Wild Spirits

by Rosa Jordan

  Kyle gave her a look. “I wish you’d stick closer to home.”

  “Those criminals are the ones who ought to be locked up — not me!” Wendy said sulkily. “I promised Danny I’d take him to Red River Ranch as soon as he turned fourteen. Well, now he’s fourteen, and that’s what we’re going to do. I’m not going to cancel it just because of them!”

  Kyle sighed. “I just think you’d be safer at home than out on the highway.”

  “I don’t feel safe anywhere,” Wendy muttered. “Especially not at home. They found our phone number, so what’s to keep them from finding out where we live?”

  “They don’t have the phone number anymore,” Kyle reminded her. He scribbled a number on a slip of paper and handed it to her. “Here’s the new one. Nobody has it but you and me and the phone company.”

  Wendy took a look at the new number and committed it to memory. But just in case she forgot it, she put the paper it was written on her shirt pocket. “I do not intend to let those rats turn me into a prisoner. I’m going to do my best to live a normal life!”

  Kyle sighed again, and said nothing. Wendy sighed, too. The real problem was that she wasn’t sure she could live a normal life knowing there were men with guns out there who wanted to get her.

  • • •

  Wendy had already talked to the McDermonts about taking Danny on as a volunteer. Despite his age, they were enthusiastic about someone she had trained, who had experience with both hoofstock and local wildlife. But naturally they wanted to meet him before saying yes definitely. They had told her not to tell him that he was being considered as a volunteer. If they liked him, they’d suggest it. Otherwise, he’d be treated like any other visitor to the ranch.

  After being told that the McDermonts were “around somewhere,” Wendy and Danny wandered aimlessly among the cages, discussing the animals on display. They spied the McDermonts standing together next to an enclosure with a fat cougar lolling under a tree on the far side.

  “How’re you doing, gal?” said Mrs. McDermont, giving Wendy a hug. “Is this your friend Danny you been telling us so much about?”

  “This is him,” Wendy replied. “Danny, meet Mr. and Mrs. McDermont.”

  Mr. McDermont stuck out his hand, and as Danny shook it, he asked, “Well, son, what do you think of Red River Ranch?”

  “I love it!” Danny said. “Where did that cougar come from? Is he really the same one from the junkyard?”

  “The very same,” Mrs. McDermont said. “Took forever to get him fattened up. But look at him now. A real butterball.”

  “He’s in good shape physically,” Mr. McDermont told Wendy, “but mentally he’s a mess. We figure that junkyard guy used an electric cattle prod on him. Probably to keep him backed off when he opened the door of the camper to throw food in. The cat’s pure petrified of anything shaped like a stick. Somebody walks by with a cane, he goes ballistic. The staff calls him ‘Psycho.’”

  “If he’s scared of people, couldn’t you let him go free?” Danny asked.

  “Would if we could, son. But it’s illegal to release a wild animal unless it came from the wild, and then it has to be released in the area it came from. If it was captive-born or spent a long time in captivity, then it’s considered too dangerous to be turned lose. The Game and Fish people asked the junkyard guy where it came from, but he said he got it off somebody who was just passing through and didn’t know its history.” Mr. McDermont turned to Wendy. “What about the bobcat? You find out anything about it?”

  “We did,” Wendy replied. “JuJu told Kyle that his dogs cornered it up in under an old camper shell and he blocked off the entrance. He said he would’ve sold it if he could find a buyer — as if anybody in their right mind would want a full-grown, totally wild bobcat. Otherwise, he intended to skin it and nail the hide to the outside wall of his office as a ‘conversation piece.’” Wendy made a face of disgust. “What kind of person wants a piece of a dead animal to show off to other people?”

  “Way too many folks like that,” Mrs. McDermont sighed.

  Wendy nodded. “Anyway, since the bobcat was caught locally, we kept her just long enough to fatten her up. Yesterday Danny and I took her to Ozark National Forest and let her go.”

  “That was so cool,” Danny said. “The best day of my life!”

