Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘What’s a hawf?’

  ‘House. Home. Shelter. There’s a space under the rock, a cave. A door was fitted years ago. There’s always firewood and candles. I’ve stayed there many a wild night.’ He rolled himself a cigarette and sat down on a flat sliver of rock. Connla remained standing, shading his eyes from the sun.

  ‘There’re more holes and caves down there than you could shake a stick at,’ Cullen told him. ‘If I was a panther wi’ bairns, I’d hole up in one of those.’

  Connla sat down next to him and pursed his lips. The valley was not only littered with boulders, there were clumps of trees, deep bracken and undergrowth. They were six or seven miles north-west of last night’s camping spot. The leopard could easily range that far, even burdened with cubs. They would still be young enough for an eagle to snatch, but no doubt she was mindful of that and would move them at dawn and dusk, when deer and other game were feeding. Right now they would be laid up in a tree or deep in the bracken, soaking the sun into their skin.

  Cullen had the stove out and was brewing tea. He seemed to stop every other hour to do this, like some kind of unspoken ritual. Connla didn’t mind. They had come across no other signs of spoor that morning and he wanted time to think. He had successfully tracked cougars in mountain country without any significant trail to follow, not just in South Dakota, but in Arizona, Canada and the redwood forests on the California/Oregon line. The cougar and the leopard were relatives. The cougar was bigger, having evolved to suit the needs of the Western Hemisphere, whereas leopards suited the East. The same cat was found anywhere from Africa to the jungles of South-East Asia. It had learned to adapt to very different climates and habitats, from jungle to open grassland. The ones on the loose in the UK were originally from captivity and they would have adapted in different ways again. Up here they ought to be more spottable, as they had no predators once they got beyond kindergarten age and there was plenty of game.

  Movement on the far side of the boulder valley caught his eye and he picked out a group of roe deer leading their young through the rockier patches. He looked at the size of the fawns, getting bigger all the time, but still no problem to the leopardess. She could bring down a stag if she had to. He had seen Mellencamp take out a 600-pound bull elk up by Sylvan Lake last winter, right alongside the Sunday gulch trail. It would have frightened the life out of any overzealous hiker who happened to be testing the ice that day.

  Cullen clipped the end of his cigarette, his rifle across his lap, his legs drawn up, and his face carved as if from stone. Connla could all but see the wheels of his brain working. ‘Deer, rabbit, stoat, weasel, pine marten.’ Cullen twisted his lip. ‘What’s with the lambs then, Mr McAdam?’

  Connla made a face. ‘She’s just walking the territory. She’ll do that. Keep the marks fresh by scraping up new dirt and leaves to scent. The cubs’ll know the boundaries well enough to be pushed over them when they’re older. Maybe McIntyre’s farm’s a marker, Bird Dog, and she figured on an easy meal while they were there.’

  ‘How old would the cubs be?’

  ‘Two or three months, I guess.’

  ‘Could they have killed the lambs? Sort of a learning curve.’

  ‘It’s possible, but I doubt it.’ Connla looked out once more across the valley.

  ‘Momma maybe took the lambs for them to practise on, but she’d have killed them first.’ He finished the last of his tea. ‘They do that from time to time when they’re all but done weaning. She’ll show the youngsters how to open up the carcass and get at the meat.’

  They continued round the steep inclining hillside, following the course the deer had taken, contours of dirt creating thin footpaths like tiny snow block trails. They got lower and the rocks got larger, and then, purely by chance, Connla found a fresh set of prints in the lee of a boulder. It was a plateau of rough, flat ground, with a muddy drinking hole seeping from under the stone. The sun could not get in and the grass had only grown so far. There was a patch of grey water with soft squashy banks to it, and in them were the imprints of two fore feet where the mother had bent to drink. Connla felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. ‘These are very fresh,’ he said.

  Cullen had his dog’s snout to them. ‘Go on, boy. Get her scent.’

  ‘Bird Dog, I think you ought to keep him close,’ Connla told him. ‘He’s big enough to kill the cubs if we run across them.’

  Cullen looked sourly at him. ‘D’you want to find them or not?’

  ‘Sure I do. But I don’t want to find them dead.’

