Mattox held him tight and rode him to the ground. They crashed into the hall, but Mattox didn’t stay down long. He hooked one powerful elbow around Riley’s neck and manhandled him to his feet. He dragged him down the hall, back toward the basement.
Riley kicked and punched, but his feet slipped against the wooden floor. He couldn’t get a purchase, and he couldn’t make a dent in Mattox’s brawny frame with his fists.
They got as far as the kitchen when, with a shimmer of inky blackness, Riley disappeared from sight. A spooky shadow crossed the floor. Mattox whirled around just in time to see a streak of black shoot through the door heading straight for the woods.
Riley didn’t give Melody a second thought. He didn’t pause to say good-bye, but rocketed past her as fast as he could bound. She didn’t have time to turn her head before the Midnight form glided away across the grass.
The very next minute, the house door slapped back against its frame and a huge brown shape catapulted across the porch. Mattox’s wide paws never touched the floorboards. In one jump, he sailed over the porch and landed on the grass. He hit the ground running, and a bear his size could outrun any panther.
He loped across the grass and cleared the garden fence in one bound. He didn’t stop running. He closed the gap between himself and the cat leaping and scampering into the field.
In seconds, Mattox overtook Riley by the shed. He gave one giant pounce and landed on Riley’s back. The panther shrieked out loud and bowled over and over with his claws and teeth sunk into the bear’s hide. Mattox tucked his feet under him and rolled, too. His great weight crushed Riley to the ground.
Screaming and growling and hissing and bellowing echoed off the shed and over the fields. Doors and windows opened. People stuck their heads out of their trailers and buses and tents to see what was going on.
Jana Dunlap came around the corner by the marquee. He shouted and pointed. His brothers appeared a moment later, and all three ran for the shed to join the fight. Walker Cunningham rolled up his shirt sleeves as he strode across the porch. Austin Farrell got out of his truck where he just pulled into the parking lot.
From every corner, people converged on the entangled bear and panther. Riley twisted one way and then the other to get away, but Mattox kept him pinned down. No matter which way he turned, Mattox always got his weight on top. Riley could never outmatch a bear.
All of a sudden, a pink cloud of organza and lace floated past Walker. By the time he turned around to see what it was, it passed him by. Melody raced across the field. She vaulted over the garden fence, and when she landed, the pink cloud turned brown and shaggy. Four tough paws hit the dirt, and the powerful she-bear barreled straight into the fight.
Riley screeched and spat. He sank his fangs into Mattox’s foreleg, and the bear bellowed in fury. He closed his massive jaws around Riley’s neck, but he couldn’t get a hold of the cat’s loose skin. He pulled back to readjust his grip when a flying ball of wildness hit him in the shoulder.
Mattox toppled sideways, but he didn’t lose his hold on Riley. He held the cat in a death grip and pulled him over so they both lay on their sides. Mattox let go of Riley’s neck long enough to look up. He never saw what hit him before Melody pounced on him with teeth and claws. She slashed his shoulder and nipped his face. She slashed here and there and everywhere.
Mattox wheeled to face this new foe. He tumbled all the way over on his back and came up on his other side. He rounded on Melody with a deafening roar. He extended one huge paw to slash her to pieces.
Melody crouched in front of him. She growled up at him with her lips pulled back, but she flattened herself on the ground and bent her head under his chin. She licked her lips and twisted over on her side to expose her neck and belly. She waved her paws up at him.
He thundered and roared in rage, but she groveled and rolled back and forth in the dirt. She touched him with one paw, and he snapped his teeth at it. He snapped on thin air when she pulled it back.
His temper faded at the sight of her submissive antics. His roars turned to growls when another murderous bellow echoed across the field. Mattox turned around to see Walker running toward them. Walker roared and shifted in mid-stride, and Mattox remembered. He looked back the other way just in time to see a black shadow disappearing into the trees.
Chapter 16
Walker slid open the action on one shotgun, checked the chamber, and set it down on the table to pick up another. “Are you guys ready? We can’t let him get too far ahead.”
