Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

  The ridge continued along the length of the hilltop with an ever-steepening drop on either side. The dog had definitely seized on something and led them between the rocks to where the slope began to dip. Here Connla paused, something darker than the grey of the stone catching his eye. He bent and scraped at a rock, then showed his fingers to Cullen. It was a tiny patch of loose black hair, no more than a few strands. He tested the coarseness against his skin. ‘I need a microscope,’ he said, ‘but I’d bet a hundred bucks it’s her.’

  Now he stood and looked out across the valley, brown and grey against the weighted clouds above them. He half closed his eyes, scanning every nook, every dark patch on the land. From his field pack he took another polythene envelope and slipped the strands of hair inside. He checked exactly where they were on the map and logged the co-ordinates.

  ‘You’re really up for this, aren’t you?’ Cullen said.

  ‘Bird Dog.’ Connla had a new-found enthusiasm for the man and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘If I can find a leopard out here, then maybe, just maybe, I won’t have to go back to teaching.’

  They went on, climbing ever higher, moving up through gorse and bracken and heather. When they had gained a couple of thousand feet they stopped and Cullen produced a small petrol stove. They rested and made some coffee. Connla always carried dried rations so they would not be stuck for food that night. Cullen told him to forget dried rations, he’d shoot a rabbit or two.

  The dog appeared to have lost the scent, but Connla was not unhappy with their progress. The land was stunningly beautiful, even in the drab weather. It would more than likely rain again tonight and he wondered what sharing a tent with Cullen would be like. A mile further on, they stopped as Connla came across some more tracks. They were much smaller, though, and ran in single file. He stared at them and scratched his head. Cullen chuckled to himself. ‘Fox, Mr McAdam.’ He bent down and pointed. ‘A fox places his hind feet into the prints of his front ones and draws them into a line under his body. Looks like he’s hopping, doesn’t it.’

  ‘I’m more used to coyotes than foxes,’ Connla said. ‘I’ll bow to local knowledge, Bird Dog. Always a good policy.’

  Cullen motioned with the barrel of his rifle. ‘He was hunting rabbit. Look.’

  Connla saw the rabbit tracks then—twin sets of tiny fore prints—and the longer, flatter hind feet.

  ‘It’s a mountain hare, in fact,’ Cullen corrected himself.

  ‘Sure scared him off, too.’ Connla nodded to where the prints suddenly changed, the little indentations of the fore feet appearing behind the larger ones, where the hare bounded away. He looked at the sky, which was blacker now than ever. ‘What time does it get dark up here?’

  ‘Oh, not for ages yet.’ Cullen rubbed a calloused palm over his jawline. ‘Crack on, shall we?’

  They climbed higher still, the dog no use to them now, Connla using his instincts and Cullen’s knowledge of the country. He was working on gut feeling and applying his intimate knowledge of cougar habits to leopards. He doubted whether they would see anything, for all he knew they might have walked right by her on a dozen occasions already. If she was downwind the dog would be none the wiser.

  They camped out, Connla erecting the lightweight hoop tent just as the rain began. Cullen was as good as his word and shot and skinned a brace of rabbits, fed the offal and intestines to the dog, then roasted the carcasses on a small fire.

  ‘Your field craft’s good, Bird Dog,’ Connla admitted as he chewed on a skinny hindleg.

  ‘Bloody well ought to be. I’ve spent half my life out here.’ Cullen produced a silver-topped hip flask and took a heavy swig. He offered it to Connla, who sipped somewhat more gingerly.

  ‘Take a dram, man. On you go.’ Cullen flapped a yellow-nailed hand at him, then set about taking his gun to pieces. Connla swallowed more of the burning whisky and rescrewed on the lid. He watched Cullen with his weapon and could see the love the man had for it. He had watched similar men in similar circumstances all over the world; their most prized possession their rifle. Once upon a time he, too, had been a hunter, but he had swapped his rifle for a camera on the day he’d turned twenty. He hadn’t shot anything since, except of course with a dart gun.

