by Rosa Jordan
Kyle paused, before continuing, “And some of the bills they were intending to use to buy the boat matched those stolen from your bank.”
“So they are the same guys, and they will go back to jail!” Wendy exclaimed.
“Not necessarily. Only a few bills were identifiable as among those stolen here.”
“But the bank only had the serial numbers of the bills in one packet,” Wendy protested. “Most of the money couldn’t have been identified later.”
“That’s true.” Kyle walked up and down the length of the porch, as if he wanted to go somewhere, but wasn’t sure where. “But that was three years ago. The stolen money would have been spent, and anybody might have some of those marked bills in their wallet by now. The fact that these guys had a few doesn’t prove that they were the ones who stole them.”
“But they did arrest them, right?”
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “But they’re not sure they can hold them. It’s not illegal to buy a boat, even if it’s one owned by a known drug trafficker. And like I said, only a little of the money they had on them could be traced to here. That’s what the FBI called our office about — to see if we had any more information. Unfortunately, we didn’t.”
“What’s going to happen now?” Wendy asked, opening the door to let Velvet out onto the front porch just so she would have a warm animal body to cling to.
“They’ll probably be released,” Kyle said, and added in his gruff cop voice, “Which is why I’m telling you. Be careful, Wendy. Keep your eyes open, especially around strangers.”
He went down the porch steps then, out to the car, and drove off.
Wendy stood there for a long time, feeling colder than she should feel on such a warm day. Then she saw Danny riding up on his bike and immediately felt better.
As he came up the front steps, she noticed a bruise on his cheek. “What happened?” she asked, touching the bruise.
“Nothing.” When he saw she wasn’t satisfied with that answer, he shrugged and said, “Just, some guys jumped me.”
“You don’t hang out much with the boys in town, do you?”
“I’m not very good at sports,” he said, as if that explained it. Then he added, “Besides, they’re all into hunting.”
Of course, Wendy thought. Practically every man and boy in this small town loved hunting, just like her own father and brother. Six-year-olds started begging for BB guns, and as soon as they got one, they’d roam around trying to shoot birds off power lines. By the time they were eleven or twelve they’d have a rifle, and the most exciting thing they could think of was to go hunting with their dad and bang away at anything that moved. She didn’t know what it was in some people that made them want to see a beautiful wild animal crumple in pain and fall over dead, but whatever it was, Danny didn’t have it.
That would make him a misfit in this hunting-crazy town, but she was glad he was the way he was. She slipped an arm around his shoulder and said, “Come on in, Danny. Velvet has been waiting for you to take her for a walk.”
• • •
When Danny returned from walking the fawn a little later, Wendy was sitting at the kitchen table, doodling.
“Whatcha doing?” Danny asked.
What Wendy had been doing was worrying about the bad guys, but she didn’t want to tell him that, so what she instead she said, “I was thinking about giving the farm a name.”
“A name?” Danny asked. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Somebody at work called it the Animal Farm, and Kyle didn’t like that because that’s the name of a book where the farm is ruled by pigs. Anyway, I like the idea of this place having a name.”
Danny stared past her and out the window for a minute. Then he said, “There are wild animal tracks all over the place. What about Wild Tracks Farm?”
“Wild Tracks?” Wendy tried the name out. “I like it.”
“Only spelled with an X,” Danny said. He took the pen from her hand and wrote, “Wildtrax.”
“That’s original,” Wendy said thoughtfully. “But what’s the X for?”
“Well, it’s like, you know, they put an X on something that marks the spot. So it’s like saying this is a place where it’s okay for wild things to make their tracks.”
“Yeah!” Wendy exclaimed. “An X is also used to designate a no-go area for anybody who doesn’t belong there. So it’ll be like saying this is the place for wild things to make their tracks, and is not the place for bad guys who want to hurt us!”
21
JUNKYARD SURPRISE
One late afternoon, about a week after they named the farm Wildtrax, the phone rang. Wendy picked it up and heard Kyle’s voice. “Hey, Wendy. You know that junkyard just north of town?”
