Warren Holt had the confiscated wire loop halfway into an evidence sleeve when he heard the sound again.
He stopped working the plastic over the frozen cable. Somewhere below the trail, an animal was calling in short, strained bursts. He waited for the rest of it: a familiar yip, a second voice, something that would let him put a name to what he’d heard.
Nothing followed.
Snow had filled the stitching on his gloves. The storm had left nearly a foot on the upper slopes of this national forest district in southwestern New Mexico, and he’d spent the morning working his way toward a service gate somebody had cut open three times since the holidays. He had photographed tire impressions beside it, collected a discarded cigarette, and found this snare hanging under a juniper farther along the track.
Now he tucked the sleeve away without sealing it.
Thirty-two winters on these mountains had taught him which sounds deserved a second look. This one drew him off the trail before he had decided what might be making it.
He checked the footing below him. Young pines crowded the slope, their lower branches holding enough snow to conceal the rocks. He freed the strap over his holstered pistol, then worked downhill with one hand against the trunks.
A small black animal moved beyond a fallen branch.
Warren’s first thought was somebody’s cat, although the nearest occupied place was more than ten miles away. Then it stepped where sunlight reached the snow, and he saw the heavy front end, the broad feet, the blunt shape of the head. Darker markings showed along its side as it turned.
He stopped so abruptly that snow slid from his trouser cuff into his boot.
The young jaguar watched him.
It was a male, perhaps five months old. Hunger had narrowed the body beneath the thick coat, and one cheek was crusted with snow. Its eyes stayed on Warren as its mouth opened.
There was the sound.
“Well,” he said softly. “You’re a long way from anything I expected.”
He had taken reports of black cats for most of his career. Usually the witness had seen something at the edge of a headlight or across a field at dusk. Now and then a male jaguar crossed the international boundary and traveled these isolated mountain ranges. A breeding female would be another matter. A black youngster standing close enough for him to see the moisture around its nose was something he would have hesitated to put in a report without photographs.
He didn’t reach for his phone.
Instead he turned slightly and let his gaze fall below the animal’s face. The cub slipped behind a tree. Warren could still see one large paw against the snow.
“Good choice. Give me room.”
He backed toward the trail.
The paw disappeared. Then the cub came out and hurried after him, stopping several yards away. It called, glanced uphill beyond him, and looked back at his face.
Warren held still.
The animal advanced another few steps. It stretched its neck toward his trouser leg, sniffed, and briefly touched the leather above his boot sole. Before Warren could move, it bounded downhill and stopped beside a rock.
Its head turned toward him.
He had spent too much time alone outdoors to trust the first story his mind supplied. A frightened animal could move toward a person for reasons that had nothing to do with asking for help. Exhaustion and hunger could make behavior look almost deliberate.
So he stayed where he was.
The cub returned, called again, and retraced its path. This time, when it stopped, Warren was behind it.
They crossed the slope rather than descending into the canyon. The cub traveled through patches of open snow, pausing whenever Warren had to work around brush. Once, it disappeared behind a boulder. He was choosing a route around the lower side when it came back and stood where he could see it.
“All right. I’m coming.”
He took a compass bearing and tried his shoulder radio. The first transmission dissolved into interference. Better reception would mean climbing above the trees, and the cub had already started again.
Warren followed.
The country steepened toward a row of shaded rock shelves. Beneath the fresh snow, loose stones moved under his boots. The cub’s hind feet began leaving long scratches in the powder. It stumbled over a buried limb, fell, and scrambled upright when Warren took a step toward it.
The hiss it gave him was immediate and convincing.
He stopped. “Understood.”
It moved on.
They had been traveling close to forty minutes when Warren smelled an injured animal. He knew that particular combination from roadside calls and wounded game: blood, wet fur, waste, and the stale odor of a place an animal could not leave.
He shortened his steps.
Ahead, the cub pushed through a tangle of oak beneath an overhang. A low warning came from inside. Warren placed his palm against the rock and leaned only far enough to look.
A gold female jaguar lay in the shelter.
Her trapped foreleg extended toward a small pine. Steel cable circled the limb above the paw, with a locking device drawn hard against swollen tissue. Her efforts had scraped away the snow and exposed a dark hollow of frozen earth. One side of her face was dirty where it had rested on the ground.
The cub went straight to her neck.
She lifted her head. For a moment Warren thought she might rise, but her hindquarters barely moved. Instead she shifted her chest across the cub, opened her mouth, and gave him another warning.
He eased backward.
“I’m leaving you that space.”
Only when he was behind the edge of the rock did he take a full breath.
The restraint was recent. The exposed hardware showed little weathering, and boot impressions remained beneath the latest snowfall. A narrow disturbance in the brush ran toward the disused road on the eastern side of the canyon. Whoever had set the cable had chosen an anchor that would hold a large animal.
Warren looked toward the route he had just traveled. The gate, the vehicle tracks, the unused loop in his pack belonged in the same report now.
He climbed along the ledge until his radio received a broken response, then gave dispatch an emergency location and asked for a wildlife veterinarian and another officer. He kept the species off the open channel.
“Large adult cat caught in an unlawful restraint. Significant injury. There’s a dependent youngster with her. Bring the response in from the north. Don’t use the east access.”
Dispatch read the location back. He confirmed it twice before the signal faded.
When he returned, the cub was standing beside his pack. Its legs trembled beneath it.
Warren’s hand went toward his water bottle. Then he stopped. He had no dish, no safe way to judge what the animal could swallow, and no reason to put his hands near a frightened wild cat’s mouth. The meat in his lunch stayed wrapped.
He could do something about the wind.
He took off his heavy canvas jacket and carried it toward the edge of the shelter, stopping when the female raised her head. He spread it across a gap between the rock and a low branch, fastening it with stones so the gusts would not lift it. Years of tending his stove had left the cuffs permanently dark and smelling of burned wood.
He retreated to his pack.
The cub investigated the cloth. After a long sniff, it stepped across a sleeve and settled there, its chin low, still facing its mother.
Warren was looking for another place to block the draft when he noticed a rectangle high in a nearby tree.
A camera.
Its lens faced the restraint, not the trail. An antenna stood above the housing. The unit could keep images on a card and send copies out as it took them, provided the signal reached the canyon.
Warren stepped sideways to see the mounting strap.
A small indicator flashed.
Somewhere outside these trees, the trap’s owner might already be looking at a picture of him…
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