Leland drove them up the road to the ridge, pausing to let Jamie jump out to open and close the gate behind them, and then trundled the truck on a bumpy dirt road along the high ridge.
“Fun, huh?” asked Clay, smiling, his elbows resting on his knees, grime-traced hands loosely hooked together.
“Yes,” said Austin, enjoying the breezy air, the blue sky, the way he could lean back just a little bit and take in the view of grass and more grass that went on along the foothills as far as he could see, and the line of the horizon, where blue sky met green grass, triggered a painting urge, faint and faraway, but there.
When he leaned forward again, Clay was watching him, his eyes serious, as though he’d been studying Austin when Austin had been studying their surroundings.
“Get those binoculars out,” said Clay. “Leland is slowing down, so this must be where Jamie said Quint saw the mountain lion.”
“What do they look like?” Austin did as he was told and took out the binoculars, then stood up to hold them to his eyes.
“You will know it when you see it,” said Clay. “They’re tawny brown and long in the body.”
Even though Leland was going slow, it was bumpy going and hard to keep steady, so he had to pull the binoculars away. Then Austin heard Jamie tell Leland to stop.
When the truck became still, Austin braced himself against the truck cab, and started scanning toward the foothills, for even if he knew little about wild animals, it made more sense than to look along the grasses of the high prairie. Clay was at his side, holding the rifle in his other hand, close enough to bump against Austin, maybe by accident, maybe on purpose, and Austin knew he didn’t mind.
As Austin scanned the foothills, something came into sharp focus, moving, shifting against the rocks, leaping up and then down. The animal’s coat was tawny, just like Clay said, but there had been no way he could have prepared for the power of the animal, the shift of its body when it moved. The look in its brown eyes, as if it was fully aware it was being looked at but was too busy hunting, too busy being a mountain lion, to give over any of its energy to Austin.
“That’s it,” said Austin, taking the binoculars away from his face. He pointed to where he’d been looking. “I’m not sure how far away the animal is, but it’s in that direction.”
“Got it.”
If Austin expected that Clay would hold up the rifle, load it with bullets and start shooting, he was wrong, so very wrong.
“Turn the truck to the west,” said Clay, leaning to talk to Leland through the sliding window to the truck’s interior.
They both steadied themselves against the cab of the truck while Leland moved to point them in the right direction. Then he turned off the engine, and while the tick tick of cooling metal grew silent, the hush of the wind lifted, the scratch of grasses against each other, the low moan of the breeze through the crags in the rocks.
Clay rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing his tanned, corded forearms, and tipped his hat back on his head. Then he handed the box of cartridges to Austin, who held them with some trepidation, having never been this close to bullets before.
The box was a serious weight in Austin’s hand, unexpectedly dense, feeling lethal. As Clay withdrew the rifle from the canvas bag, he let the bag drop to the truck bed. Never once did he move quickly or shift the gun around like a toy. The entire while he handled it like what it was, a deadly weapon that could kill.
“Cartridge please,” said Clay, holding out his hand.
His eyes were intent, and the way he looked at Austin, it was not as if he was a stranger, but it made him look like Austin had never seen him before. So focused, his body drawn tight. He lifted his chin to relax his neck muscles, shrugged his shoulders, moved beneath his clothes like a lithe animal, readying himself to do battle.
Austin carefully placed the binoculars on the roof of the truck’s cab, then opened the box and withdrew a cartridge that was pointed at one end and round on the other and looked like it was made of brass and copper. As he watched Clay shift something on the rifle to reveal a space where the cartridge would go, Clay looked up at him from beneath the brim of his straw cowboy hat, his blue eyes perfectly serious, his face drawn and still.
“Put the box down—carefully—and check one more time for me, would you?”
“Sure,” said Austin, more excited, more worked up, than he had an explanation for. Putting the box down was like putting down an explosive collection of little bombs, and it was a pleasure to pick up the binoculars once more to scan the foothills.
“He’s still where he was,” said Austin.
“Point for me.”
Austin lifted his hand and, doing the best he could, moved his finger to just below his view in the binoculars, and then straightened his arm in the direction of the mountain lion.
“Okay.” Clay shifted, his weight moving the truck bed liner slightly. “Stand over there.”
Austin moved where Clay indicated, at the passenger side of the truck bed, while Clay was at the driver’s side of the truck bed. Slowly, though with the confident air of someone who had done this type of thing before, Clay braced his elbows on top of the truck cab and moved the scope on the rifle.
Now Austin had a perfect view, though it was strange to call it perfect because while they were dealing with a wild animal who might or might not have taken the risk to kill cattle or attack guests and horses, he was looking at Clay. At Clay’s profile beneath the shade of the brim of his straw cowboy hat. The way he relaxed his shoulders, took a breath, moved his neck to relax it, as well.
The stillness of Clay’s body created a stark outline against the rugged contours of the brown and green foothills. Some wind picked up the blond hairs that curled around Clay’s ear. The warmth of the sunlight flushed his cheeks. Overhead, a bird, maybe a hawk, though Austin didn’t know, swirled around on the warm updrafts.
Nothing distracted Clay from looking down that scope, and when he lifted his chin just a fraction, Austin’s whole body tightened, for he somehow knew the shot was coming. He heard a faint click and saw Clay tense into stillness at the same time. The bang of the rifle came after a hesitation of silence, and Clay’s body absorbed the blow of the butt of the rifle as the small, hard bang popped in Austin’s ears. A second later, metal twanged against rock. Clay’s ribs moved as he took a hard breath and lowered the rifle.