  Mr. McDermont nodded. “A beautiful sight it is, seeing an animal running wild and free, the way it’s meant to. Sadly, we don’t have an animal on the place that could be legally released. Dump one of these captive-raised animals in the wild and they’d have as hard a time surviving as we would. And most of them would do just what we’d do — try to find their way back to civilization in hopes of getting a meal.”

  As they talked, they walked past other cages, Wendy visiting with animals she remembered or exclaiming over new ones acquired since she’d stopped working at the ranch. Danny paused at one cage and asked, “Why is this one empty?”

  “It’s not empty,” Mrs. McDermont turned to Wendy. “You remember Namu, the blind Canadian lynx?”

  “Oh sure,” Wendy said. “Does he still spend most of his time in his den?”

  “Practically never comes out,” Mr. McDermont said. “We were wondering if you’d take him. You know, it’s animals being on display that draws people to Red River Ranch. If we didn’t have paying guests, we couldn’t afford to feed them. One that won’t display himself is no help at all.”

  “It’s because he’s blind,” Mrs. McDermont added. “Having strangers walking by all the time and him not being able to see them, that’s what makes him so shy. I personally think if we keep him much longer, the stress is going to kill him.”

  Wendy stood gazing into the seemingly empty cage, remembering the blind lynx. “I always liked Namu,” she said. “He wasn’t friendly, but he had dignity.” Thinking out loud, she said, “I didn’t want to keep that junkyard bobcat in the quarantine cage for a month, so Danny helped me build a pen for her. Now that she has been released, we could use it. It’s not as big as the other enclosures, but Namu being blind, I guess it would be okay. It is on the far side of the farm. Nobody but Kyle, Danny, and I go back there.”

  “Well,” drawled Mr. McDermont, “I don’t know how often Danny’s going to get back there from now on. We were thinking about asking him if he’d like to volunteer here on weekends.”

  “Really?” Danny exclaimed. “Oh man! If you’ll let me, that’d make this the best day of my life!”

  “We wouldn’t want the responsibility of somebody as young as you messing with the cats,” Mr. McDermont cautioned. “But we could use a good boy with the hoofstock. What do you think, Wendy? Would he be any use to us over there?”

  “Danny is great with hoofstock. Machu and Picchu eat right out of his hand, and Dolly Llama lets him play with her cria all he wants.” Wendy gave Danny a sideways smile. “None of the llamas have ever spit on him.”

  They walked on to where the hoofstock was kept, discussing what the work would entail. It made Wendy proud to see how tall Danny stood, and to hear the intelligent questions he asked. He was so much more confident than he had been three years ago!

  As they were about to leave, Mr. McDermont handed Danny a sheet of paper. “You being underage, Danny, one of your parents will have to have to sign this form saying they won’t hold us responsible if you get hurt, okay?”

  Danny took the form without saying anything. But from the way his shoulders suddenly slumped, Wendy saw that he doubted his mother would sign it.

  “Give it to me,” Wendy said. “I’ll talk to your mom.” To the McDermonts, she said, “There’s a bus Danny can take that will get him here by eight on Saturday mornings. But I’ll bring him next Saturday when I come to get Namu.”

  “That ought to work out just fine,” Mrs. McDermont said. “I just wish you’d come back, too, Wendy.”

>   “I’d like to,” Wendy said, “but I’ve got too many animals of my own now. No way can I look after them and yours.”

  “That’s the way it is with a lot of our volunteers,” Mr. McDermont sighed. “Soon as they get trained, they go off and do their own thing with wildlife.” He grinned at Danny. “You gonna do that, too, son?”

  Danny ducked his head and smiled shyly. “Probably.”

  “At least we’re getting you young,” Mrs. McDermont said cheerfully. “You’ll be around to help us out till you finish high school, won’t you, Danny?”

  “Oh yes ma’am!” Danny exclaimed. “For sure that long!”

  28

  DANNY,S PARENTS

  When they reached Danny’s house, instead of dropping him at the curb as she always had before, Wendy went to the front door with him.

