Black Hills

he didn’t give her a comforting pat. Her eyes were dry when they met his. Dry, and a little distant. “I’ll get the horses, meet Joe back at the campsite. We’ll get your gear to you.”
    “I’m grateful, Coop. I don’t know what I’d’ve done if you hadn’t been along.”
    “Handled it. I’ll be by later.”
    “You don’t need to—”
    “I’ll be by later.”
    With that, he walked away, and Willy fell into step with him.
    “So you were with the police back east.”
    “I was.”
    “Went into private, I hear.”
    “I did.”
    “I recall when you used to come out as a boy, visit with your grand-folks. Good people.”
    “They are.”
    Willy’s lips twitched, and his stride was steady on the trail. “I heard how Gull Nodock, who works for you now, gave you a chaw one day and you about puked yourself inside out.”
    The faintest hint of humor touched Coop’s mouth. “Gull never gets tired of telling that one.”
    “It’s a good one. Why don’t you just give me the run-down, Mr. Sullivan. You don’t need me telling you what I need to know, seeing as you were police.”
    “Cooper, or Coop. Lil and I started out yesterday morning. Around eight, maybe just after eight. We unloaded some of the gear at the campsite, by the stream, and got up here before eleven. Close to eleven, I think.”
    “Good time.”
    “Good horses, and she knows the trail. She’s got that camera up there. Somebody broke the lock on its cover, switched it off. She said it went down a couple days ago. She reset it. We saw the tracks left by whoever did it. Looks like around a size eleven to me.”
    Willy nodded, adjusted his Stetson. “We’ll be checking on that.”
    “We set up the cage, and baited it, and we were back at camp before two. She worked, I read, we had a meal, turned in. Five-twenty this morning, I heard somebody moving around. I got my gun. He was already running when I got out of the tent. I heard him more than saw him, but I got a glimpse. I’d guess about six feet tall, male. Most likely male just from the way he moved, the basic shape. He had on a backpack, and a cap. Gimme cap style. Couldn’t tell you age, race, hair color. I just got the shape, the movement as he ran, then he was in the trees. He moved fast.”
    “Black as ink that time of day.”
    “Yeah. Maybe he had infrared goggles. I only saw him from behind, but he moved like a fucking gazelle. Fast, fluid. Between the two of us, Lil woke up. Not long after, she got the signal the trap had sprung. It took us a good thirty minutes, maybe closer to forty to pack up, for her to contact her base. And we spent some time looking at the cat on her computer. He had a good lead on us. Neither one of us considered he’d head up there, do that.”
    “Why would you?”
    They’d reached the horses, and Willy gave Coop’s mare a friendly rub.
    “We had light by then, but we didn’t hurry. Then she spotted the tracks. We were about halfway between the camp and the cage, and she spotted them.”
    “Got an eye for it, Lil does,” Willy commented in his mild way.
    “He’d circled around, crossed back to the trail, and headed up. We heard the cat scream, the way they do.”
    “Hell of a sound.”
    “Third time it screamed, we heard the shot.” He detailed the rest, adding the times.
    “There’s no exit wound,” Coop added. “It’s going to be small-caliber. Compact handgun, maybe a thirty-eight. The kind somebody could carry easily under his jacket. Wouldn’t weigh him down on a hike, wouldn’t show if he ran into anybody on the trail. Just another guy out loving nature.”
    “We take something like this serious around here. You can count on that. I’m going to let you get on. If I need to talk to you again, I know where to find you. You keep an eye out on the way down, Coop.”
    “You can count on that.” Coop mounted, took the reins of Lil’s horse from Willy.
    The trip back alone gave him time to think.
    It was no coincidence that the camera had been tampered with, an intruder had chosen their campsite, the cougar Lil had trapped had been shot.
    Common denominator? Lillian Chance.
    She needed to have that spelled out for her, and she needed to take whatever precautions she could.
    She assumed it was easier for a man to kill a caged animal than a human.
    Coop didn’t agree.
    He didn’t know William Johannsen well, and prior to now hadn’t had any professional dealings with him. But his impression had been one of competence