Tracking Game Page 21

  “Sure.”

  Mattie gave Robo some obedience commands, which Cole thought were meant to remind him that she was alpha in their pack and he needed to listen to her. Finally she let go of the leash. “Go make friends,” she told him.

  The two dragged their leashes as they circled the enclosure made by the vehicles, darting in for a quick sniff of each other before trotting away to mark tires—a doggy pissing contest, but friendly and harmless.

  “Time to unload the horses?” Cole asked Mattie.

  “I think so. Is that all right with you, Glenna?”

  Glenna had her eye on Moose, but she nodded agreement. “Looks like these two will run together without any fighting. They should settle in.”

  Cole suspected it was dawn, though the sunlight struggled to break through the cloud layer. He felt pressed to get started despite the darkness. He still needed to tie packs behind saddles and make sure everyone’s gear was secure. If they were going to reach the high country before noon, they’d better get going.

  * * *

  Mattie had unclipped Robo’s leash, and she let him lope ahead to sniff rabbit brush and then circle back to run beside her. When they reached the trees in the forest, she’d call him in to stay close.

  Though being up so high on horseback still made her uneasy, she’d grown used to Mountaineer. Cole rode beside her, and she thought that as long as she paid attention to what she was doing, she should be okay. At least they had this gradual slope to navigate before reaching the high country. She considered it a warm-up.

  By the time they arrived at the place where she’d found Wilson Nichol, the sun was shedding enough light for them to see. Robo alerted, and she wondered if he’d picked up the scent of the tiger or if he was reacting to the decaying blood on the grass. When he started to charge forward to go check it out, she called him back, and he came willingly enough. Glenna called Moose as well, so there was no competition for Robo to try to reach the source of the odor first.

  When Glenna dismounted and opened the pack behind her saddle, her adept movements led Mattie to assume she’d had plenty of experience around horses and their gear. Glenna fished out a collar that jingled and clanged as she held it up and shook it. “Moose is silent when he’s tracking. He wears this so I can keep up with him when we hit the forest.”

  Mattie found it fascinating that Moose took on a more businesslike attitude when he wore his special collar. Just like Robo. “You can tell Moose has tracked before.”

  “Oh yeah.” Glenna also strapped an e-collar on Moose while she spoke. “We trained five lion dogs to hunt in a pack for our cougar project. Moose got lots of experience.”

  “How does that work? Robo tangled with a cougar last fall and got a gash in his skin for his trouble.”

  “There’s something about these dogs that must be passed on in their DNA. They’re driven to corner the lions, but they rarely move in close enough to attack. They were used for big-game hunting in Africa back in the nineteenth and early- twentieth century. Not so much today.”

  “What did you do once you found the cougars?”

  “The dogs would typically run them to ground or up a tree. We darted, weighed, and measured them while they were sedated, and then recovered them and set them free.”

  Mattie asked the question that concerned her. “What are the chances we can sedate and relocate this tiger?”

  Glenna frowned. “It will depend on whether or not Moose can tree it. That’s the easiest way to get to these big cats without anyone getting hurt. I read last night that tigers will run from humans if they can, but they’ll fight if they’re cornered. We’ll just have to see how close we can get. If necessary, we’ll have to kill it.”

  Glenna called Moose and led him over to the tiger prints. After he sniffed the area, his demeanor shifted, and he trotted around with excitement. Glenna patted his side and chattered about getting ready to hunt, elevating his prey drive in the same way Mattie did with Robo before a search. Finally, she sent him off with a gesture and the command she must use for tracking cougars: “Hunt it up. Go find a lion.”

  Moose took off toward the layer of foothills that fronted the distant peaks, loping along with occasional sniff checks on the ground. The damp morning had apparently enhanced the tiger’s scent, as Mattie had thought it would.

  When Robo dipped his head to sniff the track, Mattie noticed his hackles rise. He probably remembered the scent and had cataloged the growl they’d heard inside that smart brain of his. Her dog was a quick study, and he’d already locked in this scent and was ready to follow the track; it didn’t matter that he’d never been trained to do this kind of work.