  They looked at one another for a long moment and Cullen leaned on his rifle. ‘Why don’t you leave my dog to me, Mr McAdam.’

  ‘I will. I’m just saying, what d’you think he’ll do if he finds them?’

  ‘He’ll do exactly what I tell him, like he always does.’ As Cullen was speaking the dog suddenly yelped and took off. Connla stared after him, then into Cullen’s eyes. Cullen hefted his rifle in his left hand and they took off in pursuit. The deer trail climbed the hillside now, curving away from the valley. The pitbull galloped along it, vanishing just as the two men turned the corner. Connla ran in a half-crouch, the weight of his pack bearing him down. Cullen was not so encumbered, and for a man of his age he could move very quickly. Connla found himself being left behind. The hill curved and dipped sharply, becoming almost sheer at the edge of the path, and he had to slow even more, pressing one hand into the hillside to steady himself. He heard sudden barking up ahead and bent his legs and ran faster.

  The path opened again, with shale to his left and the hill climbing starkly to his right. He ducked past a great slab of stone and saw Cullen standing square in the path, staring down the hill. Connla followed his gaze and spotted the hindquarters of the dog pressing between two rocks close to the valley floor. Then he saw a sudden flash of yellow and heard a guttural squawling, like two alley cats in a fight. There was no wind and the valley created a natural echo chamber. He grabbed his binoculars and swung them in an arc. A flash of something and he looked back again. His gaze settled on a spotted leopard cub, backed up against a rock with the pitbull bearing down on it. He looked sideways. ‘Cullen, call the dog off. Call him off now.’

  Cullen suddenly grinned. ‘He’s too far away, Mr McAdam.’

  For a moment Connla was frozen, all thoughts of his camera and pictures forgotten. The dog would rip the young leopard to pieces.

  And then, with a flash of black and a half shriek, the pitbull was reeling, toppling head over heels. It happened in a second; a blur of flying paws and the dog was yelping and screaming, up on its haunches, bred to fight but with no chance against this. The panther slapped it hard, paw flattened, claws extended, tearing a hole in its side. Seconds later the dog was hanging from its jaws by the throat, its body limp and flapping about like a doll.

  ‘Bastard!’ Cullen stared down the hill. The panther had the dog pinned now and in its death throes. Cullen had his rifle hunched into his shoulder, eye to the sight, finger already squeezing the trigger.

  ‘No!’ Connla lunged and jerked the barrel up with his forearm. The shot cracked away, echoing off the rocks. Below them, the panther dropped the dog and shooed its young into hiding.

  The bolt action on the gun had smacked Cullen’s nose, and his fingers came away bloody when he touched it. For a long moment he stared at Connla. ‘You’re going to regret that,’ he said.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, man. What were you thinking of?’

  Cullen dabbed at his nose with the heel of his thumb.

  ‘I told you to keep the damn thing on a leash. The mother was protecting her young, Bird Dog. What did you expect?’

  Cullen dabbed again at his nose and spat a gob of blood from his mouth. ‘I expect to be able to look out for my own dog,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t expect some Yankee tree hugger to interfere.’ He worked a fresh round hard into the breech, and Connla stared at the gun.

  ‘What? You’re gonna shoot me now, right?’ He turned away, sha
king his head. ‘Give me a break, Cullen. And while you’re at it, get a life.’

  Twenty-One

  THEY HIKED BACK TO the farm at Corgarff, Cullen carrying the shattered body of the pitbull in his arms. He walked ahead, back straight, not speaking. Connla had inspected the area thoroughly, but there was no sign of the panther or her cubs, only the torn-up grass soaked red. The attack had been ruthless—a mother protecting her young. She had ripped away the pitbull’s jugular vein, sending ropes of blood spraying into the air like geysers. Some of the rocks looked as though they had been vandalized with paint. Cullen had taken a spare army shirt from his pack and wrapped the dog’s body in it. Connla had suggested they bury the dog there and then, but Cullen told him to mind his own business. So now they marched in silence, walking by the light of the head torch that Cullen took from his pack.

