Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

  Connla settled the stock of the rifle into his shoulder and sighted it. He would need the torch mount, but only for a second. The cougar was beyond his tree now, perhaps thirty yards, and he wanted to hit him right behind the shoulder. He aimed, one eye closed, following the dark shape on the hillside. The sheep were bleating, shifting as one, packed against each other for comfort. Connla was aware of fresh lights in Joe’s house, but he concentrated on the cougar, settling the gun and letting his breath ease out. Then he pressed the torch mount and squeezed the trigger gently. There was a dull thudding sound and the big male jerked up on his hind legs, rolled over and got up again. Connla kept the torch mount on him and saw the dart, still embedded despite the roll in the grass. The cougar snapped his head this way and that, then reached behind, trying to get at the pain in his shoulder.

  The anaesthetic was strong and wouldn’t take long to work, but Connla didn’t want him loping off up the hill if he could help it. He seemed in two minds about what to do, slightly unsteady on his feet now, but still with the scent of prey thick in his nostrils. Connla sat where he was and watched him lurch a little, his great head swinging from side to side. Then he sat awkwardly on his hind legs and rolled over. Still Connla remained where he was, watching the cougar’s side heaving up and down as his breathing slipped deeper into a rhythm. When he was satisfied, he slung the rifle over his shoulder and jumped down from the tree.

  The cougar was long in the body and his tail more than doubled his size. A thick dark streak traced the length of his spine, and the very tip of his tail was frayed in black hairs. His mouth hung open, tongue over his teeth, and his eyes were half closed. Connla studied him for a moment. He would certainly need the Indian’s help to haul him; he must weigh all of 200 pounds. Rifle over his shoulder, he set off down the hill.

  Between them they manhandled the sleeping beast onto the sheet of tarpaulin that Connla fetched from his truck.

  ‘Beauty, ain’t he.’ Joe nodded approvingly.

  ‘He sure is. You ready?’ Connla took the strain his side and they lifted him onto the tailboard of his pickup. The cage was ready and they guided the tarpaulin through the open door and laid it on the wooden base. Connla made sure the cougar was lying correctly and that his airway was free, then he snapped the fasteners on the door and stood back.

  ‘You want some coffee?’ Joe asked, tipping his hat back on his head.

  Connla glanced at his watch. ‘You got it to go?’

  On the drive back to Keystone he mulled over the relocation problem. Like wolves, cougars could be released into new areas without any major detrimental effect. You could not do that with a bear. A bear had to know every inch of his territory from birth in order to scavenge enough food from it. A cougar, though, was a hunter, plain and simple; game and other cougars were the overriding factors.

  He was trying to gauge it properly in his mind, thinking about the habitat and the other potential inhabitants. This guy was big and he would make good babies. There were lots of female territories up in the Black Hills, but no spare male ones that he knew of. He didn’t want to let him loose close to the cabin because he would be a threat to Mellencamp’s cubs when she had them. The resident male was getting old and would be no match for this fellow. The incomer would fight, win and then kill Mellencamp’s cubs when they were born so that she would be ready to mate again quickly. Connla looked at his watch. He was never going to make it to Washington now. He’d had no sleep and he couldn’t just drive anywhere and dump the cougar. He needed to go home, wash up and think about it properly. The cougar would be OK in the cage after he came round from the anaesthetic.

  Back in his cabin he placed a pot of fresh coffee on the stove and studied the walls. More than half the available space was covered in large-scale maps of South Dakota, bits of Montana and Wyoming. The geographical area was vast, thousands of square miles. The rest of the space was decorated with photographs he had taken around the world. Shortly after gaining his Ph.D. he had realized that teaching wasn’t really for him. He had loved photography since he was a child and the pictures of cougars, lions, tigers, leopards and some of the largest birds of prey were testament to his skill as a wildlife photographer. His most recently published photo, a Siberian tiger, was in the BBC Wildlife Magazine. He had taken it from up a tree while the tiger was climbing up to eat him. Looking at his watch, he wondered when he would have the courage to call Holly.

