Wolf Stalker by Gloria Skurzynski Page B

day ago Jack would have thought he was just being surly; now he realized how much Troy was hurting inside, about his mother.
    â€œIf we didn’t help feed them, a lot of the elk would starve over the winter,” Olivia said.
    Across the road an even bigger bull elk, with even grander antlers, shook himself and pawed the ground with his right front hoof. He seemed to be putting on a lusty display for the benefit of the cows. As he bent down to scrape his antlers against the grass, his powerful shoulder muscles bunched up; then he lifted his head and bugled. Even from inside the restaurant, with the doors and windows closed, his bugling sounded impressive.
    â€œI like wolf song better,” Ashley admitted.
    Their food arrived then, and the six of them sat around the table, eating and talking—all except Troy, who didn’t do much of either.
    â€œHow were Jack’s pictures?” Olivia asked.
    â€œYour son,” Steven answered, “is one of the world’s great junior photographers. As soon as we’re finished here I’ll go get the prints of his wolf pictures. But you know,” he said, turning to Mike, “there’s something that’s weird about the other pictures—the ones Jack took of the mountain. Right in the middle of all three prints is a little red dot. I can’t figure out what it came from.”
    Mike shrugged. “Maybe somebody dropped a bandanna on the ground.”
    â€œNo, it looked more like a light.”
    â€œAshley said she saw a shirt through the binoculars—” Olivia began.
    â€œThe shirt wasn’t red, Mom. It was blue plaid. Too bad I couldn’t see the face of the person wearing it.”
    â€œI couldn’t guess what the red spot was, then,” Mike said. “But I have to tell you, your Ashley makes a great witness. She convinced me you kids heard only one shot. And then she came up with a question that got me thinking.”
    â€œWhat question was that?” Troy asked, talking with his mouth full.
    â€œAshley wanted to know why we couldn’t take the bullet fragment from the radio collar and the bullet from the wolf’s wound and see if they matched. In the first place, we don’t have the bullet that hit the wolf’s side. It was a grazing wound, so the bullet just skimmed off somewhere.”
    â€œGood thing it did,” Olivia said. “If it had penetrated, Silver would have died.”
    â€œRight. Silver is one lucky wolf,” Mike continued, “in a lot of ways. Because that first bullet, the one that hit the collar, is what we call a hot bullet—it was made to fragment on impact at close range. Looking at the way it tore up the battery pack, I’d say that bullet came in at an angle, too. When it hit, it blew into fragments, but the battery pack absorbed most of the energy. I’m sure Silver got knocked down from the impact—you know, like when a policeman wearing a bullet-proof vest gets shot at? The bullet doesn’t go in, but it slams him to the ground.”
    â€œI did notice he had some blood spots around his collar,” Olivia said.
    â€œI guess it was from a few tiny bullet fragments striking him through his thick fur.”
    Mike put down his fork and added, “Anyway, I started to wonder just when that first shot was fired. The one that hit the collar. Was it yesterday, or even before that?”
    This time they all stopped eating to pay attention to Mike.
    â€œI realized,” he went on, “that this was the same wolf whose signal stopped transmitting a couple of days ago. His radio collar went silent on the day George Campbell’s dog was attacked. So I thought, is that just a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not. And then—”
    â€œI asked him about the hair,” Ashley said. “I said, ‘What color was that hair that was stuck on Silver’s collar?’”
    Olivia frowned. “What are you suggesting, Mike?