Wolf Stalker by Gloria Skurzynski Page A

how majestic the wolf had been before the bullet slammed against his body. As his father lifted the strip of color negatives from the stabilizer solution, Jack crossed his fingers. Were they any good?
    He lost all track of time. After the negatives dried, his father let Jack put them into the enlarger. There were ten prints. The four of the mule deer when the wolves had chased it across the creek were too out of focus to be any good. There were three of the wolf, and three others of where the gunman had stood. The rest of the negatives, blank because they were unexposed, Jack threw away.
    They loaded paper into the tube and began to process the prints. When the lights came on and the prints emerged from the processor, Jack let out the breath he’d been holding. The wolf pictures were going to be beautiful! He waited for his father to exclaim over them, but Steven just stood there, acting puzzled.
    â€œI don’t get this,” Steven said.
    â€œDad!” It was a cry of disappointment. “What about my wolf shots? Are any of them any good?”
    â€œWhat! Oh—Jack—they’re so good I’ll need a half hour just to tell you how great they are. It’s these other pictures I can’t figure out.”
    â€œI know the deer pictures are out of focus—it was moving too fast.”
    â€œNo—these.” Steven held up the strip of negatives to examine them. “First I thought maybe it was a flaw in the film, but the negatives are fine. Look at that—” He pointed. “In the negs it’s a little green dot; in the prints it’s a bright red dot. It’s on all three pictures of where you said the gunman was standing.”
    Lifting the wet prints carefully, one by one, touching them only on the corners, Jack saw what his father meant. Each of the three prints showed foothills, a clump of pine trees—and a red dot in the middle of the trees. The dots were tiny, like pinpoints of red light, although one of them seemed to have a small halo around it.
    â€œMaybe it’s sun reflecting off something,” Jack suggested, but Steven answered, “No, sunlight reflects white, not red. Oh well, you ought to be really happy with your wolf pictures, son. As soon as we get home, I’m going to enlarge them and frame them for your room. But we gotta go now to meet your mom and Troy and Mike and Ashley, so we’ll let these prints dry and pick them up later.”
    â€œTake the negatives!” Jack insisted. Prints weren’t too important—he could always make extra prints, as many as he wanted. Negatives, though, were irreplaceable.
    Everyone met in the hotel lobby and then hurried across the street to the restaurant, because by that time the kids were really starved. At least Jack was; Troy looked gloomy and Ashley had already eaten a chocolate sundae, so maybe she wasn’t too hungry.
    After they ordered, Mike said, “Take a look out the windows, guys. We have visitors.”
    A herd of elk had arrived at the restaurant for dinner, too, but they were dining on the front lawn, literally. A big bull elk, with an impressive rack of antlers, lay comfortably on his belly, chewing his cud and wiggling his ears to drive away flies. His harem of three elk cows stood nearby, heads down, munching the lawn. Two middle-size calves faced away from them, providing a super view of their pale rumps to the watchers at the restaurant window.
    Olivia put her arm around Troy’s shoulders. “These are the animals I work with, Troy, down at the Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole. Every winter whole herds of them migrate from Yellowstone to get fed at the refuge. And they don’t just come from here. They come from all the higher ranges in the Tetons, too. We get 10,000 head of elk coming into the refuge every winter, and for each animal, each day, we put out 10 pounds of hay.”
    â€œHay! That’s a lot!” Ashley joked.
    Troy didn’t answer.
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