CLAWS

by Stacey Cochran

He chuckled. It was perfect. He wouldn’t even have to dig them a grave.

  Suddenly, his foot struck something on the ground, and he almost fell over.

  “What in the world,” he muttered. And he poked around at it with his Bushman EZ-Grip. It felt like a little mound. He hobbled around it on his one good leg, and he knelt down and began feeling over its surface. It felt rocky like a little pitcher’s mound of gravel. And then his hand touched something that was not gravel.

  “Oh, jeez,” he said. He realized it was the body he’d seen the mountain lion carry into the mine. He smiled.

  “Chopper!” the voice boomed from near the entrance. “Charlie ‘The Chopper’! We know you’re in here. Come on out with your hands up!”

  Charlie listened to their footsteps echoing over the gravelly ground inside the mine. They were thirty meters away from him. Charlie turned and shuffled further down into the mine.

  Come and get me, he thought. I’ve got a little present for you!

  “Robert,” the woman called. “Don’t go down any further.”

  Robert said, “This lunatic broke into my cabin. He’s trying to scare us, Angie.”

  Charlie heard the click of a handgun’s hammer.

  “Angie, Robert,” the deeper voice said. “Be cool. You’re playing right into his trap. Come on back out here, and we’ll wait him out.”

  “Listen to the Sheriff, Robert,” Angie said. “Charlie wants us to come down in there. You’d be a fool to go any further. He’ll kill us.”

  Charlie shuffled a few steps more, found an indentation in the wall and stepped up inside it. He leaned back and turned his head to look up in the direction of the entrance. He couldn’t see them well, but he could hear all the noise they made echoing off of the cavernous walls.

  “Just come a little further,” he whispered. And he hefted up the ax in his hand.

  • •

  Robert couldn’t see well, but he held his handgun out in front of him and proceeded forward slowly. Angie was about ten meters behind him. Suddenly, his foot struck something on the ground, and he stopped. It felt like a little mound.

  “What in the hell,” he said.

  Angie whispered, “What is it?”

  “Feels like some kind of mound,” Robert said.

  “Come on,” Angie said. “Let’s get out of here. We can wait him out outside. We can smoke him out, build a fire, something.”

  Feeling along the base of the mound with his feet, Robert moved around it. Angie caught up with him and touched her right hand to his left elbow.

  “Shhh,” he said. “Listen.”

  They both stood perfectly still in the darkness.

  • •

  Sheriff Tucker wasn’t having any of it. He stood a few feet inside the mine with his rifle hitched under his right arm. He reached his left hand around and lifted the gun up to his shoulder. He raised the gun to firing position and looked down the barrel into the darkness. He couldn’t see a thing.

  He lowered his rifle. He called, “Angie! Robert! Come on out of there! We’ll wait him out, out here!”

  He stood just beyond the light. He glanced back over his left shoulder out at the forest. He swung his head back around and squinted looking down into the blackness.

  “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  • •

  Angie’s breath was thin, and her chest filled with adrenaline. Her heart felt like it was about to explode. Everything was pitch black around her.

  “Goddammit, Robert,” she said. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Her hand held his elbow; she could feel him shaking.

  “No!” he said. “I will not back down from this. He is threatening our lives. I want you to see, Angie, there is one man who will stand up for you. There is one man who will not abide someone threatening your life.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Robert!”

  They both froze because they heard something coming toward them. Robert’s gun came up, and he fired three times into the dark.

  Blam! Blam! Blam!

  Each gunshot ignited a brief flash of light, and in the flashes Angie saw a man coming toward them. His face was covered in blood, and he held an ax up readying to swing. His eyes were wide, and his teeth were clenched in a fierce grimace.

  He swung the ax.

  “Look out!” she screamed. She stumbled backward, tripping over the mound and fell to the ground.

  There was a dull, wet thud! like a watermelon hitting the pavement. Angie heard a breathy gasp from Robert. She heard him fall to the ground.

  “Come here, you little tree hugging bitch,” Charlie said. “I’ll show you what a real man can do for you!”

  Angie’s face felt like five million needles all touched it at once. She tried to get to her feet, lost her balance, and fell backwards. She heard the ax whicker through the air. It struck the ground two feet from her and sparks exploded.

  In the flash of sparks, she saw Robert keeled over on the ground. He clutched at his stomach, and his neck was spotted with blood. Charlie with the ax stood over her, but everything was instantly dark again.

  Angie screamed and scrambled away.

  The ax struck the gravelly ground again, igniting sparks.

  Angie screamed and leapt to her feet. She started running and hit the wall hard, bounced, and fell to the ground. Her face stung.

  “Come here,” Charlie said.

  Angie shook her head, dazed. She looked around her, saw the brightness near the entrance, clambered to her feet again and ran. She saw Sheriff Tucker.

  She shrieked, “He killed him! He killed Robert!”

