“Come look,” Manny answers. “We’re gonna need X-rays, stat.”

Kirsten is not “cuz,” but there is no use in being acting President of the United States if you cannot include yourself in an Air Force Lieutenant’s invitation. When she sees what is in the back of the truck, she wishes almost that she had not. “Oh, my God.” Her throat closes on the words.

The larger cage in front holds a bobcat, well-fed and sleek with the winter’s hunting, and, very probably, the chickens and assorted small livestock from deserted farms. All her grace and beauty lie still now, her eyes wide pools of darkness, her tongue lolling from her mouth. Only the heaving of her ribs shows that she lives. Across her right front paw a bloody gash shows white bone and the loose ends of tendons. “What happened to her?” She manages to force out the words. “Was it—?”

“Goddamned leg-hold trap,” Manny finishes the sentence for her, his voice tight with controlled rage. “I had to dart her to get her out. It’s not as bad as it looks, but the sooner we get her cleaned up and some atropine in her, the better.”

Tacoma inspects the wound carefully, lightly moving the paw back and forward, palpating above the gash. “I think we’ve got one lucky cat here, but we need the radiographs to be certain. Shannon,” he says without looking around, “Set up the X-ray, will you? Dorsal and ventral on the paw. Any other frank injuries?”

This last is directed to Manny, who shakes his head. With his good hand, he pulls forward a second carrier. “This one’s not quite as bad, just embarrassing for the poor guy.”

Kirsten peers past him. Her first thought is that the cage holds a small wolf, her second that this is the biggest fox she has ever seen. He, too, is drugged, though his eyes are not quite so dilated. Even in this state, there is a glint of intelligence in them, and something of the mischief of Wika Tegalega. “Coyote,” Andrews says. “Somehow moved fast enough not to get a foot in the trap. Caught his tail instead.”

“He’s been there longer than Igmú, though. It’s infected,” Manny adds.

Tacoma’s nose wrinkles. The odor is pronounced, even from where Kirsten stands. “Not good,” he says. “Sorry, fella, you may lose some of your brush. We’ll do what we can, though.” Then to Manny again, “ Just these two?”

“There was a badger,” Andrews says quietly. “Too far gone.”

Tacoma swears softly. ‘Any sign of who—“ He breaks off suddenly, his eyes shifting to a large bundle in the corner of the truckbed, then back to Manny again. Something Kirsten does not understand passes between them, clearly as if it had been spoken. Andrews’ face is stiffly, deliberately unexpressive.

The bundle is about the size of a bear, Kirsten thinks. So badly mangled, perhaps, that the men do not want to trouble her tender female sensibilities? But that is nonsense; two of them have grown up in a tradition that honors women warriors, and all three of them were at the Cheyenne, commanded by one woman, led to victory by another. Nothing could offend her sensibilities any worse than the human wreckage at the end of a pitched battle, than what she faced on her flight west before Minot. They have to know that.

The bundle is about the size of a man.

A dead man.

There is nothing to be done for the dead. Aloud she says, “How can I help?”

Tacoma has opened the bobcat’s carrier and is sliding her gently into his arms. Supporting her back and head so that she can breathe more easily, he carries her into the clinic, Kirsten darting ahead to hold the door for him. “Thanks,” he says. “You can help me scrub up the surgery and set out what we’ll need.”

She continues to hold the door as Manny and Andrews between them maneuver the second cage into the waiting room and from there directly into the surgery. Carrying the cat,. Tacoma follows Shannon into X-ray, emerging a moment later and heading directly for the small operating room’s sink. Rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing vigorously up to his elbows, he says, “Let’s see Tshunkmanitu before the drug wears off. If he needs surgery, we can at least start him on antibiotics, knock the infection down some first.”

Ten minutes later, with the bright lamp glaring down on the newly cleaned wound, it is obvious what must be done. The posterior half of the tail hangs by a fragment of crushed bone and little more than ribbons or torn muscle and skin. Tacoma has debrided as much of the dead tissue as he can and flushed the wound with sterile water. “He’d have had himself out of the trap before much longer,” he observes as he strips off his gloves, wads them one into the other along with pus-sodden sponges and tosses them into the red biohazard bin. “He’s going to lose about half that brush. Let’s get the atropine into him and bed him down.”

Tacoma fills a pair of syringes from vials in the refrigerator. One is Clavulin; the other the atropine that will bring the coyote up to consciousness again. “Manny, can you and Kirsten bandage him up? I’ll go take a look at the bobcat’s X-rays.”

