“You are liable to burst,” Evelyn teased. She set the pot down and leaned against her saddle. “A good night’s rest and you’ll be as frisky as a colt come morning.”
“If we are alive.”
“You chew at a bone until there is nothing left.”
“I do not eat bones.”
Evelyn laughed. “That is a white expression.” She picked up the Hawken and the pot and stood. “You finish eating. I will be right back. I am going to wash this.”
“Do not leave me alone.”
“I am only going to the stream. I can see you from there.” Evelyn turned to go and the girl jumped up.
“Take me with you.”
Evelyn shrugged. “If you want. But you will be fine here.”
Bright Rainbow quickly scooted to her side. “I never want to be alone again,” she said.
Evelyn strolled into the high grass. To the west the sun was going down and the sky was streaked with pink, red, and yellow. “It will be dark soon,” she mentioned.
“That is when the Devil Cat will come.”
“How many times must I tell you? Mountain lions don’t stay put in one spot. They thin out the game and move on.”
“What if there is a lot of game?”
Evelyn had to remind herself to go easy with her. “When was the last time you saw the Devil Cat?”
“When my father was killed.”
“Then what are you worried about? Besides, we’ll have a fire. We’ll see it if it tries to sneak up on us.”
“The fire will not help. The Devil Cat is not like other cats. You cannot see it in the dark.”
“Why not?”
“The Devil Cat is black.”
Evelyn stopped cold in her tracks. She remembered the black animal she took for a black bear. “Surely not,” she said out loud.
“What?” Bright Rainbow asked.
“Nothing,” Evelyn said. But a seed of worry took root.
Chapter Sixteen
Nighttime in the Rocky Mountains. The temperature dropped and the wind bent the treetops. It was the second night of the full moon, and with the moon’s rising a cacophony of bestial roars and howls ripped the wilds. A lady from the East once told Evelyn that it sounded like hell unleashed. Ordinarily, the dark and the wind and the cries hardly bothered her—when she was safe and snug in the family’s cabin. But to be out in the bedlam, to be sitting by a fire in a small ring of light in the middle of all that vast black sea of savagery, to be alone except for the company of a little girl while a legion of meat-eaters prowled and slew and yowled, was enough to raise goose bumps on Evelyn’s skin and for her to keep the Hawken in her lap and a hand on one of her pistols.
The whites of Bright Rainbow’s eyes were showing as she nibbled at a piece of pemmican. She raised her head at every nearby yip and bleat. “The Devil Cat is out there. I know it.”
“Will you stop?” Evelyn was tired of hearing about it. She had been worried about the black animal she saw all afternoon and evening, but it had not bothered them.
“We should have gone to my hole,” Bright Rainbow said. “It is under a boulder and there is room for two.”
“How is it the Devil Cat did not go in after you?”
“I do not know,” Bright Rainbow said. “Maybe it did not see my father push me in.”
“We do not need to hide in your hole. I will not let anything happen to you,” Evelyn vowed.
“My father always said the same.”
Evelyn helped herself to pemmican. She imagined that by now Dega had reached her parents and they were flying to help her. The thought put her a little more at ease.
Bright Rainbow went to take another bite. “Look!” she whispered, and pointed.
Eyes were staring at them from the woods. Evelyn started to snap the Hawken to her shoulder and stopped. The eyes were small and round, not big and slanted. “A deer, I think.”
Neither of them moved. The eyes blinked a few times and melted into the vegetation.
“See?” Evelyn said.
Bright Rainbow let out a long breath. “I was scared.”
“You have to stop doing that to yourself,” Evelyn advised. “How about if we do something to take your mind off the cat?”
“What?”
Evelyn hadn’t brought cards or a book. “We could tell stories. I was on a buffalo hunt not long ago and scalp hunters came after us.” She stopped. On second thought, that was almost as frightening as talking about the cat.
“Scalphunters?”
“They take hair for money.” Evelyn bit into the pemmican, sorry she had brought it up. She chewed, and suddenly stopped in midbite. Another pair of eyes was staring at them—or
“What is wrong?” Bright Rainbow turned, and gasped. Dropping her pemmican, she scuttled to Evelyn’s side and gripped her arm. “The Devil Cat! It must be.”
“It could be any mountain lion or a bobcat,” Evelyn said, trying to set her at ease. But the eyes were too big for a bobcat, and the odds of another mountain lion having the same range as the one that killed the girl’s family were slim.
“It is the Devil Cat,” Bright Rainbow insisted in stark fright. She dug her fingers into Evelyn’s arm. “We must flee.”
Evelyn glanced at Buttercup. She would have to turn her back to the cat to throw on the saddle, and she wasn’t about to do that. “We will sit still. It is bound to go away.”
Bright Rainbow whimpered.
The eyes went on glaring.
Evelyn shifted uneasily. She considered shooting. She might hit it. Then again, she might not, and if she only wounded it, it might attack.
“What is it waiting for?”
“Hush.” Evelyn grasped the unlit end of a burning brand and stood. Holding it aloft, she took several steps toward the eyes. They stayed where they were.
“Don’t!” Bright Rainbow pleaded.
“Stay put,” Evelyn commanded, and darting forward, she hurled the brand. It landed short of the woods. Instantly, the grass caught and flared, casting light several feet but not far enough to reveal the cat. In a flash the eyes were gone. Evelyn ran over, but beyond the fading light was ink black save for patches where moonbeams penetrated the canopy. Thwarted, she stamped out the flames before they spread and ignited the woods.
Bright Rainbow was only a few feet away. “You scared it off!” she exclaimed in awe.
“The fire did.” Evelyn clasped the girl’s hand and backed away from the trees.
“You are very brave to do what you did.”
“Fire nearly always scares an animal off.”
“I was afraid,” Bright Rainbow said.
“So was I,” Evelyn confessed. She bid the girl sit and added limbs to the fire so it blazed higher. It would be a long night, she reflected. She didn’t dare fall asleep or the fire would die and the cat would be on them. She decided to put coffee on, only that required more water.
“Listen,” Bright Rainbow said.
The valley had fallen quiet. From off over the peaks came a few howls, but the valley itself was eerily
