Panther on the Prowl

by Nancy Morse

  For all its healing qualities, however, the hot tea could not erase the memory of the accident. She began to cry, the salt of her tears stinging the burned skin beneath the gauze, her shoulders softly shaking.

  “It was so horrible. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

  “Well, you’re safe now.”

  But Rennie took little comfort in his taut assurance. Safe? From the plane crash, perhaps, but what about what she was running from? She would be a fool to think that Craig would let her get away so easily. He had entirely too much at stake, as he had caustically reminded her that night before she had fled in tears.

  “Safe. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Panther.”

  “We don’t stand on ceremony here. You can call me John.” Again, that reluctant tone. “And what do I call you?”

  Her muscles tensed despite the calming effects of the tea. “My name is Rennie.”

  She didn’t want to tell him that Rennie was short for Renata, or that she was the stepdaughter of Trevor Hollander and the runaway finacée of multimillionaire land developer Craig Wolfson, so she used the name her father used to call her, one she hadn’t heard for twenty-five years. She hoped he would not press her to reveal her last name. She’d never been a very good liar, and loathed the thought of having to make one up. His motive for helping her might be different if he knew that she came from a wealthy family, so she reasoned that it was better if he didn’t know who she was and what she was running from.

  “Is there anyone I can contact for you?”

  “No.” She spoke a little too quickly. Forcing a calm into her voice that she did not feel, she explained, “There’s no one. My parents are deceased, and I have no brothers or sisters.”

  It was true, of course. Her impervious mother died a few years ago, her beloved father when she was young enough to feel the impact for the rest of her life, and she was an only child. Nevertheless, she felt as guilty as if she had blatantly lied to him.

  Skirting the evasion, she ventured to ask, “Do you know how long it will take for my eyes to heal?”

  “The skin around them will heal in a few weeks. As for your sight…only time will tell.”

  “Am I…blind?”

  “I had a doctor come by to examine you. He’s a Seminole healer from Big Cypress who’s also a licensed physician. He says your blindness is caused by a swelling of the optic nerve. In most cases the swelling eventually subsides and sight is restored.”

  Rennie sucked in her breath at his brutal honesty.

  “Would you rather I lie to you?” he asked.

  No, not another lie. She didn’t think she could stand it. As far as she was concerned, the truth was infinitely preferable under any circumstance because at least it left you with some dignity.

  Softly she said, “No lies.”

  “In the morning I’ll take you to a hospital. The nearest one’s about fifty miles from here.”

  “I would prefer not to go to a hospital.”

  She held her breath, praying he would not press the issue and grateful that the bandages hid the fear that must surely be written in her eyes. She’d be crazy to check into a hospital, even under a fictitious name. If Craig found out that her plane went down, he would no doubt give her description to every hospital on the eastern seaboard. She could not take a chance on him finding her, not until she was able to think clearly—when her sight was restored and she could look him in the eyes and tell him what a despicable human being he was, although never seeing him again would also suit her just fine.

  “Home, then?” that deep voice asked.

  That was the first place Craig would look for her. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable stumbling around in the dark by myself.”

  Rennie wasn’t eager to return to the life she left behind, to an overbearing stepfather, a fiancé who deceived her and a world in which the only decision she ever made for herself was the one to study anthropology, much to the displeasure of the senator who had other aspirations for her. Initially her desire to study the past was a way for her to connect with her own lost past, the one that ended with the death of her father. She never expected that she would come to love her work as much as she did, nor that her struggle to reconcile her past would lead her to this place.

  “You’ve got to stay somewhere,” he said.

  But for Rennie it wasn’t that simple. It had been easy for her to think that Craig was the answer to her self-sufficiency. Easy to imagine herself happily married to a man she now knew would have been as controlling as the senator. Easy to see her mistakes when, because of her blindness, she was unable to see anything else. For now, however, she was grateful for the gauze that sealed her sight, for despite John Panther’s unfriendly tone, she felt safe in his care.

  “Couldn’t I stay here?”

  She knew by the palpable silence that filled the room that he didn’t like the idea. Inwardly she cringed. Where had she gotten the nerve to ask such a thing? But desperate problems called for desperate solutions and brought out a certain recklessness she didn’t know she had when next she said, “I could pay you.”

  He answered with wry annoyance, “With what? Whatever money you had with you is buried beneath the wreckage.”

  Another man might have asked how much, and then been slack-jawed when she named a ridiculously high figure. She was no longer afraid to hide her wealthy background, because she also sensed that he was the kind of man who could not be paid off or bargained with.

  “It’s just that…” She searched for the words to tell him why she couldn’t go back just yet without revealing things he had no right to know. “I can’t go back. Not yet. Not like this.”

  She heard him expel a sharp, impatient breath and then say, with undisguised reluctance, “All right. You can stay here.”

  Rennie drew in a deep breath of relief. “Thank you, John. You have no idea what this means to me.”

  “Don’t thank me just yet,” he warned. “It can get pretty lonely out here. In a few days you just might change your mind and run screaming back to civilization.”