“JuJu’s Junk, or something like that? Yes. What about it?”
“We’ve just made a drug bust out here. JuJu and his pals are on the way to jail. But there are these cats —” Suddenly there was a lot of static, so Wendy missed some of what Kyle was saying. “— pet carrier. As soon as you can get here, because I can’t hang around long.” He hung up before she could ask more questions.
“Why didn’t they call the animal shelter?’ Wendy muttered, as she headed for the garage. Maybe the cats were in bad shape and Kyle thought they should be seen by a vet immediately, not tomorrow, as would be the case if they were dropped off at the shelter this late in the day. Kyle acted like he didn’t care as much about animals as Wendy did, and maybe that was true. But let one of them get sick, and he was the first to suggest taking it to the veterinarian.
Kyle hadn’t said how many there were, but since “cats” meant at least two, Wendy decided to take both pet carriers. She put them, along with her heavy leather gloves and a piece of meat to use for bait, into the RAV.
The road to the junkyard went right past Danny’s house. As he hadn’t come out to the farm that afternoon, Wendy wondered if she might find him at home. If so, he’d probably enjoy helping her catch the feral cats.
She saw his bicycle when she pulled up in front of his house, which meant he was there. His mother sat on the front steps of the rundown house, a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Hi, Mrs. Ryan,” Wendy called. “I’m going to pick up a couple of abandoned cats, and thought Danny might like to come with me. If that’s okay with you?”
The woman took a drag on her cigarette, and turned to call back into the house, “Danny!”
To Wendy she said, “Just came in a second ago, and if I know that kid, he’ll be gone again in five minutes. Better with you than hanging around downtown, I guess.”
Wendy smiled politely. “Well, you know how boys are. More energy than they know what to do with.” She was always polite to Mrs. Ryan, because she was afraid that if she said something to make her mad, she’d stop Danny from coming out to the farm. In fact, neither of Danny’s parents seemed to care where he went, what he did, or when he came home. Not once in the three years that Danny had been a regular visitor to Wendy’s place had they ever phoned to find out if he was there or what time he’d be starting home. Poor kid, Wendy thought. He’s like a feral cat himself. Half the time ignored, and half the time being yelled at.
Danny came out of the house. As soon as he saw Wendy, a smile lit up his face, and he started across the yard toward her car.
“You come back here!” his mother yelled roughly. “You don’t go anywhere till you put that bike away, you hear me?”
Danny ran quickly and parked his bike in the garage. Then, as Wendy had already swung the door of the RAV open, he hopped inside, not looking back at his mother.
“See you later, Mrs. Ryan,” Wendy called.
“Where are we going?” Danny asked.
“To JuJu’s Junkyard,” Wendy said. “The police made a drug bust out there and Kyle p
honed to say we should come pick up a couple of cats. I guess nobody’s left to feed them.”
They rode in silence for a few blocks. Then, out of the blue, Danny said, “Butch doesn’t do drugs. But he drinks. If we had a cat, he’d be mean to it. When he’s drinking.”
In the whole time Wendy had known Danny, he had never mentioned his parents, but she understood what the boy was telling her. He was saying that his stepfather turned mean when he drank, and if Danny were to bring home a pet, like, for example, one of these abandoned cats, Butch, when he was drinking, would be mean to the cat just as he was mean to Danny’s mother.
Wendy was about to say he could keep a pet out at Wildtrax if he wanted, when Danny spoke again. “My real dad wasn’t like that. I was little when he died, but I remember. We had a dog then. Him and me and the dog used to play ball together. And my mom would watch us and laugh.”
Wendy suspected that Danny was right; that their life had been a happier one before his dad, a National Guardsman, was killed in Iraq. She guessed his mother had started drinking in order to ease her pain, and probably got involved with Butch for the same reason. She wished Danny didn’t have to go home to all that unhappiness every night, but that was how it was. Kids belonged to their families, and Danny would just have to find ways of dealing with his.
