Descending, the dark one tested the wind. Elk had passed by recently. Usually they were higher up, but they had come to graze on the succulent grass. His nose to the ground, he set out on their trail. There were two, a cow and her calf. He walked faster. Calf meat was juicy and sweet.
Their scent hung heavy around a thicket. They were still in there. His keen ears detected the rustling of their bodies. They had lain up in its depths for the day and would soon emerge to feed. They didn’t know he was there; he never let his presence be known.
Circling, the dark one came to a small pine and sank flat under it. The low branches hid him. With the eternal patience of his kind, he waited for his quarry to show.
The sun had been swallowed by the western peaks when the thicket crackled. The mother came out first, raised her head to sniff, and pricked her ears. She was cautious, as all good mothers were, but the dark one wasn’t upwind and she didn’t smell him. She snorted, the signal for her calf to emerge. A male born that spring, it wasn’t half her size.
The dark one focused on the calf. The mother would be harder to kill and he always went for the easiest. There was less chance of being hurt and he could not afford another injury. His limp was a constant reminder of how costly a mistake could be.
The pair started down, the mother in the lead. She was wary and stopped every few steps to look about. She sensed something was amiss, but she didn’t know what.
The dark one tensed his muscles. The calf was looking at her, cuing his action on hers. That was usually the way with the young. It made them vulnerable. It made them slow to react. He bared his fangs but made no sound. Not yet. Not until the kill.
The mother twisted her neck to look behind them. She stared right at the small pine and then looked away. She hadn’t seen him. His dark coat and the dark shadows were one.
The calf stamped as if impatient.
The dark one was ready. When the mother turned, he exploded from under the pine. Two bounds and he was on them. He leaped high and landed on the calf’s back, his weight almost smashing it to the ground. It bleated and tried to run, but its legs were wobbly. The dark one sank his teeth deep into its throat even as his claws churned and sliced. The mother bleated, too, and tried to butt him. He wrenched with his fangs, and a red geyser sprayed his face. The calf took several staggering steps and collapsed. The dark one clung on, tearing and raking. A pain in his side caused him to yowl in fury. The mother had butted him. She drew back and lowered her head to charge again. A black blur, he whirled to confront her. He snarled and spat, his tail lashing. She hesitated. She bleated again, and sniffed, and drew back. Her calf had stopped moving. Whirling, she plowed off into the gathering night.
The dark one let her go. He had what he wanted. He sank onto the calf, lapped at its ravaged throat, and purred. Here was life’s most delicious treat. He loved to lap blood. Meat was good but blood was best. When there was no more blood to be had, he tore off a great chunk of raw flesh and chewed. Around him the world darkened. Stars glimmered. In the woods an owl hooted. Far off a coyote wailed. Farther away, a wolf howled. The other meat-eaters were abroad.
The dark one gorged. When his belly was full, he rose and turned his back to the calf and scratched grass and dirt onto it. He would come back to eat several times.
Cool night air washed over his sinewy form as he loped up the mountain. He caught the scent of a black bear. He had come across it twice already, a big male in its prime. Were it a male of his own kind, he would challenge it for the valley. But bears were not competitors for the same meat; they seldom went after deer or elk. So long as this bear left him alone, he would leave it alone.
He was almost to the ledge when the wind shifted. A new scent caused him to stop in his tracks. He raised his head to pinpoint where the scent was coming from, but the wind shifted. A growl escaped him. It was the scent he hated. The scent he was reminded of every time he put weight on what was left of his forepaw.
Irritated, the dark one climbed to his lair. He stretched out on the ledge and closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him. He was strangely restless. He rose to go into the niche, and froze.
Down on the valley floor a light glimmered. He has seen lights like it before. He had seen the flames that made it and those who made the flames, the two-legged creatures he hated, the creatures responsible for crippling him.
The creatures he would slay.
Evelyn King breathed shallow as she stepped to the body. The stink was atrocious. Using the stock of her Hawken, she rolled the body over. A beetle scuttled from an eye socket, and she recoiled.
“Poor woman,” Dega said. Whites said that a lot when bad things happened to others. Which perplexed him. He understood the whites’ ideas of “poor” and “rich” but not how having a bad thing happen made someone “poor.”
Although she didn’t want to, Evelyn bent down. The body had been there awhile. Scavengers had been at it. Most of the flesh was gone. Only a few shreds of skin remained. Punctures high on the brow gave a clue to the manner of death. “An animal did this.”
Dega gazed about them. The grass had been trampled and worn, and in a patch of dirt was a large print. He squatted and pointed. “Cat,” he said. “Much big cat.” Catching himself, he amended, “Sorry. Very big cat.”
Evelyn came over. “A mountain lion.” It was rare for painters to attack people. Her father, in all his years in the Rockies, had only ever been attacked by mountain lions twice, so far as she knew. Bears, on the other hand, he’d clashed with often.
“How long you think she be dead?” Dega asked.
Evelyn shrugged. “I’m no judge. Pa and my brother would likely know just by looking at her. If I had to guess, I’d say a week, two at the most.” She turned to the lodge. “Anyone in there?” she called out. When there was no answer she switched to Shoshone. “Ne hainji.” No one replied. She pushed on the hide, and her stomach churned. The stench was worse. Ducking, she warily entered. “Oh my.”
Another body was inside. The scavengers had not been at it, but it had rotted and the maggots had done their grisly work. Evelyn gave it a quick scrutiny. “This one was a boy,” she reckoned. Not much younger than Dega, she reckoned.
“Cat again?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. Slash marks on the dead boy’s buckskins confirmed it. “Let’s get out of here.” She pushed on the hide and took Buttercup’s reins and walked toward the stream. The stink faded and she could breathe again. She sucked air into her lungs and declared, “Thank God.”
Dega shared her revulsion. He never liked being around dead things. The Nansusequa always buried their dead within a day of death, usually with a feast and singing to celebrate passing to the other side. They didn’t weep and cut themselves as some tribes did. To them, death was a cause for happiness, not sorrow. “Those mother and son, you think?”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said. It begged the question of what had happened to the father. Could be the painter had gotten him, too.
“We bury them?”
Evelyn debated. That was the proper thing, she supposed. But there wasn’t much left of either the woman or the boy. And it wasn’t as if they were kin or even Shoshones. They were strangers. She felt no obligation. Besides, it would take time she would rather spend more pleasantly. “I think we should leave them where they are for their own people to find.”
“If you say,” Dega said. Though in his opinion a person should show respect for the dead as well as the living.