Deftly, hardly hindered by his immobilized arm, Manny packs the end of the wound with sponges. A length of Kerlix follows, with bright blue elastic bandage over that. “Just like Coyote,” Manny observes. “In all the old stories, he’s always getting his tail in a crack. That or his—that is, another part of him.”

Kirsten returns his grin as she sprays the table and scrubs it down.. “Did you and Tacoma work with Dakota?”

Manny nods. “I actually got paid. Poor Tacoma just got drafted when she needed someone and he was handy” The coyote’s head suddenly raises up, bright eyes beginning to focus. “Hey, here he comes. Can you lift him?”

Kirsten slides her arms under the animal, no heavier than a medium-sized domestic dog. With Manny holding the door, she walks briskly toward the Iso ward and deposits him in the waiting cage a couple doors down from the mother wolf and her pup. The wolf’s head comes up as they pass, long nose testing the air at the arrival of something canine and male. “Company, girl,” Kirsten says, slipping her arms free and securing the latch.

When they return, Tacoma is working rapidly on the bobcat’s lower leg, just above the ankle joint. This wound is fresher and has not had time to become infected. A pile of bloody sponges sits in their upturned plastic container at one end of the table, beside the bottle of sterile water. “She’s a lucky girl, and we’re a couple lucky nurses,” he says. “The bone’s not broken, and we don’t have to splint it.”

Kirsten watches his deft movements as he swabs and flushes, swabs and flushes the raw flesh. As he reaches for the water, the back of his hand trails gently over the cat’s flank, lingers for a moment on her head. It comes to Kirsten that he has the sort of bond with cats that his sister does with wolves. When he is done he bandages the wound, administers antibiotics and atropine, and himself carries her back toward the ward, murmuring to her softly in Lakota.

An hour later the clinic begins to settle for the night. All the patients are fed, cages cleaned, meds given, dressings changed. Shannon, so bone-weary she can hardly stand, has gone home. Released from his discipline, Asimov sits possessively at Kirsten’s feet in the waiting room. Manny, fishing in his pocket for the truck keys, prods Andrews where he dozes on a bench. “Hey, bro, c’mon. Let’s go home to a deee-lish-us bowl of chicken noodle soup.” And to Kirsten, “You want us to drop you and Asi off at the Colonel’s?”

“Thanks,” she says. Then, very evenly, “In a moment. First I want to know what’s in that bundle in the back of the truck. I like to know who I’m riding around with.”

Again, the covert glances: Andrews to Manny to Tacoma and back.

“I’d like an answer, please.” Kirsten says.

Manny sits down with a sigh, his stocky bulk folding up joint by joint. “It’s the trapper. He was out checking his lines.”

“He drew on Manny,” Andrews says. “It was self-defense.”

Kirsten turns to Tacoma, “You knew about this?”

Tacoma runs his hands through his hair and over his face. “I was afraid something like this might happen, yeah.”

“You thought something had happened to Manny when Shannon came running back to the Iso ward, didn’t you?”

Tacoma nods. “He can’t carry a rifle with his busted shoulder. Look, a trapper is by definition a criminal. It’s not something kinder, gentler people do.”

“Nothing’s wrong with my trigger finger, thank you very much.” Manny pats the bulge at his waist that Kirsten realizes belatedly is a handgun.

“Show me.”

The face of the corpse, when Tacoma unwraps it, is familiar even in the failing light. Except for the bullet hole in his forehead, Bill Dietrich looks exactly as he did the night he and a mob behind him tried to force their way onto the Base. Fleetingly, Kirsten regrets that she did not shoot him on the spot.. “All right,” she says. “Take him over to the morgue. Someone can notify his family, if he has one, in the morning. There’ll have to be some sort of inquest. I’ll talk to the Colonel about it tonight.” She reels off the orders as if she has been giving them all her life.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Manny says. There is a suspicious glint in his eye. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” Kirsten opens the passenger door to the front seat, and Asi hops up, settling in the middle. “Take me back to—“ She hesitates momentarily. “Take me home.”

*

Koda slips back into the darkened, empty room and pauses a moment to consider her options. She knows that down the hall, past the “special care” suite she has just returned from, there are ten birthing rooms, five to a side. Along the other hallway, there are two Jacuzzis used for relaxation, and two “birthing tubs” for water births. At the very end of the hallway is a large, family style kitchen. The two wings sprout from a central core, a square area housing a reception/admitting desk and a waiting area with comfortable couches and a communal television.