• • •
Next to Kyle’s police cruiser was a vehicle from the sheriff’s department. Wendy supposed that was because although the junkyard office was in city limits, wrecked cars, trashed trucks, and broken-down campers lay scattered over a two-acre area that was outside city limits, therefore under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff.
“Howdy, Wendy.” One of the sheriff’s deputies, a friend of her father’s, waved to her when she got out of the RAV. “Reckon these kitties are more than you can handle.”
“Maybe so, Deputy Stoner,” Wendy replied agreeably, but she didn’t believe it. Feral cats could be fierce, but she doubted she’d have any trouble catching them. She had modified one of the carriers so it functioned like a trap. She would lure the cat inside with the meat, then, with a long cord, pull the door shut. All it took was patience. “Where are these cats?” she inquired.
“One of them is over in that old Chinook camper,” Deputy Stoner said. “There where your husband’s looking in the window. The little one’s under that brown camper shell. I think Kyle already called the folks at Game and Fish. They’re on their way.”
The deputy leaned into his car to answer a call on the radio. Wendy took one pet carrier and handed the other to Danny. They walked toward the Chinook camper, which looked as if it had been rolled. That was probably why it was in a junkyard. She thought it was odd that Kyle had called Game and Fish, since they only dealt with wildlife, not domestic animals. Unless the “cat” was a …
“Hi, Kyle,” she called as she walked up. “You phoned Fish and Game?”
“For this cat, yeah.” Kyle motioned for Wendy to look in the window of the camper.
By then she had figured out that it might be another bobcat. She peered in the window, and involuntarily jumped back. “Oh my gosh!”
The cat looking back at her, ears flat, mouth open in a snarl that showed long white fangs, was no bobcat. It was a full-grown cougar! She motioned for Danny to come look. The sight caused him to suck wind, too.
Wendy had worked with the cougars at Red River Ranch, but Danny probably had never seen one so close up. Even she had never seen one so angry at close quarters! “What was JuJu doing with a cougar? And why would he keep it in a place like this?”
“Who knows? He certainly didn’t have a license for a big cat. Probably kept it in the camper so it couldn’t be seen, not unless somebody came right up and looked in,” Kyle surmised.
“Or opened the door,” Danny added in an awed voice.
“Which could’ve got somebody seriously injured. Even killed,” Kyle said grimly. To Wendy he said, “The Fish and Game guys are bringing a tranquilizer gun to deal with the cougar.” Kyle gave her a stern look, “I told them that you do not work with big cats.”
“Right!” Wendy agreed quickly.
She looked through the window again at the big tawny cat. “What a horrible place to keep an animal! I wonder how long the poor thing has been in there?”
“From the amount of poop on the floor, looks like months,” Kyle replied.
“Where’s the other cat?” Wendy asked.
“Over there.” Kyle pointed to a cracked camper shell sitting on the ground.
Wendy and Danny walked over to the camper shell and flopped down on their stomachs in the grass to peer through the window at the other cat.
“Pew-ee!” Danny exclaimed. “What a nasty smell!”
“It’s the smell of an animal that’s been shut up in a small space and forced to live in its own feces!” Wendy said angrily.
At first Wendy couldn’t see the animal she knew was in there. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the dimness inside the camper shell, she saw, crouched at the far end, a scrawny bobcat. It hissed, but weakly, and did not try to stand up.
“It’s another bobcat,” Danny whispered.
Two pairs of large boots came through the grass toward them. Wendy looked up and saw Pete Jarvis and Jackson Smith, wardens from the Arkansas Department of Game and Fish. She had come to know both of them when she was working on her wildlife rehabilitation license.
“Hey, Wendy,” boomed Pete. “Kyle called us to come out here and tranquilize a couple of cats. That you and this boy here?”
