“Worried I’ll steal your woman?” he teases before he starts back for the bunk house.
I roll my eyes and go back to the house. Caleb is in the living room.
“Did you get him?”
“Nah, I think I scared him off, though. Get to bed, no sleeping in on the ranch.”
“Yes, sir.”
I walk into the kitchen while Caleb scurries off to his bed. Once I hear him close his bedroom door, I grab a tumbler out of the cabinet and pour two fingers of whiskey into it.
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes, and will my body to get out of fight-or-flight mode. I take a pull from the glass, letting the amber liquid do its job.
I go back to my room, but I don’t know that I’ll sleep tonight.
The sun’s barely cresting over the hills when I step out of the house, the morning air crisp and laced with the faint smell of dew-soaked hay. My boots crunch against the gravel as I head toward the barn, the routine as ingrained in me as breathing.
Everything is overly quiet. There’s still the lowing of the cattle, the horses moving around, but there’s an absence of the pitter-patter of the dogs. By this time, the dogs are normally terrorizing the horses and cattle. I had made it a point to grab my nine-millimeter and holster it this morning. I may have scared that cougar off, but it didn’t mean he wouldn’t be dumb enough to come back.
But nothing.
“Shit.”
I call out for the dogs, but they don’t come running like they normally would. They’d be close to the house even if they got spooked last night.
As I walk to the different pens of quarantined cattle, I see that two of them have died in the middle of the night. With all the chaos of the cougar, I hadn’t thought to check any of them.
“Shit.”
I take a look throughout the pasture and see one of my older and biggest steer lying motionless. I blow out a breath and scurry over to the hazmat station that we had set up and throw on personal protective equipment.
I can feel it in my gut before I even see it. The air hangs heavy, thick with a sense of wrongness.
There he is—Big Red—my oldest, strongest steer. The backbone of my herd. His massive body lies crumpled in the dirt, twisted in a way that doesn’t seem real. His once proud, hulking frame is now lifeless, the deep crimson of his coat matted with blood and dirt. The marks are clear, the long, ragged slashes of a big cat’s claws across his hide, and the torn flesh where it went for his throat.
For a moment, all I can do is stand there, staring. My hands ball into fists at my sides, my breath coming short and shallow. Anger rises up in me like wildfire—anger at that damned cougar for daring to come onto my land, anger at myself for not protecting the herd, for letting this happen under my watch.
I’ve got to fight off illness, and now wild animals? What next, a drought?
Big Red wasn’t just any steer. He was a legend on this ranch, the kind you could rely on year after year. He kept the herd strong. His bloodline ran through so many of my cattle, and his semen was used in a lot of the cattle throughout Hicks Creek.
I crouch down beside him, running a hand over his flank. The fur is cold beneath my fingers, and I can feel the weight of it settle on my shoulders. My jaw tightens, and I force myself to take a deep breath. There’s no time to wallow. The herd’s spooked; I can hear the nervous lowing in the distance. If that cat comes back, it won’t stop with Big Red. I need to act, and I need to act now.
“I can’t find either of the dogs,” Caleb says as he jogs up behind me, fully dressed in the required protective equipment.
“I’ll send Benny out on horseback.” I curse under my breath, running a hand through my hair. “Have you seen Sutton yet this morning?”
“Haven’t seen her,” he says, glancing toward the small building nestled near the main house.
I nod, already moving. “I’ll go get her. I’ll send Tommy over to check on Frank. Might not hurt for someone to drive over. Whatever got ours might have gone after some of his. You can go with him, but you stay close.”
The gravel crunches under my boots as I jog toward the guest house. My mind’s racing, trying to piece together why I hadn’t heard that cat come back. Sutton’s stepping out onto the porch just as I reach the steps, her hair pulled back in a loose braid, her expression shifting from sleepy to alert the moment she sees me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, her voice steady but laced with concern.
“Two of the cows on the meds died overnight. And a cougar got into the pasture. Killed another.”
Her eyes widen, and she doesn’t waste a second. “I’m coming. I’ve heard of cougar sightings out here, but I know it’s rare. Once heard Department of Natural Resources would drop a couple to handle the deer population.”
