Читать книгу More Than A Cowboy - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 9

LARSON NEVER chose the same place twice for their meetings, but he always picked the same kind of bar, Natwig noted grimly. Ferns and mirrors. Chrome and marble. Micro-brewery beers at eight bucks a pop, and watch the bartender smirk if you asked for a Budweiser on tap.

The clients would be all ski and city types, glossy and blow-dried, with not a care in the world. Those with high-altitude tans had gotten them on the slopes at Telluride and Crested Butte, not packing mules into back-country canyons, or crouching still as a lichen-covered slab of granite, hour after hour, waiting for a line of elk to cross a ridge and step into range.

Natwig’s restless gaze touched the mirror behind the bar, where a weathered, squint-eyed face stared blankly back at him. What’s wrong with this picture? It was he who was out of place here, standing out like a crow on a snowfield. If any of his friends should see him here, they’d know something stunk.

But then, no man he respected would set foot in a place like this. So maybe Larson wasn’t dumb in his choices, after all. Still. Let’s get a move on, dammit! Natwig finished his beer, smacked the bottle down on the polished mahogany and stood.

The drill was, he was supposed to wait till Larson showed, then follow him out to the parking lot. But down at the far end of the room, Larson was dawdling over his second margarita while he flirted with a giggly blonde who kept tossing her curls, showing off a glittery pair of diamond earrings.

Karen always wore a pair of turquoise studs that Natwig had bought her their last year in high school. Wonder if she’d like something like those sparklers?

The way he was going, he’d never find out. Every dollar he earned from this job would go to paying her medical bills and hanging on to the ranch. He shoved out through the door into frosty night air and drew a grateful breath. Too much perfume and aftershave and air freshener back there. What the hell am I doing?

What had to be done.

Arms folded against the cold, he slouched against the door of his pickup. When Larson finally sauntered out, Natwig unlocked his door. He scooped the paper bag off the floorboards, then strode across the parking lot to Larson’s Porsche—not even a year old, with not a speck of mud to mar its gleaming curves. The passenger door swung open as he approached, and he ducked inside. Set the bag between them.

“How many?” Larson’s manicured fingers reached for the parcel.

“Two.” He watched with contempt as the city man pulled out the collars, counting for himself. Didn’t he know better than to doubt a man’s word? Or realize what that kind of distrust said about the worth of his own word?

“Why only two?” Larson inspected the crushed transmitter on each collar, then dropped them back in the bag.

“Like I told you last month. It’s harder tracking lynx this time of year. Most of the snow’s melted, and what’s left is too crusty to take a print.” And the one shot he’d got at the big male north of Creede, after three days of hard stalking, he’d missed. But that failure he’d keep to himself.

“My…clients…won’t be pleased.”

“If your friends reckon they can do better themselves, tell them they’re welcome to try.”

And just who were Larson’s clients? People smart enough to want a cut-out, a middleman, separating themselves from their dirty work. People with deep pockets, to pay the kind of bounty Natwig was collecting.

The Cattlemen’s Association could raise that kind of cash. Or the ski developers. Or the timber industry, easy.

The goat-and sheepherders? Somehow Natwig didn’t see it. And as a member of the Outfitters’ Association himself, he’d heard nothing but the usual bellyaching at their annual gathering. No plan of action to fix the situation, and if there had been, they wouldn’t have needed to farm the job out.

“They’ll expect better next month.” Larson pulled out his wallet, and peeled off twenty bills from a fat wad.

As each thousand-dollar bill was laid upon his palm, Natwig felt the pressure in his chest ease the tiniest bit. Twenty thousand. Before Karen had broken her back, he’d have called that a fortune. A family with a man who could put meat on the table could scrape through a year on twenty grand.

As long as everyone stayed healthy. But now…

“And here are your latest locations.” Larson passed over a folded paper.

Imagine a world where a satellite a hundred miles overhead could pinpoint the whereabouts of those soft-stepping ghosts of the forest to fifty yards or less?

Imagine a world where somebody hired to protect all wildlife could be bribed to secretly access the DOW computers, then print out their animals’ latest locations, and pass them on to their enemies?

Not my kind of world.

Except he was trapped in it, sure as a lion up a tree. He could snarl all he wanted, but he was under the gun.

