Part 3
The dirt gave way in a soft crumble, sliding around Owen’s wrist and pattering into the hollow beneath the roots. He jerked his hand back before the kitten disappeared under it. The mother bobcat made a hard, coughing sound and lunged toward the opening, but Owen lifted one palm without looking away from the gap.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Give me a second.”
It was a foolish thing to say to a wild animal. She could not understand the words. Still, something in his tone held her where she stood, pacing in a tight half-circle while he studied the root tangle.
The kitten inside was white, or nearly white beneath the dust, a little ghost tucked into the cold dirt. Its eyes were open too wide. Every breath moved its body with a tremor that made Owen think of paper held above a candle. If he pulled at the wrong angle, the dirt could cave in. If he waited too long, the cold would take what fear had not.
Owen reached into his coat pocket and found the folded towel Rachel used to insist he carry on every rescue call. It still smelled faintly of cedar chips and the laundry soap he had not bought since she was alive. For a moment, memory stepped into the woods with him: Rachel kneeling beside a cardboard box, Rachel’s steady voice saying, Warmth first, panic second.
He swallowed and folded the towel over his hand.
Using the pipe from the shed, he loosened one edge of the root mass, then swept the dirt away in careful handfuls. The mother bobcat crouched close enough that her shoulder brushed his boot. She was shaking, but she did not interfere. That restraint cost her something. Owen could see it in every rigid line of her body.
At last the opening widened. He slid his towel-wrapped hand beneath the kitten and lifted.
The little white one came free without a fight. It was too tired for one.
Owen brought it to his chest and tucked it inside the coat with the darker kitten. The two small bodies pressed together instinctively, finding heat. The white kitten made one faint sound, then went quiet.
“Three,” Owen said.
The mother sniffed the coat, counting by scent. One. Two. Three. Then she looked past him again.
Owen let out a breath that turned white in the cold. “Of course there are more.”
She led him down the slope this time, not toward the shed, but into a shallow wash where floodwater had carried branches into a tangled pile. The bear must have come through this way after breaking the den, scattering the kittens as the mother tried to gather them. Owen imagined her grabbing one baby, then hearing another cry from behind her, then another, with the scent of bear and broken wood everywhere. The thought made his jaw tighten.
At the edge of the wash, the mother stopped so abruptly Owen nearly stepped on her tail.
A rustle came from the brush.
Something small moved beneath a clump of manzanita, then froze. The flashlight caught a striped face, wider-eyed and sturdier than the others, crouched behind a spray of red bark and thorny leaves. This kitten was not trapped. It was hiding.
The mother gave a low trill.
The kitten did not move.
She tried again, softer, stepping aside in a way that surprised Owen. It was as if she knew the baby had reached some terrible conclusion in the dark: that everything large was danger, even her, even help. She lowered herself to the dirt and blinked slowly.
The striped kitten crept forward an inch, then hissed at Owen with all the force its tiny body could gather.
“Fair enough,” Owen said. “I look pretty suspicious.”
He crouched and turned his face away, reducing the threat as much as a human man with a flashlight could. The mother moved behind the kitten and nudged it forward with her nose. It stumbled, hissed again, then found the edge of Owen’s coat and smelled the other kittens inside. Recognition softened it. Not trust, exactly, but the scent of siblings did what Owen’s voice could not.
When he lifted it, the kitten hooked its small claws into his sleeve and held on.
“That’s four,” he murmured.
The mother’s shoulders lowered for one breath. Then a sound came from farther down the wash, so faint Owen thought it might be wind rubbing leaves together. The bobcat heard it clearly. Her head snapped up, and she bolted.
Owen tightened the coat around the kittens and hurried after her, stumbling over rocks and dry roots. The flashlight bounced wildly, throwing brief, broken images across the wash: pale stones, clawed earth, a scatter of feathers from some old kill, the black mouth of a drainage culvert half hidden beneath grass.
The mother stopped at the culvert.
It was narrow, old, and partly crushed where a winter storm had dropped a boulder against the rim. Owen knelt beside it, shining the beam inside. At first, he saw nothing. Then the light caught a tiny orange shape pressed into the curve of the metal, not moving at all.
“No,” Owen breathed.
The mother bobcat shoved her head into the culvert and made a frantic sound, but the kitten did not answer. Owen set the coat on the ground, making sure the three inside stayed covered, then flattened himself beside the opening and reached in with both hands.
The orange kitten lay just beyond his fingertips.
He stretched until his ribs pressed hard against the crushed rim. Metal scraped his jacket. His fingers brushed fur, slipped, then brushed it again. The kitten’s body was warm, but loose in a way that made fear move through Owen like cold water.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Don’t be gone.”
He hooked two fingers gently beneath the kitten’s chest and drew it toward him. Its head lolled once, then a tiny paw flexed against his thumb.
The mother made a sharp sound, and Owen almost laughed from relief.
“Still here,” he said. “She’s still here.”
He wrapped the orange kitten with the others. Four small bodies shifted around the fifth, lending heat in the only way they knew how. The mother pressed her nose into the coat, sniffing fast, then lifted her head and stared into the trees beyond the wash.
Owen’s body ached. His wrist bled from the splinter under the shed. Dirt filled the creases of his hands. He had five kittens against his chest and one already warming by his heater.
But the mother did not move toward home.
She turned instead toward the deepest part of the wash, where the moonless dark collected beneath the junipers, and Owen understood with a heaviness that settled behind his ribs. The last kitten had not made a sound at all…
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