Part 3
Warren moved across Boyd’s path.
“The next place you’re going is with the deputy.”
Boyd spread his hands. “Let me take the youngster. You can keep her alive. Everybody gets what they came for.”
Warren held his ground.
Above them, the tracked carrier stopped with its lights shining between the trunks. Elise jumped down, pulled a headlamp over her knit cap, and reached back for a case. The deputy and two rescue workers followed her down the slope. Tessa came behind them with another equipment bag.
The female lifted her head toward the engines. The cub moved under her chin, and she strained against the cable again.
Boyd stopped trying to get around Warren.
His attention had gone entirely to the trapped animal. Warren could not tell whether the deputy’s approach had registered at all until the man called his name.
“Turn toward me. Leave your hands out where they are.”
Boyd did as he was told. The deputy approached carefully and secured him without a struggle.
Elise set down her case before she looked at her father.
“Where can I get a clear view without putting pressure on her?”
He led her behind the rock. Her insulated coveralls crackled as she crouched. A loose end of braid had worked free of her cap, and she tucked it away without looking down.
Tessa gave Warren a brief nod. Her healed wrist disappeared beneath a cuff as she began laying out tubing and a monitor.
Elise studied the jaguar through binoculars.
“Any way to establish how long she’s been caught?”
“Not from what I found. The last snow covered the older tracks.”
“Yesterday morning,” Boyd called.
Elise lowered the binoculars.
“The alert came a little after two. She was up then. She’d gone down before lunch.”
Warren turned toward him.
Boyd looked at the equipment instead of either of their faces. “The times are on the pictures. Phone’s in the vehicle.”
Elise stood. “You were receiving images while she was in the restraint?”
“The little one wouldn’t stay. I had to wait until he came back.”
“For more than a day?”
“I couldn’t get near her while she could still stand.”
The deputy retrieved the phone and secured it for the investigators. He did not open it. The times would need verification, but the information gave Elise a working estimate: more than thirty hours of exposure and struggle.
She looked at Boyd once more.
“That helps me treat her.”
He pressed his lips together. She had already turned back to Tessa.
The plan took shape around open cases in the snow. Elise would dart the female from cover with an anesthetic dose suited to an exhausted, cold animal. They would wait for adequate immobilization before anyone entered the shelter. Warren would track the cub’s position and keep it out of the dart’s path. Once the adult was immobilized, the deputy could take Boyd out.
Elise assigned the approach, the shields, and the airway equipment. Warren waited until she finished.
“I’ll select the carry route.”
“I’ll decide when and how she can be moved.”
“That’s yours. The ground is mine.”
She looked from him to the slope above the shelter. For a few seconds she said nothing.
“Call every bad section before we reach it,” she said. “And when I stop the litter, it stops.”
Warren nodded and went to his position.
The cub had returned to its mother’s throat. He could distinguish its back from the shadow beneath the ledge only when it moved. He gave Elise a hand signal when it tucked clear of the female’s hindquarters.
The dart struck.
The cub leaped backward into the rocks. The female’s roar filled the shelter, and Warren stepped out before he meant to. She lunged, was pulled short by the restraint, and twisted toward her flank.
“Warren. Hold.”
He planted his boots.
Elise kept watching. She did not approach when the jaguar first lowered her head, nor when her eyes began to close. The animal lifted her chin again, trying to locate the cub, then settled with her cheek against the snow.
At last Elise signaled Tessa forward.
They used broad protective panels to shape a passage toward an open crate. Warren brought a second panel around from the other side. The cub stayed deep under the ledge, striking at the lower edge with a paw whenever it came too close.
Elise studied the gap.
“We’re asking him to leave her and cross open ground. Give him something besides us to look at.”
Warren saw his jacket lying where the cub had abandoned it.
With a long pole, he drew the cloth away from the shelter and pushed most of it into the crate. One sleeve remained outside. Then he and Tessa pulled their panels back a little and stopped moving.
The cub’s face appeared.
It sniffed, advanced a few inches, and withdrew. Warren kept his gaze low. When he looked again, the cub had one foot on the sleeve.
It looked back toward its mother.
He had to close his mouth to keep from encouraging it. Still, a few words escaped under his breath.
“Just a little farther.”
The animal stepped inside. Tessa closed the door from behind her shield, then covered the crate. A single hard blow rattled the bars. After that, Warren could hear only the cub’s rapid breathing.
Elise approached the female.
She checked the anesthetic depth before touching the head. Tessa supplied an airway tube, oxygen, and the monitoring leads. A line went into a vein for warmed fluids. Warren held a light where Elise directed it, trying not to let the beam wander across her hands.
The jaguar’s body nearly filled the insulated mat they had slid beside her. Even depleted, she weighed well over a hundred pounds. The muscles above the trapped leg remained formidable; below it, swelling obscured the normal shape of the joint.
Elise examined the paw. It gave no response.
Warren watched her turn it gently in her hand.
“Does she get to keep that foot?”
“I’m treating the whole animal first. We’ll know more about the limb after the pressure is off.”
They placed pads where bleeding might begin and prepared dressings. A rescue worker brought a hand-operated tool from the county truck. Warren steadied the anchor while Elise shielded the leg and worked the cable free.
Blood reached the pads as the restraint released. She controlled it, covered the wound, and supported the damaged limb in a padded splint.
Tessa read the temperature aloud.
“Ninety-six. Still dropping.”
They rolled the female onto the litter, preserving access to the airway and monitor, and packed insulation around her. Warming packs went outside layers of cloth along her trunk. Warren fastened the litter straps while Elise checked that nothing pressed on the wound.
It was fully dark when the deputy took Boyd away.
As the truck turned along the eastern road, Boyd twisted to look through the rear window. Warren was standing between the covered crate and the jaguar. He couldn’t tell which one the man was trying to see.
The tracked carrier waited roughly four hundred yards above them. The direct route crossed below a loaded snow shelf, with loose stone showing at its lower edge.
Elise looked at the slope, then at the monitor.
“How much longer around the outcrop?”
“Less than ten minutes if we place our feet right.”
“She’s losing pressure.”
“That shelf breaks, we don’t have a patient we can carry.”
Elise bent over the jaguar, listened, and checked the monitor again. Warren kept his eyes on the dark line where snow met rock.
“We go around,” she said. “Tessa, assist her breathing continuously. Everyone move on Warren’s calls.”
He took a front handle.
They climbed in short, coordinated stages. Before each change in grade, Warren warned the people behind him. Elise walked beside the jaguar’s head with one hand protecting the tubing. Tessa managed the oxygen and breathing bag. A rescue worker pulled the covered cub’s crate on a second sled.
The youngster began calling inside it.
At the first turn, the monitor’s rhythm slowed.
“Set her down,” Elise ordered.
They lowered together. She checked the airway, listened to the chest, and waited while Tessa ventilated. The rate improved enough for her to let them move.
Warren’s gloves grew wet against the handle. His legs shook when he braced the litter through the deeper snow behind the outcrop. Beyond the trees, he could see a light on the carrier.
The monitor slowed again.
This time Elise was already reaching for the jaguar before the litter touched down. She felt along the inside of the hind leg, moved her fingers, and checked again. Tessa looked at the screen.
Elise pointed to the chest.
“Cardiac arrest. Warren, hands here. Begin CPR…”
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