Puma

By T. L. Gragg

In 1970 a program was initiated to restock one of America's deadliest and most efficient predators back into the wilds of South Carolina.

This predatory restocking program, organized by a well-intentioned group of environmentalists and a university biologist unwittingly unleashed a lawless, unmerciful, and remorseless scourge on a low country com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flat River Rock Publishing Co.
• Release date: Mar 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9780979457227

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©2008, Ted L. Gragg.

All rights reserved worldwide. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Cover/Interior design by Judi Lynn Lake

ISBN 978-0-9794572-0-3

ISBN 978-0-9794572-2-7 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

Flat River Rock Publishing Division

MBISR, Inc.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

843.293.4344

[e-mail]

www.flatriverrockpublishing.com

…be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

—I Peter 5:8

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Some names of geographic features that would appear on a map are correct. Some governmental organization names are recognizable in keeping with the geographic location of the story. All of the characters as well as the names of businesses mentioned in this book are fictitious and have no relationship with anyone living or dead.

Imagination, hunting tales, a few events, low-country lore, Southern dialect, and the open-eyed wonder of a small child were the inspirations for the story.

For Connie

Contents

Prologue

Survival

Rab Miller

Victims

Initial Discovery

The Lawman

Unknown Fear

Biology & the Beast

Bloodbath

Eggs, Friends & Introspection

Scores

Instincts

Crime & the Press

The Child

Ambushes & Encounters

Ghosts, Shots & Elations

Part II

Southern Fried

Ruffles

Search & Destroy

A Reckoning

Battle

Recovery & Retribution

Epilogue

About The Author

Prologue

It was the worst storm of the century to strike the Carolina coast. The winds had risen before dawn and swept fiercely into the forest. Ancient trees swayed and bent under the wind’s onslaught. Limbs began to break and splinter. The forest was full of sound that heralded the storm’s fury. Daylight was long in coming.

She had fed well the past evening and slept for several hours beside the deer’s carcass.

The change in the barometric pressure as the huge storm approached had awakened her. Silently she stood, slowly moving her head to the right, pausing, then back to the left, scenting the wind, tasting the air, sensing her surroundings. One of her ears twitched. She listened. The late night sounds of the forest were missing. Everything was quiet. She leaned forward, nose thrust out, nostrils quivering. A spasm occurred in a series of muscles along her shoulders causing the tawny fur to ripple at the back of her neck.

The wind moaned in the distance. She was not familiar with the wind’s intense sound. Even during the peak of thunderstorms common in the Carolina summers, the wind had a textured, even feel. But this was different—unearthly, uncommon. In her five years of living, she had not experienced this difference. She stretched and warily moved toward the river, the salt-thirst from the blood of her kill driving her toward the water.

Reaching the riverbank she paused behind a screen of brush, and eased her large face through the leaves. She waited, watching, poised, tense, listening…and still the wind moaned eerily. Small waves generated by the wind’s activity as it passed over the wide river lapped against the shore. Assured that there was no lurking danger, she stepped out of the screening brush to the rivers edge in silent quickness. Her long whiskers brushed the river’s surface as she lapped water. With her thirst sated, she turned and was up the bank before a startled whippoorwill could cry. She gained the safety of the forest and tried to relax as she moved, belly close to the ground, but the unnatural wind kept her tense and ill at ease. It was intensifying.

A primordial urge forced her to seek cover. She trotted, walked, and trotted again, always cautious, moving before the incoming storm until she found the cover she sought in an abandoned beaver’s lodge that rested in a dried streambed. She nosed around the lodge, circled it, leapt six feet to the top of the tangled mass of limbs, and poised, listening, studying her surroundings, seeking safety. There was no real threat. There was only the imagined threat borne by the wind that became more intense, hurling leaves and debris through the forest as it moaned through the trees.

She bounded from the top of the heap that was the lodge to the forest floor. She circled the lodge until she located the old opening to the shelter. Warily she crept through the opening and into the body of the old beaver lodge. It smelled musty, a lingering smell of aging and molding plant matter and small rodent droppings that spoke of years of disuse. The lodge had not been occupied for some time. The solid walls of debris piled up by the beavers long ago would hold firm against the storm and soften the howl of the wind. The old lodge satisfied her need for shelter, relaxing and calming her.

