Black Hills

burry song of the mountain bluebird, the hoarse chee of a pine siskin in flight, the irritable warning of the pinyon jay.
    It seemed the forest came to life around her, stirred by the streams and slants of misty light sliding through the canopy of trees.
    There was nowhere in the world she’d rather be.
    She spotted tracks, usually deer or elk, and noted them on the tape recorder in her jacket pocket. Earlier she’d found buffalo tracks, and of course, numerous signs of her father’s herd.
    But so far in this three-day jaunt she’d given herself, she’d yet to track the cat.
    She’d heard its call the night before. Its scream had ripped through the darkness, through the stars and the moonlight.
    I’m here.
    She studied the brush as the sturdy mare climbed, listened to the birdcalls that danced through the sheltering pine. A red squirrel burst out of a thicket of chokecherry, darted across the ground and up the trunk of a pine, and looking up, up, she spotted a hawk circle on his morning rounds.
    This, as much as the majestic views from the clifftops, as much as the towering falls tumbling down canyons, was why, she believed, the Black Hills were sacred ground.
    If you felt no magic here, to her mind, you would find it nowhere.
    It was enough to be here, to have this time, to scout, to study. She’d be in the classroom soon, a college freshman (God!), away from everything she knew. And though she was hungry to learn, nothing could replace the sights, the sounds, the smells of home.
    She’d seen cougar from time to time over the years. Not the same one, she thought. Very unlikely the same cougar she and Coop had spotted that summer eight years ago. She’d seen him camouflaged in the branches of a tree, leaping up a rock face, and once, while riding herd with her father, she’d spotted one through her field glasses as he took down a young elk.
    In all of her life she’d never seen anything more powerful, more real.
    She made note of the vegetation as well. The starry forget-me-nots, the delicate Rocky Mountain iris, the sunlight of yellow sweet clover. It was, after all, part of the environment, a link of the food chain. The rabbit, deer, elk ate the grasses, leaves, berries, and buds—and the gray wolf and her cats ate the rabbits, deer, and elk.
    The red squirrel might end up lunch for the circling hawk.
    The trail leveled off, and opened into grassland, already lush and green and spearing with wildflowers. A small herd of buffalo grazed there, so she added the bull, the four cows, and the two calves to her tally.
    One of the calves dipped and shoved, and came up again with his head draped with flowers and grass. Grinning, she paused to pull out her camera, take a few pictures to add to her files.
    She could title the calf Party Animal.
    Maybe she’d send it, and copies of some of the shots she’d taken on the trail, to Coop. He’d said he might be coming out this summer, but he hadn’t answered the letter she’d sent three weeks before.
    Then again, he wasn’t as reliable about letters and e-mails as she was. Especially since he was dating that coed he’d met at college.
    CeeCee, Lil thought with a roll of her eye. Stupid name. She knew Coop was sleeping with her. He hadn’t said so, in fact had been pretty damn careful not to. But Lil wasn’t stupid. Just like she was sure—or nearly sure—he’d slept with that girl he’d talked about in high school.
    Zoe.
    Jeez, what happened to regular names?
    It seemed to her that guys thought about sex all the time. Then again, she admitted, shifting in the saddle, she’d been thinking about it a lot lately.
    Probably because she’d never had it.
    She just wasn’t interested in boys—not the ones she knew, anyway. Maybe in college next fall . . .
    It wasn’t as if she wanted to be a virgin, but she didn’t see the point in getting sweaty if she didn’t really like the guy—and if he didn’t heat her up on top of the like, then it was just a kind of exercise, wasn’t it?
    Just something to be crossed off the life-experience list.
    She wanted, she thought she wanted, more than that.
    She shrugged it off, put her camera away, took out her canteen to drink. She’d probably be too busy studying and working in college for sex. Besides, her priority now was the summer, documenting her trails, the habitats, working on her models, her papers. And talking her father into culling out a few acres for the wildlife refuge she hoped to build one day.
    The