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Despite the tragic situation, A
A
What did that leave, she wondered, her eye once again against the viewfinder. Suicide? A bit odd to do one's self in, in full gear in a saw grass swamp. Heart attack? Stroke? Drowning? Lots of ways to die. Suddenly A
Evening was settling into the canyon's bottom. Soon she'd be wasting film. Three pictures left on the roll. Careful not to disturb anything, A
There it was: another way to die. Oddly, the last and the first she had considered: lion kill. Claw marks cut up from Drury's clavicle to her chin. Puncture wounds-claws or teeth-made neat dark holes above the collarbone. A
For a long moment A
Now the lions would be hunted down and killed. Now every trigger-happy Texan would blast away at every tawny shadow that flickered in the brush. The government's bounty quotas on predators of domestic livestock would go up. Lions would die and die.
"Damn you, Drury," A
Steeling herself to accept the touch of dead flesh, A
Her light trained on the ground, she moved past the body. Above Drury's head were two perfect paw prints. Behind them several feet were two more. A
Soon stars would begin to appear in the silver-gray ribbon of sky overhead. Before the shadowy tracks vanished in the growing gloom, she clicked a couple pictures of the prints and one last shot of the body.
There was no more film; no more to be done till morning. Aware of how desperately tired she was, A
The vultures did not drop down in her wake to resume their meal. Evidently the big birds did not feed at night. A
Wearily, she wondered why the lion hadn't eaten more of its kill, eviscerated it as lions usually did. Something must have frightened it off. Perhaps a hiker unaware that less than fifteen yards away, a corpse lay in the grasses, a lion hunkered by. The canyon was closed but occasionally hikers did wander in.
Surely, in this dry season with game so scarce, the lion would return. It might be nearby, waiting. One of the forsworn gods' little jokes: to have A
A
To her surprise, she was hungry. Life reasserting its claim, insisting on its rights and privileges. There was probably food in Drury's pack but A
Sheila Drury, was she watching as well? A
Ghost stories from childhood crept uninvited into her thoughts and she found herself afraid to look toward the saw grass, afraid she'd see, not a lion, but a floating wraith.
With a physical shake of her shoulders, A
Those nights, she remembered, she'd prayed for a ghost- a voice, a touch, anything. There was nothing then. And nothing now. Except a hungry night and, perhaps, a hungry lion.
Darkness closed on this rattling of thoughts. Overhead, the stream of stars grew deeper. Cold air settled into the canyon, flowed around her where she sat, knees drawn up,.357 by her side, staring into the melting mirror of the pool.
At some point A
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WlNClNG at the sting of water in the paper-thin saw grass cuts on her hands and arms, A
In New York she'd lain for hours in the tub in the kitchen of a five-floor walk-up in Hell's Kitchen making pictures from the water stains on the ceiling and waiting for Zach to come home and make the wait worth her while.
Always he came home. Sometimes he made love to her. Sometimes he didn't.
Rogelio always did. Whether she wanted him to or not. A
Piedmont sat just outside the bathroom door. His eyes glowed red in the light of the single candle. His thick, yellow-striped tail was curled neatly over his forepaws. Piedmont liked the sound of ru
The cat closed his eyes: going into his river trance.
A