  It wasn’t civilization she needed right now. It was peace and quiet and a safe place in which to heal not only her sightless eyes but her bruised emotions as well. It wasn’t easy finding things out about yourself that you didn’t like, and Rennie was no exception. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” she said. “You’ll be here, won’t you?”

  “I have my work to do. I’ll be gone most of the day…” There was a pause, almost imperceptible except to someone whose hearing was already sharper to compensate for what her eyes could not see, and then he added “…and the night.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a biologist with the Everglades Research Center.”

  “What do you research?” She was desperately tired and struggling to stay awake, but a part of her wanted to know…needed to know…more about the man in whose care she was entrusting herself. He could have been an ax murderer, for all she knew. But there was nothing sinister in the air around him, no hint of danger or violence. And except for that unsettling scent that hovered about him, of something wild and unforgiving, she felt no menace from him.

  “I study the ecosystem of the swamp and monitor the animal population.”

  “At night?” she questioned.

  “There are creatures that live in the swamp that come out only at night.”

  “Creatures?”

  “Don’t worry. They won’t bother you here.”

  Rennie didn’t share his confidence. “Are we near anything? A town or a village?”

  “There’s nothing for miles.”

  That would account for the acute loneliness that seemed to pervade every corner of the room. The secluded place, made even more secret by her sightlessness, made Rennie feel lost.

  “You live here all by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  The deep, single-word reply made her shiver. What kind of man shunned the company of others, preferring to live amon
g the creatures of the swamp? What caused that alienating tone in his voice? Why did she sense that, despite the invitation, she was not welcome?

  A part of her didn’t want to know. And maybe none of that mattered. She was safe, for the time being at least, and that’s what was important to her. Later, when she could think more clearly, she would decide what to do. Later, when her sight was restored and she could see the face of the man whose very essence was in the air she breathed.

  Her exhausted mind battled to stay awake as her head grew heavy. “What if—” The words, almost too unbearable to utter, emerged as a choked whisper. “What if my sight doesn’t return?”

  The wooden planks beneath his feet squeaked when he stood up and walked away. “There are no guarantees in life.”

  There was no harshness in his voice, only a ring of hopeless resignation, as if he knew firsthand about there being no guarantees in life, and Rennie could not help but wonder what it was that had wrung all the hope out of him.

  She felt herself growing drowsy. Her own voice sounded far off, her words as if she’d had too much to drink. “What did you put in that tea?”

  “Something to make you sleep.”

  She smiled weakly. “An old Indian remedy?”

  “Nothing you can’t buy at a health food store.”

  He was annoyed, but she was neither worried nor frightened. For one thing she was feeling far too light-headed to entertain any dangerous notions about him. For another, even in her muddled state something told her that beneath the annoyance and unfriendly tone beat the heart of a kind man. Why would he bother to help her if he were not good-hearted? The undercurrent of wildness she had initially perceived about him must have been the workings of a weak and vulnerable imagination.

  The protective arms of sleep wrapped around her, drawing her to its breast as it whispered words of gentle comfort into her ear. She tried hard to concentrate on what it was saying and was surprised to find that it wasn’t words at all. It was a sound, an easy shhh somewhere beyond these walls.

  In a small voice that hovered midway between conscious thought and dream, she breathed, “That sound. What’s that sound?”

  “That’s the saw grass,” he said. “A river of grass swaying in the breeze.” His voice was low with reflection from across the room. “Sometimes I can sit and listen to it for hours. If you wade into it and look down, you can see the water moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, past your feet. So gradually it makes you wonder whether we move through life or life moves past us.”

  But Rennie wasn’t listening. She was asleep, lulled into slumber by the effect of the tea, the shhh of the saw grass, and John Panther’s hypnotic, regretful voice.

  Chapter 2

  With a weary gesture John Panther swept back an unruly lock of black hair that fell from his forehead as he gazed out the small-paned window into the fading light of dusk.

  The air outside was filled with familiar sounds. Alligators prowling among the aquatic plants. A mad flapping of wings as a flock of great blue herons took to flight. The croakings of the frogs. The coocooings of the doves. All were as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice.

  A mosquito buzzed maddeningly at his ear. He swatted it away. Beneath his breath he grumbled at the persistence of the pesky insect, yet he accepted its right to be there just as he accepted everything else about the Everglades, as natural, necessary ingredients.

  He loved this place like no other. The soft, squishy land, the creatures that lived in the mangrove forests and swam in the still, shallow water, the grass, as sharp as saw blades, swaying hypnotically in the breeze, the sky, so endless and unfettered there was room for a whole month of sunsets in a single evening such as this.

  If the mosquitoes had not been so thick and the land so soggy, the white men who came here would have split the mahogany hammocks for lumber and turned the mangrove forests into fertilizer and cattle feed long ago. Resort hotels would now stud the wild beaches. The land he loved would have been drained and subdivided and carved into lots, and he would not be standing here now looking out at its ferocious beauty with as much awe as if he were seeing it for the very first time.

