The shrink-wrapped package held a number of different fireworks: snakes, firecrackers, a couple of roman candles, some multicolored fountains, and a package of bang snaps. She tore off the shrink wrap, stuffing all the fireworks she could into the pockets of her flannel pajamas.
If she could light the string of firecrackers, she could throw them down, take off for the front doors. She could take refuge in one of the outbuildings and leave the front door of the inn open, in the hope that the lion would leave.
She struck a match, glancing down to find the fuse on the firecrackers. The cougar leapt. As thin as it was, its bulk hit her like a bag of wet cement. She went down hard, smashing her head on the kitchen floor. She saw the jaws open, lunging down, inches from her face. She smelled the sickly scent of infection. As they struggled on the floor, her hand closed around the handle of the fallen pot. She grabbed it and brought it in hard, hitting the cougar right on its nose. It reared back, surprised, and she smashed it again in the nose, then shoved its weight off her.
She’d dropped the matches, and she scooped to grab them as she jumped to her feet.
The cougar was taken aback, but it shook its head and stalked toward her. Alex moved backward toward the swinging doors, striking another match. She touched it to the fuse, which immediately sparked. Throwing the firecrackers down in front of the lion, she pivoted, ready to spring for the door. But just then the cougar pounced again.
It hit her back with such force that she fell sprawling face-first into the swinging doors, then slammed down hard on the floor.
The firecrackers went off, deafening in the confines of the space, and the cougar took off in a panic, sprinting forward into the room. It tore around the lobby, trying to find a way out, knocking over chairs and leaping onto tables, colliding with the bookshelf and knocking it over. Books spilled out onto the floor as it came crashing down, scaring the mountain lion even more.
It raced around the room, letting out an eerie, keening wail, and knocked over one of the two tables that stood on either side of the front door.
The tall bronze sculpture of the standing bear teetered and then came down with a thud right in front of the door.
There was no way she’d be able to move that heavy thing out of the way in a hurry, let alone with a panicked cougar racing around the room. It tore behind the wet bar and stood there panting.
She thought of the other exits on the ground floor: a back door in the kitchen where food deliveries had been made, the window with the broken lock, and a basement that led out through a set of cellar doors. All of them were through that kitchen door, and the cougar now stood between her and it.
The mountain lion inched out from behind the wet bar. Alex reached into her pocket, feeling for the bang snaps. She hadn’t used one since she was a kid, but she remembered the loud bang they emitted when you threw them onto the floor.
She picked one out of the package and threw it down in front of the mountain lion. The cat startled and withdrew. She threw another, driving it back toward the kitchen. She imagined the layout of the kitchen beyond. The door that led to the basement was standing open. She was sure of it. If she could drive the cougar back that way, she could shut the door behind it. It was a heavy oak door with a bolt.
She threw another bang snap and it turned away, moving quickly toward the kitchen. She followed it, throwing another. Bang! It pushed through the swinging doors and she pursued it, throwing down another firecracker.
The cat spun on her then, snarling, lips drawn back to reveal dagger teeth. She advanced, throwing down another bang snap. Her ears rang with the loud explosions, and the smell of silver fulminate filled the room.
The cougar backed up, and she angled toward the open basement door. It started to eye the island, and for a second, she worried it was about to leap up onto it and get on the other side of her. So she threw down three at once, letting out an ear-splitting series of cracks. The mountain lion panicked, backing up so fast that it slammed into the open basement door. Alex rushed forward, throwing another four down at once. The cougar stumbled on the top basement step, then slipped backward, its eyes wide, taking a tumble down the stairs. She slammed the door shut and drove the bolt home.
She heard it leap back up the stairs, letting out an enraged roar. It batted against the door, but the wood there was solid.
Alex closed her eyes and exhaled. The cougar was obviously sick and starving, its normal routine thrown into desperation.
She stood, unsure of her next move. Then she remembered Jolene mentioning that she volunteered at a wildlife rehabilitation place. Hadn’t she said that a vet there volunteered her time?
She climbed to her bedroom, finding Jolene’s number in her wallet, then returned to the phone. She felt bad that it was the middle of the night but didn’t want to leave the cougar there for hours.
Jolene answered on the fifth ring, her voice groggy.
“Sorry to wake you.”
“Is everything okay?”
She told Jolene about the cougar, and instantly Jolene sounded more awake. “I’ll call the pickup team,” she told Alex. “They can probably be out there within the hour. You okay?”
“Quite okay, considering. When you told me about the ghosts and the murderers, you forgot to mention the starving mountain lions.”
Jolene gave a small laugh. “Some welcome, eh?”
Using all of her body weight, Alex managed to slide the bronze sculpture just far enough to one side to allow someone through the door. Then she waited on one of the couches by the fireplace. The lodge got cold at night. The pickup team arrived, four people with a tranquilizer gun and a massive steel cage in the bed of their truck. They helped her right the bear sculpture and return it to the table, then brought the cage inside. She led them to the basement door, and one prepared to open it while the other knelt, tranq gun at the ready. Alex retreated to the swinging doors, poised to get out of the way if she needed to.
