LITMIR.BIZ

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The fewer surprises, the better.

      “Will you tranq her now?” Tess asked the vet.

      “Not till you’re ready to ride. You don’t want her waking somewhere along the way.”

      “Better believe it! I don’t know who’d enjoy that more—me, Cannonball or Zelda.” Tess had picked the steadiest horse on Suntop to carry the lynx, and a pack horse that was nearly as sensible. Still, she found her nerves were skittering as she tightened the girths on both saddles, bridled up, then fitted her various packs and bundles into place. Steady or not, she could just imagine how Cannonball would react to a yowling, struggling cat in a basket strapped to his back—her own private rodeo, in the midst of dense forest, or on a cliffside trail!

      Liza supported one-half of the collapsible metal cage while Tess lashed it to the right side of the pack mare’s saddle. A second four-foot-by-four-foot stack of steel-mesh squares was hung from the left side to balance the load. The mare snorted and rolled her eyes. “How far is it to your site?” Liza dithered. “You’re sure you can you find it in the dark?”

      “It’s about nine miles to the southwest of here, and yeah, I know the trails. And it’ll be dawn by the time we reach the point where we really have to bushwhack, so…don’t worry.” Tess smiled to herself. Somewhere in those weeks of custody and nursing, cat-loving Liza had lost her professional objectivity. She was as anxious as a mom sending her only daughter off for her first time at summer camp.

      Not that Tess wasn’t worried, as well. If they couldn’t give Zelda the wide, wonderful world she deserved—if the cat couldn’t learn to survive in that world—neither of them had the heart to stuff her back in a cage. Which left only…another kind of injection. Sleep without waking.

      And even if she succeeded in reintroducing Zelda to the wild this summer, Tess still had other worries.

      Like the imminent arrival of half a dozen line-camp cowboys, who were paid to keep their eyes wide open for anything strange going on in their territories.

      Like the chance of being caught in what they—and her father!—would see as a gross betrayal of their way of life.

      If they caught her aiding and abetting lynx, they’d see her as Tess-turned-traitor. Tess on the side of the tree huggers and the despised government bureaucrats—and against her neighbors, her family, her friends.

      And she could argue till she was blue in the face that lynx and cows were perfectly compatible, that the cattlemen had nothing to fear but fear itself. But ranchers were as stubbornly conservative at heart as…cats.

      So here she was in the middle, walking her usual tight-rope between what she loved and those she loved. Anyway you cut it, it was bound to be a nerve-wracking summer.

      And on top of that—in my spare time—I’m supposed to be finishing my dissertation! Tess reminded herself with a grimace. For the past year, she’d studied beavers in a riverine habitat. This summer she needed to analyze her data and write up her conclusions, if she wanted to earn her doctorate, and be qualified for a field biology position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service next fall, which she most certainly did.

      “Now, you’re going to keep her caged for at least three days?” Liza fretted.

      “As long as she and I can stand it.” Tess would have to camp near the cage till she freed the cat. It was spring after all, with the black bears awakening from their winter fasts. Though lynx weren’t part of their usual menu, bears were omnivorous, and they sure knew how to take apart any container with food inside. Tess wouldn’t dare leave Zelda trapped and defenseless.

      Thinking of that, she went back to the pickup, unracked her rifle, then settled it into its saddle scabbard.

      “What’s that for?”

      Tess smiled at her friend’s note of alarm. Liza was from Massachusetts. She’d only come west after graduation from vet school. Apparently, like many easterners, she viewed firearms solely as lethal weapons. Instruments of heartbreak and destruction.

      Tess took the view of the tough and capable Western men who’d raised her. A rifle was simply a tool that a responsible person used responsibly. No more or less dangerous than a car or a threshing machine. The only thing she’d ever killed with a gun was a tin can, but still… “I brought along some red-pepper spray in case of bears. But I’ve always wondered if that really works—or just turns ’em into furry buzzsaws. So this is for backup.” Which, please God, she wouldn’t need.

      “O…kay.” Liza didn’t sound convinced, but then it wasn’t she who’d be sleeping alfresco forty miles from the nearest kindly policeman. “And you’ve got the chickens?”

      “Right here.” Tess loaded the cooler that held four flash-frozen roasting chickens into the left basket hamper on Cannonball’s back. “And I’ve already stashed another fifty in the kerosene freezer at the cabin.”

      She’d claimed the highest, tiniest, most tucked-away cabin on Suntop’s summer range for herself for the next three months. Her father and sisters were used to her jaunts into the wilderness, so they hadn’t been all that surprised when she’d announced that she intended to live in the mountains for the summer, rather than stay at the Big House on the ranch. No distractions or socializing wanted or needed while she hammered out her dissertation, was the excuse she’d given—and they’d bought it.

      She’d driven up a few days ago to this trailhead and packed in everything she’d need at the cabin for the period, including a three-month supply of frozen birds. “Well. All we need now is the star of this show.”

      Liza sighed, nodded, and turned toward the Jeep. Murmuring soothing endearments, she used a noose pole and a pair of elbow-length leather gloves to immobilize the growling lynx, then injected her with the sedative.

      She brushed angrily at her lashes as Tess closed the basket lid over the curled-up sleeping cat. “You’ll tell me if she needs anything? Goes off her feed or…”

      “She won’t run too far away,” Tess assured her, though she was by no means sure. “Zelda’s grown to love her chicken dinners. She’ll stick around till she knows she can feed herself.”

      Or she wouldn’t.

      But then, didn’t freedom always come with risk? Tess had always found the risks worth facing. Three days from now, when she opened the cage door, she figured Zelda would agree.

      “SO, ZELDA, what do you think? Is it starting to feel like home?” On her way to the pool where she washed each morning, Tess had stopped to check out her charge.

      The lynx lay in feline loaf-of-bread position at the front of her cage, fore paws tucked demurely under her breast, back paws folded beneath. With her yellow eyes half closed, she seemed relaxed as any tabbycat, although she was pointedly ignoring her visitor. The comical two-inch black tufts on her ears twitched at the sound of Tess’s voice, then her gaze returned to the massive fallen tree beside her cage…to the dark hole beneath its mossy trunk.

      “You’re right. It would make an excellent den,” Tess assured her in a soft voice. “Location, location, location.” She’d chosen this site with care—an old-growth spruce forest, because lynx typically denned in such deep, dark places with their excellent cover. A hundred yards to the west stretched a wide swath of younger trees where, years before, an avalanche from the peaks above had scoured the slope. Time had patiently reseeded the scar, and now it was covered with wildflowers and twelve-foot saplings. Tess’s research over the past month had told her that lynx favored that sort of terrain for hunting. The smaller trees let in the sunshine, which nourished the flowers and grass, which drew the snowshoe hares. And the lynx who loved them.

      “One of these days, if the DOW ever gets its act together and provides you with a boyfriend, this would make a perfect den for kittens,” Tess told the cat. “Which reminds me, Liza meant to check you again, to make sure you aren’t in a family way.” The vet had intended to palpate the lynx after she’d sedated her.

      “I

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