In winter, when the island’s dense foliage dropped its leaves and deep snow made tracking easy, a Winter Study Team came to ISRO-Park Service shorthand for Isle Royale-for several weeks and studied the wolf packs. Only two packs remained, twelve wolves in all, with only one new birth in the past year. The wolves were dying and the scientists didn’t know why. There was some indication that an outbreak of canine parvovirus, a disease carried by domestic dogs, was a factor in the decline, but inbreeding was the guess most favored at the moment.

The Park Service was doing all it could to preserve the wolves, even to the extremely unpopular extent of denying visitors and staff the privilege of bringing their pets to the island-or even within the park’s boundaries four and a half miles out. Still, the wolves did not thrive, did not reproduce.

At least it’s not us killing them, not directly, Anna thought, and enjoyed the sense of being one of the good guys, a compatriot instead of a despoiler. It was a proud feeling. And rare as hen’s teeth, added her mind’s resident cynic.

“Tomorrow,” she said to the empty stretch of beach across the channel. “At dawn. Be there or be square. And bring the puppy.”

The roar of the motorboat grew louder, wrecking what remained of tranquillity. A glossy wine-colored bow plowed up the mist in the channel. Anna gathered up her cup and crept back inside. It wouldn’t do for the public to catch the ranger in her pajamas. Besides, it was her lieu day. If she didn’t escape before a tourist happened to her, she’d undoubtedly get roped into some task for which the NPS wouldn’t pay overtime.

During the six months the park was staffed, Lucas Vega frowned on rangers leaving the island on their days off. Superior’s sudden storms had a habit of turning weekends into paid vacations. Consequently, Anna spent a goodly number of her days off selling fishing licenses, cutting fishhooks out of fingers, and listening to fish stories.