He glanced at her, surprise clear on his face. "How did…" The shock turned to a smile. "Nevermind. Sometimes I wish it had been that easy. But no, I never knew my parents or family. So answering that question isn't easy."
Okay, she felt truly horrible. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to press you for details. I didn't know." How could she have been so insistent on something he clearly didn’t want to discuss?
"No, don't worry. I didn't say it was bad, just not traditional." He leaned across the truck to touch her cheek. "Why don't you tell me about your childhood instead?"
She spent the next hour sharing some of her most significant childhood memories with him. Fears. Dreams. Nightmares.
Before she knew it, they were rolling up to the first hay shed. The work went quickly and without a hitch. At the second, she discovered that the fire had smothered itself before doing serious damage. The outer surfaces of some of the hay bales were charred, but not much else. Miraculous.
Four stops later, she hardly believed they were almost finished. One more to go, then they could get back to the hunting cabin.
They went through the routine again, loading hay and moving it to the steel frames that kept the cattle from trampling it. There were fewer cattle waiting to eat than she'd expected. Some must have found an area with decent forage not too hard to access. Still, it was something to check into later.
Glad to be nearly finished, she pointed the truck toward the last stop. She almost missed it, but several vultures chose the right moment to startle away, flapping and hopping about in protest. They settled back onto a dark patch of snow that lay in shadow.
"Great. Looks like we have a dead cow. No wonder there weren't very many there to eat. The smell spooked them." She stopped the truck and set the brake and started to climb out.
"Wait. Where are you going?" Toren didn't seem comfortable with the idea of her checking the dead animal.
"I have to go see it. We need to know why it died, if possible." The act of pulling the 30.06 out of the rack behind the seat seemed foreign to her. Odd. It wasn't as if she'd never had to take the rifle along before. She ignored the feeling and grabbed the ammo pouch, loading the rifle with quick movements. "I need to know if it was winter killed, sickness, or predators. I can't have a wolf-pack or big cat feeding on the stock, and if there's sickness, I need to get ahead of it."
Toren just watched at first. "Let me."
Did he think she'd never seen a dead cow before? "Nonsense. I'll go. You're welcome to come along if you want." She crunched through the snow, barely willing to admit she was glad to hear Toren's footsteps crackling along behind her. Walking up on a dead animal meant possibly encountering a large predator still guarding a kill. Having someone to back her up couldn't be a bad thing.
She scanned her surroundings, looking for any possible hiding spot where a bear or mountain lion might be lying in wait. The dark area lay in a slight depression, making it difficult to see clearly what lay ahead. As they drew near, the first thing Sam noticed was the smell. The coppery stench of blood hung in the air and Sam automatically wrinkled her nose in an effort to block it out.
Twenty feet away, she could tell there was something odd about the kill. When predators killed an animal, or scavenged one already dead, they generally ripped pieces loose and scattered bits around. There weren't any stray parts lying about, or splashes of blood, or any kind of mess.
At ten feet, it looked really strange. There was no blood, as if it had been killed elsewhere and dumped there. The abdomen had been opened and the organs pulled out, arranged neatly along the side of the corpse. Nothing appeared to be missing at first glance. Not even the blood rich liver and heart.
"Look around. The snow isn't disturbed and torn up. This cow wasn't killed by another animal." He was right.
How could she have overlooked something so obvious? Sam scolded herself to pay better attention. "What else could have done it? I don't see a reason why anyone would come all the way out here, kill and butcher a steer, and leave it."
Even though vultures had alerted them to the kill, it appeared even they had kept their distance. Droppings and stray feathers littered an area of torn up snow a few yards away. No other scavengers had come near either.
"I don't know who or what could have done it, just that it's not a normal animal kill." Toren moved closer to the corpse, continually scanning the surrounding area as he went.
Did he seriously think whatever had killed the steer would attack them? A chill crept up Sam's spine at the thought. Just in case, she levered a round into the rifle's chamber and stayed close to Toren.
Staring down at the steer, her jaw dropped and refused to go back where it belonged. The hide over the abdomen had been opened with surgical precision and laid back to reveal the underlying muscle and fascia. Individual muscles had been incised and teased apart to reveal bundles and fibers. Sections of blood vessels and tendons protruded, the ends segmented and dissected. The organs had been removed from the abdominal cavity and arranged neatly beside the open body, all with dissected sections.