P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

At that instant, two shapes burst out of the trees between the cat and the riverbank.

The cat sensed and reacted to the new danger before Cam even knew what was happening. It whirled around on the loose gravel, still down in its crouch, and, flat-eared, fangs bared, roared at the two shepherds. They stopped in their tracks, spewing gravel out in front of them, and then spread out, one on either side of the cat, each one keeping about fifteen feet away, their fur and hackles up and showing more teeth than Cam had thought possible. Frick was to Cam’s right on the downstream side, while Frack held position nearest the stand of pines.

They’d left the cat one avenue of escape, which was to dive straight into the pines, but the lion wasn’t having it. It roared again and feinted at Frack, who answered with a pretty impressive roar of his own and even more ivory. He stood his ground, much to Cam’s surprise, while Frick kept moving, down on her belly now like the cat, growling and showing teeth, making the cat turn to keep her in view even as Frack started to slide toward his right. Cam was still so surprised to see the dogs that he hadn’t done anything, but now he did. He scooped up a handful of gravel and threw it at the cat’s back.

The lion whipped around and shrieked at him, giving the dogs another chance to adjust their positions. They clearly knew they were no match for an aroused mountain lion, so they weren’t getting closer, but they weren’t leaving, either. The cat now had three threats to deal with, and it was getting even more agitated. Cam realized he had a body shot now, but, to his own amazement, he found himself reluctant to take it. We started this, not the cat, he thought.

Run, goddamn it, Cam thought. Get out of here. He threw another handful of gravel. The cat spun around again, and this time both dogs feinted at it.

That did it. The cat shrieked one final time and then, in a blur of fur, leaped into the pines, easily clearing twenty feet without touching the ground, and was gone. The dogs ran up to the edge of the pines but wisely stopped, barking their fool heads off. Cam felt a wave of something like cold nausea sweep through his own plumbing and suddenly had to sit down. Frick came over and licked his face and neck, while Frack paced back and forth in front of the dense trees, nose down, as if he was trying to pick up the cat’s scent. Cam could still see that final leap, from a standstill, the same distance the cat had been from him, he realized. Even with the gun pointed right at it, he’d probably never have gotten even one shot off.

He had a sudden urge to answer a call of nature, so he got up and walked over to the riverbank, where the rushing water was visibly moving smaller stones along in the marginal current. Frick followed him, and then so did Frack.

He praised them while he took care of business, then lowered the hammer on the Colt and put it back in his pocket. He zipped the camera back into his parka. If that thing was working, Mary Ellen would finally have her proof.

“So where are the rangers, guys?” he asked. He saw that the dogs were both pretty wet, so they’d managed to get across somehow. He looked across the river at the north bank, but he didn’t see anyone over there. The big rocks he’d crossed with Kenny were now small mounds of turbulence out in the sweeping current. He knew what they were going to have to do: They were going to have to go into the river right about here and let the icy current take them through the entire turn and then strike out for the far bank.

He still had Kenny’s binocs around his neck, so he used these to survey the other side.

It was doable, if he could survive the cold water, and if he didn’t get slammed up against one of those now-invisible rocks by the current. As if confirming the urgency of the situation, he realized that the tips of his boots were now underwater. He looked back up into the high ridges above the canyon and saw that the dark cloud to the west was now taking lumpy definition along the entire mountain range. He could clearly see curtains of rain sweeping out of the cloud, which meant the river was by no means finished rising.

He wondered if the dogs would follow him into the river, or if he should tie them to him somehow so that they would all stay together. But with what?

They sat down before him, as if to say, That was fun. What’s the next game, Pop? He knelt down to rub their heads, which is when the mountain lion erupted out the pines in a dead run and came right at them, eyes blazing, covering the gravel in twenty-foot bounds.

It shrieked again and pounced at the nowclustered targets, mouth agape, front paws and claws spread wide, blotting out the sky. Cam barely managed to throw himself backward out of the way even as the dogs instinctively flattened, and the cat landed in the water, instead of on top of them. In an instant, it was swept away by the hungry current, even as it tried to turn back, legs thrashing, still determined to get at them. Cam, sitting on his backside, his elbows in the water, watched in shock as the mountain lion disappeared into the rumbling black river. He thought he saw its head pop up again quite a way downstream, but then he lost it again. Then the gravel under him shifted down into the current, and it was his turn to go for a ride.

He yelled for the dogs, but they just stood there as he was taken out into the middle of the incredible current, his lower body constricting with the sudden cold and his lungs refusing to work due to the shock of it.

Swim, his brain yelled at him, but nothing was working, and then his right knee whacked something underwater. It spun him around in a whirling pirouette, which completely disoriented him. He yelled again for the dogs to come, but he couldn’t see them and now had to concentrate on getting to the right side of the river and out of the powerful center current. He couldn’t swim, only thrash around while his brain tried to cope with the fact that he was hurtling downstream, totally out of control, the bank to his right a blur of trees and small rocks. He realized his body was shutting down, recalling all the blood from his extremities to his brain in response to the freezing water. The waterlogged parka was dragging him down.

“Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go,” he started chanting through chattering teeth, and he kicked out to get across the current, but the river kept turning him, so that every time he thought he was going toward the bank, he wasn’t. Then he heard someone shouting, and he caught a glimpse of Mary Ellen on the far bank, trotting downstream, yelling at him.

He hit another rock, and this one pinned him for a moment, causing a small tidal wave of water to rise up over his face. For just an instant, he thought, This is too hard. Just quit, just stop this fighting. He really couldn’t breathe, but launched out again, using the rock as a fulcrum, and actually made headway toward the bank. He hit another rock, this time with his stomach, and folded around it, helpless to straighten out and swim again. He kept his head above water and laughed hysterically at his predicament. The current was strong enough to pin him to the rock, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. His hands felt like two frozen bricks.

He looked up and saw that he wasn’t that far from the bank now, if he could only get off the damned rock. At that moment, he saw two black ears coming downstream at him. Frack swept by, a look of total terror on his face. Cam grabbed out for the dog and snagged his collar. The weight of the dog pulled Cam off the rock, and a moment later they were both rolled into the shallows by a standing wave in the current. Mary Ellen waded out into the water with a long branch in her hands. Cam grabbed at it with one hand and, holding on to Frack’s collar, she pulled the both of them to the shallows.