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One thing about horses; since they were afraid of basically everything, they were great at alerting to possible danger.
Oklahoma didn’t have much in the way of large predators. No bears or cougars or bobcats outside of zoos. Bison didn’t roam wild. There were deer, maybe the occasional antelope, but those weren’t dangerous unless they were running scared and you were in the way.
What Oklahoma had were feral hogs. Those fuckers were big, destructive, and mean as fuck. And they grouped together in large herds called ‘sounders,’ which were like the outlaw gangs of the animal world.
When Phoebe urged Amos forward, he balked. He knew about deer; there was a herd that often showed up in the pasture and grazed along with the horses. If he was afraid, there was something else up there.
The brush shook, but Phoebe couldn’t see, or hear, what was up there. Even so, she unlaced the rifle from behind her saddle and brought it forward. Obviously, having been raised in the country, she knew her way around firearms, and the Army had trained her to be a crack shot, but she didn’t especially like guns. She wasn’t a hunter, and she disliked the thought of killing any animal herself, but she wasn’t about to get charged by some monster boar and let Amos be hurt.
Again, she tightened her legs around Amos’s middle. He grunted with impatience but took a few careful steps forward. Then he stopped again and glanced back at her.
Knowing it could be a very stupid move, Phoebe dismounted. Staying in the saddle would mean a faster getaway if they needed to run, but if she had to shoot something, she didn’t want to do it so close to Amos’s head. He wasn’t trained to gunfire.
And she could mount at a run if she needed to.
Well, when she was younger, when she was barrel racing competitively and in the saddle almost every possible moment of her life, she could mount at a run. Back then, she could mount bareback at a run. But that was before the Army. Before the IED. And the coma. And all that shit.
Still, if she needed to, she was sure she could manage it. Even in her winter gear.
She could do it. If she needed to.
She could.
When she stepped forward, Amos nickered softly and stretched his neck out, trying to grab at her with his soft mouth. She could almost hear him tell her she was being stupid and should come back to him at once.
“I got it, bubba,” she assured him. “It’s okay.”
He did not look convinced.
Phoebe turned back to the mystery at hand and took another couple of steps, coming up against a sturdy hickory tree. She aimed the rifle and peered through the sight. Within seconds, she saw the thick rear end of a large hog.
It was very obviously male, which could be both good and bad. Good because there was a chance it was alone. A sow was almost definitely with a sounder, but sometimes boars were without a family. A sounder that had decided it needed to defend itself was bad news—but that generally happened when there were piglets to protect, and winter was not the season for babies.
However, a lone boar could be bad news, too. A loner was protected only by himself and almost certainly hyperaggressive. A sounder might be content to tear up an acre of forest rooting for goodies in the ground and barely give the other creatures around them any notice, so long as said creatures let them be and didn’t pose a threat. A lone boar might well see threat in any large creature nearby.
Of additional interest to Phoebe as she peered through the sight of her rifle: the fence was down. An old oak had fallen and taken at least two posts down with it. The boar was snuffling under the trunk. That oak had been dead for a few years; Phoebe had intended to pull it down and cut it up for firewood, but that was work she couldn’t do on her own, and neither Margot nor Vin could help, so she’d been putting it off because hiring help was expensive.
Welp. Add this to her list of the perils of delayed maintenance. Because the fence was down, now she had a wild boar problem.
Actually, right. She could not let this boar hang around. Wild hogs could have all manner of diseases. Plus they tore up grazing land—and they even ate smaller livestock. Like chickens. In addition to being bullying assholes.
Shit. With no way to keep it out, she had to shoot the fucker. And figure out a way to get it back to the house. And then figure out what to do with it.
None of that mattered right now. Right now, she had to deal with the threat to her home.
Phoebe did something she had never wanted to do again in her life. She reached back to the deepest corner of her mind and intentionally pulled the soldier forward.
All at once, her head filled with sense memories, and then, after the rush nearly left her breathless, everything went quiet. There was nothing but her and her target. She sighted the boar again and put her finger on the trigger.
Just then, a nearby branch dropped its load of snow. Phoebe the soldier registered that occurrence but didn’t react.
The boar, however, did. It flinched, and its big, shaggy black head came up. Two dun-colored fangs—big ones, this guy had been around the block a few times—protruded from its mouth. It looked her way, and through the sight, Phoebe saw a glint of sun catch the lens and throw light back toward the boar. That was enough to gain its full attention. It made the growly, grunting snort that meant aggression and turned to face her completely.
As it lowered its head, Phoebe fired. She’d aimed between its eyes, but his movement shifted her aim. The bullet went through the boar’s ear.
Screaming in pain and rage, it charged.
The rifle had been her father’s hunting gun: a bolt-action Remington, not remotely automatic. With the angry beast barreling toward her, faster than anything with such short legs had any business moving, she racked the gun again. This time, she didn’t bother to sight. Trusting her training and instincts, she pointed and fired.
