“That is so like you.”
“Nick, my nephew, joined the service. The Air Force. I keep an eye on him as well. He’s doing very well. Patricia has some arthritis but nothing major yet that worries me. I’m watching her right shoulder. She broke her arm a couple of years ago. It was a fairly bad break, up high, in three places, and I didn’t like the way it healed. She waited too long before she could get out of here to get help. The winter was bad and all of the kids were gone. Cells weren’t working. It was pure luck that old man Gunthrie decided to check on her. It was a long trek for him in the snow in the middle of a blizzard. Who knows why he even decided to check on her.”
“I can tell you really like him too.”
“He’s a strange man, Jonquille. I guess we’re all a little strange. Luther is the kind of man who will give you the shirt off his back. Anything he has, unless you try to take it from him. Then he’ll hunt you down and put you in the ground. He isn’t a forgiving man either. He remembers everything. He doesn’t own a car or a truck, and I can’t recall that he ever did. There’re miles, miles between his place and Patricia’s, but he made that trek in a blizzard to check on her because he was worried. She has closer neighbors, but none of them thought to do it.”
Rubin went silent when a family of raccoons, making tentative stops and starts, came out of the trees, going cautiously from rock to rock. Using the cover of grass, they made their way to the silver ribbon of water. Standing occasionally on their hind legs to peer around them for enemies, they dropped back down to eat and drink from the stream. The younger raccoons ignored the demands of their parents and rolled around together in several fights after chasing one another over the rocks and through the grass.
A pair of foxes came to the water’s edge on the other side of the stream, eyed the raccoon family warily but drank and stayed for a short minute or two. Mice and lizards scurried underfoot. A few rabbits hurried to make their burrows before the sun was too high in the sky. The clouds continued to shift with the wind, blowing across the sky, by turns darkening it and then allowing the light to come shining through with stunning beauty.
They were silent as they watched the animals take turns in a truce, drinking together at the stream. Life could be like that. Little moments where the world held its breath and everyone got along, and then it would explode again and everyone would be enemies.
Rubin tightened his grasp on Jonquille’s hand, pulling it to his chest. He had a very precarious hold on her, and all he could do was try to show her who he was as a person. Let her know he wasn’t a soldier with Whitney. He wasn’t any part of Whitney’s bizarre world in spite of having started there. He was a soldier, yes. He was a GhostWalker, yes. He wanted a wife and a family. He wanted a partner. An equal. He wanted to give her time to get to know him and hopefully she would choose him.
He did have quite a lot he could offer her. He rubbed his chin on the back of her hand as he thought about it, his gaze fixed on a young buck walking cautiously to the stream to take his turn. The buck was clearly a juvenile, velvety buds for horns, his head bobbing as he took one guarded step after another. He would pause and swing his head around alertly. Freeze. Move forward a few more steps and then stop again. Finally, the little buck made it to the edge of the stream, where he dipped his muzzle in the water.
It was a calm scene. Jonquille remained just as still as he did. He kept all movements slow as he rubbed sensitive bristles on her soft skin. Drawing the energy from her shouldn’t be difficult, not when he could direct it the way he could. He considered how to do it. The mechanics of it.
The juvenile buck raised its head abruptly, water streaming from its velvety muzzle. Instinctively, Rubin turned his body slightly to shield Jonquille’s with his much larger one. “Slide back into deeper bush.” He mouthed the command against her ear.
Jonquille slipped out from under his shoulder and off the rock noiselessly, her hand sliding inside her jacket to retrieve a weapon. Eyes on the deer, Rubin reached with all of his animal senses to scan the entire area for threats. A few minutes earlier the surrounding woods had been devoid of all enemies. He couldn’t detect a human presence, but there was definitely the whisper of danger.
The presence of the bobcat had only been recent, just the last season. There had been no indication of any larger cats, but to Rubin the threat felt feline. Not the bobcat, although certainly a bobcat was capable of bringing down a deer. This felt much more ominous. Cougars were beautiful animals and ones he respected, but they were also pure killing machines. One didn’t see them until it was too late.
He kept his gaze fixed on the nervous buck. The animal took a long time to settle before it went back to drinking water. The wind ruffled the leaves on the trees, and a silver beam scattered across the forest floor. On that breeze came a subtle scent of feral. It came and went as fast as the shifting of the clouds overhead, an ominous portent of what might be hidden in the bushes, waiting to strike at the unwary.
Rubin looked with the eyes of a bird into the bushes along the ground beside the trail leading to the water. It took a long time, long enough for the young buck to settle down and decide he was safe, before Rubin spotted the long body of the cat lying motionless beneath the sweeping branches of the red spruce fanning out on the ground right on the game trail leading to the water. The cat was completely covered by the maze of broken limbs and in the shadows, waiting for her unsuspecting prey. Clearly, she had stalked the young buck down to the clearing and was now awaiting his return.
Rubin felt the little shiver go through Jonquille’s body as the deer turned from the stream and began his careful prancing back to the game trail to enter the cooler shadow of the trees, where he felt safer. Being in the open clearly made him nervous. He would stop and look around him, his head up alertly, looking in every direction. He never looked at the one spot he should have. He passed the cougar without so much as glancing her way.
The cat remained absolutely still. Rubin and Diego, as young children growing up on the mountain and providing for their family, had often sat high in the branches of the trees, observing wildlife and the way they hunted. Learning those same skills. The female cat was on the thinner side. Rubin guessed that, like the little bobcat, she had kittens stashed somewhere, and she needed food to sustain herself. The cycle of life for animals could be brutal, just as it was for soldiers.
The cougar burst from beneath her shelter of branches when the young buck was about seventeen feet down the trail from her. She sprinted fast, covering the ground, muscles bunching beneath her fur, driving with her back legs as she leapt into the air. She caught at the back haunches of the buck as he ran, digging her claws in tight on either side, using her weight against him, dragging him to an abrupt halt. Sinking her teeth into his spine, she pulled at him as he fought back, bucking and swinging around in a desperate attempt to get her off.
The cat used her sharp claws to move up his body toward his neck, using her weight and muscle in order to get him down. The buck swung his head in an attempt to use his horns, turning his body in circles, rearing up to try to dislodge her, but careful to keep his feet. Instinctively, he seemed to know she would have the advantage if he was on the ground.
The mountain lion held on, patient as always. She was a new mother and desperate in her own way. She had to provide for herself and her young. Her next move brought her to the buck’s neck, where she sank her teeth deep and then flung her body to the side to drag his head around, in an effort to snap his neck. The buck tried to save himself, moving with her, but she was able to take him down.