  “Mom!” Danny called, “Wendy’s here to see you.”

  Mrs. Ryan came to the door and invited Wendy inside. Butch, who was watching television, mumbled hello, but didn’t get up from the sofa. He continued to watch a stock car race on TV while Wendy explained about the release form.

  “The training Danny will get at Red River Ranch should make it easier for him to get a job in another couple of years,” Wendy told Mrs. Ryan, although that wasn’t entirely true. It would make it easy for Danny to get volunteer work with animals, like what she herself did. But to get a paying job working with animals, a person usually needed a college degree in something like biology or veterinary medicine.

  Mrs. Ryan stared suspiciously at the form, then looked across the room at her husband. “Butch?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, why not? Boy don’t lift a finger around the house. Just messes with them cans he collects for recycling.”

  Wendy didn’t say anything. She knew that from years of collecting and recycling aluminum cans that Danny had over $2000 in his savings account. But maybe they did not know that.

  “Reckon he works some out at your place,” Butch commented. “Says he does, anyway.” He gave Wendy a sidelong look. “Where do you live exactly? South of town, I know. But where?”

  Wendy felt it was reasonable for Danny’s parents to want to know where she lived. However, Danny had been coming out to her place for three years, and not once had his either of them bothered to find out where she lived or even ask for the phone number. It seemed odd that Butch was suddenly asking where exactly she lived. Something else made her suspicious, too. It was the worried way Mrs. Ryan looked at her husband then back at Wendy, almost as if she was hoping she wouldn’t answer.

  Wendy mumbled, “Just, you know, a couple miles out past the interstate.”

  Danny shot her a quick look, which Wendy understood. “Out past the interstate” wasn’t exactly an address, and the farm was more like ten miles out.

  Just then there was a five-car pileup in the race Butch was watching on TV, and he didn’t seem to notice that Wendy hadn’t given him a clear answer. Mrs. Ryan scribbled her name on the release statement without bothering to read it, and handed it back to Wendy.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Ryan,” Wendy said, and hurriedly left.

  Danny followed her back to the car. Once there, she handed him the release form, which he tucked away safely in his jacket pocket.

  “Thanks,” he said, and added happily, “I never had such a good birthday before.”

  “It was fun,” Wendy agreed. “And you know there is some leftover birthday cake. You want me to save it for the llamas?”

  Danny grinned. “Half of it,” he said. “The other half I’m going to take to the zebra at Red River Ranch.”

  “Okay,” Wendy said. “But you be careful around those zebras. They’re bad about kicking.”

  “Then maybe you better get a couple,” Danny grinned. “That way, if anybody comes out to Wildtrax to mess with you, the zebras can kick him while the llamas are spitting on him.”

  “Danny, Danny!” Wendy shook her head, laughing. “You have some very twisted fantasies about animals!”

  29

  FIGHTING FEAR

  Over the next few days, no one called Wendy’s new unlisted phone number. But someone did call the doctor’s office where her mother worked and left a threatening message on the answering machine. Of course it was reported to the police, but what could they do? There was absolutely no evidence to link anybody to the threats.

  Wendy tried not to get more scared, but she did. She didn’t leave the farm again until the following Saturday, and then only because she had promised the McDermonts she would come for Namu, and Danny was expecting to ride with her for his first day as a volunteer.

  • • •

  “Come on, son,” Mr. McDermont said, as soon as they arrived at Red River Ranch. “Let’s get you started over here cleaning manure out of the shed where we keep the hoofstock shut up at night. You’re not allergic to manure, are you?”

  “No sir!” Danny grinned.

  “How about hard work? You allergic to hard work?”

  “No sir!” Danny repeated.

  “Then you’re just the volunteer we’ve been looking for,” Mrs. McDermont said. “Are you planning to work just today, Danny, or can you work tomorrow, too? We get real busy on Sundays.”

  Danny hesitated, and glanced at Wendy. She understood the problem. “It’s a long bus ride, Mrs. McDermont, but if Danny could spend the night? Danny, would you help them out on Sundays, too, if you had a place to sleep here?”