She circled the interior twice and lay down upon the floor, rolled to her side, and wrapped her long tail along side her body. Her breathing eased and her body was still except for the tip of her tail, which twitched each time her heart beat. And all was quiet…except the wind.

The forest was a bedlam of noise as the storm continued unabated with sustained winds exceeding ninety miles an hour. This was a force five hurricane. The wind tore at the lodge, howling, pounding, pushing against the lodge walls and flowing over its rounded top. The air was filled with debris flung before the wind. Limbs, torn from the forest trees, were blown against the shelter as if to pound their way through to the interior. The big cat moaned with each blow against her hiding place. She couldn’t rest. The screams of the wind made her restless, uneasy.

By midday, the eye of the storm was approaching land. Everything quieted. The bedlam in the forest from the bending and cracking trees and whistling debris had stopped. Fatigued from the fear of the storm, this new unknown, the big cat slept.

An hour passed. Then the wind began to sigh through the forest again as the rear wall of the storm neared land with the passing of the hurricane’s eye. Unknown to her, a more deadly peril than the wind was fast approaching, relentlessly seeking out her hiding place.

The beavers of long ago had fashioned their lodge in the midst of a tributary stream or runoff to the river. The lodge opening was small, just barely large enough to allow the big cat to belly-crawl into the interior. At the time of its construction, the bottom half of the lodge had been underwater, with the underwater entrance on the bottom of the streambed to allow safe passage for the small mammals. Now, with passage of the eye of the hurricane, the storm surge had forced a huge tidal swell of water up through the mouth of the river on the coast. The water, pushed by the intense winds, created a back flow up the river reaching miles inland from the seacoast. This huge wall of water inundated the river’s flood plain, forced open the ancient blocked channel to the dry streambed, and created a flash flood that filled the old watercourse further upriver. This massed wall of water rushed down the dry streambed upon the ancient beaver lodge.

The cougar awoke. Water was rapidly filling the lodge. On her feet now, she lunged upward, staying above the crest of water as the daylight that had marked her exit from the lodge disappeared. She plunged for the way out, desperately seeking the opening, completely underwater now. She clawed the stick walls of the lodge, shoving, frightened, the fundamental urge for survival taking charge. Finding the opening, she fought against the incoming current of the rushing water, clawing, gasping, lungs bursting, surging upward until she broke through the surface of the flood.

Rain pelted her face. With her mouth open, she gasped for air and was then plunged beneath the flood by the surging current; back again on the surface, fighting, fighting, only her reserve strength holding her afloat, she was swept along with the raging water.

A huge cypress tree gave way before the storm and crashed into the water just ahead of her. She swiped at one of its limbs with her paw and gained a toehold on the tree, lifted herself from the water, and scrambled along the tree’s trunk to high ground. The wind-driven rain lashed her and stung through her thick pelt. She looked anxiously around for a tree, something to climb, anything that was higher than the incoming flood.

She sprang toward a large pine tree, leapt upward six feet or so, and hung on to the trunk. She sank her claws deeper into the soft bark and pushed mightily with her hind legs to gain height on the tree, clinging to it, withstanding the brunt of the storm.

She heard the crack of a limb close by and felt a blow to her body as the wind drove the splintered branch through the air. Moments passed before she realized that the pain coming from her left shoulder was from the nine-inch raw splinter that jutted from her body. She tilted her head back and screamed from the white-hot pain that swept through her, screamed again, lost her hold on the pine tree, and fell unconscious to the ground.

She awoke several hours later from the warmth of the morning sun. The pain in her shoulder was intense. Twisting her head, she could see the huge sliver of wood that hung from her shoulder. She caught it in her teeth and jerked at it despite the intense pain, gnawing at the splinter until it dislodged amidst a gout of blood and a blinding flash of pain.

As the pain subsided, she drifted into an exhausted sleep.

