Cat Breaking Free

2

Nothing could be seen on the vast green hills but the three riders, their horses jogging across the rising slopes high above the sea; they were pursued only by swift cloud shadows as ephemeral as ghosts slipping along behind them. Far below them where the hills dropped away, a carpet of fog hung suspended, hiding the cold Pacific. California weather, Charlie thought, loving the swiftly changing contrasts of light and shadow and the damp smell of iodine and salt. The chill wind was refreshing after a good night's sleep and a big breakfast; she was deliriously warm inside her leather jacket; her mass of wild red hair, held back with a leather band, kept her neck warm. She sat the big buckskin easily; she was watching a gull swoop low to disappear below the fog when her attention turned suddenly to the pine forest that followed on her right, deeper inland.

Something moved there, something small and quick. Many somethings, she thought, frowning. Small creatures slipping along fast among the shadows as if secretly following them. In the shifting patterns of sun and shade she tried to make them out, but could see nothing clearly. She didn't want to move Bucky closer and alert her two companions. Uneasily, she studied the woods. She had been watching for some time when, behind her, Ryan put the sorrel mare to a gallop and moved up beside her.

"What are you watching?" the dark-haired young woman said. "What's in there, what are the horses looking at?" Both horses were looking toward the woods, their ears flicking nervously as they stared into the tangled shadows.

"Maybe rabbits," Charlie said. "I really can't see what it is. This time of year, maybe baby rabbits." Though none of their horses was in the habit of shying at rabbits.

Ryan frowned. With her dark Latin beauty and startling green eyes, Ryan Flannery looked, in Charlie's opinion, more like a model than a building contractor. Even this morning with her short dark hair tucked beneath a battered slouch hat and wearing faded jeans and faded sweatshirt, Ryan Flannery was striking, her mix of Irish and Latino blood creating a stunning and singular beauty. Riding Charlie's sorrel mare, turned in the saddle, Ryan peered into the shadows of the woods with curiosity but warily. She looked ready to act if action was needed.

Ryan's sister, moving up beside them so not to miss anything, watched the woods intently. Mounted on a dappled gray gelding whose coat exactly matched her short, well-styled silver hair, Hanni Coon was the glamorous one of the three. Hanni's designer jeans, this morning, were of a skillfully faded shade that dramatically set off her hand-knit coral-and-blue sweater. Her Western boots were too new to look natural; they sported rattlesnake insets and had been handmade by Tony Lama. Hanni's roping saddle was plain but expensive, elegantly understated, with a soft, elk-suede seat. The saddle blanket was hand-woven llama wool from Peru. Even the temperament of Hanni's gray gelding matched her own. He was as flamboyant as Hanni, a flashy, meddlesome Arab who would rather prance and sidestep than take the trail at a sensible walk. As the three women watched the woods, Ryan and Hanni perhaps envisioning baby rabbits, Charlie knew that what she had seen wasn't rabbits. As they crested the next hill, she deliberately turned away.

"I guess it's gone," she said, hiding her nervousness. Ryan and Hanni didn't need to see what was there. The three women rode quietly for some time, caught in the beauty of the rolling green land and the muffled thunder of the waves crashing against the cliffs far below. The piping of a meadowlark shattered the air, as bright as tinkling glass. A hawk dropped from the clouds screaming, circling close above them; but the meadowlark was gone. In all the world, at this moment, there seemed no other presence but the birds and the innocent beasts of the forest. Of the creatures that followed them, only Charlie guessed their true nature. She told herself she was wrong, that probably those small, swift shadows were only rabbits.

Ryan and Hanni soon strung out behind Charlie again into a comfortable riding distance. She looked down at the fog far below her, the fog she had loved since she was a child, imagining hidden worlds among the mist's pale curtains. Even when she was grown, in art school in San Francisco, she had indulged herself in fantasies as she walked the city's steep streets where fog lay thick. Peering into mist-curtained courtyards and gardens, she had imagined all manner of wonders; as if, if she looked hard enough, she would glimpse unknown and enchanted realms.

