Black Hills

breathed the word. She stood like a statue with that one trembling hand on his arm, and stared into the tangled brush.
    “What? Where?” Suspicious, sure she was just screwing around and trying to scare him, he tried to pry her hand away. At first he saw nothing but that brush, the trees, the rise of rock and hill.
    Then he saw the shadow. “Holy shit. Holy freaking shit!”
    “Don’t run.” She stared as if mesmerized. “If you run, he’ll chase you, and he’s faster. No!” She yanked on his arm as Coop edged up, getting a firmer grip on the ball. “Don’t throw anything, not yet. Mom says . . .” She couldn’t remember everything her mother had told her. She’d never seen a cat before, not in real life, not near the farm. “You have to make noise, and, and make yourself look big.”
    Quivering, Lil rose to her toes, lifted her arms over her head, and began to shout. “Get away! Get away from here.
    “Yell!” she shouted to Cooper. “Look big and mean!”
    Her eyes, keen and dark, measured the cougar from tip to tail. Even as her heart pounded with fear, something else moved through her.
    Awe.
    She could see his eyes glint in the oncoming dusk, glint as they seemed to look right into hers. Though her throat went dry, she thought: He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful.
    He paced, powerful grace, watching them as if deciding whether to attack or retreat.
    Beside her Coop shouted, his voice raw with fear. She watched the big cat slink toward deeper shadow. And then it leaped away, a blur of dull gold that dazzled her eyes.
    “It ran away. It ran away.”
    “It didn’t,” Lil murmured. “It flew.”
    Through the roaring in her ears, she heard her father shouting for her, and turned. He charged across the field, scattering surprised cattle. Yards behind him Coop’s grandfather ran, carrying a rifle she realized he’d gotten from the house. The dogs raced with them, as did her mother, with a shotgun, and Coop’s grandmother.
    “Cougar.” She managed to get the word out just before Joe swept her off her feet and into his arms. “There. Over there. It’s gone now.”
    “Get in the house. Coop.” With his free arm, Joe pulled Coop against him. “Both of you, get inside. Now.”
    “It’s gone, Dad. We scared it away.”
    “Go! Cougar,” he said as Jenna sprinted past Sam and reached them.
    “Oh, God. You’re all right.” She took Lil, giving Joe the shotgun. “You’re all right.” She kissed Lil’s face, her hair, then bent down to do the same to Coop.
    “Get them in the house, Jenna. Take the kids and Lucy, and get inside.”
    “Come on. Come on.” Jenna draped her arms around both children, looked up at Sam’s grim face as he reached them. “Be careful.”
    “Don’t kill it, Dad!” Lil called out as her mother pulled her away. “It was so beautiful.” She searched the brush, the trees, hoping for just one more glimpse. “Don’t kill it.”

2
    Coop had a couple of bad dreams. In one the mountain lion with its glinting yellow eyes jumped through his bedroom window and ate him in big greedy bites before he could even scream. In another, he was lost in the hills, in the green and the rock, in the miles of it. No one came to find him. No one, he thought, even noticed he was gone.
    Lil’s father hadn’t killed the cougar. At least Coop hadn’t heard gunshots. When his grandfather and Mr. Chance had come back, they’d had cherry pie and homemade ice cream, and had talked of other things.
    Deliberately. Coop knew all about that adult ploy. Nobody would talk about what had happened until after he and Lil were in bed, and couldn’t hear.
    Resigned to and resentful of his prison, he did his chores, ate his meals, played his Game Boy. He hoped, if he did what he was told, he’d get a parole day and be able to go back to the Chance farm and use the batting cage.
    Maybe Mr. Chance would play, too, then he could ask him about what it was like to play professional ball. Coop knew his father expected him to go to law school, to work in the family firm. To be a big-shot lawyer one day. But maybe, maybe, he could be a ballplayer instead.
    If he was good enough.
    With his thoughts on ball, on escape, on the misery of his summer sentence, the big yellow-eyed cat might’ve been just another dream.
    He ate his breakfast of flapjacks, as his grandmother called them, in silence at the old kitchen table while she fiddled around at the stove. His grandfather was already outside doing