More Than A Cowboy. Peggy Nicholson
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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