Sam and Dean Winchester belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me, This story is for entertainment only, not for money.
Hunter's Moon
Chapter 7
Sioux Falls, Bobby's Yard
All thirty-two species of cats… resemble each other because, so far, they have had no reason to change. Good hunters since the lynx-like Urcat of the Miocene from whom the modern cats descended, the cats have had no need to adjust their bodies or their diets in response to major changes in the world's climate. Why not? Because, unlike the diets of other animals, the diet of cats didn't change. The vegetarian menu listed everything from bananas to pecans, from seaweed to eucalyptus leaves, items so different from one another that completely different organisms were required to find, chew and digest them, but the cat menu lists only one item: meat. From a cat's point of view, the difference between a bird who eats cherries, a fish who eats algae, and a giraffe who eats acacia thorns is mainly one of quantity. All three are meat, and a cat can benefit from any one of them if he can catch it. So, while the glaciers came and went, while the vegetarians struggled against all odds trying to digest new plants and adept themselves to overwhelming global changes, the cats simply kept on hunting, waiting to pounce on whoever managed to survive into the next epoch. The limber cat body that hunted successfully in the Pliocene hunts just as successfully today.
From The Tribe of Tiger, published in 1994
By Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
The Sphinx was not too enamored of Dean's "deal" with the Howard brothers. He circled his tree, round and round. Throwing his head up to try and catch the smell of his treed prey over the gasoline fumes he sent his brother short low pitched growls.
Dean knew an unhappy cat when he saw one. "No, you agreed. No more bodies."
Flicking his tale sharply, a sign of displeasure among cats, the Sphinx looked pointedly down the road,
"Let it be! Damn it, no. You promised. "Dean repeated, trying to break through the animal to his brother underneath. " I'm going in the house to talk to the Garcia family. You watch these guys and do not, I mean it; do not go after that other guy."
Dean hopped up the stairs and knocked on the Garcias' front door. Mr. Garcia opened the door and stood on the other side of the screen with his wife and little girls hiding behind him. "Could I speak to you, please?" Dean asked and Mr. Garcia came out on the porch.
The screen door stayed partially open and Dean could see the curious little girls peering out, looking at him but craning their necks trying to look at Sam. He knelt down and started cranking up his glow, trying to get everyone calm.
"Mr. Garcia, I'm Dean" he stuck his hand out to shake.
Mr. Garcia took Dean's hand. "My name is Hector," he said. "I want to thank you and, um, him," Hector nodded at Sam, "for helping us with these men. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't come."
"This is my wife, Marilia and my daughters, Grace, Olivia and Marta." Hector waved at his family and they all came out on the porch with Dean. Dean figured he had just the right amount of glow going as everyone seemed much calmer now.
Dean noticed that the littlest girl's hands and knees were scraped and bleeding a little. "What happened there?" he asked.
"The bad men yelled at me and I fell down and hurt myself."
"Well, let's just get that fixed up right now." Dean put his hands on her knees and then took her hands. The skin healed right up and she smiled and her eyes got big. "Doesn't hurt now." she said.
One of the other little girls looked up at Dean. "Can we pet the kitty cat?" Dean snorted and looked up at Hector. "What do you think of that?"
Hector smiled back at him. "If you think it is safe I trust what you say."
"Sam, hey Sam!" Sam looked up at Dean's call. "Leave those men alone and come over here and sit on the steps. The little girls want to pet the Kitty cat."
Sam looked at his brother. "You're kidding,"
"No, I'm not. Get over here."
Dragging his feet and with a couple of sharp glances at the treed Howard brothers, Sam trailed over to the porch steps and sat down. He immediately had little girls petting his head, touching his ears and running their hands down the curve of his neck. The littlest one tried to climb onto his lap but he wasn't going to allow that, he was naked. Cat or no cat he didn't want her sitting there.
Sam looked at Dean "Do you want me to purr too?"
"Whatever floats your boat, little brother." Dean replied.
Dean and Hector moved down the porch a bit, leaving Sam to entertain the girls with their mother standing watch behind him. She reached out and tentatively ran a finger down the back of his neck,
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A few minutes later Dean came down the steps and patted Sam on the shoulder. "I'm going to get the car. Wait here with your fan club."
Dean went over to the Howard's pine tree. "You guys can come down now. I'm driving you back down the road."
The Howards dropped down out of the tree; all the while keeping their eyes pinned on Sam.
"Come on. Let's get in the car." They trouped over to the Impala and got in. By this time the gasoline had evaporated and their pants weren't exactly wet any longer but they sure smelled. Dean figured they were still highly flammable. He drove to the foot of the steps and waved Sam into the car. The Howards crushed themselves into the corner behind Dean, as far as they could get from Sam without actually falling out of the door.
"Look, you pigs," Dean started. "You are going to leave those people alone. You're going to see that you brother gets the idea too. "
Looking down the road Dean could see the Howard's car. The third brother's head was sticking up over the back of the seat, watching them approach.
"They all have my number and we're going to have people watching you. Any sign of trouble and the collar comes off my pretty kitty. This time he can have you. I'm sure you all know how cats like to play with their food. Think about it."
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They dropped the Howards at their car and watched them drive off down the dirt road. Not even the clouds of dust raised by the car could obscure the fact that there was a heated, hand waving discussion going on.
Dean turned to Sam and watched his brother morph into his human form and try to shimmy into a pair of jeans from his duffle. "OK, back to Route 90." Dean said. "I swear, it has never taken us this long to go 300 freaking miles."