  “Let’s go,” Glenna said, mounting her horse. “Don’t let Moose get too far ahead.”

  Glenna and Brody kneed their horses forward at a lope. Mattie’s anxiety surged when Mountaineer began to follow at a teeth-jarring trot, and she clutched the saddle horn with both hands, almost dropping the reins.

  She was thinking she couldn’t do this when Cole rode up next to her, providing instruction in a quiet, steady voice. “Keep your heels down and tighten your grip with your legs. Just a little bit.”

  Mountaineer’s gait smoothed out into a rocking-chair-like canter.

  “There,” Cole said. “Now try to keep your back straight and relax your hips in the saddle.”

  Mattie began to hope she could manage to ride with the others. Once they caught up to the dogs, Duke slowed and Mountaineer automatically matched his pace. This time she was ready for the rough trot, and they alternated between a trot and a canter as they followed behind the dogs, moving upslope. Within a mile they came to a fence, and Mattie called Robo back. She didn’t want him to try to duck under the bottom strand and get hooked by the barbs.

  Robo looked disappointed, but when she told him to heel, he stayed by Mountaineer’s side. Grateful for their countless hours of obedience training, Mattie rode toward where Glenna and Moose waited on the near side of the fence.

  “This is the far end of the BLM,” Glenna called to Cole. “Do you know where we can find a gate?”

  “Wait a minute. I thought we might run into fencing, so I brought a pair of wire nippers. We’ll have to repair fence later, but this will be all right for today.”

  Cole dismounted, took the wire snips from his saddlebag, and strode to the fence. He bent to cut the bottom strand but hesitated as he reached for the second one. “See this,” he said. “Hair.”

  A tuft of short, tawny-colored hair was caught in one of the barbs. Glenna dismounted to examine it. “There’s an orange cast to it,” she said.

  Though Mattie had hoped following the tiger would lead them to Tyler Redman and his hunting party, this bit of hair caught in a barb cast a different light. It made the tiger more real. She wanted more than ever to find it alive and keep it that way.

  Cole cut the fence, and Brody dismounted to help, pulling the sharply barbed wire back so the horses could pass through the gap. Mattie waited for Cole to swing back into the saddle, and they fell in line at the end as they started the climb through the foothills.

  The trail Moose followed took him into an arroyo about six feet deep and the same distance wide, and though Glenna rode Honey down into it to stay with her dog, the others remained on the bank. Piñon, ponderosa pine, and juniper sprang from the rocky soil around them, and Mattie kept Robo from trailing down into the lower ground. If the tiger attacked, it would most likely come from above.

  Shod hooves clicked against stone as they continued upslope. After a half hour, Moose left the arroyo and headed up into the forest, where lodgepole pine and spruce grew sparse at first but soon thickened, reducing visibility in all directions. The ground underfoot became rough as the incline steepened. Mattie grabbed the saddle horn as Mountaineer lurched up the side of a draw.

  Moose led them into the wide mouth of a canyon filled with pockets of aspen amid the evergreens. Rock shards rolled from under the horses’ hooves as they churned their way
upward. Gradually the canyon narrowed, and the horses had to pick their way around boulders. As the terrain grew more and more rugged, Glenna called more often for Moose to wait.

  The trail led them to a narrow path, pinned against the canyon wall on one side and thickets of thorny currant bush on the other. An eerie feeling of being watched crept over Mattie, and she scanned the top of the canyon wall. A breeze fanned her cheeks, telling her that at least they would be downwind from the tiger if they should overtake it in this narrow passage. That might prevent it from sensing their presence and attacking from above.

  A deep growl came from behind. Mountaineer tucked his tail and hopped forward, making Mattie grab the horn to stay on. Once he stopped up against the rump of Brody’s black-and-white paint, Mattie turned in the saddle to look over her shoulder at Cole. He reined to reverse direction, eyes searching the canyon rim.

  The growl escalated to the snarling rumble Mattie remembered only too well. Moose bayed, booming sounds that echoed off canyon walls. He rushed past Mountaineer’s legs, making him spook. Barely able to keep her seat on the lunging horse, Mattie tried to calm him. Thank goodness he was wedged in on the narrow path and unable to bolt.

