Matthew smiled. “Ah well, then, Captain Greene. Please thank my old friend Whittaker for his kindness and tell him that I wish to deprive him of you for a while longer to assist me with my inquiries. If you’ll please drop us at Sierra Padre, we can at least make use of our time there to further our investigations. But make sure that you do return!”
Greene snapped him a salute.
Shush awoke, killing and devouring a vole before she set out on the trail once more, following the spoor of the curlies and the track-cat of Kilcoole.
She was far from her territory, among wild things that would kill her and eat her as casually as she had killed and eaten the vole, and yet, the farther from the pass she traveled, the better she felt. The very mud and snow beneath her paws seemed to put spring in them, to make her step lighter and her gait swifter.
Shortly after she began walking again, she found the used campsite of the people: cold ashes, churned snow and mud, grasses scattered on the ground from the horse’s meals, and a few small bones from the track-cat’s. A tentative, fearful sniff relieved her mind that these were rabbit bones, not cat. She sniffed the track-cat’s sign and trotted onward.
She thought of Satok, of her massacred race, and of the girl as she walked, but she had to be careful not to drift too long into reverie. Once she noticed barely in time that a wolf was watching her from the bushes. Fortunately, wolves could not climb trees and she could. She slept in a tree that night, and in the morning walked on.
That night, as she stalked a squirrel, she pounced and somersaulted in the air just in time to catch the whiff of the fox a spare few feet away. Her distraction caused the squirrel to bolt for its hole in the tree roots and she bolted after it, squeezing in the tip of her tail just as the fox’s nose appeared at the hole.
As she lay there panting, heedless of the squirrel, which had burrowed deeper, she wanted to wail. This was too hard. It was too far. There were too many things that wanted to eat her and she was all alone, and further more, she felt as if she just might be going into heat again.
I am all alone, she cried, and something said, But I designed you to be alone.
Not all the time, she said and it said, No.
I am afraid, she cried. A man would kill me, beasts would eat me, and the Kilcoole cats are far away and their people are Satok’s prey.
Did someone speak of the Kilcoole cats? a voicea different voiceasked. A big voice, a cat voice, a tom voice, but a big voice. Who are you, little sister?
I am Shush, the last of my race at McGee’s Pass, she said. Who are you?
Nanook. What do you know of the people protected by the Kilcoole cats?
I know they strayed into danger. Satok will kill them, as he killed us. He took the girl. He will surely kill the boy or make him submit, as he made all of those under my protection submit.
Ah. And the dog? There was a dog? For a dog, she was good.
She is dead. Are youfar? she asked.
Two days’ lope from where we left the boy and girl.
I have traveled two days.
Your legs are short.
I am afraid. I am alone.
I am coming, Nanook’s voice said. And as an afterthought it added, And no, I do not eat my small cousins.
Bunny and Diego saw the cat tracks in the snow but were too preoccupied to pay them much attention. Both of them had slept badly, but once out of the village, Diego brooded and Bunny couldn’t stop talking.
Diego was just attuned enough to her to notice that her hands trembled on the reins. Her face, like his, was scraped and bruised, her mouth swollen so that she kept biting her lip. He didn’t know if she had the pounding headache he had. She talked a lot, but she hadn’t said anything about a headache, or her aches and pains. Mostly, she was angry, raving about how those people could have let Satok get away with what he had! How had he been able to do that to them, and how could he do that to the planet?