Black Hills

be close. If she’s got a litter she won’t be happy to see you.”
    “Why is it on the tree? So high on the tree.” Drawing out her camera, Lil walked closer. “She could’ve taken out an elk or deer, I guess, and it fought, or it hit the tree. But it just doesn’t look like that.”
    “And you know how that would look?”
    “In my head I do.” She glanced back, saw he had the rifle. “I don’t want you to shoot her.”
    “Neither do I.” He’d shot nothing but targets, and didn’t want to shoot the living, especially her cat.
    Frowning, Lil turned back to the tree, studied it, the ground. “It looks like she dragged the kill off that way. See how the brush looks? And there’s more blood.” She crouched, poked at the ground. “There’s blood on the ground, on the brush. I thought she took the buffalo calf that way. More east. Maybe she had to move her den, or it’s another cat altogether. Keep talking and stay alert. As long as we don’t surprise her or threaten her or her young, she won’t be interested in us.”
    She inched her way, trying to follow the signs. As she’d said, the trail was rough here, steep, rocky. It didn’t surprise her to see some signs of hikers, and she wondered if the cat had moved to avoid them.
    “There’s more scat. Fresher.” She looked over and just beamed. “We’re tracking her.”
    “Whoopee.”
    “If I could get a shot of her and her young . . .” She stopped, sniffed. “Do you smell that?”
    “Now I do. Something’s dead.” When she started forward, he took her arm. “I can follow it from here. You stay behind me.”
    “But—”
    “Behind me and the rifle, or we turn back. I’m stronger than you are, Lil, so believe me when I say we’ll turn back.”
    “Well, if you’re going to get all macho.”
    “I guess I am.” He walked forward, following the stench.
    “West,” she directed, “a little more west. It’s off the trail.” She scanned brush, trees, rocks as they moved. “God, you wonder how she can stomach anything that smells like that. Maybe they abandoned the kill. Chowed down, moved on. Nothing picked clean is going to smell like that. It looks like a lot of blood around here, and then into the brush.”
    She stepped over. She didn’t move in front of him, but beside him. It wasn’t her fault the signs were on her side. “I see something in there. Definitely something there.” She strained to see. “If she still considers it hers, and she’s around, she’ll let us know quick. I can’t see what it is, can you?”
    “Dead is what it is.”
    “Yes, but what was the prey? I like to know what . . . Oh, my God. Cooper. Oh, my God.”
    He saw it as she did. The prey had been human.
     
     
     
    LIL WASN’T PROUD of the way she’d handled herself, the way her legs had buckled, the way her head had gone light. She’d damn near fainted, and certainly would’ve gone down if Coop hadn’t gotten hold of her.
    She managed to help him mark the spot, but only because he’d ordered her to keep back. She made herself look, forced herself to see and remember what had been done before she’d gone back to her mount for her canteen to drink deeply.
    She’d been steadier, and able to think clearly enough to mark the trail for those who would have to come for the remains. Coop kept the rifle out as they rode back home.
    There’d be no final tryst by the stream.
    “You can put the rifle away. It wasn’t a cat that killed him.”
    “Her, I think,” Coop said. “The size and the style of the boots, and what was left of the hair. I think it was a woman. You think wolves, then?”
    “No, I didn’t see any signs of wolves near there. It’s the cougar’s habitat, and they’d leave her alone. It wasn’t an animal who killed her.”
    “Lil, you saw what I saw.”
    “Yeah.” It was etched in her mind. “That was after. They fed after. But the blood on the tree, it was high, and there weren’t any cat tracks there. No tracks until a good ten yards off. I think someone killed her, Coop. Killed her and left her there. Then the animals got at her.”
    “Either way, she’s dead. We have to get back.”
    When the trail opened enough, they spurred to a gallop.

    HER FATHER GAVE them whiskey, just a swallow each. It burned straight down to the sickness in her belly. By the time the police arrived, the idea of being sick had passed.
    “I marked the trail.” She sat with Coop and her parents and a county deputy named Bates. She