He stopped and looked carefully up and down the line of greenery marking the top edge of the grove. It was a good hundred yards of open snowpack to the nearest tree.
He tried a step. Deep open snow.
He listened, but there were no more sounds coming from within the pine grove. Where was that damned thing? Just inside the tree line, waiting for him to move out into the open? His mind formed an image of the great tawny beast loping across the snowpack behind the Bronco with perfect ease, doing it for miles and miles.
He scanned the trees ahead and extracted the. 45. Had he put the rounds in the right chambers? If he cocked the hammer, would he get a bullet cycling under it, or an empty chamber?
Gotta move sometime, he thought. He stared at the distant trees, trying to pick one out with branches low enough to get into. He spotted a likely candidate, then turned around so he could walk backward up the hill, keeping the entire pine grove in his sight. He held the. 45 close to his belly to keep it warm as he trudged backward up the hill, trying hard not to look over his shoulder to see what might be behind him. It was tough going as the hill steepened, and the snow felt like it was three feet deep, even though he knew it wasn’t.
He stopped, breathing hard as he thought he saw something move out on the far right corner of the grove. He stared hard, his eyes watering with the effort, but there was nothing there. He scanned the whole grove again, watching for any signs of movement. Nothing. He looked over his shoulder. His target tree was twenty feet away. It was bigger than he’d thought, with a huge gnarly trunk some seven or eight feet in diameter.
Behind which was-what?
Look at the snow, his brain told him. He did. No tracks near the tree.
He scanned the pine grove again, his eyes moving from left to right, even as he started moving backward again, his mind chanting a simple mantra: There’s nothing behind you except that tree. No tracks, no cat. Damned thing can’t fly.
He kept watching the pine trees, staring hard into those deep shadows at their bases. Wrong, he told himself; watch the tops. If something’s coming through those trees, the tops will stir.
And, oh shit, they were-right in the middle of the grove, right where he’d come out. Tiny little movements in the moonlight, but the tops were definitely moving. Something coming through there. And there were his own tracks, pointing right at him.
Night-Night? Or White Eye? Both?
Then something slammed into his back and he let out a little yelp before he realized he’d backed into his tree. He took one last look around, jammed the gun back into his pocket, and started trying to climb it. The limbs, which had appeared to be close to the ground before, were not so close now that he was right here. He circled the tree, searching for a handhold, looking frantically at the next tree, and then one on the other side, then back at the pine grove.
Where the big cat had just come out of the grove and was bounding up the hill, right toward him, eyes flashing in the bright moonlight.
Propelled by a sudden blast of adrenaline, he crouched down into the snow and then leaped straight up, high enough that he could grab a small branch, which broke, dropping him into a heap in the snow. Peering out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the cat was halfway up the hill, coming strong, right for him.
He jumped again and grabbed the stub of the broken branch. This time, it held and he did a one-armed pull-up into the first branch junction. With a second handhold, he was up, off the ground, and scrambling higher.
The cat screamed at him from beneath the tree, causing him to lose his footing and almost fall. He scrabbled around the trunk, looking for more branches, discarding his gloves to get a better hold, while the panther growled at him as it circled the tree, looking up at him-and at the branches.
Oh shit, Cam thought as he pulled himself up into the third tier of branches, some twenty feet above the ground now. Cats can jump. And climb.
He kept circling the trunk now, not trying for any more height but, like a squirrel, attempting to keep the trunk between him and the cat’s sight line. The panther circled below, more patiently now, watching him, silent as it concentrated on its prey, its breath making little puffs of vapor.
Fucking thing’s working it out, Cam thought. Picking which branch. That bastard’s coming up here.
He found as secure a position as he could and put his back to the huge old trunk and his legs out on two separate wide branches. He drew the. 45. The walnut grips were cold in his bare hands, and he knew better than to touch the metal.
The cat circled one more time, came around to the side where it had a clear view of Cam, and sat down on its haunches. For an instant Cam thought it had decided to give up. And then it came straight up in one graceful leap to grab onto the trunk with all fours at the same branch intersection Cam had first grabbed. It hung there for no more than a split second, then pulled itself onto the branch stub, never taking its eyes off Cam, not even looking where it was placing its enormous feet, its claws tearing off bits of bark that rained down on the snow.
With another effort, she climbed into the second tier, eyes blazing in triumph as she came up, her breath steaming in the moonlight, total certainty in her eyes. Got you now, human. Chow time. He could smell her wet fur and urgent breath. Got you now.
He braced his back against the tree as she maneuvered underneath him, no more than eight feet away, balancing like it was nothing, with all four feet on a single branch, looking, evaluating. She was huge.
He lined up the gun sight between her eyes and then his training took over. No fancy shooting here, center of mass. The chest. Go for the chest.
The cat gathered herself again, crouching down on the branch, rumbling in her throat as she prepared to make the final leap up to where he was, and he thumbed back the hammer.
All the muscles on her front and shoulders quivered as she got ready. She stared right at him, daring him to move, to run, to even try to escape. The words aim and shoot thundered through his head, and he fired.
The shot boomed out over the meadow and the panther transfixed the mountain air with her death shriek. She tumbled down onto the snow at the base of the tree in a rain of bark. Cam felt the thump of her body hitting the ground. He instinctively cocked the hammer back for another shot, but it wasn’t necessary. The huge cat was crumpled in a heap at the base of the tree, its lungs clearly blowing red spray out onto the snow. Cam heard another sound then, yelling and shouting. He turned and saw White Eye reeling through the snow, heading across the open ground between the pine grove and the tree line. He was shouting, “No, no,” his arms flailing as he tried to run through the snow like a wild drunk, still yelling. Cam pointed the gun at him as he came up, but the man wasn’t even looking at him. He was running to the cat, which was trying to get up but couldn’t. There was an awful wet roaring noise rising in its red maw.
White Eye stumbled to a stop, glared up at Cam, and then dropped to his knees next to the cat. Cam expected the cat to try to crawl to its master, but that wasn’t what happened. The panther rolled sideways and then back in its death agony, focused its eyes on White Eye, and, in a move too quick for Cam to see, lunged at Mitchell with its front paws, hooking viciously, smashing White Eye’s head repeatedly like a boxer working a speed bag before collapsing in the snow with a great groan and a final spray of bright red blood from its gaping mouth.
Cam stared down at the bloody spectacle below him. The cat was now on its back, obviously dead, even though the large muscles in its legs and haunches were still jerking. White Eye was sprawled on his back, his staring eyes wide, the sides of his head not really there anymore, hands clenching and unclenching in the spotted snow.