Conspiracy

12

Charlie Dean took a slow breath, pushing the air through his teeth as quietly as possible. He scanned both sides of the stream, then moved his eyes slowly across the canyon in front of them, looking for their prey.

“Tracks are less than an hour old,” said his guide, Red Sleeth. Red pointed at the outer rim of the impression, still moist. “Dogs are real close now. You hear how they bark?

It’ll pick up even louder and faster as they close in. Ready?” Dean nodded.

Sleeth rose and started following along the double track of footprints left by his two hounds. They’d been tracking this mountain lion through the Montana wilderness since early morning, after discovering a three-or four-day-old kill hidden in the brush below.

Sleeth splashed through the water to the other side of the creek, moving up the embankment into a copse of juniper.

Dean followed, pushing through the calf-high grass and scrub to a small rock outcropping. A trail cut across the terrain to his left, intersecting the gray and green side of the canyon. It would be dark soon; they didn’t have much time left to catch the lion today.

“This way,” said Sleeth, pointing to a cut that angled downward to the left.

Dean followed, picking his way through the rocks as the guide crossed back to the north. The ground leveled out, then angled upward sharply. Dean slung his rifle over his shoulder, snugging the strap as he began climbing. He couldn’t see the dogs, but from their barks it seemed that they were moving to the northeast.

“You kept up pretty well for an old guy,” said Sleeth when they reached the rim of the canyon.

“You think I’m old?”

“Didn’t mean to insult you.” Sleeth gave him a yellow-toothed smile and pointed across the ridge. “The dogs are running that way. I think if we can swing straight across the side of that ridge, we may cut him off.” Ten minutes later, the dogs’ barks sounded even farther away, though Sleeth claimed they were closer.

“Snow up here just last week,” said the guide as he and Dean edged downward. “Now it’s all gone or we’d have an easier time.”

“Yeah.”

“Warm today.”

“You figure forty degrees is warm?”

“Depends on your point of reference.”

“True enough.”

“Stop. Listen.” Sleeth held up his hand, pointing to the sky. “The dogs.”

The dogs were barking, loudly, in short, quick yaps.

“They’ve treed him,” explained Sleeth. “Come on!” Dean followed the guide down into a thin copse of trees.

The dogs’ excited barks bounced off the two sharp horizon-tal walls that bookended the canyon about a quarter mile away.

Dean started to think about the shot. A treed lion was not particularly difficult to hit, and Dean began to feel a little guilty, as if the dogs and the guide had given him an unfair advantage. Like any hunt, the tracking and chase were the critical elements; the finish was just the finish — necessary for success, yet vaguely unsatisfying, especially for someone like Dean, who had hunted humans before turning to animals.

Sleeth stopped suddenly. “Something’s wrong,” he told Dean, and in the next moment he started to bring his gun up.

By then Dean had already spun to his right and dropped to his knee. Ten yards away, the brush parted, revealing the face and teeth of an angry lion. The big cat pressed its weight onto its front paws and sprang forward, teeth bared.

Dean fired toward the lion’s head.

And missed.

He threw himself left as the animal lunged, its paw claw-ing his leg. Rolling on the ground, Dean bashed the butt of the rifle into the animal’s side. The mountain lion’s snarl filled his ears as he tried to scramble away. He felt as if he were underground, swimming in a pit of sand.

The cat rolled off to the side and Dean pushed himself to his feet. He had a round chambered. The gun was up, aimed.

He fired, point-blank, this time taking the cat through the head.

A dank musk surged around him as if it were air rushing into a vacuum chamber: death’s scent.

The animal shook violently, its feet vibrating.

Sleeth ran over, 357 drawn. He administered the coup de grâce to the lion, then looked over at Dean.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Dean.

Everything had happened so fast, he couldn’t decipher it.

Had he shot once or twice?

Twice — he’d missed the first time.

How, from that range?

It didn’t make sense, but he had missed.

The dogs were howling. Dean looked toward the sound.

“The other lion is out of the tree,” said Sleeth, his voice a monotone. “One of the dogs is hurt.” Dean started in that direction.

“Wait,” said Sleeth, catching up. “We can’t shoot the

other lion. Your license only allows one kill.”

“OK,” said Dean, lowering his gun.