SURVIVAL

ONE DAY LATER the big female cougar awoke. The wound in her shoulder had clotted and closed, but now her body was wracked with thirst. She heard the lapping of the river, knew that she was close to water, and dragged her body down the bank and drank. She rested by the water for a time enjoying the coolness before creeping back into the shadows along the riverbank where she slept again. She slept the entire day and through the night, awakening only once from the pain created when she had rolled over onto her wounded shoulder. She had shifted her position in the sheltering undergrowth that grew in the edge of the forest at the top of the bank overlooking the river. Her sleep was tormented by re-occurring mental remembrances of the fear of the storm and the pain of the pine splinter entering her body. She shivered momentarily and continued to sleep. Her body systematically fought the infection that coursed through her bloodstream from the healing wound. There had not been a need for food, only water to quench the raging temperatures that accompanied the wounding and the healing process. So she slept through the second night.

The fisherman tied his one-man boat to an overhanging branch. Satisfied that the slipknot would hold, he stepped from the boat to the shore and climbed the bank. He gathered twigs and pine straw for kindling and started a small cooking fire. After making sure that the ground around the fire was free of debris, he added larger limbs to the burning mound of twigs until he was satisfied with the heat of the fire. Then he stepped back down the bank to the boat, lifted the lid of the live well, and extracted two pan-size bass from the morning’s catch.

The smoke from the cook fire awakened her. She lifted her head, scenting the wind, and saw the fisherman as he stepped from his boat with the two fish. She watched, intent now as all cats are to movement, interested in what the man-beast would do next.

The fisherman chose a place on the shore just a few steps from his boat. He knelt and began cleaning the fish. First he scaled them, then he plunged the knife’s blade into the anal opening of the fish and cut forward, allowing the entrails to drop and hang from the head as he stripped the gills from the fish.

She scented the fresh blood. Her body tensed. It had been almost three full days since she had fed last. She slid forward, not placing much weight on the injured shoulder, until she rested just yards above the kneeling fisherman.

He cleaned the second fish and started to rise to his feet. He heard a sound and started to turn in its direction just moments before he died. Her claws caught his face at the corner of his mouth and ripped through the triangularis and masseter muscles removing the lower part of his face from his skull, tearing apart the larynx, and severing the common carotid artery. At the same time, her crushing jaws and huge canines bit deeply into the soft fleshy area between the neck and shoulder, cutting through the cervical vertebrae, severing the spinal cord, and breaking the fisherman’s neck.

She dropped the bleeding body onto the riverbank and began to lap the blood spurting from the neck wound. Soon she began to feed on the carcass, ingesting scraps of clothing as well as the warm flesh beneath. After feeding awhile, her hunger satiated, she covered the carcass with debris to mark her kill and protect it from scavengers and birds. Quietly she eased back into the border of the forest where she could watch over her kill. Later, she would feed again.

Fanny’s voice over the telephone was concerned.

No, Joe didn’t come home today. Usually he’s back from the river and washing out that old boat by suppertime. Something is wrong. No, I called the hospital just in case. He hasn’t been there.

What time did you say he left today? asked the voice on the other end of the line.

Sometime around six this morning. I was barely awake. It’s after dark now, and he’s not home. And there’s so much debris everywhere from that storm. He shouldn’t be out on the river now. No, he doesn’t drink or play around. He’s a good man, just sort of a loner. Fanny answered in response to the dispatcher’s questions about the missing man’s habits. He just likes to fish and hunt.

Where does he go on these outings? inquired the dispatcher

Why, up the Pee Dee River, of course. Yes, the Big Pee Dee. He usually puts the boat in either at Punch Bowl or Yauhannah Landing.

Normally, Mrs. Porter, we don’t list anyone as a missing person until they have been gone for twenty-four hours. The dispatcher rapidly typed in the missing man’s name on her keyboard. In the background she could hear the computer whirling as it accessed the main data bank of the South Carolina Highway Patrol. The information appeared on her screen: Joseph NMI Porter. DOB 10-29-1948. RES 200 Plantation Drive, Bucksport SC 29529. Record 0 SCDL01408993. 95 Ford PU Blu 487FYP 2002. 99 Sed Buick Rd 316NRA.

No, something’s wrong! He would have called if he was going to be late. He has a phone in the truck. Fanny’s voice became more strident, more insistent. How old is he? He’ll be fifty-five next month. No, he’s never been hospitalized or even very sick. And we’ve been married twenty-eight years. I just know something’s wrong. I can feel it!