  Cullen’s face, darkened by the firelight, intrigued him. Its swelling bald dome, shiny now, with shadows lying under quick, dark eyes, and the habitual roll-up cigarette clamped between his teeth. Connla rested on his elbows and gazed through the firelight to the lighter mass of the sky, scratched by the crests of mountains; they weren’t very high but there were a hell of a lot of them. This area was prime cougar country, although a cougar could survive in just about any terrain, so long as there was enough for him to eat. Once upon a time they had been scattered throughout the whole of the American continent, but now they were confined pretty much to the western states. They could survive anywhere from the forty below of the northern Rockies to the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. They had adapted to new habitats, evolving to cope with change. They ranged in size according to their living conditions and could be anything from tan to blue-grey in colour, with all manner of red and brown in between. Unlike leopards, their hindlegs were considerably longer than their forelegs, which was ideal for mountain terrain. Like leopards, they lazed between hunts, cleaning and licking their fur, giving the dual benefit of hygiene and the extra vitamin D absorbed from the sun by their coats.

  The rain was easing against the nylon tent and Connla took a cigarette from his pack. Cullen looked on longingly and Connla tossed one to him. His thoughts wandered away from his companion and his preoccupation with his rifle, and away from the pitbull lying just inside the flysheet. They drifted to Keystone and his cabin in the hills, then Washington and the upcoming semester. Finally they settled on the Kyle of Lochalsh, the tiny hamlet of Gaelloch and Imogen Munro’s face. Throughout the day he had been elsewhere, concentrating on his craft, endeavouring to track the untrackable and only too aware of the little bursts of excitement the various finds had given him. Yet for a moment it seemed less important, other than, perhaps, keeping him in Scotland. And remaining in Scotland was now important less because it kept him away from the university than for other reasons.

  He shook his head to clear it, but Imogen’s face remained—the gentle darkness in her eyes, the Celtic sheen of her skin and that improbable tumbling hair, like a massed black waterfall.

  ‘I’ll give you a penny for them, Mr McAdam.’

  Connla glanced across the flames. Cullen had finished reassembling his rifle and it lay across his knees; his gaze centred on Connla.

  ‘Oh, I was just thinking.’ Connla lit his cigarette and breathed smoke at the dying fire. He motioned to the rifle. ‘You look like some Highland gunman with that thing across your lap. Something from the old days?’

  Cullen squinted. ‘In the old days it was cap and ball, Mr McAdam, and not enough of that. This whole place was cleared after Culloden. I told you about the clearances. Bastard English again. Did you see that film Braveheart, with the lairds and prima nocta?’

  ‘The women on their wedding days, you mean?’

  ‘Aye. They used to do stuff like that. It’s all true, you know.’

  ‘It sounds pretty familiar, apart from the first-night stuff, maybe.’ Connla sat up a little straighter. ‘We did it with the Native Americans; cleared them out and moved them on somewhere else. Took their language, their traditions, their whole way of life.’

  ‘Yon Indians. Aye.’

  Connla made a face. ‘I live pretty close to Pine Ridge, Bird Dog. That’s the Oglala Sioux Reservation. Right now it’s the poorest place in the United States, and only a hundred and fifty years ago the seven tribes of the Teton were the proudest, most prevalent race in the west.’

  ‘Life, Mr McAdam. Life, politics and religion.’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’ Connla stopped talking, all at once watching the dog. It was sitting up now with its ears pricked forward.

  ‘Sometimes
I think—’ Cullen started, but Connla lifted a finger to his lips and silenced him. The air was still, the rain gone and the wind less than a murmur. Connla thought he heard a sound he had only heard once before, on the edge of the Kalahari. He strained hard to listen, convinced that his ears deceived him. But then he heard it again, and as he did a shiver puckered his cheeks.

  Cullen stared at him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Ssshh.’ Again Connla strained his ears. The wind picked up then dropped to nothing. Still the pitbull sat where it was. It had heard the sound, too, but couldn’t smell anything. Silence again and Connla half stood, thinking he had been mistaken. But then he heard it a third time and he knew it wasn’t his imagination. It was a coughing sound, almost a grunt, like a pig snuffling away at the trough.