“You go ahead without us,” Aiken replied. “Me and Austin are running down to Farrell Homestead to get the dogs out. We’ll have that cat treed before lunchtime.”
Walker nodded. He slotted cartridges into a revolver and stuck it into his waist band. He still wore his tux with the buttonhole rose. “Make sure you run him around away from Mackenzie country. Cut off his line of retreat so he can’t leave the Peak. No matter which territory he’s on, we’ll get him.”
The marquee crackled with activity. Men and teenage boys hurried everywhere in readiness to join Walker’s posse to track down Riley. Trucks and ATVs buzzed around outside to pick everybody up.
Foicks appeared with another armload of guns. He put it down on a table nearby. “Here you go. This is all we’ve got in the lock-up. Boyd went down to the greenhouses to get some more.”
“That’s okay,” Walker replied. “Dax went back to our Homestead. He’ll be back with more guns than you can shake a stick at. No matter what happens, we won’t be short of weapons.” He picked up another shotgun and slung it over his shoulder. “Let’s go. There’s no weapon like time, and we’ve let him get too far ahead of us as it is. Come on.”
Austin picked up a 30.06 and locked down the bolt. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Melody sitting not far away. She stared straight in front of her and didn’t respond to anyone or anything around her. “What do you want to do about her?”
Mattox stuck a semi-automatic in his shoulder holster and gathered a rifle in each hand. “Don’t worry about her. Killing that cat is the best thing we can do for her now.”
Brody heard him and stopped in the act of inspecting his rifle. He squatted down in front of Melody. He laid both arms on her legs and leaned his face close to hers. “Tell us everything you know about him, Melody. The more you tell us, the more chance we have to bring him back alive.”
She looked past him. She didn’t even blink.
Mattox tapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, man. I already tried everything. She’s been like this ever since he left.”
Brody stood up and frowned down at Melody. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She thinks he’s her mate. I never should have let her go downstairs to visit him.”
Brody shook his head and turned away, but he couldn’t help looking back over his shoulder. “She’s acting like she lost her mate.”
Mattox frowned at her, too. “I know, but how can that be possible? How can a Bruin mate with a panther?”
“Well, look at her. Are you telling me they aren’t mated?”
Mattox waved his hand. “I can’t think about that now. Come on. Everybody’s leaving.”
The men loaded into their trucks and barreled down the driveway. Half the posse set off on foot through the woods. A dozen bears loped ahead of them with their noses sweeping the ground. In half a second, silence descended over Dunlap Homestead again.
Mattox and Brody stood in the back of Ash Dunlap’s Jeep. Mattox swung his arm. “Head around through Cunningham territory. We’ll cut through to Mackenzie country. If we get there before him, we can cut off his retreat through the mountains toward Burkes Road.”
Ash yanked the steering wheel sideways to head uphill. In the distance, Walker Cunningham’s pick-up made for the road running around Bruins’ Peak. The bears and runners on the ground would drive Riley through the woods. He would head only one way: northeast toward escape and freedom.
Ash swerved right and left. He bounc
ed through gullies and fought his way over rock beds. He clipped the corner of Cunningham territory, around the ridge over Dodd territory, and downhill into the cattle-studded pastures of the Mackenzie ranch. Mattox thumped Ash's shoulder to urge him on faster. “Get around the Homestead. We’ll set up a barricade along our northern boundary.”
Ash skidded through the dust in front of Mackenzie Homestead just as a shiny red truck broke through the trees on the far side. “Austin’s here,” Brody murmured.
At the same time, a dozen armed men ran into the open. One of them pointed east, but they couldn’t hear him. “Look!” Ash cried. “There’s Boyd. They must have spotted the cat.”
He slammed his steering wheel hard to the right and hit the gas. Mattox held on to the roll bar to catch his balance. The Jeep tore through the grass heading for the woods along the Mackenzie-Kerr boundary. They got along the edge of Mackenzie-Farrell territory where Boyd waited for him. Ash pulled up short, and Boyd jumped aboard.