Now below her hidden beneath the fog lay her own village, her home of two years-her home forevermore, Charlie thought, smiling. Molena Point was her own enchanted village-enchanted if one didn't look too closely, at the dark side that any idyllic setting could reveal.

Stroking Bucky's neck, she thought how lucky she was to have moved to Molena Point. She was certain that fate had led her to Max. To have married Max Harper was more than a dream come true. She wished he were here, riding beside her instead of home at the station slugging it out with the bad guys, with the dregs of the world.

So strange that she, eternal dreamer and optimist, had married a hard-headed cop. A man who, by the very nature of his work, was forced to be a cynic-at least in most matters.

But not a cynic when it came to her, or to his horses and dogs. There was not, in Max Harper's view, any reason to be a cynic regarding the nature of animals, for they were the innocent of the world.

Max had promised that they'd take this trip together, soon. A belated honeymoon, to make up for their original honeymoon plans a year ago, when their wonderful cruise to Alaska was aborted by the bomb at their wedding. A bomb that was meant to kill them.

That didn't matter now; though the bitter aftertaste was there. They were together, that was what mattered. And despite the perfection of this weeklong journey, she could hardly wait to get home.

She and Ryan and Hanni had ridden for three days down the coast, with a day's layover at the Hellman ranch to get the sorrel mare shod when she threw a shoe. It had been an easy trip, no roughing it, no camping out in the rain, no pack animal to lead, though they had carried survival gear, just in case. They had stayed each night at a welcoming ranch, dining before a hearth fire, sleeping between clean sheets and stabling their horses in comfort; had experienced nothing like what the first explorers and settlers had known traveling these hills, sleeping beneath drenching rain, eating what they could shoot or gather, fighting off marauding grizzly bears with muzzle loaders. It was hard to imagine grizzlies on these gentle hills; but this had been grizzly country then. The early accounts told of bear and bullfights, too, staged by the Spanish vaqueros and American cowboys in makeshift arenas; and Charlie shivered at the cruelty.

Now that they were nearing home again a bittersweet sadness touched her, but a completeness, too. Her soul was filled with a hugeness she could not describe; she felt washed clean. No religious retreat could ever, for Charlie, be as healing and inspiring as this open freedom, on the back of a good mount, wandering through God's country away from the evils of the world. As the sun began to burn through the fog, she could see the rooftops of Molena Point far ahead, a montage of red and brown peaks, hints of white walls softened by the deep green oaks and pines that rose between the cottages and shops. Soon she would be able to see their ranch, too, the white fences and oak trees of their own few acres. All three women were silent, drinking in the first sight of home, all with the same mix of sadness.

Hanni said, "I feel like an eighteenth-century traveler rounding the hills in a strange land, amazed to suddenly see my own rooftops." That made Charlie smile; but then she pulled Bucky up, again looking at increased movement in the woods. Had she heard a plaintive sound? A soft cry mixed with the wind and the crashing of the surf against the cliffs? Or maybe she'd heard only the faraway cry of the hawk? Dropping the reins across Bucky's neck, she sat listening.

The wind struck more sharply, hiding any sound. Above the pine woods a sliver of sun grew brighter as the clouds parted again. Pushing back her kinky red hair, Charlie brushed loose strands off her forehead and buttoned the throat of her jacket. Very likely she had heard nothing; she was as foolish as Hanni's gray gelding.

But no. Bucky had heard; he was watching the woods and he began to fuss, flicking his ears and rolling his eyes. Bucky, unlike the gray gelding, wasn't given to fantasies. Steady as a rock, the buckskin did not shy without good reason. Apprehensively Charlie studied the dark tangles among the pine trunks and deadfalls. She had not imagined that stealthy running, low to the ground among the dry branches and scrub bushes; had not imagined something intently following them. And she did not want-must not-let Ryan and Hanni know its true nature.