Nick scanned the clearing and spotted the cub, a frightened lump huddled on a bed of pine straw.
“He’s fine,” Nick assured Mrs. Starch.
“Can you handle him? It’s all up to you now,” she said. “You and Marta.”
“We can do it.”
With grim efficiency, Twilly worked on Mrs. Starch’s leg to stanch the bleeding. Smoke kept his eyes glued on the panther in the tree, while Nick and Marta watched the kitten on the ground. The two cats, mother and baby, remained unaware of each other.
After a few minutes, Twilly hoisted Mrs. Starch to her feet and instructed her how to hold on. Smoke got on the other side, and together he and Twilly formed a human crutch.
“If you hear somebody coming,” Twilly said to Nick and Marta, “take off running. If you can’t get away, then use that.” He nodded toward his rifle, leaning against a stump.
Nick had never fired a real gun; his father didn’t own one, though he’d become an expert marksman in the National Guard.
Marta said, “I’ve shot a .22 before. My cousins in Miami took me to a target range.”
“This is different,” Smoke told her. “Way different.”
With his free hand, Twilly pulled the vulture-beak necklace from his pocket and tossed it to Marta. “You’ll need all the mojo you can get,” he said with a tight smile.
Mrs. Starch was obviously in pain, and fading. “Do your best,” she told Nick and Marta, and then her eyelids began to flutter.
Twilly pulled Nick aside and said: “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t get yourselves lost.”
“We’ll be right here.”
Then, without another word, Twilly and Smoke set off grimly across the foggy flatlands. Mrs. Starch was propped limply between them, her feet dragging, an arm around each of their shoulders. Smoke glanced back only once, with an anxious expression, and Nick waved.
Marta put on Twilly’s strange necklace and said, “You ready?” The fear was completely gone from her voice.
“Let’s do it,” said Nick.
The cub was still shaking from the noise of the gunfire when Nick scooped him up. There was no clawing or biting; little Squirt seemed almost relieved to be held, even by an unknown human.
With the kitten curled against his chest, Nick stood beneath the tall dead pine, trying to visualize the climb. He wanted to put the cub as close as possible to the mother cat, who loomed only as a shadow, high in the gnarled boughs.
“What if it’s the wrong panther?” Marta asked.
“No, Smoke said it’s her.”
“But what if he made a mistake?”
“He wouldn’t,” Nick said. “And he didn’t.”
“That’s a nasty old tree. Don’t break your neck.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.”
Nick began slowly, using only his right hand to pull himself upward from one bare, brittle branch to the next. Hardly stirring, the kitten was nuzzled in the crook of his other arm.
Purposely Nick didn’t look up at the powerful cat who was watching every step of his ascent, but occasionally he glanced downward where Marta stood guard at the base of the tree. Although it was weird seeing his young friend holding Twilly’s rifle, Nick felt unaccountably secure. For no particular reason, he was confident that Marta would know how to handle the gun if necessary.
And she did.
He was halfway up the dead pine, at least thirty feet off the ground, when he heard her shout, “Stop, or I’ll shoot! Stop right there!”
Alarmed, Nick craned his neck to see what was happening below. As he shifted his weight, the branch beneath him snapped off and he began dropping straight down, feetfirst, as if he were in a runaway elevator.
It all happened in a dizzying wisp of a second. Nick’s right sleeve snagged on something—another jagged branch—and he heard a sickening crack. A bolt of blinding pain shot from his wrist to the core of his brain, then a wave of frozen blackness crashed over him.
He experienced the sensation of twirling slowly in midair, like a circus acrobat. When he opened his eyes, he realized that he was dangling from a broken arm, and that very soon he would pass out. His chest was on fire from hot stinging needles—it was the panther cub, digging its claws into Nick’s skin to hang on.
“He ran away! He’s gone!” Marta crowed triumphantly from beneath the tree.
“Who?” Nick rasped.
“Some guy wrapped in bandages. I scared him off!”