  Back at the farm, Cullen insisted on loading the dog into the Land-Rover and they drove to the village of Tomintoul in silence. Connla, exhausted from the day’s exertions, booked into a room, took a shower and went to sleep. Cullen stowed the body of his dog in the back of his truck, then sat at the bar with the landlord, drinking into the small hours of the morning. Finally, the landlord yawned for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Harry,’ he said. ‘I’m away to my bed. Lock the door before you go.’

  Cullen shoved his glass across the bar for one last shot of whisky.

  When the landlord was gone, he sat and smoked and brooded. For eleven years he had been monitoring these sightings; eleven years trying to find a big cat and be the man who caught or shot it, to prove beyond all doubt they were out there. He had imagined the newspaper stories, the book about his life, the rounds of chat shows—TV and radio alike. Years of careful, painstaking work—finding the locations and checking prints and carcasses at kill sites. Then this American waltzes in with his big ideas and his bloody great cameras and his twenty years of tracking pumas. Now his dog was dead and the best chance he was ever likely to have of shooting one of the panthers was gone. He thought of the paltry hundred pounds McAdam had paid him. He had lost a thousand pounds’ worth of dog and, with the current government legislation, he wasn’t likely ever to replace it.

  He finished his whisky, then climbed over the bar and lifted the glass to the optic. A double. He sipped at it and topped it up again while the beginnings of an idea slowly took shape in his head. Leaving the glass on the bar he went outside, being careful not to let the front door close on him. He staggered slightly as he scrabbled in his pocket for his car keys and then he unlocked the door of his VW. His canvas pack lay on the front seat where he had chucked it on transferring the dog from McAdam’s Land-Rover. He blinked in the moonlight as he tugged at the straps and eased open the drawstring. He delved now, one hand feeling amongst the clothes, the cold tank of his petrol stove and the soft piece of oilcloth. He smiled and lifted it clear. He closed the car door and held the cloth in both hands before peeling it back like the skin of a banana. Cold steel glinted blue in the fall of the streetlight. He thought he heard a noise and started: the village copper lived just across the square.

  He stood for a moment and listened, but he was alone; he ran a practised, if inebriated, eye over the pistol. It was a throwback to his days in the slaughterhouses—sometimes the bolt gun was no good and he would revert to this. He had filed off the serial number long ago, back when all handguns had to be given in because the government overreacted after the shootings in Dunblane. A 357 Magnum revolver that no-one knew he had—short-barrelled; the sort of weapon you see in American films. He weighed it in the palm of his hand and considered his options.

  Connla slept fitfully. In his dreams Imogen stared at him with her dark eyes, questioning the lines in his face. Then she faded and the leopardess sat over him again, but this time she was black and there were no cubs with her. He could feel the heat of her breath and hear the squawling deep in her throat. Her lips were drawn back, whiskers down, her face wrinkled like a male scenting flehmen. And something else was there, some darkness moving at the edge of the dream, the shape of a man. It faded and only the leopardess remained, and then her face became Mellencamp’s, staring at him in the way she did when entering the house unannounced at dawn. Gradually she faded, but he could smell her scent where she had dragged dried leaves into a scrape, then spray-marked it as part of her territory. A nomadic male would kill her cubs. She hadn’t got any cubs. Yet she had, they were tawny and spotted, with black streaks on their backs like lion cubs in Africa. The nomad would kill them to make her ready to mate again. There was nowhere she could hide them. The nomad stood on two legs and his mouth was the barrel of a gun.

  Connla woke sweating before the dawn, and he had one thought in his mind: to get in his truck and drive to the Kyle of Lochalsh.

  He didn’t hesitate, pulling on his jeans, shaking his arms into the sleeves of his shirt and lacing up his boots. He had paid for the room last night, so he didn’t have to worry about waking the landlord, and he stepped outside and closed the door quietly. It was just beginning to think about getting light, fingers of grey scratching away in the east. He saw Cullen’s truck and then Cullen himself, snoring, face pressed up against the window, slumped behind the wheel in the driver’s seat. His pack lay open next to him, the rifle, encased again now, across his knees. Connla studied his aged seamy features; there was grime above his eyes and stubble bruising his chin. He really didn’t like this man; and it was a feeling he had had from the start.