Which vehicle is your husband using, Mrs. Porter? asked the dispatch operator.

The blue pickup. And he’s pulling an old one-man boat and trailer, Fanny answered, never realizing that the dispatcher’s question should have made her aware that her husband’s information was being read by the dispatcher during the conversation.

Your husband is probably tied up to the riverbank somewhere either resting or on the way home. Why don’t you wait a couple of hours and call me back if Mr. Porter doesn’t show up. Meanwhile, I’ll alert our patrol shifts to keep an eye out for him. Just about all of the officers are working extended shifts because of the storm. If your husband’s on the road, one of them will spot him and send him on home. Don’t worry too much, you know how men are! And with that, the female dispatcher ended the conversation.

The distraught wife’s call had been captured by the tape recorder that monitored and recorded every incoming call on the County Police’s emergency line. The dispatch operator, a fifteen-year veteran to the calls generated by frightened wives searching for errant husbands and mothers looking for tardy teenagers, followed standard operating procedures. She flicked the transmit button over on her microphone and registered a Bolo, or all points bulletin on the air.

Attention all units. Be on the alert for a dark blue, 1995 Ford pickup, S.C. license number 487 FYP, that’s foah aight seven Foxtrot Yankee Papa. Should be pulling a boat trailer. Possible missing person. Vehicle registered to a Joseph No Middle Initial Porter Junior, 200 Plantation Drive, Bucksport, South Carolina. Last seen around 0600 hours this morning.

The forest filled rapidly with the inky black of the Carolina night. A male cicada rapidly vibrated his drum-like membrane on his abdomen, sending a call out across the forest that was instantly answered by scores of other male cicadas. The continued buzzing sound permeated through the dark forest. The female cougar lay on the warm ground, resting, listening to the night sounds. She heard the soft slither of a large snake close by and the resounding plop as it slid into a rainwater pond left by the receding flood from the storm. Her shoulder throbbed. She tried to reach the wound by twisting her head down and around but the burning was too far to the back of the shoulder to reach. She rolled onto her side and the pain bit deeply into her mind. She began to pant, tongue lolling from her mouth, and saliva forming on her lips. She gasped against the pain and rolled heavily on the shoulder trying to massage the hurt against the ground.

Finally the wound opened, seeped, and bled, and she slept, instinctively knowing that the wound was cleansing itself. Tomorrow she would feed again on her kill.

She awoke to the cry of a blue jay. A mist hovered among the trees and over the ground of the river swamp. She sat up and noticed that the pain in her shoulder wasn’t as excruciating as before, more like muscle stiffness now. She stood up, dizzy for a minute, mentally searching for the moment, steadying her body. She lifted her head, scenting the air, listening, all of her being attuned to the moment, the huntress awakening. Still weak, she crawled out from beneath her cover, lay in the warm sunlight, and slept again.

She slept most of the day, awakening just at dusk. The sky was fading into a bluish gray and the underbrush along the river extended its shadows onto the muddy brown water of the river. She eased from her hiding place and stretched, deeply arching her back as only a cat can, reaching forward with her huge paws and pulling the soft earth with her claws.

A slight evening breeze wafted the still fresh blood scent of the fisherman to her. She tilted her head slightly to catch the wind, savoring the scent, awakening her hunger again. She moved toward the riverbank and the meal that she had saved for this later time. The sound of a distant boat motor caused her to pause and listen, head turned down river. The noise faded into the distance and the silence was broken only by the lapping of the river water against the shore, the wailing call of a loon on the far side of the river, and the hooeee sound made by a hoot owl beginning his evening hunt. A slight scent, something musty in the air from the direction of her kill, alerted her. She caught sight of a subtle movement near the water’s edge as she stepped warily down off the riverbank onto the sand.

A booted leg ending mid-thigh just above the knee lay on the shore next to a long olive drab shape with two yellow eyes protruding from the top of its head. The scaly nine-foot monster opened its cavernous jaws and hissed at the startled cougar. The big cat froze in her tracks. Lunging forward, the alligator grabbed the leg, jerked it savagely back and forth until it parted from the remains of the fisherman’s corpse; with the severed leg protruding from its jaws, it slid back into the water.

