The Ridge

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.

The tiger roared. Tried to roar. The powerful sound died into a rasp and blood ran out of his mouth and onto his muzzle. Wesley Harrington, more than four decades devoted to these beautiful cats, felt the black rage again.

I will find whoever did this and tear his heart from his chest, kill him with my hands…

“Easy, Kino,” he murmured. “Easy.”

He was close now, about five feet away. Within range of the pole, but it would be a stretch, and he didn’t want to be off-balance. Another step, then. Two more. He needed to get this in where it would count, and he knew this cat and the cat knew him and there would be no problem with this, no problem at—

He’d just pressed the syringe to Kino’s rib cage when the tiger lunged. It was difficult for the cat—obscenely difficult, considering that Wesley had carefully approached from his left side, his wounded side, knowing that if the tiger did make aggressive movements, it would be harder for him to go left than right.

It was hard. His left foreleg twisted uselessly, shattered bone rolling in the shoulder socket, fresh blood pouring free, as he pushed off the ground entirely with his hind legs. For one second they were facing each other, the tiger’s lips peeled back to expose massive, bloodstained teeth and enraged eyes that glittered in the flashlight glow. Wesley saw the right paw rising, saw it coming, and even in the second before it hit him he was more dazzled than terrified. What an incredible show of power. This cat was dying, but he had risen up one last time, risen bold and brave and—

The impact caught him in the chest and threw him back toward the fence. The pole syringe and flashlight fell from his hands and he felt searing warmth and then he was down on his back and the dark trees wove overhead in the endless breeze, tendrils of fog drifting through the fences and out into the woods.

It had not been a full-strength blow. Far from it. A tiger did not need to use full strength, or even half strength, to kill a man.

Wesley got his chin onto his chest and looked down and saw the source of the terrible warmth that engulfed him. Kino had torn him open. In one swift strike, the cat had laid Wesley open from midchest to abdomen. The blood pulsed and pooled around him and he was glad that it was dark and he couldn’t see the wound any better.

Should’ve used the gun, he thought stupidly. Not even the dart gun— the real one. Should’ve just ended his misery. Because that cat is dying, and he is scared, and he knows that it was a human that did it.

Kino was up again, moving again. Coming toward Wesley. He let out a bellow, and Wesley, who knew more about cats than he did about people, understood. The cat was not coming to finish the job. The cat was sorry.

“I know,” Wesley said, or tried to say, but his tongue was leaden in his mouth and his jaw seemed locked. “Not you, Kino. Not your fault. You were scared. We were both scared.”

The cat’s noise had changed, shifting from the roars of agony and fear to the softer chuffing, the sound of friendship, of love, and Wesley could see that Kino was trying to reach him. Not to strike again, not to do harm. The tiger didn’t want to kill him, never had. It was scared, that was all, and an animal of such tremendous size and strength could kill quite accidentally when it was scared.

Kino fell again. The white on his muzzle was stained dark with blood. He tried to stand and couldn’t. Wesley said, “Not your fault, Kino. Not your fault.”

Still the cat tried to rise. Wesley dug his fingers into the grass and the dirt and dragged himself. Parts of him seemed to be trailing behind, but he did not look back. The tiger had gotten so close; all Wesley had to do was close the gap.