The Caldera Read online

  Slowly, the jaws of the trap began to separate. The cougar growled deep in its throat but remained asleep as the steel teeth were slowly withdrawn from its injured paw. Holding the trap open with her saxe, Maddie reached with her left hand and seized the bottom jaw. Then, angling her big knife to gain leverage from the ground, she lifted, opening the trap wider until she heard a welcome click and the jaws locked open.

  The cougar growled again, but now Maddie knew it was a reaction to the discomfort and not a threat. She set the saxe down and took the trap in both hands, beginning to ease it off the paw.

  Some of the blood-matted hair was still stuck to the steel of the trap, and the cougar stirred as she pulled it. She stopped pulling, took up the canteen again and soaked the hair thoroughly. Again, moving with infinite gentleness, she parted the hair and brushed it away from the trap. Then, finally, she took the trap again and slid it free.

  The cougar grunted. Maddie took the sound as one of relief from pain, rather than a reaction to it. She set the trap to one side.

  Must remember to spring that before I finish, she thought. She didn’t want the cougar to inadvertently catch itself again. Then she took the paw in her left hand and raised it into the light. There was a little blood flowing round the edges of the wound, but the wound itself looked clean and free from infection. There was no sign of reddening or swelling in the flesh.

  She unstoppered the bottle of spirits she had brought with her and poured a little over the wound. The cougar flinched as the spirits stung the raw flesh and it pulled its paw from her grasp. But, once again, it was an instinctive reaction, not a conscious one. The cat’s eyes remained tightly shut.

  Maddie took the paw again and began to smear a special healing ointment on the wound. Similar to the sleeping drug she’d used on her arrow, the ointment was derived from warmweed and had a strong odor that set her eyes watering.

  The more she used, the less pain the cougar would feel. She slathered it on heavily, spreading it over the paw and the open wound. The cougar grunted, a different sound from the one it had made when she caused it to flinch. Now there was a sense of contentment in the sound as the source of weeks of pain was eased away, leaving the injured paw numb and free of the nagging, throbbing sensation that it had endured.

  “You like that, do you?” she said in a crooning tone. She was still nervous about being so close to the wild animal, but her confidence was growing. The difficult part was over now. From this point, everything she did would be making the animal more comfortable, not causing it distress.

  And that meant she was less likely to awaken it from its drugged state.

  Maddie sat back and studied her handiwork. The wound was well covered with warmweed salve now. The thick ointment would work in three ways. It would mask the pain of the wound, help it heal cleanly and healthily, and its strong smell and bitter taste would discourage the cat from licking the wound. Maddie hoped that four or five days would see the cougar well on the way to a full recovery.

  She smiled, satisfied with her work so far, and relieved that the cougar showed no sign of awakening. She took a roll of clean linen bandage from her pack and quickly wound it three or four times around the uninjured paw, pulling it tight and fastening it, leaving the ends of the bandage long and flapping.

  Then she used another bandage on the paw she had been treating, working more carefully now. The point of the clumsy bandage on the uninjured paw was to distract the cougar. She knew it would lick and tear at the bandage when it awoke. Her hope was that the flapping, obvious bandage might distract it. After all, there would be little or no sensation in the healing wound, due to the warmweed. This way, she hoped that the cougar would leave the real bandage alone, at least for a day or two, and give the wound time to heal.

  Remembering a detail, she leaned to one side and reached for the arrowhead embedded in the cougar’s flank, pulling it free and tossing it away into the bushes. Then she moved back to her spot beside the cat’s head and began to pack away her kit.

  As she did, something disturbed her. Something had changed. She frowned, checking the bandaged paw, making sure the linen was firmly fastened. Then she looked at the cougar’s face, and her breath came out in a short gasp.

  The yellow eyes were open, watching her. The big predator was awake.

  8

  MADDIE FROZE. IT WAS AN INVOLUNTARY ACTION. HER MUSCLES and sinews simply froze. She couldn’t have leaped to her feet and run for her life if she’d wanted to.

  She locked gazes with the cougar. She stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped doing anything. Time stood still.