“Don’t expect too much next month. Lynx tend to travel in the spring,” he warned Larson as he gripped the door handle, eager to be out and away. “They’ll be searching for mates, looking for fresh hunting grounds.” He’d tried a couple of times to explain that just because the satellite pinpointed each cat one day per week, that didn’t mean the lynx would then sit tamely waiting till he came hunting.

If these locations were stolen from the computer yesterday, why, by today, every one of these forty-seven cats could be fifty miles to hell and gone across the mountains. Larson’s paper only gave him the place to start looking, no guarantee of finding.

But something about all this high-tech bullshit seemed to make a man arrogant, brash as the dumbest horse in blinders. If a computer said it was so—why then, it must be so. Nothing to it. Just reach out and shoot someone.

As Natwig shoved open the door and stepped out into clean air, Larson leaned over to give him a bland farewell smile. “My clients expect better.”

THEY’D RENDEZVOUSED outside of Trueheart at midnight, then Liza in her Jeep, with its caged rear end, had followed Tess’s pickup, towing its tandem horse trailer, north. Toward the high country.

A horseman could have ridden a straighter and shorter route to the summer range up through Suntop land. But constrained to travel by vehicle—and in secret—they had to circumnavigate the ranch. Their route wound up through the mountain valleys to the east, then spiraled north, then west, then finally south again.

Sixty slow-going miles of road dwindled from public two-lane to frost-heaved one-lane to muddy Forest Service and logging tracks. The scent of pine and snow blew through Tess’s open window. The jewelled eyes of deer gleamed in her headlights, then their graceful silhouettes bounded across the road and into the trees.

“Coming home,” Tess half sang aloud, as if the lynx in the car behind could hear her. “Hang on just a little longer, baby.” Liza had sedated the cat lightly for the drive, but she hadn’t dared give her more, since Zelda would have to be knocked all the way out for the final leg of her journey.

It was two hours before dawn when they reached the trailhead east of Sumner Mountain and parked. Just a whisper of cold wind stirring the pines. Stars so big and bright you could pick out colors by their light. “How is she?” Tess asked as she joined Liza at the back of her Jeep.

“Not happy.” The vet dropped the tailgate to reveal the caged interior, and a low feline moan seconded that opinion.

“But she looks good,” insisted Tess, while Liza inspected the lynx by flashlight. “She looks wonderful!”

Once the cat had recovered from pneumonia, Liza had moved her to a large kennel behind her house, west of Santa Fe. Seven weeks of intensive feeding had worked a miracle. Zelda’s ribs were no longer visible beneath her glossy coat and, even sedated, she seemed bursting with energy.

“Oh, she’s spunky enough,” Liza said broodingly, “but I’d still like her to gain more weight. A lot of her bulk is just that fabulous coat.”

“But you said she’s ready for freedom,” Tess worried. They’d discussed this at length.

“Given our schedule, I guess she’s got to be.”

They didn’t dare wait longer. Last week had seen spring roundup at Suntop and all the surrounding ranches near Trueheart. Now that the new calves were branded, within a week or two, the herds would be driven north to their summer range.

Liza and Tess had agreed that it was best if Zelda were acclimated and freed before the cattle arrived in the foothills. Lynx were shy and wary at the best of times. Commotion in the area while Zelda was choosing a den and a territory, might persuade her to seek these elsewhere.

But it was crucial to their plan that Zelda stick around, close to where Tess could feed her, till she’d learned to hunt her own food.

And so this rush to get her settled and happy and accustomed to being fed in a certain place at a certain time before the herds arrived. Cats were conservative creatures who liked dependable rituals, Liza maintained. The fewer surprises, the better.

“Will you tranq her now?” Tess asked the vet.

“Not till you’re ready to ride. You don’t want her waking somewhere along the way.”

“Better believe it! I don’t know who’d enjoy that more—me, Cannonball or Zelda.” Tess had picked the steadiest horse on Suntop to carry the lynx, and a pack horse that was nearly as sensible. Still, she found her nerves were skittering as she tightened the girths on both saddles, bridled up, then fitted her various packs and bundles into place. Steady or not, she could just imagine how Cannonball would react to a yowling, struggling cat in a basket strapped to his back—her own private rodeo, in the midst of dense forest, or on a cliffside trail!

Liza supported one-half of the collapsible metal cage while Tess lashed it to the right side of the pack mare’s saddle. A second four-foot-by-four-foot stack of steel-mesh squares was hung from the left side to balance the load. The mare snorted and rolled her eyes. “How far is it to your site?” Liza dithered. “You’re sure you can you find it in the dark?”

