Part 3
“Stop.” Eli’s voice carried clearly across the snow.
Wes halted, but his weight remained pitched toward the jaguars. Eli stepped into his path without drawing his weapon.
The tracked rescue vehicle emerged above them. A county deputy descended first, one hand near his holster. Behind him came Mara, Kendra Ortiz, and two rescue workers carrying hard cases, oxygen, shields, and a folded litter.
The deputy ordered Wes to turn around. This time he obeyed. The cuffs closed without struggle, and Wes watched Mara pass him as if the arrest were happening to someone nearby.
Mara wore insulated coveralls beneath an orange shell. Her dark braid had been looped through the back of her cap, and snow had melted into a crescent along one shoulder. She gave Eli one brief look.
“Observation point?”
He showed her the granite shoulder. Kendra followed, carrying the portable monitor with the same hand that had been broken during the mountain lion response. She acknowledged Eli with a nod and began laying out the oxygen line.
Mara examined the female through binoculars. “Duration?”
“Possibly more than thirty hours,” Eli said. “Wes saw the first alert yesterday.”
Mara turned toward him. “What time?”
Wes answered before the deputy could silence him. “A little after dawn. She was standing. By midday she wasn’t.”
“You went to the camera account more than once?”
“I was waiting for the cub to come back into view.”
Mara’s face did not change. “Where is the account?”
“My phone has the login saved.”
The deputy retrieved the phone from the utility vehicle and sealed it without opening it. Investigators could obtain the images later. Mara had the one fact she needed now: prolonged entrapment, worsening shock, and a limb that might release toxins into the bloodstream if circulation returned too quickly.
She dismissed Wes from her attention and explained the plan. The female would be immobilized from behind cover. Kendra would monitor. Eli would help establish a shielded corridor for the cub and choose the safest ascent for the litter. No one would approach until Mara declared the sedation adequate.
“I lead the carry,” Eli said.
“I direct everything involving the patient.”
“I’m talking about the ground.”
“So am I.”
For a moment they were back in his kitchen, the folded report between them.
Eli pointed to the snow shelf above the direct route. “The wind loaded that edge from the southwest. We go around the west side of the rock fin.”
“That adds distance.”
“It keeps six people and a litter out from under the shelf.”
Mara studied the slope rather than him. “We decide after she’s stabilized.”
It was not agreement, but it was not dismissal.
Eli took his position. The cub had wedged itself between its mother and the back of the ledge. Mara waited until the female’s head turned, then delivered the sedative into the muscle of her hindquarter.
The jaguar roared.
She lunged so violently that the cable shuddered against the tree. The cub vanished into a crack beneath the rock. Eli moved one boot beyond cover before Mara’s voice stopped him.
“Hold where you are.”
Every part of him wanted to close distance, add weight, become useful.
He stepped back.
The female fought the drug in weakening bursts. Her head lowered, rose again, and turned toward the crevice where the cub hid. Mara waited through each movement. Only when the jaw loosened and the shoulder no longer answered stimulation did she signal Kendra forward.
They advanced behind broad polycarbonate shields. A small black paw struck Eli’s panel, claws scraping across it with the sound of gravel thrown against a window.
“The cub won’t cross open ground while she blocks the crate,” Mara said.
Eli saw his coat beneath the ledge, one sleeve marked where the cub had lain. Using a fiberglass pole, he eased the canvas toward the open transport crate and pushed the sleeve across the threshold. Then he widened the shield corridor and withdrew.
The cub appeared beside its mother’s head. Its eyes moved from Eli to the coat, then back to the female. It stepped onto the sleeve, followed the cedar-smoke scent inside, and turned.
Kendra pulled the door shut remotely. The cub struck the bars once before crouching on the coat, sides pumping.
“Cover him,” Mara said. “Leave the coat.”
Only then did she kneel beside the mother.
Up close, the jaguar’s body seemed built from heavier material than any mountain lion Eli had handled. Even depleted, she was all shoulder and muscle. Mara checked the depth of sedation, secured her airway, began warmed fluids, and examined the trapped leg while Kendra attached the monitor.
The cable had cut deep above the paw. No bone showed, but the tissue below the loop was swollen and cold.
“Can you keep the leg?” Eli asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you keep her alive?”
Mara looked at the monitor. “That’s the question I can work on.”
They slid absorbent pads beneath the wound and positioned a manual spreader around the cable. Eli stabilized the anchor. Kendra maintained the airway while Mara protected the limb.
When the pressure released, dark blood welled from the crushed tissue. Mara controlled it, packed the wound, and secured the leg in a padded splint. The female’s pulse slowed as they worked.
“Temperature’s still falling,” Kendra said.
They transferred her onto the insulated litter and placed warming packs around her chest and abdomen with folded blankets between heat and skin. The cub’s covered crate went onto a separate rescue sled close enough for scent and sound to pass between them.
The deputy took Wes toward the county truck. At the edge of the trees, Wes twisted to look back.
“You’ll find messages,” he called to Eli. “There’s a broker in Nevada. I never met him.”
The deputy guided him onward.
Mara did not look up. “Was that for us or for himself?”
“Both can be true,” Eli said.
The direct path to the tracked vehicle cut beneath the loaded snow shelf. The longer route curved west around the rock fin through deeper but more stable snow. Mara watched the monitor while Eli examined the slope.
“Her pressure is dropping,” she said.
“And that shelf has cracked behind the lip.”
“I don’t see it.”
Eli handed her his light and pointed. A thin dark seam crossed the upper drift, almost hidden beneath windblown powder.
Mara followed it to the rocks. “West side.”
Eli took the front of the litter. Mara walked beside the jaguar’s head, keeping one hand near the airway tubing. Kendra ventilated and monitored while the rescue workers steadied the rear.
They moved by short commands. Eli called each change in grade before stepping into it. When he stopped, no one asked why. When Mara ordered the litter down to check a change in the pulse tone, he lowered it without telling her how long the route could tolerate delay.
The cub’s cry came at intervals from the covered crate behind them.
Halfway around the rock fin, the monitor slowed. Mara called a halt, adjusted the airway, and waited until the rhythm strengthened. They moved again.
The tracked vehicle’s amber marker appeared through the trees. The female’s pulse tone separated into widely spaced notes.
“Down,” Mara said.
They lowered the litter level. Mara pressed two fingers inside the jaguar’s thigh, shifted them, and tried again. Kendra stared at the monitor as the last narrow mark crossed the screen.
Mara looked at Eli. “No pulse,” she said. “Compressions. Now…”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