P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Where’s Frick?” Cam gasped, not letting go of the black shepherd’s collar.

“Don’t know,” she shouted above the roar of the river. “Gotta get you dry, right now. You’re blue in the face. Let go of the dog.”

Cam pried his fingers off Frack’s collar and tried to sit up. All those soaking layers felt like a shroud, and he realized he’d been lucky they hadn’t drowned him. Then Frack barked and jumped through the shallows, stopping short of the real current. Cam looked. There went Frick, sailing by like a furry cork, ears and snout up like little sable periscopes, but much too far out in the center current. Cam yelled to get her attention, but she went on downriver and disappeared around a bend.

Cam got up and started to trudge down the bank. Mary Ellen caught up with him as he began to stumble badly, his leg muscles too cold to function adequately. Then the roaring in his head got louder than the river and he passed out.

He awoke to the sound and feel of a fire and saw Mary Ellen Goode coming back toward him with an armload of driftwood. He’d been dragged to a sitting position and placed against a large rock, and she’d built a fire in the gravel on the riverbank. The sunlight was no longer bright, and there was a cold gray haze. His parka lay in a heap next to him, his boots were upside down on sticks, and Frack sat on the other side of the fire, watching him intently. His knee hurt and he felt like he’d been punched repeatedly in the stomach, but all his extremities were responding to commands. The front of his clothes felt damp and stiff, but his back was still soaking wet. He shivered and coughed up some water.

“Welcome back,” she said, dropping the driftwood near the fire. “We thought we were gonna have to leave you out here.” She pointed with her chin at the massive dark cloud bank building up behind the high ridge.

“Any signs of my other dog?” Cam asked.

“Not yet, but she was swimming strong,” she said. “That cat probably made it out, too.”

“You saw it?”

“For about a second,” she said. “I had binocs on you when you came out on the point over there. I was trying to figure out how to get your attention, but I didn’t bring a gun. That was pretty close.”

“We’d met before,” Cam said. “Where’s Marshall?”

“Up at camp on the sat phone, hopefully getting a helo in. The weather jumped the gun on us. Where’s your deputy?”

Cam just shook his head. He didn’t want to deal with that right now.

“Did you find him?”

“He found me. That’s where I went last night.”

She nodded. “We kinda figured that out when we saw two sets of tracks. Marshall just thought you’d decided to go in on your own. I was disappointed. I wanted to go up there with you. See if this stuff was true.”

Cam thought about the camera in his parka, but he decided he’d keep that factor off the table right now. He rather doubted the film had survived immersion, even with the shrink-wrap. It was, after all, just a cheap disposable.

Mary Ellen hunkered down by the fire and pushed coals together. “We heard the shots,” she said. “But the river had come up by then. We had no way to get across.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cam said. “You got me and Frack out of the river. Thank you.” Then he began to shiver uncontrollably.

She came around the fire, sat beside him, and folded her arms around him. He sank into the warmth of her gratefully, and she held him until he stopped shivering. Then, hearing distant shouting, they drew apart.

Marshall came down across the open meadow and joined them by the fire. “Three hours,” he said. He eyed Cam and the waterlogged shepherd. “Been swimming, I take it. Where’s your deputy?”

Cam looked out at the rushing current and said only that Sergeant Cox was dead. Both rangers just stared at him in surprise.

“You mean he’s in the river?” Marshall asked, glancing sideways at the rumbling water.

“Yes,” Cam replied.

A sudden gust of cold wind made them look over at the ridge, where the approaching front looked like a black wave building up on the distant back range. Cam thought he saw a flicker of lightning off to the right. The rock on the eastern face was changing colors in the intermittent sunlight.

“How high’s that ridge?” he asked.

“Almost five thousand feet,” Marshall said. Another cold gust blew down from the meadow in the direction of the approaching system, flattening the dying grass. “Three hours is going to be close. They asked if we could ride out the frontal passage. I told them no.”

“Good answer,” Mary Ellen said. She studied the cloud bank again. “We could, I suppose, if they have to abort. But that mess could be wild when it comes down this side.” She turned to Cam. “Can you walk?” she asked. He said he could.

“Good. We need to get back to the camp, get it ready for load-out.”

Cam lurched to his feet, grunting when he put weight on the knee, and then helped Marshall douse the fire. It wasn’t hard, as the river had risen to within five feet of where he’d been sitting. Cam took a last look downstream to see if Frick was coming, but there was no sign of her. He dreaded the thought of leaving her out here.

“Can you guys do the camp?” he asked. “I’d like to go look for my dog.”

Marshall looked at Mary Ellen, who nodded. “Okay,” he said, “but be back in two hours-max. And if you see that thing start down the slope, run back to camp. The tops of that ridge are about twelve miles away, believe it or not, but that storm may come down like an avalanche.”

Cam gathered up his wet parka and put on his boots, then went to look for Frick.

Two hours later, he trudged back up the hill toward the waiting rangers, Frack alongside, but no Frick. He’d scoured the riverbank, tramping downstream for an hour, then reluctantly turned around. The sky above was getting dark gray now as the approaching front began to descend over the mountain. The temperature had actually risen a bit and the air smelled of moisture. He’d put the parka back on; it was almost dry now. His head felt like it did when he had a bad cold coming on. The rangers had most of the camp taken apart and bagged up, but they’d left the larger tent up in case the weather did manage to beat out the helicopter. Mary Ellen handed Cam a cup of hot soup from the Primus stove.

“No luck,” he said as he wrapped both hands around the hot metal cup. She handed him a bologna sandwich as he finished the soup. He ate half of it and then pitched the other half to Frack, who was waiting outside the tent’s front flap. “I didn’t find any bodies, either,” he said. “Except for one deer.”

“Mary Ellen says she saw the mountain lion,” Marshall said. “So I guess it’s official.”

Cam nodded, still not wanting to talk about what had happened to Kenny. Marshall cleared his throat.

“We’re going to have to file a report,” he prompted.

“I know,” Cam said. “And I’ll give you a debrief at the appropriate time. Do you guys have a secure phone at the station?”

Marshall laughed. “We’re the Park Service, remember?”

“The Sheriff’s Office will have one,” Mary Ellen said.

Cam nodded. “I’m going to make a report when we get back in. How about I let you guys listen in to that? Save me from having to do it twice?”

“That’d be fine,” Marshall said. “I mean, I know we’re not-”

Cam cut him off. “Yes, you are. You need to know this. My deputy was killed by that cat.”

Marshall blinked. “Oh” was all he could manage.

“But it wasn’t the cat’s fault,” Cam said. “Kenny was cat dancing.”

“Oh my God,” Marshall said. “That’s real?”