  Tucker looked into her scared blue eyes. He raised his rifle up to his shoulder and fired off three quick, controlled shots down into the mine.

  He lowered his rifle and listened for any sound coming up toward him. Angie stood in the light, listening too.

  Tucker raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired twice more into the mine. The sharp smell of gunpowder filled the air. He took a few steps back into the light. He glanced at Angie.

  She stared into the mine. They couldn’t see anything beyond the darkness. And they couldn’t hear anything either.

  “Jesus, Angie,” Tucker said. “What were you thinking?!”

  “He’s dead,” she cried. “Oh, my God! Robert’s dead! The Chopper killed him with an ax!”

  He shook her.

  “Get a hold of yourself,” Tucker said.

  She was hysterical. Angie recoiled. Tucker shifted his serious gaze from her, to the darkness of the mine.

  He was nervous, but he grounded his energy, and he held his rifle firmly in his hands. If Charlie Rutledge came up out of that black mine, he was going to blast him back down to hell.

  Forty-One

  Three hours later, it was clear that Charlie Rutledge wasn’t coming out of the mine. Angie had taken up a position on a rock. Her horse was down at the base of the rock, and she held her rifle cocked under her arm and stared into the darkness.

  “He ain’t coming out, Sheriff,” she said.

  Tucker tied up the other two horses adjacent to the clearing. He leaned back against a tree. One leg was propped up underneath him. His black cowboy hat was down over his eyes.

  He didn’t look up and might have been asleep save for the words he spoke. “He’s got to come out sometime,” he said.

  “You might have shot him,” she said. “Robert might have shot him before—”

  “Shhhh,” Sheriff Graham Tucker said calmly.

  Angie sat there on the rock. She stared at Tucker. She stared at the mine. Her back hurt, and she readjusted the rifle. She was no longer using tranquilizer darts and saw the golden .22 shells glint inside the chamber.

  She stood up and eased down off of the rock. Her legs had gone to sleep, and so she walked around to get the circulation flowing again.

  She walked over to a section of woods where they’d seen the mountain lion take off down the hill. There was a green leafy bush, and Angi
e saw blood on it. She knelt down and inspected it more closely. She saw spots of cougar blood on the leaves and on the ground near the bush.

  She glanced back at the sheriff.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs,” she said.

  Sheriff Tucker looked up at her. His steely brown eyes glinted in the afternoon sunlight. His cowboy hat cocked back a little. He said, “Don’t go walkin’ off too far, now.”

  Angie nodded her head.

  He said, “You hear?”

  “I hear you,” she said. “I’m just going to stretch my legs. See how far this trail leads into the woods.”

  It was the third time she’d mentioned the blood in the past three hours. He’d casually eyed the blood himself more than a dozen times, though he didn’t say so to Angie. As far as he was concerned, the mountain lion would keep. Their real concern was Charlie down inside the mine; the lunatic had put an ax into Robert. He’d deal with the mountain lion later. For now, the sheriff wasn’t leaving the entrance to that mine until Charlie came out.

  Angie started down into the woods. A bird twittered on a branch to her right and then swooped down quickly and crossed the path right in front of her. Her nerves were on edge; she checked her rifle.

  She glanced over her left shoulder and saw the sheriff was now fifty meters up the hill from her. He’d brought his cowboy hat back down over his eyes, but he was still leaning against the tree. Angie turned and looked further downhill through the forest.

  Everything seemed bright along the forest floor. Everything had sharp edges. She could see individual strands of pine straw on the ground. A large lizard rustled over the ground. It startled Angie, and she stood still and watched the creature.

  Its scales were mottled bright orange and black, and it climbed up a tree to her right. Her gaze went back to the forest in front of her. How far did the mountain lion go?

  Maybe Charlie had delivered a fatal blow to it, and it had wandered a half mile down the mountain and died. Angie checked her rifle again. She realized the irony in her decision to switch from tranquilizer darts to bullets, now that they had a man to worry about rather than a mountain lion. She cleared her throat. A breeze started up in the treetops. Her face was oily, and the breeze came down through the trees and cooled her skin.

  Her back felt sticky in her shirt. Her bra was uncomfortable. Her hair felt grimy and was pulled back in a ponytail. Her jeans were too tight.

  Spots of blood dappled the ground every few feet. They grew increasingly thinner as she came down the hill. Suddenly, Angie realized she was beyond shouting distance from Sheriff Tucker. She turned around and looked back up the forest hillside but saw nothing but trees.

  She knew he was up over that ridge just out of sight, but not being able to see him at all sent a chill through her. She hated being alone, but it was something she told herself she could do. Angie wanted to believe that she was a self-reliant woman, and in many ways she was. But she hated being alone. It was one of the few things that sent real panic through her.