“It’s about nine miles to the southwest of here, and yeah, I know the trails. And it’ll be dawn by the time we reach the point where we really have to bushwhack, so…don’t worry.” Tess smiled to herself. Somewhere in those weeks of custody and nursing, cat-loving Liza had lost her professional objectivity. She was as anxious as a mom sending her only daughter off for her first time at summer camp.

Not that Tess wasn’t worried, as well. If they couldn’t give Zelda the wide, wonderful world she deserved—if the cat couldn’t learn to survive in that world—neither of them had the heart to stuff her back in a cage. Which left only…another kind of injection. Sleep without waking.

And even if she succeeded in reintroducing Zelda to the wild this summer, Tess still had other worries.

Like the imminent arrival of half a dozen line-camp cowboys, who were paid to keep their eyes wide open for anything strange going on in their territories.

Like the chance of being caught in what they—and her father!—would see as a gross betrayal of their way of life.

If they caught her aiding and abetting lynx, they’d see her as Tess-turned-traitor. Tess on the side of the tree huggers and the despised government bureaucrats—and against her neighbors, her family, her friends.

And she could argue till she was blue in the face that lynx and cows were perfectly compatible, that the cattlemen had nothing to fear but fear itself. But ranchers were as stubbornly conservative at heart as…cats.

So here she was in the middle, walking her usual tight-rope between what she loved and those she loved. Anyway you cut it, it was bound to be a nerve-wracking summer.

And on top of that—in my spare time—I’m supposed to be finishing my dissertation! Tess reminded herself with a grimace. For the past year, she’d studied beavers in a riverine habitat. This summer she needed to analyze her data and write up her conclusions, if she wanted to earn her doctorate, and be qualified for a field biology position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service next fall, which she most certainly did.

“Now, you’re going to keep her caged for at least three days?” Liza fretted.

“As long as she and I can stand it.” Tess would have to camp near the cage till she freed the cat. It was spring after all, with the black bears awakening from their winter fasts. Though lynx weren’t part of their usual menu, bears were omnivorous, and they sure knew how to take apart any container with food inside. Tess wouldn’t dare leave Zelda trapped and defenseless.

Thinking of that, she went back to the pickup, unracked her rifle, then settled it into its saddle scabbard.

“What’s that for?”

Tess smiled at her friend’s note of alarm. Liza was from Massachusetts. She’d only come west after graduation from vet school. Apparently, like many easterners, she viewed firearms solely as lethal weapons. Instruments of heartbreak and destruction.

Tess took the view of the tough and capable Western men who’d raised her. A rifle was simply a tool that a responsible person used responsibly. No more or less dangerous than a car or a threshing machine. The only thing she’d ever killed with a gun was a tin can, but still… “I brought along some red-pepper spray in case of bears. But I’ve always wondered if that really works—or just turns ’em into furry buzzsaws. So this is for backup.” Which, please God, she wouldn’t need.

“O…kay.” Liza didn’t sound convinced, but then it wasn’t she who’d be sleeping alfresco forty miles from the nearest kindly policeman. “And you’ve got the chickens?”

“Right here.” Tess loaded the cooler that held four flash-frozen roasting chickens into the left basket hamper on Cannonball’s back. “And I’ve already stashed another fifty in the kerosene freezer at the cabin.”

She’d claimed the highest, tiniest, most tucked-away cabin on Suntop’s summer range for herself for the next three months. Her father and sisters were used to her jaunts into the wilderness, so they hadn’t been all that surprised when she’d announced that she intended to live in the mountains for the summer, rather than stay at the Big House on the ranch. No distractions or socializing wanted or needed while she hammered out her dissertation, was the excuse she’d given—and they’d bought it.

She’d driven up a few days ago to this trailhead and packed in everything she’d need at the cabin for the period, including a three-month supply of frozen birds. “Well. All we need now is the star of this show.”

Liza sighed, nodded, and turned toward the Jeep. Murmuring soothing endearments, she used a noose pole and a pair of elbow-length leather gloves to immobilize the growling lynx, then injected her with the sedative.

She brushed angrily at her lashes as Tess closed the basket lid over the curled-up sleeping cat. “You’ll tell me if she needs anything? Goes off her feed or…”

“She won’t run too far away,” Tess assured her, though she was by no means sure. “Zelda’s grown to love her chicken dinners. She’ll stick around till she knows she can feed herself.”

Or she wouldn’t.