“Head down that ravine,” he told Ash. “They’ve got him treed down there, but he’s that close to breaking out into the mountains. If he gets away from us now, we won’t be able to follow him. There’s no time to lose.”
Ash plunged into the trees. The fat wheels spun through loose litter, but they crept down the steep sides into the ravine. The slopes got so steep Mattox and Brody sat down in the back seat, but they made steady progress.
“How did you find him?” Mattox asked Boyd.
“Foicks caught him.”
“Great,” Mattox groaned. “There’ll be no tolerating that kid if he doesn’t get his nose scratched.”
“You gotta admit he’s got a knack with this cat,” Boyd replied. “This is the second time he’s caught it, and he got the thing treed almost single-handedly. Him and Jana were running way out in front of the crowd and Foicks caught the scent. He veered off to follow it, but no one knew what he was up to. We all thought he was distracted by something. He followed the trail down the old lumber race and found the cat. By the time Jana caught up with him, Foicks had the thing treed.”
As he finished speaking, Ash came to the bottom of the ravine and turned up the stream bed. He picked his way over gravel and fallen branches. Shouts and gunfire echoed not far ahead. Mattox and Brody stood up again and readied their rifles for action.
“There they are!” Boyd jumped to the ground.
Ash slammed on the brakes and kicked on the parking brake. In a flash, all four men dismounted from the Jeep and charged into the woods toward the noise. All at once, the main action exploded into view.
Dozens of bears trotted everywhere among the trees. Men and boys armed to the teeth with every caliber of firearm pointed up into the branches. Roars and shouts drifted from all directions.
Mattox stopped in his tracks and peered up into the canopy. A black streak of lightning skipped from tree to tree. Even now, two bears clawed their way up the tree trunks to cut off the panther’s flight.
Mattox lowered his rifle. “Well, we got him treed. Now, how are we gonna get him down?”
Austin scratched his head. “That’s the problem. Once we get a bear up one trunk, he just jumps off to the next tree. He could keep going like this until he leaves the territory altogether.”
“What do you suggest? We outweigh him by a couple hundred pounds, easy. All he has to do is retreat into the top branches and we won’t be able to follow.”
“Well, we can’t all go up the trees. There must be some other way to get him down.”
“We could shoot out the branch,” Ash suggested. “That’s what we did last time.”
“That was one big tree standing in one place,” Austin countered. “All the trees around here are the same size. We were only able to shoot the branch out from under him because he had no other tree to jump to. We won’t get him to stand still long enough to do that here.”
While they discussed the situation, the panther made another flying leap and landed on a scrap of branch some twenty feet away. Without hesitation, he coiled his legs under him and went sailing out into empty space. He spread all four limbs like a squirrel and dropped out of the clear sky. His momentum carried him far enough forward that he dropped onto another branch even farther away. He left the climbing bears far behind.
Another five bears ran around to get in front of him, but the panther traveled too fast through the treetops. The men ran along the ground to keep up with him. Mattox couldn’t wait any longer. He rushed forward, far in front of Riley, and swung around to take aim.
A bear Mattox recognized as Barton Kerr scrambled up a tree behind the panther. Barton closed the gap, and the cat crouched to spring to the next branch. At that moment, Mattox fired. The bullet ripped through the canopy over the cat’s head. The bullet sang wide and pinged into the branch above Riley’s head. The branch snapped, and its bushy bunch of leaves fell into the panther’s face.
Riley recoiled with an enraged shriek. His muscles, already tightened to spring, let go, but he twisted sideways to avoid the swinging branch and lost his balance. He floundered in mid-air, caught himself, and slid off his perch. His claws dug into the bark to catch him, but he already tumbled over the side.
Barton saw what was going on and jumped from his trunk to the one under Riley. Riley twisted in mid-air and alighted on a branch above Barton’s head. He didn’t pause, but clawed his way up the trunk toward the smaller branches to get away.
Barton climbed as fast as he could, but he had a lot more weight to drag up the tree than Riley did. Riley outstripped him and gained the upper canopy again. Mattox aimed again, but another gun cracked from somewhere behind him. A bullet whistled through the air and splintered the bark above Riley’s head.