Then she looked up into the tree and saw Nick swinging by his shirt sleeve. “What in the world are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” he moaned.
“You’re gonna fall and kill yourself!”
The possibility had already occurred to Nick. Reaching up with his good arm—the left arm, the same arm he’d been training with and building up for weeks—he grabbed the branch from which he was dangling …
And began pulling himself up.
Pulling with all his strength.
Pulling in spite of the worst pain he’d ever felt, or had ever imagined feeling.
Pulling even with a terrified wild panther cub attached like a cactus to his flesh, yowling and spitting in his face.
Pulling and pulling until he’d completed your basic one-handed chin-up, no problem.
Nick suspended himself in this grueling pose long enough to unsnag his sleeve with his teeth. His damaged arm flopped uselessly to his side; the elbow was bent at a very peculiar angle.
An instant later, by some small miracle, his feet found a toehold for support. It was a deserted woodpecker nest, a baseball-sized hole in a weathered knob of the tree.
Marta called, “I’m climbing up!”
“No!” Nick said.
Because the mother panther was climbing down.
Nick could see her silhouetted against the fog, moving closer. The animal easily weighed more than a hundred pounds, yet she darted from limb to limb as if she were light as a sparrow.
There was nothing for Nick to do but catch his breath and wait for the cub’s cries to draw the big cat nearer. He supposed he should’ve been scared, but instead he felt oddly at ease.
The panther was elegant and agile and ghostly, mesmerizing to watch. Although Nick had seen many panther photographs in books and magazines, he found himself in a state of dreamy amazement. The scorching pain in his fractured arm had all but disappeared, causing him to wonder if he was slipping into shock.
Soon the mother cat was only a few yards away, coiled on a heavy Y-shaped branch directly above Nick’s head. Her ears flattened, her nose quivered, and her bright eyes fixed with fierce intensity on the noisy bundle that had tacked itself to the front of Nick’s shirt. He knew the panther must be wondering why there was only one cub crying, wondering what had happened to her other one.
Nick heard the deep rolling prelude of a growl that couldn’t possibly be coming from the pint-sized kitten, and he knew the time had come.
Even with both shoes wedged in the woodpecker hole, he teetered and swayed as he struggled to unfasten the frightened baby from his chest. The little cat was now squalling loudly and with evident fright; Nick worried that the mother would soon pounce upon him in defense of her offspring.
Marta must have had the same concern, for she’d braced herself against the tree to steady Twilly’s rifle, which she was pointing squarely at the adult cat.
Nick raised his eyes to the big panther and very gently said, “It’s all right. I’m not gonna hurt your little guy.”
The panther blinked, and her ears perked. The cub let go of Nick’s shirt, and ever-so-carefully he placed it on the trunk of the tree. Its hooked claws dug into the crispy bark and, with a mighty yelp, the kitten attempted to climb.
Immediately the adult panther raised up, and a distinctly softer rumble came from her throat.
Nick knew what had to be done now. As long as he remained in the tree, the mother cat would likely hold her distance from the baby. It was easy to envision the inexperie
nced kitten losing its grip and falling before it reached the Y-shaped branch.
So Nick looked down and picked out a landing area.
“Don’t do it!” Marta shouted.
“Stand clear,” he said, and with his good, strong left arm he pushed himself away from the trunk of the tree. This time, luckily, he struck no branches on the way down.
He landed on his back, in a mound of pine straw. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the panther, outstretched in mid-leap, crossing to another tree.
She was toting her cub by the scruff of its neck.
* * *
Drake McBride tried to make up for all the rotten things he’d said about Horace.
“You’re a good dog!” he shouted down from the cypress tree.
But Horace didn’t budge. Horace continued to bark and howl. Flecks of foamy spittle flew from the bloodhound’s large jaws.
Drake McBride was afraid to climb down because Horace looked positively crazed and ferocious—nothing like the lazy mutt that the dog handler had brought to his hotel suite.
Horace was totally wired. Horace wasn’t budging from the base of the cypress tree, up which he had chased the president of the Red Diamond Energy Corporation.