But then, didn’t freedom always come with risk? Tess had always found the risks worth facing. Three days from now, when she opened the cage door, she figured Zelda would agree.

“SO, ZELDA, what do you think? Is it starting to feel like home?” On her way to the pool where she washed each morning, Tess had stopped to check out her charge.

The lynx lay in feline loaf-of-bread position at the front of her cage, fore paws tucked demurely under her breast, back paws folded beneath. With her yellow eyes half closed, she seemed relaxed as any tabbycat, although she was pointedly ignoring her visitor. The comical two-inch black tufts on her ears twitched at the sound of Tess’s voice, then her gaze returned to the massive fallen tree beside her cage…to the dark hole beneath its mossy trunk.

“You’re right. It would make an excellent den,” Tess assured her in a soft voice. “Location, location, location.” She’d chosen this site with care—an old-growth spruce forest, because lynx typically denned in such deep, dark places with their excellent cover. A hundred yards to the west stretched a wide swath of younger trees where, years before, an avalanche from the peaks above had scoured the slope. Time had patiently reseeded the scar, and now it was covered with wildflowers and twelve-foot saplings. Tess’s research over the past month had told her that lynx favored that sort of terrain for hunting. The smaller trees let in the sunshine, which nourished the flowers and grass, which drew the snowshoe hares. And the lynx who loved them.

“One of these days, if the DOW ever gets its act together and provides you with a boyfriend, this would make a perfect den for kittens,” Tess told the cat. “Which reminds me, Liza meant to check you again, to make sure you aren’t in a family way.” The vet had intended to palpate the lynx after she’d sedated her.

“I remember tucking you into your basket while we were jabbering away about rifles and bears. But I don’t remember Liza examining you. Did we just get distracted? Or did she do it while I was fussing with the pack mare?”

The lynx turned to give her a haughty stare over the wonderful double-points of her neck ruff, which resembled a Victorian gentleman’s gray-and-white-barred side whiskers, edged in formal black.

“Guess you wouldn’t remember, since you were asleep,” Tess reflected. “And I reckon you figure it’s none of my business anyway.”

The lynx stood to stretch magnificently, forelegs, then back. She stalked away on her oversize paws—furry snowshoes that were designed to let the cat run atop the fluffiest powder. Her black-tipped stub-tail stilled as a gray jay swooped low past the cage, then quivered with furious attention when the bird landed on a nearby branch.

“Soon,” Tess assured her, standing and stretching, too. She could have chatted happily for hours, but it was safest for Zelda if she lost her tolerance for people. Her best chance for a long, healthy life in these mountains was to shun all humans, friend and foe alike. For that reason, Tess had pitched her tent fifty feet to the west, within easy earshot if a bear came calling, but otherwise out of sight.

She shouldn’t linger now. She sighed as she collected her rifle and her kit. “Better get ready,” she advised the lynx. “Today’s the day.”

She’d wait till noon, when a lynx normally would be dozing. This time, instead of giving Zelda her chicken inside the cage, she’d show it to the lynx—then set it at the entrance to her proposed den. She’d open the cage door and walk away.

If all went as Tess hoped, Zelda would step out timidly into freedom. Then, overwhelmed by the sudden expansion of her world, made nervous by the too-bright light of noon, she’d snatch up the chicken and scuttle into cover beneath the fallen tree. She’d spend the rest of the day there, eating and gradually growing accustomed to a feeling of safety and rich possession. The den would begin to take on her scent.

Meantime, Tess would collapse Zelda’s cage and carry it away.

By twilight, when her instincts urged Zelda to come out and prowl, maybe the burrow beneath the tree would already feel like a haven, a home to return to. A place where food had been provided before. Where she’d find it again and again, in the following days, thanks to Tess and her cache of frozen chickens.

And so her life in the wild would begin.

Ducking under and around ancient trees, then between head-high thickets, Tess came at last to the stream, which angled across the slope. For most of its course, the brook ran shallow and clear—icy-cold from the snows above, narrow enough to step across. But at this point it paused in its chuckling journey and widened to a pool—another reason Tess had chosen this site for Zelda’s den.

She set the rifle and her kit to one side and knelt, then unbuttoned the top button of her shirt. Then the next. An absent smile curved her lips as she pictured Zelda’s spotted, big-footed kittens crouching on the rocks beside her, peering fascinated into the pools. Ears pricked as they searched for minnows.

An excellent place to raise a family.