Wendy sat up. “Hi, Pete. Hi, Jackson. I can tell you, if the guy who kept these animals in this condition had been here when I arrived, you’d have had to tranquilize me to keep me from ripping his head off.”
“Nah, we’d have helped you,” drawled Jackson.
“At least we got here while they’re still alive,” Pete said. “We called McDermont over at Red River Ranch. He says he’ll take the cougar, but not the bobcat. No place to put him.”
Wendy sighed. “I’ll take him.”
“Ma’am, you got a license to be in possession of a wild animal?” Pete asked in a mock-stern voice.
Wendy grinned and tapped the big man on the toe of his boot. “They told me at the Game and Fish office that anybody who can deal with animals like the two of you automatically gets issued a license to handle wildlife. By the way, this is my friend Danny Ryan.”
“Nice to meet you, Danny,” said the one called Jackson. “Just keep an eye on this girl, or she’ll have you playing nursemaid to every sick animal in the country.”
“She already does,” Danny said with a big grin.
The men laughed, then got down to business. “We’ll dart this one first, then deal with the big one,” Pete said. “How much you reckon it weighs, Wendy?”
Wendy squinted into the gloom. “Hard to tell. Maybe ten pounds.”
“Ten pounds? That all?” Pete asked in surprise.
“See for yourself,” Wendy invited. “It’s in terrible shape.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Pete said. “Already seen that cougar, and it’s starved down to half the weight of a healthy one.” To Jackson he said, “Go light on the tranq. We don’t want to end up with a cat so sound asleep it won’t wake up.”
“Always a chance when you’re dealing with animals in this condition,” Jackson said as he loaded the gun. “Cats especially. Wendy, you want to knock him down?”
Wendy hesitated. “If you think I can handle it.”
“Didn’t I give you a passing grade in my wildlife capture class?” Jackson grinned. “If you can’t handle tranquilizing a trapped animal four feet away, I’m gonna go back and flunk you.”
“Okay, okay,” Wendy said, laughing. “Give me the gun.”
Jackson handed her the gun. Wendy slid the Plexiglas window o
f the camper shell back just a little, enough to stick the barrel through. In her mind she told the bobcat, Don’t be afraid. This won’t hurt, and I won’t hurt you. When you wake up, you’ll be safe. Then she pulled the trigger.
Danny was beside her and she felt him flinch as the hypodermic needle penetrated the cat’s shoulder. It jumped, flung out a pawful of claws, and flattened itself on the ground. Wendy handed the gun back to Pete.
“Did that kill it?” Danny whimpered
“No!” Wendy knew that watching an animal go limp like that was like watching one die before your eyes. But she felt that Danny should see it. For a year or more she’d had an idea in the back of her mind that he might grow up to work with wildlife in a professional way. If he ever decided to do that, she wanted him to know as much as possible about what was involved.
Kyle walked over. “So did you bag your lion, Great White Lady Hunter?”
“He’s down,” Wendy told him. “But not bagged. Want to help me move this camper shell so I can get it into the pet carrier?”
Kyle and Danny each grabbed a side of the camper shell and lifted it away. The bobcat lay unmoving on the stinking poop-covered ground, so limp it seemed more like a filthy rag of fur thrown over a bag of bones than a living animal.
“Hold on a second,” Jackson said, then snapped several pictures with a digital camera. “We’ll be charging the owner of this dump with keeping dangerous wildlife in captivity without a license or proper caging,” he told Kyle. “You all decide to prosecute him on cruelty-to-animals charges, just give me a call.” He tapped the camera. “Plenty of evidence in here.”
“Good deal,” Kyle said. “With all the crystal meth and lab equipment our guys had to look after, I doubt anybody thought to take pictures of the cats.”
Danny and Kyle followed Pete and Jackson over to the camper to watch them tranquilize the cougar. Wendy sat next to the bobcat for ten or fifteen minutes, then pulled on her gloves. After a couple of test touches to make sure the cat was still unconscious, she slid it into the largest pet carrier, and fastened the door securely shut.