About 50 miles down 90 they passed through the little town of Mitchell. As they drove through on Main Street Dean spotted something he didn't believe. Determined not to stop, he turned to Sam, "What the hell was that?"
Sam laughed. "That was the world famous Corn Palace." It's an arena and multi-purpose Moorish Revival building decorated with "crop art". In this case the "crop art" is corn, corn cobs and other grains. Like Pasadena in California has the Rose Parade with floats decorated in flowers, in South Dakota they have the Corn Palace, which is decorated in murals made from grains. Instead of a parade, in September every year they have the Corn Palace Polka Festival.
"You just can't make this stuff up." Dean said. "Why does it have those green Russian onion-domes and Moorish minarets?"
"I think the short answer here is, why not?' Sam replied. "It started out looking like a castle and over the years it's been rebuilt several times. The last time they went with the Moorish Revival look and there you go. The corn murals are designed new every year and it costs the city about a hundred thousand dollars to put them up, but they pull in about half a million tourists a year because of it so it's well worth the investment."
"How do you know all this stuff?" Dean asked.
"A flyer in the diner in Petah." Sam smiled. "I was ready for it."
"And the smart ass leaks all over the car again," Dean replied.
"You know you love me." Sam smirked.
"Shut up, bitch." Dean replied and hit gas pedal. "Hey, do me a favor. Keeps an eye out for someone following us? I have that itchy feeling in the back of my head."
More of the boring South Dakota passed under the wheels but Dean was aware now. He was just waiting for the crazy to pop up.
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It was just a little over an hour later that they parked under the Singer Salvage arch. The old metal arch was just about all that was left of their long time refuge. Dean got out of the car and walked on to the property. Bobby's piles and neat rows of busted cars were now just monuments of rust; beginning to fade into the pale brown dust of dry Dakota brush.
He wandered up to the house. It was a blacken pile of charred timbers. Strangely the stairs up to the front porch were still there and the screen door remained, flapping back and forth in the wind. It led into a destroyed home full of memories, all gone now. The doorway opened to nothing left. Dean stood at the bottom of the stairs and remembered Bobby in his trucker's cap; holding the door open and saying "Well, come on you idjits."
Sam came up behind his brother and put his arms around him. "It's OK to grieve, Dean. He was a big part of our lives and helped make us who we are. You can let go. No one will know but me."
They stood together in the driveway, watching as the sun went down and darkness hid the disaster around them.
There was a flash of car headlights and they turned to see a police cruiser pulling up the old driveway. It parked and Sheriff Jody Mills got out of the car. Still slim and pleasant looking, she gave them her tight lipped smile and nodded. "Sam, Dean, good to see you boys again."
She walked up and stood next to them. Dean pushed back on Sam, disengaging his brother's arms and trying to look like she hadn't just caught them hugging and grieving.
"Did you guys know that he left the land to you?" she asked.
Dean was shocked. "What? No, we didn't know." Sam just shook his head at her, slacked jawed in surprise.
Jody went on, "Yep, and for my sins he made me executor. He left an account with enough money for me to pay his debts and keep paying the property taxes and insurance. I figured you guys would show up sooner or later. Had no idea how to reach you."
"How did you know we were here, Jody?" Sam asked.
"Old man Huntsinger down the road keeps an eye on the property for me." She replied. "He called as soon as he saw the car pull up. Noisy old man but he has his uses. You should stop and introduce yourselves. He's better than an alarm service. " She turned and looked down at her pants pocket. Fishing around in it she came up with a business card.
"Another thing you don't know, you've been followed clear across the state by this guy." Jody handed them Ray Ellis' business card. "FBI guy came by a couple of hours ago asking if I had any idea where you guys would go to ground around here. You lost him when you took the off ramp for here."
"I'm sorry, Jody. We didn't mean to make trouble for you." Dean said.
"Don't worry about it. As a matter of fact, I'm real glad you showed up. Once I clean the FBI out of my office I need you fine, upstanding Minnehaha County property tax payers to come in and sign some papers for me. We should get this property cleaned up before it's declared a public nuisance and the county does it for you. I got guys ready to bid on the metals and those metals are rusting away day by day. You need to think about what you want to do with the land; sell it, develop it, donate it , whatever."
"Maybe we can build some kind of memorial to Bobby," Dean suggested.
Sam snickered. "What? The Bobby Singer Memorial Children's Park? Hey, how about the Robert Singer Memorial Paintball Field? Shooting range?"
Dean smacked his brother. "Shut up, smartass. We could think of something."
"Here, here's my private cell phone," Jody wrote on the back of her business card. "Call me or give me your number and I'll call you. Just don't leave town before we settle this."
She turned to leave. "Oh, wait a minute," She turned back. "I think we've got a problem that's up your alley. Used to be I'd call Bobby for help but now all I have is you."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Jody," Dean replied. "What's the problem?"
"There is something going on around Falls Park and the burial mounds on the bluff above the river. " she replied.
"That's the park with the five waterfalls in the middle of town, right?" Sam asked. "I didn't know about the burial mounds."
"There's something you don't know?" Dean snarked at his brother. "How did you let that one slip by you?"
"Just ignore my idiot brother, Jody," Sam said. "If he drools on the furniture just kick him."
Jody laughed. "I have night joggers reporting misty figures that appear and disappear around the Falls. People picnicking on the bluffs have found their stuff thrown over the edge with no one around. Nothing real serious and I would like it to stay that way. Can you look into it for me?"
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A/N: We'll have our ghost hunt in the next chapter. In the meantime, leave a review if you want me to go on with this story.