She just stood there, stunned by the size of the lizard-like thing that she had encountered. Then he was back again, rising out of the dark water on stubby legs, approaching the remaining food in her cache, slashing his ugly ridged tail from left to right, and daring her to do anything about his raid. This time he bellowed through open jaws laced threateningly with yellow-stained teeth. She slunk down, subservient, sensing the immediate danger from the reptilian beast and waited. The alligator scattered the remnants of brush covering the fisherman’s body, jerked and pulled at the remains of the torso and the left leg until the entire gory mess separated, rolled over with the carcass in its jaws, and disappeared back into the dark water leaving just a severed foot on the shore.

A bullfrog croaked somewhere in the near shadows. The puma snarled—just once—short and savage-like to ease her frustration, then turned and leapt to the top of the bank. It was time to leave. A small aggravating pang of hunger reminded her of the meal that she had missed.

So she moved on, slowly, listening to the forest, heading downriver, no course in mind, just hungry. Her shoulder still pained her, nagging with each long step. Soon she would have to rest again.

RAB MILLER

RAB MILLER RUBBED the sleep from his eyes, wearily swung his booted feet off the facing chair that he had pulled up to create a sleeping platform, and sat up in the eerie red light generated by the lighted advertisement on the break room’s coke machine. He had done his sixteen hours on and eight off now for two shifts since the night of the storm. That was thirty-two hours of overtime at time and a half plus regular time for the other sixteen hours. The long hours made for a good-size paycheck this pay period. Many hours of overtime still lay ahead as the huge storm had wreaked havoc with the Cooperative’s power lines. The entire coast looked like a war zone: uprooted trees, shattered houses, shingles and debris everywhere, and half the county still without electric power.

Rab stretched his arms up over his head, arching his back, feeling the muscles loosen, and stifled a yawn. It was time for another sixteen, then home. By the time this shift was over, just about all of the customers served by the electric cooperative should be back on line.

He stood up and looked out the windows toward the service bays where his bucket truck was parked. Number 82 was his truck, the one with the smaller ‘cherry picker’ bucket on the back, the only one-man truck on the lot. All of the others were bigger and required a crew of two to manipulate the larger, double-sized buckets on the extended booms. No problem. Rab liked working alone and had for almost eleven years. He exited the break room, stepped outside the building, and walked to his truck.

Rab opened the door of the truck, stepped up onto the running board, and swung into the driver’s seat. He checked his six in each of the side mirrors, turned the key over in the ignition switch, and let the engine idle, warming up. The green L.E.D. light on the radio blinked on, the oil pressure gauge showed a steady sixty pounds, fuel was good, and the battery indicator registered a full twelve volt charge. He eased the truck into gear and headed out of the gate of the company’s compound.

Dispatch, this is eighty-two reporting in, Rab said into the hand-held microphone whose curly cord stretched across the dashboard.

Hello, eighty-two. Looks like another day of downed wires and tripped fuses. How about working the River Road grid on this shift? There’re eight or nine homes back above the ‘Bowl’ that haven’t had their power restored yet. Dispatch’s voice crackled across the airwaves.

No problemo. Rab hoped that he sounded alert and cheery. Never knew who else was listening in on the company conversations. Who’s first on the hit list down there?

Pole number 739 is reported out. That’s sort of the end of that line on the River Road. Most of the time that one just trips the fuse during a big storm, but that transformer on it supplies a couple of other customers on down the road. Take that one first. Should be a quick fix.

Will do. Call you when I’m finished. Rab hung the microphone back on its dash hook.

He turned the green and yellow bucket truck off of the highway and onto the clay dirt road that led past the blue and white building marked Riverside Groc. Small tendrils of dust marked his passing along the roadway that bore the sign naming it the Sand Hole Road. He passed fewer and fewer houses along the way into the area known as the Bowl. Huge live oak trees stood beside the narrow roadway, their knurled limbs overhanging the right of way; evidence of the fury of the storm in the form of broken limbs, scattered leaves, and Spanish moss littered the roadbed. The undergrowth grew denser the farther the road led into the forest, and a dark stillness seemed to pervade the land.

