He watched the patch of alligator juniper in his scope until the cat emerged again, undoubtedly too far this time. Pete lumbered up into a clearing above the trees then gained the top of the ridge, his black figure sharpened by the graying eastern sky behind him as he disappeared over the other side.
It was perhaps five o’clock, but Kevin gave no mind to this. He mounted up, to Bonny’s delight, and began the climb up the ridge and through the saddle. Sally was easily raised to a canter as she found a good game trail that led to the saddle.
“You love me when it comes to chasing cats, don’t you, old bitch?”
When they’d crested the ridge, Kevin stopped his mule and called Bonny back. Staying mounted, he made a quick sweep with his glasses of the canyon below. He worked to calm himself as he knew the chance of a reasonable shot at the cat was high in the next half hour.
They moved down the lee side of the hill at a fair pace, Bonny all the way indicating a strong trail, and Kevin on ready with his palm on the rifle butt. They bottomed out again, and again gained the top of the next ridge—still, no Pete.
“You still have him?” he asked the dog. “You still on his scent?”
It was heavy dusk when they’d reached the four-strand barbed wire fence that marked the New Mexico state line, and Kevin realized then that a decision had been made without his having to think about it. The little heeler dog had never lost old Pete’s trail, but the old tom had picked up his pace, and it was clear they would not catch him before dark. There was a good chance, though, that Kevin could find the cat at dawn and with some luck could marshal a decent shot at him. Opportunities of a lifetime happened only once, and Kevin, young though he was, understood this intuitively.
Under the waning light, he looked back the way he had come but could no longer see the bald ridge where they had parked the trucks. The new moon, he remembered, had just begun and would offer only a crevice of reflected light to find the way back. Then his being able to find the vehicles and get there before the rest decided to leave was dubious at best. No, the decision had been made for him to spend the night.
He had water enough in the half-gallon canteen tied to Sally’s saddle horn, and the mule had watered three times at various tanks that day. He was surprised to find a plastic bag filled with about a half pound of homemade jerky in one of the side bags, the saliva under his tongue gathering as he opened the bag, the smell of the peppered venison rising to meet his nostrils. Bonny sat at his feet, apparently resigned that the chase was over for the day.
“Hey there mutt,” Kevin said to her. “I guess there’s enough here for both of us.”
Kevin knew they would worry, mount a search, be livid when they finally reconnected, but he also knew this transgression to be forgivable, a small fault when one backed up a step or two and really looked at it.
Two hours later and four miles west of where Kevin was camped, the men began to wait, then to worry. They’d gotten back to the trucks and trailers just before 6:00 o’clock expecting to find both kids, but neither was anywhere in sight. Amanda’s deer had been boned, the meat cut into strips and packed in a large pillowcase, the hide and head bundled in the truck next to the meat, but the girl was not around. The men discussed the possibilities, then waited in silence. Mild concern turned to worry and they mounted up and began a quarter mile circle around the perimeter of the parked vehicles, calling out the kids’ names the whole while.
After two hours of this, they quit their calling. Under a thin slice of just-risen moon, they sat their mounts in silence. The horses and mules under them, exhausted and footsore, snuffled and clomped their hooves in the dirt. By turns the last hour, each animal had barn soured, jerking its head and making feints toward the trucks.
The click of O.D.’s pin light broke the silence as he held it to his watch. “Eight-thirty,” he said to no one in particular. “I’m just about sure them kids is onto that tom cat. That good mix bitch probably hit a strong scent and those two just took after her.” He’d arrived at this theory two hours before and had mentioned it a half dozen times since.
Monahan shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Could be. I just can’t see Mandi going off like that. She’s not done that sort of thing before.”
“I can see Kevin doing it,” Mondy spoke up.
“Me too,” Tom said.
They were quiet a moment, and all understood it was the rancher’s turn to speak. “Well,” he said finally, “she likes old Kev well enough to follow him, I guess.”
Another silence, this one quite uncomfortable, while all waited for John to speak again, which he did: “I sure don’t know what I’ll tell her mother, though.”
“Amen to that,” Tom said.
Though the men talked a few minutes about what next to do, three of them had already decided that to look and call any more that night was futile. They would return home, where they would alert the sheriff’s office and spend a sleepless several hours before they came back next morning, perhaps with a Cochise County deputy or two, maybe some search volunteers.
But Mondy had stayed silent as the decision was hatched. He had set his mind far earlier to the course he would take when he had strapped his bedroll behind the gelding’s saddle.
When the rest realized his intent, Tom spoke up. “You ready to pay me for that old horse if you end up busting a leg on him kicking around in this dark?”
“You think I wouldn’t?”
“Look, Mondy,” Tom said. “Those kids are perfectly capable of surviving a night alone in the hills.”
“And they’ve got that jerky and plenty of water,” John added. “That boy had on a lined chore jacket and Mandi has a down coat. Even if it hard freezes again tonight, they’ll be fine.”
But Luna was unmoved. “You guys got people to go back to,” he said. “I don’t. Not really. If I go back to Douglas, I’ll just end up at the Red Barn getting drunk. I don’t want to do that.”
“Now us and the sheriff’s department’ll have three fools to worry about out here,” O.D. said.
Mondy brought old Turk around and started him toward the east. “I’m an Indian, remember.”
“A fat Indian,” O.D. pointed out.
“Can you see your dick to pee lately?” Luna came back.
“Okay,” Tom broke in. “If you want to stay out here, it’s your own damn foolish decision. But if you don’t find those kids before ten o’clock tomorrow, meet us back at the holding corral and tell us what’s going on.”
“Will do,” Mondy said. “Thanks for the use of old Turk here, Tom.”
“Mind where he steps, like I told you.”
About an hour later, Mondy had picked his way to his intended destination. He’d made a cold camp, for no reason other than he felt no need for a fire, on a grassy saddle overlooking a long tree-crowded basin he and Kevin had hunted a number of times before. Though he was playing a hunch, the decision to go there had been driven by reason as well. If old Pete was on the prowl in the area, that basin served as a good gateway to both New Mexico and Sonora.
Mondy ate the extra burrito he’d saved and for a long while sat on the saddle overlooking the basin. He could see only the edge of the next small ridge opposite him and the general shape of the Escrobarra beyond that. Before he made his bed, he lit a cigarette, drew on it a few times then crushed it out before it was half burnt. He was thinking of a prayer, one based in his Catholicism, but the words came to him in the old language, and he began to say it. Perhaps his aim was some effect he’d only intuited at the moment, perhaps to give the prayer a kind of resonance and subtlety it deserved. Kevin McNally was his best friend, and his worry for the boy struck as deep, he felt, as that of anyone involved. Suddenly, he was visited by a passing regret that he’d not thought to go back