  He yawned and sat back, resting one ankle over his knee, and looked carefully at the wall charts. He had to match the cougar in the truck with another male roughly his age and size, or find a vacant patch where the resident male had died or moved on. There were one or two possibilities, but all of them meant a few hours in the truck. His best options were in the Powder River Basin, but he didn’t want to admit the drive was necessary. He closed his eyes, kneading the lids with stiff fingers, and yawned. Bed looked inviting; maybe he should sleep on it for a while.

  He glanced at the wall again, his gaze just wandering now. Above the desk he had a collection of newspaper clippings from the United Kingdom, and he considered the face of a panther staring out of one of them, BLACK BEAST OF ELGIN was the headline. He had read it a thousand times, but still he reached for it and inspected the picture closely. With his UK visit coming up, his interest had redoubled. The panther in the picture had obviously been photographed at a zoo, but it was there to show the reader what the supposed Beast of Elgin looked like. Elgin was in north-east Scotland and at least four separate people claimed to have seen the cat. Their descriptions of size and colour told him that it was a panther, or, to term it correctly, a black leopard. Close up, you could see the rosettes against the black background. Leopards were smaller than cougars, weighed less and their hind legs were not enlarged. Their heads were a different shape and you could recognize individuals by the lines of small spots on their muzzle. He laid the piece down again and scratched the bristles crowding his jaw. Big cats running wild in the UK. The idea of it fired his imagination, because no-one was really sure they were there. It had never been proven beyond doubt. Were they real or only imaginary? Nobody had ever got the definitive picture on film, but there was plenty of evidence to suggest they were out there in the hills and forests of Britain.

  Connla looked at his cameras, lying carefully in their cases beside his bed. If he could get a picture of a panther in the UK, he would really be on the wildlife-photography map. And the more that happened, the less he would need to teach in the classroom.

  He was due in Britain in a few weeks’ time. A zoo in the south of England was awaiting the arrival of two cougars, which were being shipped over from Banff in Canada. The owners had invited Connla to help get them settled in—something that happened from time to time since he was recognized as one of the leading authorities in the world. He stared again at the phone. What should he do: drive up to the Powder River Pass or wait a while and phone Holly? Picking up his hat, he headed out to his truck.

  Once the cougar was safely released in Wyoming he had telephoned Washington. There was no answer at his ex-wife’s apartment, so he’d left a message then tried the university, left another message on her voice mail and called her cell phone.

  There was no connection on that either, so finally he emailed her from his laptop and went to sleep. Rising early the following morning, he caught the first flight out of Rapid City. Holly hadn’t called him back, which didn’t bode well, and he assumed she was really pissed off about him missing the first zoology class. The trouble was, he thought as he hailed a cab in Washington, that what was important to her, or the university for that matter, was very different to what was important to him. They would never understand about the Indian and the cougar. Hundreds of cougars killed livestock, why didn’t he just shoot it like everyone else.

  The cab took him to the Holiday Inn close to the university medical centre and Foggy Bottom Metro Station. He wandered past their old apartment building and saw that Holly’s car wasn’t in the allotted sp
ace, so he assumed she was still at the university. In his hotel bedroom he tossed his bag onto the bed and twisted the top off a bottle of beer. The cab ride had been sticky, the traffic heavy and he wondered why he hadn’t just taken the metro. The beer was cold and crisp in his throat, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in satisfaction. Sitting down on the bed, he stared for a while at the telephone, then, picking up the receiver, he dialled her office at the university.

  ‘Dr McAdam.’

  He transferred his beer from one hand to the other. ‘Hello, Dr McAdam. This is the other Dr McAdam, calling you up to apologize for putting the life of a cougar before a zoology class and a party.’

  She didn’t say anything for a second, then, ‘Are you trying to be funny?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Don’t give me the hicksville homeboy act, Connla. It doesn’t wash any more.’

