rising more steeply with every quarter mile, had distorted or cloaked the source of the bark, it seemed to Beth that the volume should be changing.
Two hours later she wished she had turned back then, at the moment she thought something was wrong, before she realized that she was far from any familiar trail and had no map or food, before trees started filling the landscape once more and crowding her perspective. But the sound of her lost dog’s happy cries had a stronger pull than her good sense. Truly, Beth had expected to find Herriot long before all the ponderosas started to look the same and the sun had come to a point so directly overhead that she lost all sense of direction. The dog had sounded so much closer.
Still the pleasant barking continued, and Hastings showed no sign of fatigue. What was there to do but continue until a smarter alternative presented itself ?
When Beth saw the prints of a mountain lion in the rain-moistened soil, she decided she was the stupidest person to ever wander into these mountains.
It was impossible for her to tell how old the prints were. The cougar might have passed through a week ago or a minute ago. When the tracks veered north and her dog’s barking stayed to the south, Beth felt relief.
She and Hastings went on like this for a long time, with the sun continuing its arc and the prompting of her dog always the same distance ahead of them. The birdsong had long shifted from busy morning chatter into the infrequent afternoon communication. They’d soon return to their nests, and it seemed more and more likely that Beth might be staying overnight outdoors, where cougars prowled.
This thought took up hardly any space in her head compared to the mystery of the sound they followed. Why was it always in front of her, like a carrot dangling from a stick tied to her own horse? She felt as if she’d lost Herriot all over again. She began to doubt that the noise belonged to anything real, though it sounded as real as Beth’s own breathing.
And then the barking stopped. The white-trunked aspen trees in front of Beth parted onto a steep bluff. The lip of it dropped away into a narrow valley cut in half by a snaking stream. The water poured off rocks at the west end and then meandered away through a pass to the southeast.
Beth reined in Hastings. She paid little attention to the vista. Most of her mind was focused on the hope that she’d hear Herriot again.
A crackling of underbrush caught her attention. Beth turned her head and saw a golden mountain lion with a wide white muzzle and a tail as thick as her arm already airborne. It was aiming for a meal.
Beth’s limbs seized up. Her only reflex was to call up an image of that wolf leaping out of darkness. Oddly, Hastings didn’t seem to notice that he was a target. She didn’t understand anything about those two seconds of her life: Tick and there was a fang-bared cougar flying at her; tock and the cat dropped to the ground like a fighter jet struck midair by a missile.
The mountain lion tangled with a mass of long gray fur that was no match for its own great size. In spite of this inequality, they tumbled all the way to the edge of the bluff, snarling and snapping. Freed from her shock then, Beth kicked Hastings and reined him away from the fight.
The horse didn’t respond.
Beth yelled at him, kicked harder, yanked on the reins.
Hastings snorted and stayed put.
The animal kingdom has gone mad!
It was a wolf that had intercepted the wildcat—no, not just a wolf, but that wolf, the one that had disrupted her life. The one with the four-clawed scar striping its back. The ferocious creatures fought at the brink like men with a score to settle, all teeth and claws.
Once she accepted the wolf’s identity, she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to run away. If Joe couldn’t outrun this wolf, the butler Hastings was lost already. That would explain why he so senselessly hung around, waiting for the inevitable.
Resignation was one thing—but why wasn’t he afraid? She was terrified. She thought of her pocketknife and wished she had thought to bring a gun.
Beth’s own heart was straining inside her ribs. Tiny buggy spots were beginning to swim at the edges of her vision when she saw the wolf,