It was the second jarring interruption of Drake McBride’s escape. The first had occurred when he’d stumbled into a clearing and come face to face with a skinny Cuban girl holding a seriously large rifle. She had vowed to shoot if he took another step, and she’d seemed serious about it.
So he had turned and fled, and kept on running until the bloodhound caught his scent and treed him like a dumb possum. “Good boy!” hollered Drake McBride for the eighteenth time.
“Ooowwwwwoooooooooo!” replied Horace.
This went on for two hours until, suddenly, the dog wheeled around, fell silent, and began wagging its tail. Momentarily Horace was joined at the foot of the tree by a shirtless man wearing a knit ski beanie, wraparound shades, and an ammunition belt.
Drake McBride figured the man was a poacher, not that he cared.
“Help me, bro!” he begged.
“Come on down from there,” the stranger said.
“What about the dog?”
“Hurry up. I don’t have all day.”
Timidly, Drake McBride made his way to the ground. He was relieved to see that the bloodhound was now preoccupied with a bag of hamburgers.
“I can’t believe I paid five grand for that wacko dog,” Drake McBride said to the stranger, “ ’cause they said he got eaten by a panther. I wish he had.”
“You want him back?”
“After he chased me up a tree? I don’t think so.”
The man seemed amused. “I guess Horace got bored and chewed through his rope.”
Drake McBride was rattled. “How do you know his name?”
“Horace and I go way back. Who are you?”
“I’m Drake W McBride.”
“Well, how about that for luck.”
Drake McBride stuck out his right hand. The stranger didn’t shake it, though he was smiling broadly.
“You know who I am?” Drake McBride asked with surprise, and a creeping sense of dread.
The man said, “Yup. You’re the boss of the two-bit oil company that’s drilling an illegal well in this state wildlife preserve. Or should I say, was drilling.”
Drake McBride dejectedly wondered how much worse his day could possibly get.
“And who are you?” he asked in a hollow voice.
“I’m the one who called the Fish and Wildlife agents about the panther and glued your man Melton to a tree and sprayed him orange and gutted his truck and ripped off that load of pipes. I’m the one who’s gonna shut you down.” The stranger took out a cell phone and dialed a number. “The fog’s lifting. Get the chopper up and come out here right away,” he instructed someone on the other end.
Drake McBride considered making a dash for freedom, but knew he would only get himself more lost than he already was. Besides, it would be easy for the athletic-looking stranger to outrun a chunky, out-of-shape guy with fractured ribs.
“I’ll give you five thousand dollars to forget about all this and let me go,” Drake McBride said.
The stranger laughed so sharply that Horace looked up from the mulched remains of his Quarter Pounders.
“You remind me of my old man,” the man said to Drake McBride.
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“It’s not.”
“Then how about ten thousand?”
The stranger grew serious and swatted a fly on his neck. “Mr. McBride, I’ll let you go for free,” he said, “but there’s not enough money in the world to make me forget what you did here.”
“Twenty thousand, if I can hitch a ride back to town on your helicopter. Twenty thousand, cash!”
“Sorry, man. The chopper’s full.”
“Now, wait—”
“Come on, Horace.” The stranger jogged off into the Black Vine Swamp, the bloodhound loping at his heels.
“Hey, where are you going?” Drake McBride shouted after him. “What about me? How do I get out of here?”
EPILOGUE
More than a month after Mrs. Starch vanished, her third-period biology students filed anxiously into the classroom. Their expressions reflected a mix of excitement and uncertainty, for it was rumored that the most feared (and surely the most famous) teacher at the Truman School would be returning for the first time since the fire at the Black Vine Swamp.
By now all the kids knew what had happened—Nick and Marta had told the panther story about a hundred times.
Nick’s account of his daring climb to meet the big cat ended with him jumping from the tree and passing out. He also vaguely recalled waking up in a helicopter and seeing a hound dog, of all things, drooling on his shoes.