  ‘You were right, Bird Dog,’ he whispered.

  ‘Right about what?’

  ‘About them breeding in the wild.’ Connla stared at him. ‘Hear that grunt? That’s a leopardess calling her cubs.’

  Twenty

  CONNLA WOKE BEFORE CULLEN, the voice of the leopardess still in his head. In his dreams she had come and looked down at him where he lay. She wasn’t black, but spotted, and he recognized her like an old friend, counting the marks on her face. She called to him as if she were calling her cubs, but when he tried to scramble up the hillside his feet kept slipping. For a long time she watched him, shoulders hunched, the white tip of her tail flicking from side to side, then a dog barked and she rose and backed away, her ears suddenly flat. Connla lifted himself on one elbow and stared at the pitbull terrier.

  Wriggling free of the sleeping bag, he crawled outside; the grass was springy and soaked with dew. He set up the stove, then walked the short distance down the slope to the burn. Yellow water spilling over lichen-rich stones, and pebbles of orange and brown had been thrown up by the peaty earth. Connla bent to fill the water bottle, delighting in the sudden warmth of the rising sun on his scalp. Then he stopped and stared.

  On the far side of the stream, no more than five feet away, he saw fresh prints in the mud bank. He squatted there for a long moment in silence, letting the implications sink in. He recognized the print of the leopardess, but along with hers he made out what looked like two sets of smaller ones. They were definitely breeding. Last night he had heard the proof and now he was looking at it. He got up slowly, realizing then that there was not only a female here, but somewhere also a male. Female and male territories overlapped, and out here, with the numbers so few, they would be vast. The largest cougar patch he had logged was over 150 square miles in the Powder River Country of Wyoming. That had been a male, and he had heard of even larger territories in Idaho. This one, sprayed and scraped, could easily be as large.

  Cullen was awake and rubbing his eyes when Connla got back to the tent. He set the water on the stove and lit it. ‘Make the coffee, will you, Bird Dog? I’ve got some prints I wanna cast.’

  He crossed the stream carefully on stepping stones, making sure he was a good way down from the print markings so as not to disturb them if he stumbled. Setting up his gear, he mixed fresh plaster and set the casts. Cullen wandered down the hill, crossed the stream and handed him a tin mug of coffee. ‘It’s hot,’ he said. ‘Don’t burn your lips.’

  Connla set the mug down and worked again at the plaster. ‘They’re definitely breeding,’ he said. ‘We’ve got cub prints right here.’

  Cullen looked out of half-closed eyes and sipped noisily at the coffee. ‘Could be just wildcats.’

  ‘You mean the ones with the round-tipped tails?’

  ‘Aye. The real wild ones, not feral.’

  Connla shook his head. ‘No chance of that.’

  ‘How come?’

  Connla smiled and pointed to the large print, right at the water’s edge. ‘Here’s where momma was standing.’

  Cullen watched as he labelled and bagged the casts, then worked away with his tripod and camera, making sure he took pictures from every angle. He marked the area on his map, and took shots of what he considered pertinent landmarks. When he was finished he folded the tripod away.

  ‘If they’re breeding there has to be a male,’ Cullen said slowly.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Any sign of him?’

  Connla shook his head. ‘There won’t be. His turf could be huge. He’ll only come across the female when it’s time to make babies.’

  ‘How big?’

  Connla looked up at him. ‘Daddy? A lot bigger than this girl, for sure. I don’t know, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, maybe more. There’s plenty of food up here.’

  ‘How big is the biggest?’

  ‘Leopard? I guess around one ninety. They’re smaller than cougars. I’ve seen male cougars in the Yukon at up to two fifty.’ He picked up his coffee. ‘These cubs are pretty young still. Look at the size of their prints.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So somewhere there’s gotta be a lair.’ Connla smiled then. ‘Tell me something, Bird Dog. If you were momma leopard, where would you hide your babies?’

  Imogen painted the oil of Redynvre and was reminded again of the sea eagles. She was in the studio with the massive Velux window open above her head. There was as much light as possible in the room, with windows facing both south to the hills and north across the loch. It had rained the day before she had made the sketch, but the rain had stopped that morning. When she had come upon the grazing stags the afternoon had been still. She had commented on the weather conditions in her sketch notes, which were laid out on the table next to her.