  Connla smiled. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He paused. No laughter. ‘I thought that’s what attracted you to me in the first place.’

  ‘Attractions fade, or didn’t you figure that out yet. Besides, I was very young then. I’m older and wiser now.’

  She was softening; he could tell. ‘You don’t mean that. It was always the country-boy thing that got you.’

  ‘I do mean that.’

  ‘I am sorry, Holly. Really,’ he said. ‘But I’m here now and all set to teach up a storm to those students.’

  ‘The faculty’s pissed, Connla. They had to cancel the class.’

  ‘I’ll explain it to them, don’t worry. Zoology in action; that’s what I was doing. Hell, the students’ll understand.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘There you go.’ He sucked on the beer. ‘What time will you be done? I’m fixing to buy you dinner.’

  ‘Late. I’ve got a meeting to go to.’

  ‘Ah.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Payback time.’

  ‘No. I’ve got a meeting, Connla. I’m a senior academic. D’you remember academe? We have meetings to attend.’

  ‘Are you still mad at me?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘So you don’t want me to buy you dinner then?’

  ‘Connla, you go ahead and book an expensive restaurant. I just might not show up, is all.’ She hung up without saying goodbye.

  Connla grimaced at himself in the mirror. ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘Payback time.’

  Three

  IMOGEN ENDED THE LAST day of term by telling the children the tale of the sea maiden. She stood and chatted to the parents at the school gate, but all the time she was itching to get home and prepare for her upcoming trip. Events had conspired against her over the last couple of weeks and she had been unable to return to Tana Coire. Patterson was busy with a parent and Imogen hoped to slip away quietly, but she could tell by the way he kept looking over that he wanted to speak to her. She never gave him the chance, however. School was finished and the time was hers, and she climbed into the cab of her Land-Rover.

  Clouds were gathering west of the Skye Bridge, smoke coloured and rolled like open-ended barrels. She drove back to the turn for Gaelloch and saw Andy McKewan’s Toyota truck parked in front of the hotel—the fisherman from Kyle, another one who wanted to get into her knickers. What was it about men that they all seemed to seek women’s company with some ulterior motive? Feigning friendship only to try it on at the first opportunity; so arrogant that they believed women would fall for the little they were offered. An affair with Patterson, a date with the ageing John MacGregor, or a quiet fumble with McKewan. Was that merely cynicism or was it her experience? She thought about it, mulling over her abortive relationships, the half-hearted attempts since she broke up with her college fiancé. There wasn’t much to analyse really, most of her encounters had been brief, to say the least. Was that a commitment problem on her part, or theirs? Or had they just been the wrong people. They say your past shapes who you are. She wondered if that had something to do with it.

  Halfway along the seven-mile stretch to her house it began to rain, though the sun was still refracted in the waters of Loch Gael. It did that a lot here, mini rainstorms brushing in from the sea with the sun still strong in the east. The loch lay rumpled like black velvet, a perfect rainbow climbing above it. Imogen exhaled heavily and felt her soul freeing up at the sudden, silent beauty of the place. This is why she had spent every childhood holiday she could recall here. Her great aunt had seen what she saw and knew that she could see it, too. The first time Imogen remembered coming to visit her she had found some of her oil paintings in the attic. After that, when the old woman painted, Imogen sat and watched and learned. She had been more of a grandmother than a great aunt really; her mother’s mother died long before Imogen was even thought of. They had had a special bond and Imogen remembered writing letters to her when she was a little girl in America.

  Parking the Land-Rover, she gazed at the grey stone house and, for one fleeting moment, felt the old lady’s presence. It happened now and again, and Imogen had always thought that she was somehow watching over her. She could picture her, sitting here in the garden with an easel and brushes, painting the loch from every angle in every kind of light or weather. Every summer Imogen would sit with her and watch. One gnarled, arthritic hand would grip a brush between the middle joint of her thumb and the flat of her forefinger; her fingers twisted with age, yet still able to respond to what her eyes beheld. She had never needed glasses. She’d never cut her hair and it had hung in silver lines to her waist. In her youth she had been beautiful. Charlie Abbott, ushering his hens across the grass, broke Imogen’s thoughts. He looked up at her, head darting, chest out. He squawked at her.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she said. ‘You’re just like all the rest. How many women d’you need?’