  Then the beast dropped its gaze from hers, and it looked down at the neatly bandaged forepaw, tilting its head to one side. It was wondering, dimly, why the constant pain from that paw, which had throbbed unremittingly for weeks, had ceased.

  It nudged the paw with its nose and licked tentatively at the clean linen of the bandage. Its tongue was only a few centimeters from Maddie’s hand as it did so. She remained stock-still. Now that the initial moment of heart-stopping terror had passed, she realized that she could move her legs and arms. But there was no way she was going to. Any movement on her part might be seen as a threat. So she sat on her heels and waited. The next move was up to the cougar.

  The cougar looked up at her again, its yellow eyes boring into hers. Then, with a low growl, it rose to all four feet, swaying slightly with the aftereffects of the drug, tentatively placing its injured paw on the ground and testing its weight on it. It lifted it once, holding it clear of the ground, then replaced it as the drug started the cougar swaying again.

  It thrust its head forward and sniffed at Maddie, its breath hot on her cheek. She closed her eyes. The huge fangs were only centimeters away from her, and there was nothing she could do to defend herself. The cat edged closer and sniffed her jacket and her arms, slowly lowering its head to sniff at her hands, where it could recognize the warm, pungent smell of the salve. Maddie’s heart raced in triple time as she endured the cougar’s inspection. Any moment now, it could lunge at her and seize her in those powerful jaws, shaking her as a terrier shakes a rat.

  Yet she remained unmoving. It was the only course open to her. If the cougar chose to attack, she was dead. She felt its hot, moist breath on her hands. It was sniffing around her head once more, then, finally, it moved away. She opened her eyes.

  The cat was sitting back on its haunches several meters away from her, watching her intently. As she looked at it, it raised the bandaged paw and studied it again, then looked back at her, seeming to find a connection between the cessation of pain and the strange two-legged creature in front of it.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone. It rose to its feet, whirling around, and bounded off down the game trail, disappearing round a corner.

  Maddie started with the speed of its sudden movement. Then, reaction set in, triggered by the adrenaline that had been flowing through her body since the cat awoke and the sudden, unexpected release of tension. She sank back onto her haunches, her whole body shaking, her mind numb. Involuntarily, tears began to stream down her face, and she started to shake with delayed reaction and shock.

  She knuckled her eyes to wipe the tears away, but they refused to stop flowing. Her nose ran and snot dripped out onto her lap. She could smell the sickly sweet warmweed smell on her hands as she rubbed them against her cheeks.

  “Oh my lord,” she crooned over and over. “Oh my lord.”

  Gradually, she regained control of her body. The shaking stopped and the tears ceased to flow. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, the vague thought occurring to her that her old tutor at Castle Araluen would have been scandalized by such common behavior.

  She let go a deep, shuddering sigh as she thought of how close she had been to those powerful jaws and huge fangs.

  “Well,” she said to herself after a long moment, “at least now I know how long
it takes before the knockout drug wears off.”

  She wrapped her medical kit in its pack and climbed wearily to her feet. Her body felt as if she had been beaten all over with cudgels. Her head throbbed—the adrenaline again. Wearily, she stooped to retrieve her bow and quiver. Then, with one last wondering look down the trail in the direction the cougar had taken, she turned and retraced her path to Spiny Mountain farm.

  It was well after daybreak when she reached the little farmhouse. Hec and Gert greeted her curiously. They could see from her subdued manner that she had obviously been through some kind of ordeal. Hec stepped forward and touched her arm.

  “Are you all right, Ranger?” he asked.

  She gave him a tired smile. It was the first time, she realized, that he had acknowledged her status as a Ranger.

  “Just tired, Hec,” she said. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep and I think I might be coming down with something.”

  Gert reached forward and placed her rough, callused hand on Maddie’s forehead.

  “You may have a touch of fever,” she said. “I’ll fetch you some soup, and you get some sleep in the barn.” She bustled back to the farmhouse.

  Maddie looked after her. Gert had been a prickly, argumentative host. But now that Maddie appeared to need nursing, Gert’s maternal instincts seemed to have come to the fore.

