Black Hills

Chance Wildlife Refuge. She liked the name, not only because it was hers, but because the animals would have a chance there. And people would have a chance to see them, study them, care about them.
    One day, she thought. But she had so much to learn first—and to learn, she had to leave what she loved best.
    She hoped Coop came, even for a few weeks, before she had to leave for college. He’d come back, like her cougar. Not every summer, but often enough. Two weeks the year after his first visit, then the whole wonderful summer the year after, when his parents divorced.
    A couple of weeks here, a month or so there, and they’d always just picked up where they left off. Even if he did spend time talking about the girls back home. But now it had been two whole years.
    He just had to come this summer.
    With a little sigh, she capped her canteen.
    It happened fast.
    Lil felt the mare quiver, start to shy. Even as she tightened her grip on the reins, the cat leaped out of the high grass. Like a blur—speed, muscle, silent death—he took down the calf with the flower headdress. The small herd scattered, the mother bugling. Lil fought to control the mare as the bull charged the cat.
    It screamed in challenge, rising up to defend its kill. Lil locked her legs, gripping the reins with one hand as she dragged out her camera again.
    Claws flashed. Across the meadow Lil scented blood. The mare scented it as well and wheeled in panic.
    “Stop, easy! It’s not interested in us. It’s got what it wants.”
    Gashes dripped from the bull’s side. Hooves thundered, and the calls sounded like grief. Then it all echoed away, and there was only the cat and her kill in the high meadow.
    The sound it made was like a purr, a loud rumble, like triumph. Across the grass, its eyes met Lil’s, and held. Her hand trembled, but she couldn’t risk taking her other off the reins to steady the camera. She took two wobbly shots of the cat, the trampled, bloody grass, the kill.
    With a warning hiss, the cat dragged the carcass into the brush, into the shadows of the pine and birch trees.
    “She has kittens to feed,” Lil murmured, and her voice sounded thin and raw in the morning air. “Holy shit.” She pulled out her recorder, nearly fumbled it. “Calm down. Just calm down. Okay, document. Okay. Sighted female cougar, approximately two meters long, nose to tail. Jeez, weight about forty kilograms. Typical tawny color. Stalk-and-ambush kill. It took down a bison calf from a herd of seven grazing in high grass. Defended kill from bull. It dragged kill into the forest, potentially due to my presence, though if the female has a litter, they would be too young, probably, to visit kill sites with the mother. She’s taking her kids, who wouldn’t be fully weaned as yet, breakfast. Incident recorded . . . seven twenty-five A.M., June 12. Wow.”
    As much as she wanted to, she knew better than to follow the track of the cat. If she had young, she might very well attack horse and rider to defend them, and her territory.
    “We’re not going to top that,” she decided. “I guess it’s time to go home.”
    She took the most direct route, anxious to get back and write up her notes. Still it was mid-afternoon before she saw her father and his part-time hand Jay mending a fence in a pasture.
    Cattle scattered as she rode through them and whoaed the horse by the battered old Jeep.
    “There’s my girl.” Joe walked over to give her leg, then the mare’s neck, a pat. “Home from the wilderness?”
    “Safe and sound, as promised. Hi, Jay.”
    Jay, who didn’t believe in using two words if one would do, tapped the brim of his hat in response.
    “You need some help here?” Lil asked her father.
    “No, we’ve got it. Elk came through.”
    “I saw a couple herds myself, and some bison. I watched a cougar take down a calf in one of the high meadows.”
    “Cat?”
    She glanced at Jay. She knew the look on his face. Cougar equaled pest and predator.
    “Half a day’s ride from here. With enough game to keep her and the litter I imagine she’s got fed. She doesn’t need to come down and go after our stock.”
    “You’re all right?”
    “She wasn’t interested in me,” she assured her father. “Remember, prey recognition is learned behavior in cougars. Humans aren’t prey.”
    “Cat’ll eat anything, it’s hungry enough,” Jay muttered. “Sneaky bastards.”
    “I’d say the bull leading that herd agrees with you. But I