  He started the noisy diesel-engined Land-Rover and drove slowly round the square, then headed west down the road to Grantown. From there it was south and west, and then Gaelloch, and when he got there he didn’t know what he was going to do. There was something there, he told himself, something there from the past. Words to say, perhaps, maybe things to sort out. Yet he had put that chance even further away when he’d told her his name was Brady. So why was he going back? He could see her face; every tiny line, every shaped contour memorized from across the table in the hotel bar. He compared it with the little girl from Wyoming who had had a crush on him and recognized only the eyes. They had grown bigger and perhaps a little darker, but their shape was as he remembered. He could see her and smell her, that heated quality in her skin. It felt as though she had invaded his soul and so held part of him that he needed to get back. He had no idea what he was going to say to her, only that he had to see her again.

  Imogen walked her horse along the edge of Tana Coire. She could see Atholl McKenzie and his labourers bent double as they shaped the pine logs into the base of a table. She could imagine the fishermen next year—waders and umbrellas and tackle boxes and strings of nets and barbecues, with drinks laid on by McKenzie. She closed her eyes, the wind nipping at the corners, forcing them to run with uncried tears. She imagined the eagle inches above the loch, feet thrust before him, talons reflected in the black of the water, wings back to steady him, the tips spread into six magnificent fingers filtering out the wind.

  Looking up, she saw that McKenzie had spotted her. Both he and his men were watching and Imogen could only gaze beyond them at the crag in helplessness. They had beaten her and they knew it; beaten her before she even knew of the competition. Those eagles had been killed or scared off, their nest destroyed, before she and Johnson ever got to McKenzie’s farm. She knew it and they knew she knew it, but there was nothing she could do about it now. One of the men suddenly waved, then a wolf whistle pierced the silence and Keira half reared and whinnied. Imogen wheeled her around and galloped down the valley.

  She rode back through the Vale of Leum Moir. It had been raining all morning and it was raining now, the sweet summer rain that makes the grass lush and rich so the stags can gorge themselves before the exhaustion of the rut. The big bucks would be high now, right up where the summits scraped the clouds and the heather was moist and thick and new. Imogen guided the horse one-handed, the other hanging at her side like a cowboy, the flat-fronted pommel of the stockman’s saddle gentle against h
er pelvis. It was more padded, more compact and more shaped to her body than the standard English one. She rode often and over long distances, so she’d invested in something designed for the sheepherders of Australia and New Zealand. This one had been ordered from a shop on the banks of Lake Wakatipu and sent back twice before it fitted Keira’s back properly.

  She climbed now, Keira’s forelegs sinking less deeply into the grass as the valley gave way to hillside, which grew sparser with each upward stride. The path wove a pattern through the brown scrub of the bracken, sand-coloured and snake-like, lipping the hillside in ever-tightening bands. Imogen moved out from the shelter of a stand of trees and the wind hit her full on, the rain gaining in strength. She wore a wide-brimmed waterproof hat which she pulled closer to her nose. The wind was chilly, but she was warm enough. Her long waxed coat kept her dry and Keira’s flanks sweated against the inside of her legs. She headed south, crossing the River Leum and cutting between the mountains. The going was less steep and much easier on Keira, not that she minded; she fairly relished being saddled up, and horses like her had been used to haul wood and peat and all manner of things over far rougher ground than this.

  An eagle called above her and Imogen looked up, the brim of the hat shading her eyes from the sudden white of the sky. Cloud blown, grey and cream, she scanned the horizon for the bird, then spied it soaring far to the north. She watched as a second, slightly smaller one, joined the first, and taking her binoculars from the saddlebags she scanned the pair for markings. Her heart began to drum in her chest. Their bodies were sleek and brown, not the tawny russet of golden eagles but a muddier, darker brown. They soared together like lovers, the updraughts catching in the sharpened hollows of their wings. She picked out the white in their tail feathers and felt the adrenalin rush.

  They drifted gradually closer, circling lower and lower, as if they’d spotted her and in so doing a kindred spirit. They were so close now that she could make out the paler patches on their breasts. She sat in the stillness and watched as they climbed one last time, before turning into the wind and heading out to sea in the west. And she thought of Gwrhyr and Eidoel seeking Mabon son of Modron in the tale of the wooing of Olwen: