Part 2
The engine was still several switchbacks away, but the canyon walls made it sound closer.
Eli pressed the emergency button on his radio, sending his location and an officer-needs-assistance signal without speaking. He photographed the camera’s straps, tree, and sight line, then cut it down and sealed it in the evidence bag from his pack. Whatever image it had transmitted could not be called back.
His radio crackled as he returned to the jaguars.
“Eli, do not release that cable.”
He recognized his daughter’s voice before the signal cleared. “Hello, Mara.”
“Did you touch the lock?”
“No.”
Dr. Mara Carden did not answer as his daughter. She began asking for the female’s respiratory rate, alertness, position, visible blood loss, tissue color, and whether the loop tightened when the jaguar shifted. Eli counted and reported. Their voices became precise in the way they always had when work gave them a place to stand.
“She may be hypothermic and in shock,” Mara said. “That cable could be limiting hemorrhage. If you take the pressure off before we immobilize her and control the wound, she could bleed out.”
“I understand.”
“Build a windbreak only if you can do it without making her move. Don’t feed the cub. Don’t attempt a capture.”
“Already done. How far out are you?”
“The northern road is drifted. We’re bringing the tracked unit from the field station. An hour if the upper switchbacks hold.”
The engine from the east rose, fell, and rose again.
“I may have company first,” Eli said.
Mara went silent for half a breath. “Move away from the cats.”
“He’ll have to pass me to reach them.”
“That is exactly what I’m telling you not to arrange.”
Eight months earlier, during an immobilized mountain lion response, Mara had crossed a marked safety line when the cat’s airway failed. She restored it, but Kendra Ortiz, the technician who followed her, slipped on loose rock and broke her wrist.
Eli’s report was factual until its final paragraph, where he recommended removing Mara from backcountry leadership. He sent it to her supervisor without showing it to her. When the restriction followed, Mara came to his house with the report folded into quarters and accused him of presenting a father’s fear as an agency conclusion. Eli argued that a leader was responsible for everyone who followed her across a line. Neither had listened much after that.
Now Eli moved behind a granite shoulder from which he could watch the animals and the road. “I’m not using them for cover.”
“That isn’t the same as moving away.”
“No.”
“Then don’t tell me you understand when you mean you heard me.”
The engine stopped nearby.
“Call dispatch for updates,” Eli said. “I need the channel clear.”
“Eli—”
He ended the transmission.
The cub lifted its head from his coat. The female’s eyes opened wider, and she drew the young animal against her throat with her uninjured leg.
An olive utility vehicle appeared between the oaks. Tire chains gripped all four wheels, and a narrow aluminum animal crate had been bolted into the bed. The driver stopped thirty yards away.
Wes Sorrell climbed out.
Eli had known him for twenty years. Before his outfitter’s license was revoked, Wes had been the tracker deputies requested when children wandered from campgrounds or hunters failed to return. He could bring a panicked horse across shale without forcing its mouth and read weight, speed, and injury in one partial track.
He had also taken clients onto closed land, falsified tags, and accepted cash for animals they had no right to kill. Eli supplied the maps that connected three carcasses to Wes’s camp. Wes lost his license, most of his business, and eventually the house his father had built above Sonoita.
He wore new leather gloves now. Wes had never worn gloves for ordinary work.
“You’re beyond the gate closure,” Eli said.
Wes looked past him toward the ledge. The female raised her head, and something unguarded crossed his face.
“She got her whole paw through,” he said.
Not What happened? Not What is that?
Eli moved until his body interrupted Wes’s view. “Show me your hands.”
Wes lifted them. “I came to fix it.”
“You came with a transport crate.”
“For the young one. Not her.”
The cub emerged from beneath its mother’s chin. In the failing light, its coat appeared almost featureless. Then it turned, and the rosettes rose like watered silk across its shoulder.
Wes breathed out. “I thought the October picture was a trick of the light.”
“You knew there was a cub.”
“I knew there was something no one had seen up here.”
“And you set steel for it.”
“A live restraint. Swiveled, padded, checked by camera.”
The female shifted. The cable tightened, and her injured leg jerked without following the rest of her body.
Wes flinched. “She wasn’t supposed to be in this drainage.”
“She is.”
“The male’s range was farther west. I watched him for two seasons.”
“So there was another jaguar.”
“There was a shadow on three cameras. Maybe the father, maybe not.” Wes’s gaze stayed on the cub. “A buyer wanted the black one alive. Enough money to clear what I owe and start somewhere nobody knows my name.”
“You watched the mother caught in your restraint.”
“The first alert came yesterday. I thought she’d pull free.”
“How long has she been down?”
Wes glanced at the evidence bag holding the camera. “You already took the answer.”
“Say it.”
His mouth tightened. “Since sometime before noon.”
More than a day. Eli kept his face still.
Wes nodded toward the agency patch on Eli’s shoulder. “You’ll collar them, issue a press release, and turn that cub into a fundraising picture. Then somebody will approve another road through the corridor because the map looks cleaner than the ground. Don’t pretend I’m the first man to put a price on him.”
Eli had sat through meetings where a jaguar became a budget request, a lawsuit, or a colored shape projected on a wall. Wes knew that much. It did not change what the cable had done.
“The difference,” Eli said, “is the cable.”
Wes looked at the female again. “Let me use the winch. You won’t get her up that slope without it.”
“You won’t go near her.”
“Your veterinary team is an hour away. She may not have an hour.”
“My daughter is leading that team.”
A flicker of recognition entered Wes’s face. “Still deciding what risks she’s allowed to take?”
Eli pointed to a boulder away from the vehicle. “Sit down. Hands on your knees.”
“You going to cuff me alone on ice?”
“No. I’m going to watch you until the deputy does.”
Wes sat. He knew enough about terrain and armed men not to test the distance. Eli divided his attention among Wes’s hands, the female’s breathing, and the northern ridge.
Dusk gathered beneath the trees. The cub left the shelter of Eli’s coat and stood over its mother’s injured foreleg, back bowed and teeth showing. Wes watched it with an expression Eli could not sort into greed, shame, or wonder.
At last, two pale beams appeared among the pines above them.
The female tried to rise at the sound of the approaching rescue team. The cable snapped taut. Her head struck the ground, and the cub cried out.
Wes came to his feet. “They’ll separate them,” he said, taking one step toward the ledge. “If she dies, that cub is not going into one of your cages.” Then he took another…
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