  “Oh yeah!” Danny said eagerly. “I can sleep here in the stable. I don’t mind.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Mrs. McDermont said. “We’ve got several volunteers who sleep over on the weekend. They usually roll up in their sleeping bags in the nursery. But since you don’t have a sleeping bag with you, you can stay at our house tonight. Then if it works out that you start volunteering regular with us, you can start bringing a sleeping bag and bed down in the nursery with the other volunteers.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Danny said again, with so much enthusiasm that you’d have thought they had just offered him an all-expense-paid weekend at Disney World.

  After they had got Namu into the pet carrier and loaded him into the RAV, Wendy yelled across the field to where Danny was already hard at work pitching manure over the fence into the compost. “Call me when you get home tomorrow night, and let me know how it went!”

  Danny came to the fence. “I don’t know your new phone number.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Wendy mentally thought of the new number then checked to see if she had remembered it right. She had, so she handed Danny the slip of paper. “You won’t give it to anybody else, will you?”

  Danny shook his head. “No.”

  Wendy knew that he understood why she only wanted trusted friends to have her phone number. After all, he was the person who had actually seen the robber hold a gun to her head. And, by pure coincidence, he was also the person who’d answered the phone when that same criminal, or someone, had phoned to threaten her again. Next to Kyle, Wendy trusted Danny more than anyone in the world.

  • • •

  The drive to Red River Ranch had been easy because Danny was with her and they had talked all the way about the animals she knew there which he would soon be helping to look after. However, driving home alone was nerve-wracking. Wendy was so busy watching the road behind her to make sure she wasn’t being followed that she could hardly pay attention to the road ahead. But nobody bothered her. It was just her own nerves getting the best of her.

  She wished she knew what to do about the fear, but the only thing she could think of was to keep busy. That wasn’t hard once she was back at Wildtrax because there was plenty to do and no Danny there to help her. First she put food and water in the small enclosure where she planned to keep Namu. Then, since she couldn’t carry the big pet
carrier with a forty-pound lynx in it, she put the carrier in a wheelbarrow and rolled it across the pasture to the waiting pen.

  The wheelbarrow wouldn’t fit through the gate, so when she reached the pen she had to lift the carrier out and drag it inside. Although she managed it by herself, she again thought of how much easier it would have been with Danny there to help.

  “He was my volunteer,” she muttered. “I don’t know why I gave him to them. They’ve already got plenty of volunteers!”

  But she did know why she had arranged for Danny to volunteer at Red River Ranch. She had gotten a good education working there and knew he would, too — better than what he could get at her place, because Red River had so many more animals.

  Once she got the carrier inside the pen, she opened it. Then she quickly slipped out the gate, closing it securely behind her. She sat down to watch, but nothing happened. Wendy waited nearly an hour, and still Namu didn’t come out.

  He’s afraid, she thought. Just like me. If he could see what’s around, he wouldn’t be so scared, but knowing something’s around and not knowing what or who, that’s the scariest thing of all!

  It started getting dark and cold, seeing as it was the end of November. Wendy fed and watered the rest of the animals, then went indoors. The house, and in fact, the whole farm, seemed empty without Danny. Fear and loneliness seemed to be seeping into her bones along with the winter cold, but Wendy was determined not to let it get the best of her. She went upstairs to her office and began working on the accounting jobs she did for various small businesses.

  At ten in the evening the phone rang. She reached for the extension then remembered that she was supposed to check the display on the new phone first to see who was calling. She ran downstairs, and saw that it was Kyle. “Hello. Kyle?”

  “Yeah. Listen, Wendy. I’m going to be a little late tonight. I’m going out to County Line.”

  The roadside bar was not the sort of place where Kyle normally hung out, although he had been known to stop there occasionally for a beer with one of his buddies. Wendy felt a stab of annoyance. Kyle seemed concerned that she stay close to home, but didn’t seem worried enough to be at home as much as possible himself.