Imagine a world where a satellite a hundred miles overhead could pinpoint the whereabouts of those soft-stepping ghosts of the forest to fifty yards or less?
Imagine a world where somebody hired to protect all wildlife could be bribed to secretly access the DOW computers, then print out their animals’ latest locations, and pass them on to their enemies?
Not my kind of world.
Except he was trapped in it, sure as a lion up a tree. He could snarl all he wanted, but he was under the gun.
“Don’t expect too much next month. Lynx tend to travel in the spring,” he warned Larson as he gripped the door handle, eager to be out and away. “They’ll be searching for mates, looking for fresh hunting grounds.” He’d tried a couple of times to explain that just because the satellite pinpointed each cat one day per week, that didn’t mean the lynx would then sit tamely waiting till he came hunting.
If these locations were stolen from the computer yesterday, why, by today, every one of these forty-seven cats could be fifty miles to hell and gone across the mountains. Larson’s paper only gave him the place to start looking, no guarantee of finding.
But something about all this high-tech bullshit seemed to make a man arrogant, brash as the dumbest horse in blinders. If a computer said it was so—why then, it must be so. Nothing to it. Just reach out and shoot someone.
As Natwig shoved open the door and stepped out into clean air, Larson leaned over to give him a bland farewell smile. “My clients expect better.”
THEY’D RENDEZVOUSED outside of Trueheart at midnight, then Liza in her Jeep, with its caged rear end, had followed Tess’s pickup, towing its tandem horse trailer, north. Toward the high country.
A horseman could have ridden a straighter and shorter route to the summer range up through Suntop land. But constrained to travel by vehicle—and in secret—they had to circumnavigate the ranch. Their route wound up through the mountain valleys to the east, then spiraled north, then west, then finally south again.
Sixty slow-going miles of road dwindled from public two-lane to frost-heaved one-lane to muddy Forest Service and logging tracks. The scent of pine and snow blew through Tess’s open window. The jewelled eyes of deer gleamed in her headlights, then their graceful silhouettes bounded across the road and into the trees.
“Coming home,” Tess half sang aloud, as if the lynx in the car behind could hear her. “Hang on just a little longer, baby.” Liza had sedated the cat lightly for the drive, but she hadn’t dared give her more, since Zelda would have to be knocked all the way out for the final leg of her journey.
It was two hours before dawn when they reached the trailhead east of Sumner Mountain and parked. Just a whisper of cold wind stirring the pines. Stars so big and bright you could pick out colors by their light. “How is she?” Tess asked as she joined Liza at the back of her Jeep.
“Not happy.” The vet dropped the tailgate to reveal the caged interior, and a low feline moan seconded that opinion.
“But she looks good,” insisted Tess, while Liza inspected the lynx by flashlight. “She looks wonderful!”
Once the cat had recovered from pneumonia, Liza had moved her to a large kennel behind her house, west of Santa Fe. Seven weeks of intensive feeding had worked a miracle. Zelda’s ribs were no longer visible beneath her glossy coat and, even sedated, she seemed bursting with energy.
“Oh, she’s spunky enough,” Liza said broodingly, “but I’d still like her to gain more weight. A lot of her bulk is just that fabulous coat.”
“But you said she’s ready for freedom,” Tess worried. They’d discussed this at length.
“Given our schedule, I guess she’s got to be.”
They didn’t dare wait longer. Last week had seen spring roundup at Suntop and all the surrounding ranches near Trueheart. Now that the new calves were branded, within a week or two, the herds would be driven north to their summer range.
Liza and Tess had agreed that it was best if Zelda were acclimated and freed before the cattle arrived in the foothills. Lynx were shy and wary at the best of times. Commotion in the area while Zelda was choosing a den and a territory, might persuade her to seek these elsewhere.
But it was crucial to their plan that Zelda stick around, close to where Tess could feed her, till she’d learned to hunt her own food.
And so this rush to get her settled and happy and accustomed to being fed in a certain place at a certain time before the herds arrived. Cats were conservative creatures who liked dependable rituals, Liza maintained. The fewer surprises, the better.
“Will you tranq her now?” Tess asked the vet.
“Not till you’re ready to ride. You don’t want her waking somewhere along the way.”
“Better believe it! I don’t know who’d enjoy that more—me, Cannonball or Zelda.” Tess had picked the steadiest horse on Suntop to carry the lynx, and a pack horse that was nearly as sensible. Still, she found her nerves were skittering as she tightened the girths on both saddles, bridled up, then fitted her various packs and bundles into place. Steady or not, she could just imagine how Cannonball would react to a yowling, struggling cat in a basket strapped to his back—her own private rodeo, in the midst of dense forest, or on a cliffside trail!
Liza supported one-half of the collapsible metal cage while Tess lashed it to the right side of the pack mare’s saddle. A second four-foot-by-four-foot stack of steel-mesh squares was hung from the left side to balance the load. The mare snorted and rolled her eyes. “How far is it to your site?” Liza dithered. “You’re sure you can you find it in the dark?”
“It’s about nine miles to the southwest of here, and yeah, I know the trails. And it’ll be dawn by the time we reach the point where we really have to bushwhack, so…don’t worry.” Tess smiled to herself. Somewhere in those weeks of custody and nursing, cat-loving Liza had lost her professional objectivity. She was as anxious as a mom sending her only daughter off for her first time at summer camp.
Not that Tess wasn’t worried, as well. If they couldn’t give Zelda the wide, wonderful world she deserved—if the cat couldn’t learn to survive in that world—neither of them had the heart to stuff her back in a cage. Which left only…another kind of injection. Sleep without waking.
And even if she succeeded in reintroducing Zelda to the wild this summer, Tess still had other worries.
Like the imminent arrival of half a dozen line-camp cowboys, who were paid to keep their eyes wide open for anything strange going on in their territories.
Like the chance of being caught in what they—and her father!—would see as a gross betrayal of their way of life.
If they caught her aiding and abetting lynx, they’d see her as Tess-turned-traitor. Tess on the side of the tree huggers and the despised government bureaucrats—and against her neighbors, her family, her friends.
And she could argue till she was blue in the face that lynx and cows were perfectly compatible, that the cattlemen had nothing to fear but fear itself. But ranchers were as stubbornly conservative at heart as…cats.
So here she was in the middle, walking her usual tight-rope
