The Cat Dancers

55

Cam froze when he saw the cat between him and the riverbank. He tried to think what to do. Step back into the stand of pines? Pull out the. 45 and start blasting away-with both remaining rounds? Do the fifty-meter dash straight ahead and then jump into the river?

He stared at the big cat. It did not appear to be injured or even marked. He then wondered if it was the same cat that had mauled Kenny, or was it a different one? A mate? The cat looked right back at him, its black mask clearly etched in the bright sunlight. Its tail began to twitch. Cam quietly extracted the Colt and held it down at his side.

There was no point in going back into the trees. If the cat wanted him, it would have the advantage in there, and Cam would probably never see or hear it coming. The trees were too insubstantial to climb, and it was probably a couple hundred feet back to the nearest big pine.

The cat made that guttural coughing sound again and lay down on the gravel, its entire body pointed right at Cam. He’d seen house cats do the same thing when they had a mousie out in the middle of the living room carpet. For a crazy moment, Cam was tempted to walk over there, right at it, and see if he could shoot it like he’d shot the other one, right through the long axis of its body. But then he saw the muscles in the cat’s shoulders coiling. It lifted its lips at him, baring yellow fangs.

He looked longingly at the water, but there was no way he could outrun that thing if it charged. When it charged. He slowly knelt down on one knee, took a two-handed shooting stance, braced himself as best he could, pointed the. 45 at the cat, and cocked the revolver. The cat growled when he moved, but it still didn’t charge. Its tail was whipping back and forth now, its agitation clearly growing. Cam focused on its face along the blade sight picture and then dropped the point of aim slightly. If he fired now, he could probably hit it in the chest, but the shot would be slightly downhill and just far enough away that the drop of the round might result in a clean miss.

He commanded his lungs to expand and tried to keep his eyes from watering as he waited, the big Colt getting heavier in his hands by the minute. The cat began to inch forward on its belly, taking his measure the whole time, its eyes glaring in anger. Cam refined his aim point as the cat made its approach, still belly-down on the gravel, its breathing becoming audible as it made its move. Cam remembered reading somewhere that this was the time to make himself as big and tall as possible, to make the cat pause, but he didn’t want to disturb his shooting stance. He had only two rounds, and he’d probably only get off one shot before the damned thing was all over him. He remembered what the mortally wounded beast had done to White Eye, that speed bag hammering with those three-inch-long claws. And Kenny with his shirtful of innards.

The cat stopped, twenty feet away now, and began to quiver all over. Its head was down, giving Cam less, rather than more, of a target.

Then he remembered the camera.

Holding the gun in his right hand, he unzipped his left parka pocket and brought out the little disposable, slick in its plastic shrink-wrap covering. Being careful not to make any sudden jerking moves, he brought the camera up, pointed it at the cat, armed the flash, and fumbled for the shoot button. An instant later, there was a bright flash and the cat shrieked at him. He did it again, and a third time, and each time the cat yelled at him. But its eyes were blinking now and the flash had clearly upset its attack pattern.

He fired it again and again, and each time the cat reacted. After the sixth time, he put it back in his pocket and reset his shooting position. The cat was no closer, but it was still blinking furiously. Its tail was, if anything, whipping back and forth more vigorously, but the cool, careful “Here I come” expression on its face was gone.

At that instant, two shapes burst out of the trees between the cat and the riverbank.

The cat sensed and reacted to the new danger before Cam even knew what was happening. It whirled around on the loose gravel, still down in its crouch, and, flat-eared, fangs bared, roared at the two shepherds. They stopped in their tracks, spewing gravel out in front of them, and then spread out, one on either side of the cat, each one keeping about fifteen feet away, their fur and hackles up and showing more teeth than Cam had thought possible. Frick was to Cam’s right on the downstream side, while Frack held position nearest the stand of pines.

They’d left the cat one avenue of escape, which was to dive straight into the pines, but the lion wasn’t having it. It roared again and feinted at Frack, who answered with a pretty impressive roar of his own and even more ivory. He stood his ground, much to Cam’s surprise, while Frick kept moving, down on her belly now like the cat, growling and showing teeth, making the cat turn to keep her in view even as Frack started to slide toward his right. Cam was still so surprised to see the dogs that he hadn’t done anything, but now he did. He scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it at the cat’s back.

The lion whipped around and shrieked at him, giving the dogs another chance to adjust their positions. They clearly knew they were no match for an aroused mountain lion, so they weren’t getting closer, but they weren’t leaving, either. The cat now had three threats to deal with, and it was getting even more agitated. Cam realized he had a body shot now, but, to his own amazement, he found himself reluctant to take it. We started this, not the cat, he thought.

Run, goddamn it, Cam thought. Get out of here. He threw another handful of gravel. The cat spun around again, and this time both dogs feinted at it.

That did it. The cat shrieked one final time and then, in a blur of fur, leaped into the pines, easily clearing twenty feet without touching the ground, and was gone. The dogs ran up to the edge of the pines but wisely stopped, barking their fool heads off. Cam felt a wave of something like cold nausea sweep through his own plumbing and suddenly had to sit down. Frick came over and licked his face and neck, while Frack paced back and forth in front of the dense trees, nose down, as if he was trying to pick up the cat’s scent. Cam could still see that final leap, from a standstill, the same distance the cat had been from him, he realized. Even with the gun pointed right at it, he’d probably never have gotten even one shot off.

He had a sudden urge to answer a call of nature, so he got up and walked over to the riverbank, where the rushing water was visibly moving smaller stones along in the marginal current. Frick followed him, and then so did Frack.

He praised them while he took care of business, then lowered the hammer on the Colt and put it back in his pocket. He zipped the camera back into his parka. If that thing was working, Mary Ellen would finally have her proof.

“So where are the rangers, guys?” he asked. He saw that the dogs were both pretty wet, so they’d managed to get across somehow. He looked across the river at the north bank, but he didn’t see anyone over there. The big rocks he’d crossed with Kenny were now small mounds of turbulence out in the sweeping current. He knew what they were going to have to do: They were going to have to go into the river right about here and let the icy current take them through the entire turn and then strike out for the far bank.

He still had Kenny’s binocs around his neck, so he used these to survey the other side.

It was doable, if he could survive the cold water, and if he didn’t get slammed up against one of those now-invisible rocks by the current. As if confirming the urgency of the situation, he realized that the tips of his boots were now underwater. He looked back up into the high ridges above the canyon and saw that the dark cloud to the west was now taking lumpy definition along the entire mountain range. He could clearly see curtains of rain sweeping out of the cloud, which meant the river was by no means finished rising.

He wondered if the dogs would follow him into the river, or if he should tie them to him somehow so that they would all stay together. But with what?

They sat down before him, as if to say, That was fun. What’s the next game, Pop? He knelt down to rub their heads, which is when the mountain lion erupted out the pines in a dead run and came right at them, eyes blazing, covering the gravel in twenty-foot bounds.