  She always stood when she painted in the studio, especially with a big canvas such as this one. She had wanted to begin with the sky—powder blue with a hint of grey in it, grainy almost. The clouds were slow moving but ragged, the edges diffused in the foreground and flatter and thinner in the distance. But she had painted the mass of rocks first, making harsh, thick lines with her palette knife, starting with black paint and then adding touches of greyed white as they took on more definition. She surprised herself. This was not how she painted. She always started with big blocks of colour, forgetting anything vaguely resembling line or character or definition. That would all come later. Half the pleasure was starting with a mass of colour, yet knowing that from the initial colour, all that was in your head would finally break free.

  But today it wasn’t like that. She had painted the rock in detail, and, at the base, as if it were part of the stone itself, she had fashioned the figure of somebody standing. She stared at it now, aware of the strangest feeling: that it was somebody else’s hand, not hers, that held the brush, as if she were standing back and being shown how it looked through someone else’s eyes. She was aware of a sudden clamminess on her skin. Sunlight flooded the room, yet she was strangely cold. For some reason she thought of Hugues de Montalembert, the French painter who lost his sight in 1982. Two muggers broke into his New York apartment and threw paint stripper in his eyes. A few weeks before he had painted a self-portrait with a horse in the background: neither he nor the horse had eyes.

  She had to leave the studio and go outside. She wandered to the shores of the loch, vaguely aware of gulls crying in the distance. She stood with her arms folded behind her, the wind pressing the cotton of her dress against her legs, framing material against muscle. Why think of that now? Why paint something like that just now? For a long time she remained there, alone with the water, the mountains and the handful of silent houses. The wind got up and clouds rolled intermittently across the sun to darken and lighten the day. Imogen stared blankly into the distance and thought about the past few days and the memories awakened by a man she had never seen before.

  John Brady’s face filled her mind. She could see his eyes, the arch of his brows, the hair that looked as though the sun had set in it. She could feel him, sense him, smell his skin, right there on the loch side, as if he were standing next to her.

  Back in the house she pottered, straightened the throws on the settees, considered dusting and went
to the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen. She worked away at the surfaces and the mantelpiece, and at the lounge window she paused. She picked up the little carved figure. Ghost dancer. That’s what the inside of her head felt like today: a mass of confused emotion and memory, like a macabre dance of the ghosts. Shoshone, he’d said, or Sioux. It couldn’t be Sioux, not on the east fork of the Salmon. She thought it might have been Nez Perce, Chief Joseph’s tribe, who had almost made it to Canada before they were finally beaten back. She traced her finger over the single remaining eagle feather and images of the white tails flashed through her mind—the male, wings back, talons out, reflected in the water. Carefully, she set the figure back in its place.

  In the studio again, she selected a brush and had to look hard to identify the image she had set in the rock: a splodge of black paint. She was about to smear and start again, but something stayed her hand and she laid the brush down.

  Connla and Cullen hiked north-west towards the Ridge of Caiplich. They forded the River Avon, amid 2,500-foot peaks which were still mottled with snow in the shadows. Cullen was leading, with Connla falling in behind him, his pack heavy all at once between his shoulders. Cullen marched purposefully, the dog trotting at his ankles, panting in the sudden heat of the sun. The route took them along ridges, through tree-lined gullies and back again to the barren height of the hills. Cullen walked with no map and no compass, using only the sun and his innate knowledge of the land to guide him. They crested another hill, using the well-worn deer trail as their path, and he stopped. Connla had been deep in thought and almost bumped into him.

  Cullen was gazing down on a valley strewn with boulders, some of which must have been thirty feet high. It stretched for mile after mile, a great cleft in the land, littered with broken rock, as if a pair of giants had been having a stone-throwing fight. One particularly large slab was pressed against the base of the far hill. Cullen pointed towards it. ‘The Shelter Stone,’ he said. ‘It forms a natural hawf.’