  In fact, it had been a long time since she’d had a young person to look after. Gert and Hec’s children were grown and long gone to their own farms. Both she and her husband realized that Maddie had put herself at some risk, sleeping in the open when there was a chance that the cougar might return. In truth, they were good people at heart, but living in such an isolated location, their social skills had deteriorated. Now they both felt a little ashamed at the way they had treated the young girl in the gray-green cloak.

  As Gert bustled off to the farmhouse to fetch the soup, Hec leaned a little closer to Maddie.

  “Thought I heard the sheep bleating through the night,” he said. “But you told me not to come out. Did the beast return?”

  Maddie nodded, then, as her headache throbbed, wished she hadn’t. She placed the back of her hand over her forehead.

  “Yes. He was here. I took a shot at him and I’m pretty sure I hit him. I don’t think he’ll be back to worry you. But I’ll stay around for a few days to make sure.” She didn’t meet his eyes as she said it. She wanted Hec to think she’d killed the beast, without her actually saying it. She hoped she was right to assume that when the cougar regained its strength, it would give the farm and its animals a wide berth.

  Hec nodded his gratitude. “Thank ’ee, Ranger,” he said. “I’m sorry we doubted you. But you know . . . you’re a girl and all and we didn’t think . . . well, I don’t know what we didn’t think . . .” His voice tailed off.

  She gave him another tired smile. “That’s all right, Hec. I get that a lot.”

  • • • • •

  The following morning, Maddie shot a wild sow and dragged the carcass into the forest, following the game trail the cougar had taken the previous night. She continued until she was two kilometers from the farm, and then wedged the carcass in the fork of a low tree—low enough for the cougar to reach but out of reach for smaller predators or wild dogs.

  When she returned to the spot that afternoon, the sow had gone and there were drag marks through the undergrowth, heading deeper into the forest toward the foothills to the Spiny Mountain range.

  She waited another two days but there was no sign of the cougar’s returning. On the third day, she shot a small deer and took it even farther down the game trail, once again leaving it wedged in the fork of a tree.

  “That should keep it busy,” she said. Then she set out for home, bidding the old couple farewell.

  • • • • •

  Will arrived home a few days later and she greeted him cheerfully. She had missed his company. Being alone was all very well, but he was a reassuring presence in the little cabin.

  She wasn’t sure if he’d approve of her decision to leave the cougar alive, so she glossed over her adventures at Spiny Mountain farm, telling him merely that a large polecat had been raiding the old couple’s stock and she had tracked it down and killed it.

  Will raised an eyebrow. “You tracked it down?” he said, smiling at her. “You must have improved your skills. Or was it wearing hobnailed boots?”

  She decided to let his comment pass, and they settled down into the comfortable routine of life in the cabin by the trees.

  • • • • •

  A week later, they were woken in the middle of the night by Sable’s barking, and Bumper and Tug sounding a warning call from the stable. They dashed out onto the little verandah, Will with his bow in hand and Maddie with her sling.

  Will took the porch lantern from its hook and held it high, peering into the shadows among the trees.

  “Who’s there?” he called. “Show yourself!”

  “They’re not likely to do that,” Maddie muttered. “Not with the pair of us armed to the teeth.”

  “Possibly not,” Will agreed. “In any event, they’re probably long gone, what with the dog barking and the horses kicking up such a rumpus.” He replaced the lantern and reached down to fondle Sable’s head. “Good girl,” he told her absently, still peering into the darkness. Then he glanced to one side and straightened.

  “Hello. What’s this?”

  At the end of the verandah, two fat, freshly killed hares had been left on the planks. Maddie walked over, stooped and picked them up. They were still warm, and the muscles were limp. They hadn’t been dead long.

  Will joined her and looked at the hares, puzzled. “Now, who do you suppose left them here?” he mused.

  Maddie shrugged, and looked out into the darkness again. As she did, she saw two glowing yellow eyes in the deep shadows, watching them. A low growl rumbled in Sable’s throat. Then the eyes blinked shut and they were gone.

  “I have friends you know nothing about.” Maddie smiled.

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