More content from Dakota River Bend and my character Holly O’Connor! For more information about what DRB is, check out the intro to THIS post.
Cumberland Forest wasn’t Holly’s usual hunting grounds, but to call anything her “usual” would be to imply that she’d been in the county long enough to have a usual.
Hell, it would imply that she had any skill at hunting in the first place.
Getting used to her new life was a slow-going, trial-by-fire kind of affair. The countryside was deadly — predators stalked the woods and plains while bandits lied in ambush along the roads.
There was always the city, of course. Saint Denis, with all its glittering lights and gutter trash. Alleys and smokestacks, roofways and rats. Suffocating. Too much like the life she’d left.
Even the thought of it made her skin crawl and her stomach ache.
There was a chance that the latter was just hunger. Any money she’d had had gone into saving up for a gun. Food-wise, pickings had been… slim, to put it lightly.
She was no stranger to living with the bare minimum. Sleeping in the stables wasn’t so bad, and the rivers were water enough for her. Armed with a rifle, the countryside was full of food. …In theory.
There were places she’d learned fairly quickly to avoid for her own health – the Grizzlies came to mind – but for the most part, she hunted where the food was. Today that was the Cumberland Forest, the sun shining through the branches of the trees and speckling the ground all around her as she made her way down the trail.
Though the outskirts of the forest had been rich with small game and a few ungulates here and there, the calls of elk further in drew her towards them with the promise of bigger game. However, she’d lost track of where the elk must have been a few minutes ago and hadn’t heard it again since.
It was about that time that she noticed the footprints in the ground ahead of her, crossing the trail from one side to the other rather than following it. It wasn’t uncommon to find signs of other hunters in the area, but the sudden realization that perhaps she wasn’t alone in these woods made her itch anxiously at her wrists and neck. It was fine though, she thought to herself. It was about time she moved off of the trail, and as long as she went in the opposite direction of the footprints…
Oh.
The scent of blood hit her nose in almost the same instant that the sight of it did, leading off the same way the footsteps had gone. One pair of boots, she realized, and a second pair of other prints following closely behind, though these were definitely not shoes.
They were paws. Cougar paws.
It occurred to her that the forest was deathly quiet all around her now.
Her mind and heart raced, slowly drawing the carcano rifle from her back. Why cougars? Why was it always cougars? She’d seen them around New Hanover here and there, but hasn’t seen any in Cumberland Forest before – had it followed the stranger in? Was it still here?
Of course it was. It had to be. She imagined her sweetheart’s voice in the back of her mind, teasing her— Another cougar run-in was just her sort of luck, wasn’t it? Her new friends hadn’t started calling her Catnip for nothing, after all.
Movement in the brush. She snapped her sights that way, slowly backing down the trail the way she’d come. Her breathing had begun to shake, making it difficult to see, much less aim. She tried to steady herself. They said the worst thing you could do was give your back to a cougar – they’d pounce the second you turned. The thought prodded at her that she had no way of knowing if it was already behind her. They were horrendously fast and stealthy to boot – whoever had left that trail and blood had discovered that all too well.
Focus! Focus!
Movement again from brush, and stepping out onto the trail, she finally saw it. Immediately, she raised her rifle, not even daring to take a breath.
It turned to look at her, and in that moment, she understood why the cougar must have come all this way after the other man: In its jaws, the mother cougar held a cub by its scruff.
Breathing hard, Holly didn’t dare move a muscle. Didn’t dare lower the gun. Didn’t dare pull the trigger.
The creature’s eyes assessed her, sizing her up. Staring her down. Its golden fur gleamed in the dappled sunlight, but its shaded eyes glinted with an orange intelligence and prowess. Blood stained its jaws and claws, fresh and still drying into the beast’s fur.
It could end her as easily as it had ended the poacher before her.
But, it seemed, there was nothing more the mother wanted. She turned back to the forest, vanishing into the brush as quickly as she’d come.
At long last, with the sounds of birdsong and other small game beginning to fill the area, Holly’s shaking hands finally lowered the rifle.
She steadied herself against a tree, breathing a sigh of relief.
The rest of the hunt would pass in relative peace. Though her hunting capabilities were subpar at best, hunger-driven determination would eventually bear fruit.
She would return to the nearest stable to light a campfire and cook her catch, and in a few hours, she would settle in the hay next to her beloved horse to bed down for the night. But through it all, she would never forget the mother cougar’s eyes as she chose to spare, nor the contrasting wisdom borne in blood across her claws.