Pole number 738 appeared, then 739 just a short one hundred and fifty yards farther down the road. A house sat back off the road, its driveway grown up in knee-high grass, and storm litter scattered about the bare-ground clearing that had served as a yard in the past. The dark windows of the house stared vacantly across the road and into the forest. The screen door slanted drunkenly on one remaining hinge.

House must belong to some red-necked peckerwood, mused Rab. Probably hasn’t been a soul around since sometime long before the storm.

He switched on the truck’s emergency strobes. The amber flashes cast an even more appalling eeriness over the scene. Just in case there’s someone home, he thought as he strode toward the house. He stepped up onto the porch and rapped loudly on the doorframe. He waited. The dark windows remained empty. He knocked again, this time calling out, Anyone home?

Again, no answer. Just the quiet of the surrounding forest. He returned to the truck.

He noticed the fuse dangling from the transformer mounted on pole number 739.

Dispatch was right. There it hangs, just like he said. Rab peered up at the overhead transmission cables. The three ominous looking black wires that carried the 7200 volts along the road were intact here. A simple job. He only needed the eight-foot-long Hot Line Stick to shove the fuse back into place. Rab reached over and pulled the radio’s microphone from its dashboard hook, pressed the transmit button, and called the company dispatcher.

Eighty-two here. I am on pole 739. Appears to be just as you said. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes. I’ll call when I’m clear.

Roger, eighty-two. The radio was silent again.

She heard the electronic static of the radio before her array of olfactory sensors scented the lineman. Her hearing was acute and capable of detecting ultrasonic frequencies. She was well equipped for her role as a supreme predator. Her eyesight was binocular, giving her immense powers of visual acuity both at night and during the day. Her depth perception and her hearing were unequaled in the animal kingdom. She was in her prime, full of power and grace. Only the injury to her shoulder slowed her down. She had failed in an earlier attempt on a deer just hours past and the pangs of hunger were again gnawing at her stomach. She ate often. She was a big cat and weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds. She consumed about twenty-four hundred pounds of fresh meat annually and this didn’t count rabbits and other small rodents.

She had traveled eleven miles so far today and had slept fitfully during the early morning time, the pain in her shoulder jabbing her awake every time she twitched in her sleep.

The alligator had spoiled any attempt at a later meal by devouring the remains of the fisherman’s body yesterday evening. There had been nothing else to eat after that; just a morsel in the form of a land tortoise that she encountered along the way. It was late afternoon now. She was hungry, tired, sore, and ill tempered with no promise of relief or food.

Again she heard the crackle and the electronic voice of the radio. This was a new sound, something with which she wasn’t familiar. She paused in mid-stride, listening, scenting the air, searching mentally, cataloguing this new sound, seeking its source. Her rounded black-tipped ears moved independently, searching for the direction of the new sound, aiding in the sensory perception of the effort, enhancing and pinpointing the source. Ah, there it was. She had it. She turned left and began to move slowly, stealthily, belly low to the ground, using cover, approaching the sound until suddenly she froze, the man-beast scent finally filling her nostrils.

Rab hung the microphone up, opened the truck’s door, and swung to the ground. He walked around to the hydraulic control bar for the bucket at the rear of the vehicle and lowered the bucket boom down to the ground. He opened one of the vehicle’s toolbar doors, rummaged through the equipment inside, and drew out a pair of lineman’s rubber gloves.

Safety first, he thought as he donned his hard hat. Don’t need the rubber shirt sleeves for this, just the gloves, just in case. He pulled the gloves onto his hands, reached over into the truck bed, drew out the bright yellow Hot Line Stick, and leaned it against the white bucket at the end of the boom. He stepped up and over into the fiberglass bucket or ‘cherry picker’ and shoved the ‘up’ lever forward to lift the bucket into the air.

The big cougar panted as she watched the man high overhead. Only her eyes moved, alive with each motion that the man-beast made, only her eyes and sometimes the tip of her tail as she lay hidden beneath the old azaleas that made up the border of the barren yard that fronted the house with the lifeless windows. Idly, she extended one front paw out from under the bush and flexed her claws, sheathing and unsheathing the sharp talons that nestled half hidden between the four large toes of the paw.