The cat shrank back, and that slight pause gave Barton the time he needed to overtake him. Barton put out a big paw. His claws touched Riley’s back. The cat contorted with three sets of claws sunk into the bark. He hissed and screeched and batted Barton away with his other paw.
Barton retreated from those claws. He ducked his head and scrambled another two inches higher to get hold of the cat. In his desperation to fight the bear off, Riley forgot himself and released his other forepaw from the tree bark. He turned around to fight Barton with both front paws, and his whole body peeled off the trunk.
Before Riley could recover, he swung all four feet around to fight, but his weight carried him past Barton. Nothing remained to break his fall, and he plummeted toward the ground.
Bears and men converged on him from all sides. Riley spread his legs and landed on his feet with every muscle tensed to slash and kill, but the Bruins overwhelmed him in seconds. Foicks and Ash hit him first. Azer, Jana and Rhys Dodd jumped in, too. The older men rushed to the spot, but they couldn’t get near the panther with five bears mauling him all at once.
The bears slashed Riley with their fangs from every direction. Foicks and Ash lay on top of him and crushed him to the ground with their weight. Anytime Riley tried to move one of his limbs, a Bruin jumped on it and clamped it in iron jaws to stop him from slashing them.
At last, Foicks fought his way in and closed his jaws around Riley’s neck. The cat twisted one way and the other, but Foicks only tightened his jaws. Mattox stepped forward and leveled his gun at the panther’s head. His finger tightened around the trigger to shoot when a hand rested on his shoulder. Brody murmured in his ear, “Save him for Walker. Let him have the kill.”
The panther’s struggles lessened until he finally lay still. More men crowded around. They loaded the panther, not with ropes this time, but with chains. They duct-taped his muzzle closed so he couldn’t scream or bite. They didn’t bother with the trunk, but dumped him in a pick-up with a dozen shotguns aimed at his head and chest. They barreled full speed back to Dunlap Homestead.
Chapter 17
Melody listened to people discussing the second hunt to track down Riley, but she didn’t respond to their questions and threats. What was the point of living without her mate by her sid
e? Even if he got away from them, she would never see him again. She ignored Lyric and even Marla trying to talk some sense into her. They couldn’t understand. They had their mates. They couldn’t know her grief.
All at once, someone shouted and the wedding guests crowded out of the marquee. A shiny red pick-up hurtled up the driveway. Lyric rushed past on her way to get a good position. “Look, Melody. They’re bringing Riley back.”
Melody ran with her sister to watch. This time, the men lifted the panther out of the truck and carried him down into the basement. A trail of blood marked their passage. As soon as they came out and locked the door, women hurried into the house to mop up the floor.
Melody retreated to her chair and slumped into it, more miserable than ever. The men would never let Riley escape again. They would keep their keys hidden, especially from her.
A few minutes later, Walker appeared with men surrounding him on all sides. High-fives and handshakes went around the marquee. The whole atmosphere changed. Even the Farrells congratulated him on Riley’s capture.
“Let’s go get him,” Dax Cunningham rubbed his hands together. “Let’s skin him alive.”
Walker held out his hand. “Not yet. I’m having brunch with Jasper and Beatrice in fifteen minutes, and you know how these things can wind up taking all day. I don’t want any interruptions during the brunch. We’ll wait until tomorrow. We’ll have plenty of time then.”
Dax wilted. “Aw, man!”
Walker laughed. For the first time since Riley appeared, his eyes sparkled and his rolling laugh filled the tent. He clapped Dax on the shoulder. “We’ll kill him. Don’t you worry. We can’t let him spoil any of the rest of the wedding, though. We caught him, and he’s not getting away again. We’ll kill him in our own good time. There’s no hurry.”
Mattox came over and shook Walker’s hand. “We’re with you, man. We’ll hold him down for you if you want—the sooner, the better.”
Bruins Peak Bears Box Set (Volume II) Page 11