  It was why she settled on boyfriends who were beneath her. She thought of John. And she didn’t feel anger. She felt love. She felt sad inside that he was gone, that she didn’t do more to prevent it, that she was that much more alone in the world. No, she didn’t feel anger. She felt remorse.

  Angie held her rifle and took a long, slow turn, looking around her through the trees. She didn’t see anything that looked like a cougar, but she knew that the animal was capable of camouflage that escaped the perception of alert prey.

  She said slowly to herself, “What am I doing here?”

  Forty-Two

  Charlie Rutledge was alive. A bullet had grazed his side, his ankle was injured, he was covered in blood, and he felt the cold chill of the mine sweeping over his face and hands. His hands felt cold and clammy. He touched the side of his shirt and felt the moistness of blood. Whether it was his or the cougar’s he couldn’t be certain.

  Charlie started shivering.

  How long had he been down here? It felt like several hours, but his head was swimming and so it might have only been forty-five minutes, or an hour and a half. Everything was black inside the mine, but over the course of time his eyes gradually adjusted to the dark. He could see well enough to keep from hitting the walls should he decide to stand up and walk.

  He was sure they were waiting for him. That whore of a woman and the man with the gun. The woman he could handle, but he didn’t know about the man. That son of a bitch would probably put a bullet in him without so much as a thought.

  Charlie sat against a wall, his legs straight out in front of him on the ground. He began to feel around in the dark. He was looking for his ax. He patted the ground to the right of his legs and felt its handle. He leaned forward, and pain shot through his side. He grimaced and tried to raise himself up in some semblance of a stance.

  Charlie slipped and fell back against the wall. Pain rippled through him.

  Not good, he thought.

  He reached down and felt around his ankle. He’d heard it snap, and he could feel it swollen to twice its normal size.

  He wasn’t sure how long he was going to last inside the mine, but he knew he stood a lot better chance of making it out of this situation if his ankle wasn’t turning gangrenous in the next few days. The key was blood flow. As long as the blood flow in his ankle wasn’t cut off, he’d be able to ride this injury out.

  If the blood flow was severely impeded, though, that ankle would turn as black as the mine all around him. The tissue would be eaten up by bacteria, and his situation would be a hundred times worse.

  He thought savagely, I’m going to mess that girl up.

  He leaned forward and tried to get himself up on his feet. He used the ax and ax handle to pull himself up. He grimaced in pain, but he managed to keep himself balanced, and he rose to his one strong foot. Quickly, he whipped the ax around to support the weight that his bad ankle could not bear.

  He could hobble forward fairly well, and so, carefully, he began to lurch forward, using the ax as a cane, dragging his bad leg behind him. He walked forward about ten steps.

  Then, he paused and looked back.

  Not bad, he thought. Not bad, ole Charlie.

  He glanced up toward the entrance of the mine. It was no longer light out. Maybe they had left. Maybe the mountain lion had come. Maybe he could ease on out of this mine real quiet like and slip on down the mountain.

  Suddenly, he heard whistling.

  It was a man’s long, slow whistling. Charlie leaned against the wall, and he squinted out into the darkness. Nightfall had set in, but he could see across the clearing fairly well.

  He saw the sheriff. He was leaning against a tree. Everything had a blue sheen from the starlight and moonlight. The sheriff stood with one leg propped under him, leaning against a tree. Of course, Charlie didn’t know he was a sheriff; to Charlie, he was just a son of a bitch with a rifle who was friends with Angie Rippard.

  In the darkness, Charlie’s eyes looked around nervously. He saw that the man had a cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes. He saw that he had a rifle hitched under his arm out across the thigh of the leg that was propped underneath him. In the darkness, Charlie could only see the sheriff’s contours.

  Except, he was whistling. The son of a bitch was out there, whistling away. Charlie looked around but didn’t see the woman. That whore of a woman biologist. She was the cause of all this. She wanted to save the mountain lion. That kind of shit would run him out of business. She was the epitome of every conservationist who had ever tried to bring him down. Goddamn woman biologist. He’d show her. He’d show her what she was good for.

  “Oh, I’ll show her,” he muttered.

  He’d show her exactly what she was good for. He’d show her exactly what she was put on this earth for.

  He gripped the ax in his hands.

  And then he recognized the song that the sheriff was whistling. That good-as-dead son of a bitch was whistling Patience. He was
standing out there waiting for Charlie Rutledge to come out of the mine, and he was whistling Patience.

  Forty-Three

  Angie Rippard stood in the shadows listening to Sheriff Tucker whistling Guns N’ Roses’ Patience, and she couldn’t help but crack a smile at the big man. She was hungry and tired, and the night promised to be long.

  When he was done, he sighed, yawned a long moment, and adjusted his rifle on his lap. He checked the safety and glanced for the thousandth time into the darkness of the mine. It was cool out, and he had on his duster, and so he adjusted the collar up around his neck.