  The horses jostled, crowding each other. The snarl intensified to a full-throated roar, one that sent chills down her spine.

  “Can you see it?” Glenna shouted from up ahead.

  Robo stayed beside her, his fur bristled. Mountaineer settled enough that she could scan the top of the canyon wall.

  And then she saw it.

  Teeth gleamed as the huge tiger loomed over them on the canyon’s rim, crouched and poised to leap. The creature was so magnificent, it stole Mattie’s breath. Rifles scraped out of their scabbards as Brody and Cole pulled them free. Mattie realized with horror that they might not have a choice. For their own survival, they might need to shoot this superb beast, a disastrous end to their mission to save it.

  A gunshot echoed from a distance. Impossible to locate, but it sounded like it came from up above. The tiger whirled and disappeared behind the canyon rim. Moose continued to bay and tried to scale the wall, falling back to the path time and again until Glenna called him off. Robo stopped barking and stood guard beside Mattie, bristled and growling.

  “What in hell?” Brody shouted as he struggled to control his horse.

  While the horses settled, Cole made eye contact with Mattie, his gaze stunned. She knew how he felt. Their target’s sudden appearance had staggered her as well.

  “We’re going to need a different plan,” Glenna said, cool as creek water.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Mattie realized she was trembling. “I need to get off this horse,” she said to Cole.

  He swung down to help her, but she’d already slipped from the saddle. As soon as her feet touched firm ground, she got a grip on her shudders and turned to stroke Mountaineer’s neck, trying to soothe him. At the same time, she settled Robo with her voice, telling him to cease his growling while she assured him he was a good boy.

  “This is a challenge,” Brody said, resting his rifle crossways against the pommel of his saddle. “We’ve found our tiger and our hunting party at the same time.”

  “How do you think they’re tracking it?” Cole asked.

  “I don’t know,” Glenna responded in a quiet voice. “I thought I saw a collar on its neck. Did anyone else?”

  Mattie had to admit she hadn’t. She’d been too rattled and distracted by trying to stay on Mountaineer.

  “They could have a GPS locator on it,” Glenna said. “Like the one I use on Moose.”

  The two different purposes posed an awful contrast: one to protect an animal, the other to kill it. Mattie wanted more than ever to find the members of Tyler’s hunting party and arrest them all.

  Glenna dismounted to huddle with Mattie and Cole on the narrow trail, and they kept their eyes moving along the canyon rim. “Where did that shot come from?”

  “Good question,” Cole said. “It sounded like it came from behind us, farther back in the direction we came from but up above.”

  “We’ve got to get out of this canyon,” Brody said. “We’re sitting ducks down here.”

  “True,” Cole said. “For the tiger anyway. But whoever shot that rifle might not know we’re in the area. Our approach would have been shielded from sight unless someone scouted along the canyon’s edge.”

  Mattie wanted to get up above so Robo could find the trail of whoever had shot that rifle. And the sooner the better. “What’s the fastest way out of here?”

  Cole frowned. “I don’t know this area well enough to say what’s up ahead. It’s best to go downhill and find a place where we can ride up.”

  “Let’s go,” Brody said. “I want to get out of this trap and up to a place where we can see.”

  After remounting, they headed downhill, with Brody in the lead setting a fast pace, and the horses seemed eager to be going toward home. Mattie scanned the rim as she clung to the saddle horn, lurching with Mountaineer when he tucked his haunches and slid down the steeper parts of the trail. She’d much rather have been on foot.

  As the canyon opened up, she searched for a break in the wall and soon spotted a chute choked with brush, but it afforded an incline that she knew she could scale. She pointed it out to the others. “Robo and I can head up there. I want to get onto the trail of that gunman.”

  “No, we stick together,” Brody said.

  Mattie tried to convince him. “Our suspect in a double homicide is in that party, Brody. Once we get to them, we can arrest them all for illegal hunting activity and sort it out later. I’m better off on foot in this kind of terrain. Besides, if we stay on horseback, they’ll hear the four of us coming a mile away.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Cole said, eyeing Mattie with concern.

