“What did he want you to do?”
“Find him a den. Had to be a female with cubs, ’cause tom’s don’t den up. Just the momma cats, and then only for a coupla months. After that, they hide the cubs with their kills.”
“And he wanted you to take him right to a mountain lion’s den?”
“I told him, ‘I’ll set me up camp a coupla miles away and you get to go creepin’ on in there one night and take yer fuckin’ picture, you want to. But I hear you scream, I ain’t ridin’ to no rescue until all the picnic noises stop and it’s daylight.’”
“Can you actually get that close?”
“I took that boy into the woods off and on for two full years, every time he could get out here to the Smokies. Summertime, wintertime, everything in between. Taught him how to Injun-walk, how to be hid and stay hid. How to change human smell into animal smell. How to listen. How to look. How to be still in one place-for hours if need be. How to hunt. You know what I’m sayin’? And I’ll say this-he had the natural-born sense for it. I’d’a swore he done it all before.”
“Who are these guys? Do you know?” Cam asked.
The Bronco banged over a downed tree hidden under the snow, rattling Cam’s spine and precipitating a dust fall inside the vehicle. White Eye kept it going as if nothing had happened, and then shook his head. “Ain’t no tellin’,” he said. “Crazy bastards, that’s what they are, for damn sure. Deer hunters. Bored with life. Sportsmen, they call themselves. Sorta like you.”
“Not like me at all,” Cam said. “I mean, I’m a cop. We hunt bad guys, but we do it with teams of detectives, technology, and prosecutors. No way in hell would I mess with a mountain lion or any other large wild animal on its own ground. I’ve never been that bored.”
“That’s just the word,” White Eye said. “That’s why they do it, I think. They was bored. Wanted them some real excitement. They was hunters already, but this-this was different. Real different. Called it a challenge. Got fire in their eyes when they’d come out. Especially Carl. Kept sayin’ extreme all the time. And I believe it turned into something else once Carl brought out the third one.”
“What was that?”
“Took Carl three years to get his first picture, ’long with fifty damn stitches on his back. Goddamned cat came this close-he snapped his fingers-“to takin’ his fool head off. This was out to the Chop. He’d gone down one a them mountain-climbin’ wires to get hisself level with the den, then swung hisself in to shoot that cheap-ass little camera. Cat went right at him, jumped the damn wire. They both fell fifty feet into a creek. Cat screamin’, Carl screamin’. Said I wouldn’t, but I come a-runnin’ anyway, used a rifle to run the cat off, and there was goddamned Carl, flounderin’ around in that creek. Deep December it was, blood all over the ice, and all that crazy fucker cared about was findin’ his damn camera, his back all tore up-I’m talkin’ the whites of his ribs showin’. I mean, damn! Hurt me to look at it.”
“But he got his picture?”
“Oh yeah, he got his goddamned picture. Coupla months later, Carl brings out a second one. Some common damn name. I forget. Bill, John, you know. Looked a little like Carl. Same money, though, so I wasn’t askin’ much about names. Trained the new boy just like I trained Carl. Graduation back out to the Chop. Anyways, I think these two turned the whole thing into some kind a test for the third guy. You want to be one of us, first you gotta get your face.”
“‘Face’?”
“That’s what they called it-didn’t count less’n you got a picture of the cat’s face from near enough so’s anyone seein’ it would fuckin’ know that the guy takin’ the picture was noshit close-up.”
Cam shook his head in wonder. A disposable camera was autofocused at eight to ten feet for the best picture.
They broke out of the woods and drove out onto a large meadow at the foot of a massive hill. Cam could just see the summit of the next mountain looming over its top. He glanced at the Bronco’s gas gauge, but there was plenty of fuel, even though the vehicle had been grinding through the snow in second gear.
“Yonder’s Catlett’s Bald,” White Eye said, indicating the mountain behind the big hill. He was able to go a little faster now that they were traversing the open meadow, although the snow was deeper. They were running without headlights, and they needed none. White Eye aimed the vehicle at the left side of the hill, where there appeared to be a small pass between it and the edge of the deep woods.
“Fourth one got hisself killed,” White Eye said, apropos of nothing.
“Whoa. How?”
“How you think?”
“Cat got him?”
“Oh yeah. Me’n Carl, we was hid out on a ridge ’bout a half-mile crow fly from the den. Whoever this Carl is, he’s the boss man. We was out along the back side of Whittier Mountain. They’s a canyon back there, where the Bullet River cuts through. This old boy went in after midnight, aimin’ to rope down to the den ’bout an hour before daylight. He fucked up crossin’ a feeder creek halfway to the cliff, made him some noise. Carl never did hear him, but I did. And so’d the cat. This boy didn’t come back, so we went in around noon. Found a foot in the creek, and a hat full of hair.”
“And the rest of him?”
Mitchell snorted. “Cub meat.”
“You hunt down the cat?”
“Hell no. Cat was just doin’ what she was supposed to, protectin’ her den. If there’s a den, there’s cubs. Carl said he tole each one of them sumbitches, ‘If the cat wins, the cat wins, and you lose. That’s it. Otherwise, this ain’t got no point.’”
“Damn,” Cam said quietly, but he was beginning to understand. Carl, or whoever he was, had turned this deadly little game into an initiation of some kind. But who were these guys? And initiation into what?
“But doesn’t that make the cat a man-eater?” Cam asked. “I mean, what if she gets a taste for it?”
“‘Gets’?” White Eye said. “Mister, they’s already got the taste for it, best I can tell. Look at them cats out there in California. They’s eatin’ folks right and left. And why not? They don’t call ’em mountain lion for nothin’. And besides, look at it this way: Most wild animals ain’t gonna fuck around with no damn panther. So here comes this twolegged animal, bangin’ around on the cat’s ground, don’t seem to know the fuckin’ rules, no respect. Panther’s gotta do somethin’ about that, ’cause, way he figgers, if it ain’t actin’ like prey, then it’s gotta be a predator, right? Pretty fuckin’ logical, I’d say.”
“Why do you have one around, then?”
White Eye smiled. “I like ’em. First one I found as a cub up on the Tennessee line twenty-odd years ago. Little fucker, mewin’ up a damn tree and starvin’. No claws up front. Got away from some breeder, I figger. Put him in the house, raised him up like a house cat. Used to have me some fun when strangers would come round my place, specially after he growed some. Thievin’ white trash comes around at night to steal him one a my chickens? Runs into Night-Night in the barnyard? Come daylight, I’m gonna find me fifty feet a goose shit ’cross my yard.”
They entered the narrow pass, straddling a blackwater creek running between the two elevations. They came out into a smaller meadow, with the full expanse of Catlett’s Bald rising in a sheer face right in front of them. Cam thought it looked like the pictures he’d seen of EI Capitan in Yosemite Park. There was a stand of densely packed tall pines to the left, and the ground rose to the south behind the pines, where there were large bare deciduous trees climbing that slope toward the bald. White Eye stopped the vehicle in the middle of the meadow, but left the engine running. The moonlight was bright enough that the pine trees showed their intense green color.
“Get your gear on,” he said. “Time to show you somethin’ about cat dancin’.”
44
Cam opened his door and got his coat and overboots on while White Eye did the same. Cam looked at his watch. It was 3:30 A.M., but Mitchell’s grainy coffee brew still had him wide-awake. He put on gloves, a black watch cap, and then an adjustable ball cap on top of the watch cap. He patted the gun to make sure it was in his pocket, then quietly transferred the three bullets to the coat pocket from his trouser pocket when White Eye wasn’t looking. He stood down into the snow, as did White Eye.