Ordinarily, Mr. Osborn woke well before sunrise, but the following morning, due to the exhaustion of the previous day and the fact that the sun rises quite early in Montana in June, a golden glow was already bathing the ranch house's master bedroom when his eyes finally fluttered open. For a moment, he started to panic, thinking of all the cows that must have been lowing for their morning milking, but then he set his concerns firmly aside; a man had a right to one lazy morning in forty-four years, and he had certainly earned a few extra winks after the absurd commotion last night. (It was too early in the morning to make the effort of remembering what the commotion had been about, but he knew it had been absurd.)

He rolled over and stared at his still-sleeping wife, and thought that she had never seemed so beautiful as she did now. The graceful lines of her face, the pale smoothness of her skin, the long, black hair that lay askew about her shoulders, were all wondrously accentuated by the sunbeams that the morning poured like molten gold over her unconscious form. Even the encroaching tints of silver in her hair seemed like something scattered down from Olympus.

Not, of course, he reminded himself (for he was a fair man, even in his private thoughts), that there's anything wrong with silver hair. In the right context, it can be pretty breathtaking in its own right. Just look at wolves.

And then his mouth fell open, for, with that word, all the details of the previous evening had come rushing back unbidden into his mind. But no – that couldn't have actually happened, could it? Werewolves were creatures of legend and bad cinema; they didn't actually exist. They certainly didn't lie in baskets in O'Hare International Airport, waiting to be found by passing ranchers' wives. No, it had to have been a dream.

Though if it had been a dream, it had been an awfully realistic one. Mr. Osborn believed he could remember every detail of the incident, right down to the smell of his rifle (which really needed oiling, now that he was thinking about it). Why, he could even remember that the Rowena-wolf's tail had had a peculiar tuft at the end of it – which didn't seem like the sort of detail his subconscious mind would have made up on its own.

Mr. Osborn frowned reflectively for a moment, then decided to make an objective test. He rose from the bed, went over to his dresser drawer, and pulled out the silver William Jennings Bryan medallion that he had inherited from his grandfather. (Jeremiah Osborn had gotten it at a Bryan rally during the 1900 campaign; it had been the high point of the future Flaming O founder's early life when he had gotten to see the Great Commoner in person.)

Holding this as though it were a talisman, he tiptoed out of the bedroom and into the game room, where he leaned over and peeked into Rowena's crib. A less wolf-like child than the one who lay therein would have been hard to imagine, and Mr. Osborn was tempted to dismiss the whole idea as a fantasy and go back to bed, but he told himself firmly that he had come into this room for a purpose, and he wasn't going to leave it until that purpose, however stupid it might be, was accomplished.

Gently, he reached into the crib, picked up his foster daughter's right arm, and pressed the Bryan medallion against the tip of her middle finger.

Mrs. Osborn was in the middle of a confused dream in which she and R.L. were fighting each other for Rowena's blanket when she was woken by a sudden, high-pitched wail from across the hallway. Like her husband the previous night, she was awake in a moment; throwing a thin robe over her nightgown, she sprinted into the game room, and there found her husband standing over her daughter's crib, holding some sort of large coin in his right hand and wearing an expression of grim validation on his face.

"Nat!" she exclaimed, reaching into the cradle and pressing the distraught Rowena to her bosom. "What's going on here?"

"Just a little experiment," said Mr. Osborn. "I thought I'd check to see whether Rowena responds to the touch of silver the same way others of her kind do."

"Her kind?" said Mrs. Osborn, puzzled. Then she remembered the events of the past night, and her eyes widened. "Oh," she said. "Oh, yes, I see. And, um, does she?"

"Look for yourself," said Mr. Osborn. "Third finger, right hand."

Mrs. Osborn glanced down at the tiny hand that was picking clumsily at the edge of her robe. At the tip of the third finger was a small, red blotch; it was scarcely bigger than a pinprick, but, judging from the way Rowena was keeping that finger as far splayed out from the rest as her infantile motor skills could manage, it was evidently causing her significant discomfort.

"Is that what it looks like when a werewolf touches silver?" said Mrs. Osborn, frowning. "I always pictured something more... I don't know, more ghastly somehow."

"Well, maybe if I'd stabbed her with one of your mother's old serving forks, it would have been," said Mr. Osborn, "but I guess there's a limit to how much damage you can do with a 19th-century campaign token." And he slipped the Bryan medallion through his fingers and pocketed it.

"It almost looks like an allergic reaction of some kind," said Mrs. Osborn, examining the affected area critically. "I wonder if we'll have to put that on her school forms: 'Allergies: ragweed, penicillin, silver.'"

"Don't be ridiculous, Julie," said her husband. "No Osborn's ever been allergic to ragweed."

Mrs. Osborn gave him a look, which he ignored. "Besides," he said, "I think you're looking too far ahead."

"Oh?"

Mr. Osborn nodded gravely. "Superintendent Argenbright isn't the elected official who can cause us the most grief right now," he said. "That distinction goes to the Honorable John P. Dellon."

"Judge Dellon?" said Mrs. Osborn. "That's right – he's hearing our case today, isn't he?"

Mr. Osborn nodded. "And sure as God made little green apples," he said, "he's going to ask us if we know of any special needs Rowena has – and I can just imagine the look on his face when we tell him."