ears and cheeks went hot, and he hoped they hadn’t turned bright red. Why hadn’t any of the other Marshall men been cursed with the tendency to blush like schoolgirls?
Don’t overreact, or you’ll play right into their hands. “There is no ‘she.’”
His mom’s eyebrows disappeared behind dark, silver-streaked bangs. “Oh, my,” she said, drawing out the word. “This one must be a real doozie if he feels the need to hide her.”
Et tu, Mom?
He could easily take the spotlight off himself by directing the conversation back to the Hank v. Henrietta thread, but throwing his sister under the bus wouldn’t solve anything. “If there isn’t a ‘she,’ then it stands to reason there’s no one to hide, right?”
They weren’t convinced. He could tell by their sly grins and winks.
“Sheesh. Guy can’t even butter his thumb around here without everybody jumping to conclusions.”
While they laughed, Nate decided to keep them distracted by reporting the latest ranch news.
“Carl found another horse yesterday.” He kept the description vague, as much for his nieces’ and nephews’ sake as his dad’s. “We got plenty of pictures. Near as we can tell, it was a cougar attack.”
His mom gasped softly. “Oh, I hope you’re mistaken. There hasn’t been a cat sighting since...” Maeve faced her husband. “How long has it been, Royce?”
“Five, six years? I’d have to check my log books.” He looked grim. Concerned. “Are you sure, son?”
“Positive.”
“So the boys found tracks, eh?” Zach said.
“Not at first. The ground’s pretty dry. But once we found one sign, plenty more showed up. We have pictures of those, too.”
“What about rumen and bones?” his dad asked. “Right near the kill sight, or scattered all around?”
“Close by for the most part. No blood trail, either, so it’s pretty clear the cat didn’t feel pressured to move the carcass. It left plenty behind, though, which tells me its meal was interrupted.”
“Any idea by what?”
“Could have been anything, Hank. Another cat. Bear. Heck, one of the other horses could have spooked it.”
She nodded. “True. Cougars are pretty skittish.”
“Honestly,” his mom interrupted. “Can’t the four of you wait until later to discuss this? You’re frightening the children.”
Nate looked at the wide-eyed faces of his cousins’ kids. At their mothers’ faces, too. Sally and Nora agreed with his mom, and he could hardly blame them. Even though he’d been far younger than any of them when he got his first up-close-and-personal eyeful of what a determined predator was capable of doing to livestock. The experience taught him the importance of caution and alertness. He turned to their parents. “If you’re okay with it, I’d like to take them out there soon,” he said, pointing toward the fields. “Teach them how to keep their eyes open and their ears perked.” Nate met each child’s eyes. “You’re ranch-raised, same as the rest of us, and spend a whole lot of time outside. There are all kinds of dangerous critters out there. But you already knew that, right?”
They nodded their agreement.
“Things are scariest when you don’t know anything about them. Once you have the facts—”
“Well, now,” Hank said, “aren’t you just a big ol’ ball of warm and fuzzy today.”
He got to his feet. “I’d rather give them a couple of scary dreams tonight, Henrietta, than have something terrible happen out there later.”
Tossing his napkin onto his chair, Nate faced his aunt. “Dinner was great as always. Thanks.”
“You’re leaving?” his mother said. “Before dessert? When I made your favorite?”
Not even hot-from-the-oven apple pie could tempt him to stay. Nate didn’t know what to blame for his agitated state of mind. With any luck, a few gulps of fresh mountain air would cure what ailed him.
“Thought I spotted a loose gate, couple of leaning fence posts in the main corral,” he said with another nod toward the window. “That sky looks pretty threatening. I’m gonna check ’em out before the storm rolls in.”
He made a beeline for his pickup and drove straight to the barn. If he didn’t waste time, he could saddle Patches and get those gates secured before the storm hit. And there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that they were in for a big one. The clouds hung low and dark, and there was a certain bite in the spring air. The wind rolled across the north pasture, laying the new ryegrass fields almost flat. They needed a gentle soaking, not the hard-pounding downpour that was about to hit. Patches sensed it, too. Normally, he’d nibble contentedly at the blades of grass growing alongside the fence. Today, he whimpered, stamping his front hooves and testing the strength of his tether.
“Easy, boy,” Nate said. “I’m almost through here, and if you quit kickin’ up a fuss, I’ll give you a good rubdown and add some oats to your feed.”
Good thing you started at the corral, he thought, disconnecting the come-along from the now-taut barbed wire. He stowed it in the burlap sack that hung from his saddle horn, untethered Patches, and climbed into the saddle as the first fat drops began thumping the brim of his Stetson. The air quickly filled with the thick, musky scent of plant oils, bacterial spores and ozone. Nate found it rather pleasant. Patches did not. But the horse, true to form, obeyed his master’s every directive.
The rain was falling in earnest now, hitting the hard ground like wet bullets. It was tough to see more than a few yards ahead, but Nate held tight to the reins to make sure Patches didn’t panic, rocket forward and step into a gopher hole.
“Easy, boy,” he said again, holding the steady pace even as the gusts rustled the grass and bent the trees to the breaking point. A violent boom rolled across the fields, startling Patches and Nate, too, and seconds later, lightning sliced the sooty sky.
Once they reached the barn, man and horse exhaled relieved sighs and shook off the rain. Now Nate wished he’d eaten some pie; when this deluge let up, the pan would no doubt be empty.
Patches nickered and bobbed his head. “You’re right,” Nate said. “Fifteen minutes more and we’d be out in the middle of this bedlam, instead of warm and dry in here.” Plus, the broken latch and leaning gatepost would have blown over. It took only one curious cow to notice the opening for a couple of dozen to follow, and it would require days to round them all up.
If that cat didn’t get them first.
Based on the size of the paw prints, Nate and the ranch hands had decided it was likely a female. They all agreed she had a right to hunt and prowl the territory. But with elk and deer so plentiful in the Rockies, they knew something was wrong. Very wrong. Choosing easy pickings such as tame horses and cows could mean she’d been wounded. She might be pregnant, or have a litter of cubs hidden nearby. Cubs that would learn many lessons in killing from their stealthy mother.
Nate stowed Patches’s combs and brushes in the tack room and walked to the window, where the rain clouded his view of the Front Range. But he didn’t need to see the mountains to know they were there. He’d been living in their shadow since birth, and could point them out with his eyes closed: Grays Peak and Mount Evans, Longs Peak and Mount Bierstadt, and one of the world’s highest, Pikes Peak. Several years ago, Nate had been able to cross an item off his bucket list when he’d reached its summit. Up there, it seemed he could see the whole world. The sight made him pity Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, who, after a four-month trek, spied the mountain on the horizon and knew even before arriving that he’d never reach its pinnacle.
“Wonder how many cougars old Zeb saw?”