They opened the door, and for a long moment, nothing happened. For a second Alex thought the lion might have found another way out of there or collapsed from exhaustion. But then it cautiously crept out, eyeing the team. The woman with the tranq gun shot it, and the cat let out a yowl. It made a break for the swinging doors and Alex moved aside, taking refuge behind the bar. It darted out into the lobby, panicked, knocking over more chairs. Then it started to slow down. It circled, disoriented, then stood still for a moment. Then the gigantic cat slumped over on its side. It was out.
As they stood over the sleeping lion, Alex looked it over more carefully. Its ribs and spine jutted out. The emaciation was painful to see.
“It’s been starving,” the woman with the tranq gun said. She pointed to the wound on its paw that Alex had noticed earlier. “See this?” Now Alex could see the wound went all the way around the lion’s ankle.
“It’s been shackled,” Alex said.
The woman nodded. “People find cubs and think they can keep them as pets. Then they get so big, they end up in cages, or chained up like this one was. People don’t realize how much they eat. It’s expensive to raise a lion. They eat up to twenty pounds of meat a day. People don’t want to spend the money or can’t afford it, so they just let the cougar go, thinking they’re returning it to the wild. But by then they’re usually too sick or too starved to survive, and they’ve never learned to hunt.” She shook her head. “I wish this was the first time I’ve seen this, but it’s not.”
Alex wondered where it had come from.
Working together, they slid the mountain lion into the cage. It took all four of them to heft it out to the truck. They placed the cage on the hydraulic lift on the tailgate and raised it into the bed of the truck, then strapped it down.
When they drove away, Alex returned to the kitchen and replaced the cinder block in front of the window. Then she got two more and hefted them inside, lining them up on the counter.
Her heart still thumping away, she climbed the stairs to bed, wondering about the m
ountain lion. Where had it come from? A nearby property? She’d been lucky tonight. It could have been a lot worse. She imagined the cougar out there in the forest, starving, desperate, and hoped they’d be able to help it.
For now she had to sleep somehow, because tomorrow she was going to venture back into the wilderness.
Fifteen
Out in the backcountry, Alex stirred in her sleeping bag, half awake. She’d checked some of her camera traps the day before, excited to find more dark hairs that could be wolverine. Still shaken from the close encounter with the cougar and wanting some time to process what had happened with Brad, she’d decided to camp out last night. She wasn’t relishing the thought of sleeping in the lodge again after the mountain lion incident, though she knew the chances of something like that happening again were exceedingly unlikely.
Now she snuggled down in her bag. She’d been dreaming that she was on a farm somewhere, cows mooing in the pasture. She turned on her side, trying to drift back to sleep. Light streamed in through the tent walls, but it still felt early. She settled in and then heard heavy footfalls outside the tent. Still half asleep, she curled up in the warmth of her mummy bag, disregarding it. More footfalls thumped by her tent and her eyes snapped open. She sat up, listening to multiple animals moving around her.
Then a loud bellow from a cow broke the morning silence. She moved to the tent fly and stuck her head out, finding herself surrounded by cattle. They moseyed about, grazing. Four of them turned to stare at her, their chewing suddenly stopping, watching her cautiously to see if she was a danger.
She got dressed quickly and climbed out of the tent, seeing as many as a hundred cows milling about, stretching into the distance. Wary of her, they moved away when she emerged, keeping their distance and continuing to stare.
They all had green ear tags with numbers. Grazing wasn’t allowed on the preserve, so she knew they must have wandered over from some neighboring ranch.
Quickly she packed up her tent and sleeping bag so they wouldn’t get trampled and attached them to her pack. Then she hung her pack on a low-hanging branch of a pine, keeping only her camera and GPS unit. She took a few photos of the cattle, zooming in on their ear tags. Then she walked in the direction they streamed from, wanting to find out how they were getting in.
Some of the preserve was fenced and some of it wasn’t. She knew the boundary between adjacent ranchland and the wildlife protection area was fenced, though. Maybe it had come down in a recent storm.
She walked about a mile through Douglas fir–dominated forest, at last emerging in a vast meadow. She could see the fence cutting through it, the cows passing right through a downed section.
She walked to it, finding the barbed wire neatly cut and folded back, a deliberate place of ingress for the cattle. She uncoiled the wire slightly to see how fresh the cuts looked. They weren’t shiny and clean, but slightly rusted, so the fence had been cut open a while back.
She took photos of it, then of the surrounding area for points of reference. With her GPS unit, she took a waypoint.
This part of the preserve was in a distant corner that was seldom visited. Cattle could easily have been grazing here without anyone noticing, especially if they were kept from the more visited parts of the preserve. As she stood in the opening, two nearby cows on the other side of the fence stopped, staring at her.
She’d have to find out who owned the cattle and get them to do a roundup, then repair the fence. Pulling up the photos she’d taken of their tags, she zoomed in on one of the images to see if there was a ranch name on them. The tag read Bar C Ranch.
Just as she turned back to retrieve her gear, she heard the pounding of horse hooves. A cowhand emerged from a cluster of juniper trees. He slowed his horse to a leisurely stroll, watching the cattle.