  “As soon as we get out of this canyon, we’ll decide on a plan.” Brody reined his horse back down the trail. “But for now, we stick together.”

  Mattie disagreed with his decision and chafed at the fact that he was the one in charge. She kept her eye on the left side of the canyon, and another quarter mile down the trail, she spotted a gap in the wall that looked promising.

  Brody saw it too, and picked up the pace. The gap turned out to be the mouth of a dry streambed that looked steep but passable. “We’ll try to go up here.”

  “Lean forward on the uphill,” Cole reminded her as she nudged Mountaineer forward. “Heels down and squeeze your legs tight.”

  Pebbles and stones rattled and rolled down the incline as each rider entered the dry bed. The horses tucked their hind legs under themselves as they strained and heaved up the fifty- foot incline. The herbal scent of sweet sage being crushed under their hooves infiltrated the air.

  Mattie clung to the saddle, feeling Mountaineer move beneath her, and she admired the power harnessed in the body of this animal, one so willing to do whatever she asked of him. Even though she’d once feared being on top of him, she seemed to be getting the hang of it.

  When she gained the top of the rim, a view of the mountainside opened up to an expanse of evergreen forest, dotted with boulders and rugged outcroppings—perfect cat country. She pulled a set of binoculars from her pack and used them to scan the hillside. Mist covered the high crags, concealing anything that might be hidden.

  The last one to reach the rim, Glenna pulled up beside them and dismounted to grab Moose by the collar. “Let’s take Moose to the rim where we spotted the tiger and set him on the trail from there.”

  Mattie knew Robo’s strengths far better than anyone, and she knew he could find human scent left by the shooter. She looked at Brody. “When we see which way the tiger went after he left the rim, I need to take Robo across country from there, so he can find the shooter’s trail.”

  “Let’s split up, two and two,” Glenna said. “We’ll have a better chance of taking that tiger alive if we find whoever’s hunting him.”

  Mattie could tell Glenna’s focus was on saving t
he tiger, and that was good; Mattie wanted it taken alive, too. But above all, she wanted to catch the person who’d killed Nate Fletcher and Wilson Nichol, and splitting up made sense for her plan as well. “Chances are the four of us are going to end up back together anyway.”

  “Who’s the best shooter?” Glenna asked. “I’ve never tagged a cougar with a dart. Someone else handled that job.”

  “Brody’s the sharpshooter in our department,” Mattie said.

  Brody eyed Cole. He looked like he was thinking it over. “Can you keep up with Cobb if she takes to the ground?”

  “I think so.”

  Mattie knew Cole had stepped up his fitness program a few months ago to include running the foothills around his house. He wouldn’t slow her down. “We can stay together.”

  “Okay, you and Cole go after the shooter,” Brody said to Mattie. “We’ll track the tiger. Stay in touch.” He tapped his pocket where he’d put his cell phone.

  Glenna got back on Honey and chattered to Moose about finding the cat, taking him with her as she reined uphill. Mattie urged Mountaineer forward, and Cole rode up beside her. They dodged between trees and rocks as they trotted upslope, and Cole called out to the others: “That tiger is going to go up high if it’s being chased. Watch your backs when you ride under anything.”

  Within a quarter mile, Moose charged forward, leaving Glenna’s side to circle around an area at the edge of the canyon rim. He bayed a few times, obviously excited by the freshness of the cat’s scent. The Rhodesian ridgeback paused only long enough to vacuum up the scent, then headed uphill, nose to the ground.

  “Brody, we’re going to split off here,” Mattie shouted, reining Mountaineer away from the edge of the canyon rim.

  Brody lifted his hand in acknowledgment as he nudged his horse into a trot to follow Glenna and Moose.

  “Come, Robo. Let’s go find a bad guy.” Robo fell in beside her as she set a diagonal course away from the rim and downhill, keeping one eye on the ground for tracks while taking quick glances to scan the tops of boulders and promontories.