Marta’s necklace of vulture beaks was a big hit at school. Her version of the panther adventure recounted how she’d stood guard with a high-powered rifle, warding off a crazed intruder while Nick was high in the branches, reuniting the cub with its mother. She also provided vivid details of the helicopter rescue, including a hairy landing on the hospital’s roof.
It was a good story, no matter who told it.
When the school bell rang, Dr. Dressler walked into the classroom. He looked more crisp and unflappable than usual, with good reason. The board of trustees had just given him a new five-year contract to remain as headmaster of Truman. They had sweetened the deal with a generous raise, based on a wave of positive publicity that the school had recently received.
Bunny Starch and three of her students had saved the life of a rare panther cub, and in the process had helped expose a crooked oil-drilling operation in the Big Cypress Preserve. It was huge news all over Florida, and was even featured by Anderson Cooper on CNN.
As a result, the Truman School was being flooded with enrollment applications and, more importantly, donation checks. While Dr. Dressler had nothing to do with the heroics of Mrs. Starch and her pupils, he was pleased to bask at the edge of the limelight.
“I have two brief announcements,” he said to the biology class. “First, the suspension of Duane Scrod Jr. is hereby suspended. I am proud and delighted to welcome him back to Truman.”
The headmaster turned toward the open door and motioned with two fingers. As soon as Smoke entered the room, everybody began to applaud except Nick, whose right arm was still encased in plaster from his fingers to his shoulder. Instead of clapping, Nick slapped the palm of his left hand against the top of his desk.
Smoke seemed mortified at the attention, and he hustled to seat himself as fast as possible.
Marta passed a note to Nick: He looks thinner!
Nick noticed it, too. Smoke had spent the past fourteen days in the county juvenile hall, which was not famous for serving hearty and nutritious meals.
His classmates had been outraged that Smoke was locked up, after all the good he’d done. Without his keen tracking s
kills, the missing mother panther might not have been found. And without his muscles, Mrs. Starch might never have made it alive to the emergency room after being shot.
Although the arson case against Smoke was dropped—a Texas oilman named Jimmy Lee Bayliss confessed to the crime—the state prosecutor had insisted on punishing the boy for fleeing from the police. At the time, Smoke had been on probation for the two arsons he’d committed when he was younger.
Even Jason Marshall thought two weeks behind bars was too harsh, considering the circumstances. Libby had persuaded her father to make a call on Duane Jr.’s behalf, but the prosecutor wouldn’t budge.
So Smoke had served his time without complaint, a model inmate.
“My second announcement deals with another rumor flying around campus,” Dr. Dressler said. “This one happens to be true: Today there will be no substitute biology teacher. Mrs. Starch, do you need some assistance?”
A familiar icy voice from the hallway: “I certainly do not.”
She clomped briskly and with purpose into the class-room. The crutches didn’t make her look frail and wobbly; in fact, she seemed taller and more imposing than ever.
Her bleached hair was piled into an exceptionally steep slope, and the violet shadow on her eyelids appeared to have been applied with an industrial paint roller. The anvil-shaped scar on her chin showed up like a fresh bruise against the hospital paleness of her skin.
Yet the students responded to her arrival in a spontaneous and unexpected way: they all rose from their desks, cheering and whistling and clapping. Dr. Dressler, to his own mild surprise, joined in.
For once, Mrs. Starch was speechless.
She crutched to her desk and fiercely began organizing her teaching materials. It looked to Nick as if she was trying not to cry.
Eventually the students settled down, and Dr. Dressler smoothly excused himself. After an awkward silence, Mrs. Starch cleared her throat and said, “Good morning, people. Please open your books—we have lots of catching up to do.”
Graham Carson’s arm shot up. Naturally, Mrs. Starch ignored him. Nick smiled and thought: Some things never change.
“Who’s prepared to tell me about Watson and Crick’s model for DNA structure?” Mrs. Starch asked. The usual squirming silence followed. “Anybody bother to read Chapter 11?” she said. “If you’re having trouble finding it, try looking between Chapter 10 and Chapter 12.”