She waved at him. “Hey! Hello!” It was still cold enough that her breath frosted in the early-morning air.
He turned to look at her, his white cowboy hat gleaming in the morning sun. He nudged his horse and trotted toward her. She stopped at the gap in the fence to meet him.
Touching the brim of his hat to her, he said, “Mornin’.” He was in his early twenties, rough-shaven, red-haired, and freckled.
“Good morning.” She gestured around at the cattle. “Are these your charges?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She pointed at the fence break. “I’m not sure if you know this, but beyond this fence is protected land held by the Land Trust for Wildlife Conservation.”
He squinted in that direction. “I don’t think so, ma’am. That’s Bar C Ranch land.”
She frowned. “Actually, it isn’t, though it certainly looks like it’s been used that way. The fence has been cut.”
He shifted in his saddle. “I didn’t cut it, ma’am.”
Shielding her eyes against the sun, she said, “It was cut some time ago. Can you tell your boss to get it repaired and round up the cattle?”
He rested the reins on his leg and shook his head. “No offense, ma’am, but I think you’re a little mixed up. I’m sure that’s Bar C Ranch land. You must have gotten turned around. Where did you come from?”
“I’m a biologist stationed at the Snowline Resort, and I’ve got a map with me if you’d like to see it.”
At this, he stiffened. “I don’t need a map to tell me where I am.”
She exhaled. “I’m not implying you’re lost; I’m saying that the cattle are trespassing.”
He shook his head. “I think you’ll have a hard time proving that.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s prime grazing land belonging to the Bar C.”
She frowned. “No, it’s protected habitat. And it’s private land.”
His horse shifted its weight, its tail swishing. “I don’t see what I can do about it.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Bar C Ranch.”
“Yes, but who owns the Bar C Ranch?”
He sighed as if she were a confused child. “I think you’d best just let this drop, ma’am. I think you’ll find that’s Bar C land, and you don’t want to make a fool of yourself.”
This was going nowhere, and for some reason, he was reluctant to talk about his boss.
“I’ll have to take it up with the sheriff, then.”
He chuckled. “You go ahead and do that.” Then he steered the horse away from her and meandered off.
Alex felt heat rise to her cheeks, and not just because of his rudeness. The cattle industry was a big reason why Alex was a vegetarian. Between grazing and growing feed, almost a third of the land on earth was used to raise livestock, with forests being clear-cut for the purpose, many of them in the Brazilian rainforests.
In addition to the fact that the beef industry tied up significant cropland in the United States, the cattle themselves destroyed vegetation and wildlife habitats, damaged soils and stream banks, and contaminated water sources with fecal matter. When cattle belched and passed gas, methane was introduced into the atmosphere, a gas far more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
On top of that, so-called predator control programs meant the deaths of countless animals, driving species like the grizzly and the Mexican gray wolf to extinction in the Southwest. The livestock industry was the major opponent to predator reintroduction programs that were otherwise popular with wildlife watchers and were required to restore healthy ecosystems.
Vital areas like valleys between steep mountain ranges were needed by species like the pronghorn, yet miles of fencing fragmented this terrain and proved fatal for animals such as the sage grouse, who frequently collided with barbed-wire fences and perished.
For all of these reasons, she’d decided long ago to substitute beans for beef in her diet.
She took a deep breath, watching the cowhand moving off into the distance. Now she’d have to go into town and see Makepeace. This was not how she wanted to spend her day. But at least she could talk to him face-to-face about how SAR was
faring with the missing man.
After hiking back to the lodge and freshening up, Alex made the drive to Bitterroot, still nervous at the thought of encountering the hostile pickup again. But the trip was peaceful, and she parked in front of the sheriff’s station. Inside, Kathleen sat on the phone, giving her a friendly nod as she walked by. Then, gritting her teeth, Alex knocked on Makepeace’s door.
“What is it?” came his gruff voice from the other side.
She opened the door and peeked in. He was sitting at his desk, filling out paperwork, when he glanced up at her. “Oh,” he said by way of greeting. “It’s you.” He sounded like she’d just ruined his day.
“Yes, it’s me. How are you, Sheriff?”
“As well as can be expected.”
“Has there been any news from SAR?”
He shook his head. “Afraid not. They’ll probably pack it in today. There still aren’t any missing hiker reports. He may have just hiked out.”
“Sheriff, if you’d seen this man’s condition—”
“Even so,” he interrupted. “Not much I can do. We tried. I’ll let you know if they turn up anything today. You didn’t have to come all this way to ask. You could’ve called.”
She stared at him from the doorway.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he added, “I went up to the Bakers’ place to see if they’d seen the guy. Showed them the photos from your camera, but came up empty there, too. Jolene sure makes a mighty fine pie, though,” he added, patting his stomach. For a moment, his face was almost friendly as he thought about the dessert. Then he narrowed his eyes and his hint of a smile faded. “Is there something else I can do for you today, Dr. Carter?” he asked in a beleaguered voice. “Got another magically disappearing man you want me to search for?”
She straightened up and entered the room, closing the door behind her. “Someone has purposefully let cattle through the fence onto the preserve, where they’re currently grazing.”
A Solitude of Wolverines Page 16