Kesh knew the dragging mark was not a wounded sheep before Halen finished describing the last carcass.
A sheep could favor a foot, stumble, leave a scuffed trail. It did not walk for forty yards with the same narrow scrape falling between two clean hind prints. The thing on the spring road had lost the use of one forefoot. It was still hunting.
She knelt at the bend above the northern tank and held her hand beside a print without touching it. Four toes. A heavy pad. The outer edge deeper where the animal had compensated for the injured side.
“Ridge wolf,” she said.
Halen let out a short breath. “One?”
“One in this trail.”
The grazing keeper stood above her with a bow across her shoulders. She had brought it without announcing that she knew how to use it, which Kesh preferred. On the slope below, Edda’s party followed the old inlet channel toward the source. Iven’s brown coat appeared between thorn bushes, then disappeared behind a fold of land. He had offered to come if they needed him. Kesh had told him to stay with the water crew.
She could follow a wolf without a Circuit restorer walking on her heels.
