The Ridge(44)

By the time he reached the door the other cats were into the fray, roars echoing through the woods. Ira had sounded the first alarm, but now the rest had joined the chorus.

He came back after all, Wesley thought, amazed. Maybe he actually went into that trap.

He came out of the trailer barefoot, wearing nothing but the old gym shorts he’d slept in. The gravel bit into his feet but he ran ahead anyhow, ran in the direction of the trap he’d constructed for the cougar, out near the overgrown tracks that ran through the woods south of the preserve. The cat was still screaming, and Wesley didn’t like that. There should be no way it could have gotten injured in the trap, but it was screaming all the same, and—

The gunshot brought him to a stunned halt.

A rifle had just been fired. There was no mistaking it.

Shooting at the cats, he thought, and there was wild, black rage in him. If someone is shooting at my cats, I will kill him, and I won’t need a gun to do it.

Another shot, closer, and for the first time Wesley recognized the possibility that he was the target. The bullet had passed close, just over his left shoulder. He turned the flashlight off, and as the world returned to darkness there was the crack of yet another gunshot and the anguished bellow of one of the tigers just behind him.

A hit. The son of a bitch had hit one of the cats.

Wesley got back to his feet, screaming, and ran toward the tree line. He got past the occupied cages and opened fire blindly into the woods. He knew that there were no cats in his line, and that was his only concern. There were only three cartridges in the huge Remington Model 798 that he held, and he put all three of them into the trees. When the last shot had been fired, he could hear the sound of someone running through the woods, crashing through the timber. Wesley could not pursue, though—a cat had been shot.

He found the flashlight where he’d dropped it in the gravel and turned it back on and searched the darkness for the wounded animal.

It was Kino. The tiger was trying to fight through the fence, trying to escape this place of rescue that had suddenly turned dangerous on him. In the pale white glow of the flashlight beam Wesley could see a wound bubbling with blood. The tiger’s left shoulder was broken, so he could not stand without keeping his right foreleg on the ground, which left him attempting to chew through the fence instead of using his paws.

“Kino, buddy, relax,” Wesley said. His voice was shaking. “You got to relax, buddy, I can fix this, I can fix this.”

But could he? The bullet had penetrated deeply. That the tiger was still up at all was astonishing.

“We’ll fix this,” Wesley said again, and then he set the empty rifle down beside the fence and ran back to the trailer, his bare feet leaving streaks of blood on the gravel.

Inside the trailer, he fumbled a ketamine-filled syringe onto one of the six-foot poles they used to tranquilize the cats. Tranquilizing a wounded animal could be deadly, but he’d have to do it to have any hope of stopping the bleeding and addressing the wound. If he could get the bleeding stopped, he could call for a veterinarian—there was one in Whitman who helped them regularly—and maybe Kino could be saved.

He considered making the call now, getting the vet on his way, but decided that the loss of time was too dangerous. The first priority had to be getting the cat down and the bleeding stopped.

They had a dart rifle but he trusted the pole syringes more, particularly in the dark, and the cat was close to the fence. He’d be able to reach him.

Back outside he ran, the pole in one hand and the flashlight in the other. All around cats were roaring or growling or hissing. Somewhere out there in the darkness, Ira was loose.

Who would have done this? Wesley thought. What sick, evil son of a whore would have done this?

When he reached Kino’s cage, he saw with dismay that the cat had returned to the center of his enclosure. He was still trying to stand. Each time he tried the left leg collapsed and he dropped drunkenly into the dirt.

Wesley looked at the pole in his hand and back at the cat inside, now far from the fence. He’d have to go in. It was that or return for the dart rifle, but that would waste more time and—

Kino tried to rise again, and this time he let out an agonized cry, and that made Wesley’s decision. There was no time. He opened the combination lock on the gate—every lock in the facility had the same combination, set to Audrey and David’s wedding anniversary date—and removed the chain. Kino, thankfully, was so antisocial that he had his own enclosure, leaving no other cats to deal with.

“Easy, buddy,” he called, and then he removed the cap from the syringe, opened the gate, and stepped inside, his breath fogging in the cold night air.