Rab reached overhead with the eight-foot pole and reset the dangling fuse into the transformer by swinging the fuse up on its hinge and back into the contactor mounted below the transformer. He pressed the down button and the bucket began its descent, lowering the lineman to the ground.

The azalea bush exploded as the cat launched her attack, clearing thirty feet or so in one bound, striking the ground at the end of the broad-jump, and hurtling upward, reaching, claws extended, straining for the prey in the bucket of the aerial lift. The jump was high. She struck the side of the bucket when it was a good eight feet off of the ground and fell back to the earth. The force of her blow knocked the man-beast off his feet and he sat down heavily in the bucket that bounced and wobbled against the sky from the force of her assault. She shook her head to clear the dizziness from the blow and coiled again, muscles flexing, overcoming the shoulder pain, springing upward in a mighty leap that would carry her the dozen or so feet upward and into the bucket where she could plunge her teeth into the soft skin of the man-beast.

Rab hit the ‘UP’ lever with so much force that he bent it; the hydraulic lift responded, and the bucket swung out and up just as the cat leapt from the ground.

Her paws caught the edge of the bucket, claws extended, straining and stretching to get to the man-beast, her mouth open, and snarling and spitting in anger and frustration.

Rab could hear her hind feet raking the outside of the bucket as the mountain lion tried to climb into the bucket. He swung the yellow Hot Line Pole around and jabbed at the lioness with the butt end of the pole.

She was half into the bucket now. She swiped at the man-beast with a forepaw and struck his gloved hand just above the wrist, her long claws shredding the dark black skin as they raked across Rab’s hand. That’s when he hit her injured shoulder with the bright yellow stick. She screamed in frustration, in pain, and then lost her hold on the bucket and fell the fourteen feet or so to the ground.

Rab’s knees buckled, his legs trembled, and he sat down in the bucket high off the ground. He looked at his injured hand and watched the blood well up through the torn flesh and drip onto the floor of the bucket. When his legs felt like legs again instead of rubber, he put out a shaky hand to the edge of the bucket and drew himself up slowly, looking over the edge of the bucket for the cat.

She was there on the ground just beneath the bucket. She circled continuously, head up, just like a big house cat deprived of her favorite prey, mewing softly, staring at the man in the bucket, thinking it through, preparing another attack. In a moment she sprang into the bed of the truck. Closer now to the suspended bucket, she just stood there, looking at the hydraulic arm rising up out of the bed of the truck, then up at the bucket, and at the frightened man-beast who peered over the side of the bucket.

The lineman watched the cat. The cat’s fall had wrenched the Hot Line Stick from his grasp and it now lay on the ground alongside the truck. He was defenseless. The cat just stood there in the back of the truck among the coils of wire and anchor cable and stared first at him then the lift arm. She edged toward the lift and stood on her hind legs, stretching up, reaching, testing her strength against the metallic hardness of the hydraulic arm.

Could she climb it? Rab had no idea. But he was sure of one thing. She was going to try. He waved his arms and yelled. The cat just stared back insolently. Rab pushed the swing lever over to the left and the bucket and arm pivoted on its brace. The cat jumped back away from the moving lift arm. She snarled. Rab screamed. The cat opened her mouth wide and roared her disapproval. Rab screamed back, paused, and screamed again.

The puma lunged again at the pivotal bucket arm, trying desperately to get a claw hold on the slick steel surface, but her claws just raked down the metal, shrieking, leaving eight ugly gashes for several feet along the gleaming white surface. Rab hit the left to right lever again, swinging the bucket. Suddenly the bucket lurched downward toward the cougar, the hydraulics giving way for an instant. Rab’s heart froze as he watched the lion crouch lower, readying her body for the leap into the bucket. He screamed and kept screaming as the bucket lurched again and soared upward to its utmost height. The force of the bucket halting threw Rab to his knees. The hard surface banged his kneecaps and plunged shafts of pain through his knees and hips. He stopped screaming and fought the sickness that was rising in his belly from the fear and pain.

She coughed an irritated growl. The man-beast was beyond her reach. She sat on her haunches and eyed the bottom of the bucket. She could smell the man’s fear. She moved toward the back of the truck’s cab.