Part 4
He had to get one knee farther into the snow to place his shoulders above his hands.
Elise corrected his position. He straightened his arms and pressed where she showed him, following her count. Beneath his palms, the jaguar’s chest yielded and rose. Tessa kept air moving through the tube while watching the monitor for signs that the compressions were circulating blood.
Warren fixed his eyes on the edge of the blanket. Down, release. Down, release. He let Elise supply the pace.
The cub struck the side of its crate.
Its next cry carried through the trees, clear even over Elise’s voice. Warren’s hands nearly faltered.
“Here with me,” she said. “Keep going.”
Tessa gave medication through the existing line. Elise watched the screen, checked the jaguar, and sent Warren into another cycle.
His shoulders began to ache. He moved exactly when Elise told him, refusing the urge to look at her face for an answer she had not given.
A narrow mark appeared on the monitor.
Then another, farther apart than he wanted.
“Continue.”
He pressed again.
Elise reached along the inside of the jaguar’s thigh. She held her fingers still.
“Stop compressions. There’s a pulse.”
Warren lifted his hands but stayed in position. Tessa kept squeezing the breathing bag. The jaguar’s chest rose without his help, then fell as the bag relaxed.
Elise listened for a long moment.
“Very weak. We hold here.”
He sat back on his heels. Less than two minutes had passed, but the snow beneath his knees had melted through his trousers. When he looked up, he caught a small tremor near Elise’s mouth. She turned her face toward the monitor before he could say anything.
Nobody touched the litter handles.
After several minutes, the rhythm remained organized. The jaguar still needed help breathing, but Elise finally nodded for them to lift.
Warren called the last changes in the slope. Elise gave the instructions concerning the animal. When she wanted a pause, he stopped before she finished asking.
The carrier’s treatment compartment was already warm. They locked the litter in place and secured the equipment where Elise and Tessa could reach it during the descent. The cub’s crate went into a separate bay, close enough to the female for scent and sound to pass between them.
Before closing that bay, Tessa tried to retrieve Warren’s jacket through a small access slot.
The cub had gathered the canvas beneath its chest. When she drew one sleeve toward the opening with a pole, both black forepaws clamped down. Its ears flattened. The cloth stopped moving.
Elise watched through the inspection window.
“Leave it for now.”
Warren stepped closer. “He’s been lying in my scent all afternoon.”
“And he’s quiet on it. We’ll remove it later without putting a person in there.”
Tessa withdrew the pole. Warren shut the outer cover.
At the road, they transferred both animals to a larger wildlife transport unit. The winter drive to the regional wildlife hospital near Las Cruces took nearly three hours.
Warren sat beside the driver. Behind the partition, Elise and Tessa exchanged numbers and brief instructions. He could hear a drawer open, the soft knock of equipment against a cabinet, the change in the oxygen flow.
During one stretch of quiet, he turned so far in his seat that the belt tightened across his chest. Elise’s shadow moved across the treatment-bay window. He faced the road again.
A surgical team met them under the hospital’s loading canopy. Warren stepped out with stiff legs and watched the litter roll through the doors. Keepers moved the cub into a darkened isolation stall in the adjoining wildlife unit without handling him.
One of them drew a curtain, and Warren found himself standing with nothing in his hands.
He sat in the waiting area and began his statement.
He described the evidence in the order he had found it, stopping to check the times in his field notebook. Where he could quote Boyd accurately, he did. Where he couldn’t, he recorded the substance and marked it as such. He gave the animal its proper species and left out everything he had merely suspected.
A federal wildlife investigator called after midnight.
An expedited electronic search warrant had given the team access to Boyd’s camera account. There were images from both restraints, covering several weeks, and a message arranging delivery of a live young jaguar. The box and capture net in his vehicle had been secured as evidence. Boyd was being held while charges were prepared, and the investigators were checking for other participants.
Warren answered the remaining questions and set the phone beside his notebook.
When Elise entered the waiting room, the clock above the desk showed almost three. She had changed into scrubs, but her boots still carried mud from the canyon. A deep line crossed the bridge of her nose where her protective eyewear had rested.
He stood before she reached him.
“She made it through surgery,” Elise said. “She’s stable at the moment.”
His knees loosened. He sat again.
Elise took a chair with an empty seat between them and rested her forearms on her thighs.
“The fracture is close to the wrist. There’s extensive damage around it, and the vessels and nerves were compressed a long time. They stabilized the bone and got circulation back into the foot.”
“So the leg stays.”
“For tonight.”
He looked at her.
“We still have infection to deal with. The muscle damage could affect her kidneys. We don’t know how much feeling or movement will return, and her heart has already stopped once.”
Warren rubbed the crease his notebook had left in his palm.
Elise leaned back. “The deputy sent pictures from the road. There was a crack across that snow shelf. You saw what I didn’t.”
He nodded slowly.
“I also stepped out when you darted her.”
“That’s a different conversation.”
“I know.”
The ventilation fan started above them. Elise closed her eyes, but Warren reached into the map compartment of his pack.
He laid the folded mountain lion report on the chair between them.
“I’m submitting an amendment.”
She opened her eyes and looked at the paper.
“The account of the capture stays,” he said. “You crossed the line. Tessa followed and got hurt. But the recommendation at the end was mine. I made it sound like a settled safety finding, and I sent it up without giving you a chance to answer.”
Elise did not touch the report.
“Tonight doesn’t cancel what happened on that call.”
“No. And that call doesn’t excuse what I did afterward.”
He waited while she looked down at his signature.
“Next time you think I’m wrong?” she asked.
“You’ll hear it from me first. You’ll be there when I say it.”
She watched him for several seconds. He kept his mouth closed.
At last she gave a small nod and stood.
“Try to sleep. If she wakes well enough, we’ll see about putting them together.”
“Both in the same stall?”
“He still depends on her. Keeping them apart may add more stress than it prevents. We’ll do it under observation.” She paused beside the door. “After tonight, no jacket. No voice from the hallway. If they’re ever going back, people can’t become part of his ordinary life.”
Warren put the report away.
Through a narrow window, he could see the cub in the rear of its stall. The jacket lay beneath him. Food remained untouched near the service opening, and his face stayed pointed toward the solid divider beside him.
Near dawn, Elise allowed Warren to watch the camera feed from outside the treatment wing.
The female was waking. Her head lifted a few inches and sank again. After the breathing tube had been removed and the staff withdrawn, she tried once more and held it up. The bandaged foreleg lay straight along the bedding.
Elise watched her breathing and responses before operating the panel between the stalls.
The opening was barely high enough when the cub flattened himself and slid beneath it.
He crossed directly to the female and fitted his dark shoulder against her throat. She lowered her nose along his back. For a while, they lay without moving.
Then her uninjured paw rose and settled across him, the broad pads resting on his side…
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