  The land itself was as flat as a Kansas wheatfield, but what to some was monotonous, John found hypnotic. It was what drew him to the window at just about this time each day, when it was neither light nor dark, when the world seemed to hover in a sort of limbo where there was no past to haunt him and no future to look forward to, when the sky was ablaze with color and all that mattered was the moment and the land. This was country that had to be understood. It was a wild, unforgiving place inhabited by dangerous, venomous creatures. And the most dangerous of all was the one that looked back at him in the clear glass.

  With unerring predictability his thoughts drifted back to the past. It was crazy, he knew. After all, he wasn’t responsible for Maggie’s death. At least not in any court of law, tribal or otherwise. Nevertheless, he had tried, convicted and sentenced himself in his own heart.

  He heaved a ragged sigh at the cruel irony. Whoever would have guessed how things would turn out? How, in a heartbeat, something could go so terribly wrong and change your life forever?

  Sometimes, when the night was still and he lay awake on his bed of moss, he could still hear her laughter…and her screams.

  Seminole women were encouraged from birth to be independent because the culture demanded survival skills, and Maggie certainly was that. Over her parents’ objections she spent two years at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe studying painting and sculpture. She returned to the Big Cypress Reservation to wait tables in order to earn enough money to enroll in an art school in San Francisco. She was working in a little luncheonette off State Road 7 when he walked in one day.

  Maybe it was because she was Seminole that made the difference for him. She had no notion of him slinging her over his shoulder and carrying her off, the way the white women he had dated typically did. He was no savage. At least not in the way they thought he was, because he was Indian. If anything, being Indian only tempered his spirit and gave him a sense of his own place in the world and an acceptance of and reverence for the things around him. Being a loner at heart only added to the stereotyping and had made not dating easy. Until Maggie.

  Maggie laughed at the white world’s idea of what it was to be Indian. She knew there was nothing savage about him. These days, whatever fierceness he possessed was born out of tragedy, the kind that wounds so deeply it turns a soft heart into a hard one. He wondered if Maggie would even recognize him now.

  He never asked her to give up her dream of going to San Francisco. She did so willingly. And together they planned a new dream for the future. She continued to wait tables while he studied for his master’s degree. When he landed a job with the Everglades Research Center, she quit her job at the luncheonette to concentrate on painting and sculpting.

  Having been born in a chickee made of cypress wood and palmetto leaves, like most of his people, John didn’t expect much from a world that was decidedly white and hostile. But a hundred years of white influence could not eradicate the one thing he was above all else. Seminole. In his Indian soul he had no wish to be any different or better than he was. He merely wished to be. Working in his own backyard among the creatures and cattails of the swamp, returning home to the reservation each night to be with his wife, was more than he could ever have hoped for. But happiness, like hope, was shortlived, and all because he killed a panther and was unable to come to terms with it.

  He’d been tracking the big male cat for weeks, hoping to collar it and monitor its movements through the swamp to determine what was causing a decline in the population of the Florida panther. But the cat only came out at night, seeming to disappear into thin air during the day, the morning rains that were so common in the Everglades washing away its tracks.

  One night, camped in a cypress hammock, he heard a rustling in the tall grass. In the next moment the panther was on him, claws ripping thr
ough his jeans and leaving a ridge of scars on his thigh. He managed to grab his knife and kill the panther, only to discover later that he’d killed a female.

  Sick with guilt, he returned home, only to awaken later that night to Maggie’s screams. A male panther had tracked him to the reservation, and with almost human vengeance, killed his mate just as John had killed the panther’s mate.

  Outsiders might have questioned the existence of a creature as smart and vindictive as a human, but in the Seminole world in which he was raised, he learned about the legend of the panther that the old ones told, and he knew how such a thing could be.

  There was, they said, a long time ago, a proud and vain Seminole warrior who killed a panther while hunting in the swamp. In his arrogance, the warrior didn’t say a prayer to the Spirit Being for taking the life of one of its children. Angered, the Spirit Being condemned the warrior to wander the earth for all time by day as a man, by night as a panther.

  The legend struck a particularly painful chord inside of John. Could it be that the panther he’d been hunting was the one the old ones spoke of? That would explain the clever way the beast eluded him. Some would say he was crazy to even think it, but deep in his Seminole heart, John wasn’t so sure. His curiosity was almost as great as his thirst for vengeance. But if myths and legends were supposed to teach us about ourselves, what was it teaching him about himself? Could it be that he was doomed by fate to follow the same crazy path as the legend, wandering around by day emotionally cut off from the rest of the world, at night adrift in his grief and alone? If there was any lesson to be learned from it all, it had to do with the part he played in a cycle of vengeance begun by some ancient warrior and which lived on inside of him.

  Why couldn’t he have left the panther alone instead of tracking it relentlessly? Was it the panther that caused Maggie’s death, or was it really he himself for tampering with a greater plan and not leaving well enough alone? A year and a half later the questions remained unanswered. All that was left was the guilt, and an overriding vengeance for the panther. Yet as much as he hated the panther, that was as much as he blamed himself. For him, the only way to get past the sickening guilt was to kill the panther. It didn’t matter if it made any sense. It was just the way it was.