  He looked a little puzzled and Imogen went indoors.

  The kitchen was spacious, warm in winter but cool in summer, and it opened on to a large, high-ceilinged lounge, with tall, thin windows facing south and north. Beyond it was the hall, with stairs climbing into the roof and the three large bedrooms. On the other side of the hall was her studio, stark and bare and very private. Her aunt had knocked down whatever crofter’s cottage had been on the land originally and built this imposing house in the style of the eastern seaboard. Upstairs, the landing stretched, her bedroom at one end and the low-ceilinged bathroom at the other. Imogen filled it with plants and dried flowers. The bath stood on four lion’s feet and was deep and enamelled, and you had to run the hot water first to avoid your bottom freezing in winter.

  First thing in the morning she went up and saddled Keira. The sun was low still, but full and bright, and it reflected off the grey, flaglike stones of the cottage walls. The horse stood rattling the metal bit against her molars, saliva gathering in a yellowed froth at the sides of her mouth. Imogen flipped the girth strap over so it hung to the ground on one side, then bent under Keira’s belly to reach it. Her mane hung unbrushed down one side of her face and she twisted her head back to nibble Imogen’s thigh. Imogen wore jodhpurs and battered knee-length riding boots. She had saddlebags packed and ready, with her small easel folded into the rucksack set against the stable wall.

  ‘Good morning.’ The voice from behind made her jump. Keira shifted under her hand, half cocking one hind leg. Imogen looked round, shading her eyes, and her heart sank as she saw Patterson striding up the path from the gate. He must have seen her Land-Rover pass his house on the way up: ‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ he went on. ‘Wonderful morning for a ride.’

  Imogen still hadn’t got the girth strap tight, but she wasn’t going to bend for it now, with Patterson standing behind her. He smiled his Colin Patterson smile and his eyes were all over her. ‘You look good.’ He said. ‘Jods. They look very good.’

  Imogen dropped to her haunches, still half facing him, and tightened the girth strap. She waited for Keira to breathe, then pulled again and fastened it. She stood straight once more and lifted a stirrup, adjusting the strap behind it. She was sud
denly aware of the smell of horse and leather and the fact that Patterson shouldn’t be here, in her place, where the beauty was incredibly private.

  ‘What can I do for you, Colin? I was just about to get going.’

  ‘Where?’ he said, leaning against the wall of the cottage. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Just up the hill.’ She did not point or gesture.

  ‘For the day?’

  ‘Probably.’ Keep the conversation to the minimum, she told herself, and he might just go away. But he didn’t. He stood there and chatted, listening to the sound of his own voice, oblivious to the atmosphere that must have been pretty apparent. All at once Imogen thought of her other would-be suitor, and wondered again at the quality of man who pursued her. What did they think they saw in her? Patterson married and MacGregor still living with his mother.

  ‘I’d love to come with you one of these days,’ Patterson was saying.

  She fixed the other stirrup to the right length and reached for the saddlebags.

  ‘Here, let me help you.’ Patterson bent at the same time as she did and his fingers brushed the back of her hand. It was all she could do to stop herself from physically recoiling. She stood up quickly. He had the saddlebags, and for a brief moment they looked at one another. Patterson tried to smile, but Imogen’s face was frozen. Suddenly self-conscious, he passed the bags to her. She fastened them quickly, then picked up her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. Patterson just stood there, looking from her to the view over the loch and back again. ‘Such a pretty spot,’ he said. ‘Wonderful place to stable a horse.’

  Imogen didn’t reply. She guided the horse round the back of the cottage, past the old sheep pens to the path that led, at a calf-straining incline, between the cleft in two hills. Black-faced sheep cropped at the yellowing grass on either side of it.