Wash shook his head, but not like he was contradicting her. “How nearby?”
“Half-mile radius,” the professor replied. “And yes, I compensated for the sphinx effect.”
“Saber cats and Columbian sphinxes travel in prides,” Wash said, frowning. “Meaning, more than three.”
“Three?” I said before I could stop myself.
The professor pointed past me, to the north. I turned and saw another heap of tan fur partway up the hillside. “Saber cats are clever, cooperative hunters,” she said. “When they’re stalking, the pride will try to encircle their prey, so that as few as possible will escape.”
I’d just barely begun feeling easy, but that made me tense again. “So where are the rest of them?”
“That is a right good question,” Wash said. He looked at the professor. “Are you as handy with a rifle as you are with a spell?”
“I can manage, at need.”
“Good.” He swung down from his horse and handed her the rifle and me the reins. Then he went down the hill to examine the dead saber cats and the sphinx. After a few minutes, he circled the hill farther out, pausing occasionally to study the ground.
“Scouts,” he said shortly as he reclaimed his rifle and horse. “The rest of the pride will be back that way.” He pointed south. “All three look to be three-quarters starved … but they’ve fed well recently. That’ll be why they aren’t all traveling together — the pride has killed something large enough to last them a few days.” He looked from the professor to me and added, “Maybe a couple of bison, or a mammoth.”
I couldn’t help frowning a little at that. We hadn’t seen any bison or mammoths or even deer since we crossed into the area that the grubs had devastated the year before.
“Starving,” Professor Torgeson said thoughtfully. “That explains why they pushed through the protective spells, then.”
Wash snorted. “Wildlife comes through the protective spells for all sorts of reasons, and we only know about half of them. If that.”
“I take your point, Mr. Morris.” The professor hesitated, as if she wanted to say more, then shook her head slightly and waited.
“We need to warn the nearest settlements,” Wash said after a moment. “Let’s go.”
I noticed he didn’t say anything more about investigating trouble, but he didn’t seem too happy about going on, either. I wondered about that. Wash wasn’t the sort to go courting trouble, and searching out a mixed pride of saber cats and Columbian sphinxes looked to me like being more trouble than even a trouble-seeker would ever want.
The horses were still skittish, so we gave the dead cats a wide berth. As we rode away, Professor Torgeson looked over her shoulder and said, “You did well, Eff.” Then she went back to concentrating on the travel protection spells.
It made me feel good to hear that, but I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I hadn’t been much help when the saber cats attacked. Oh, I’d kept my seat and hung on to the packhorse, which at least kept me from causing extra problems, but I hadn’t been good for much else, and I didn’t like it. I’d grown up on the edge of the West; I ought to have been more use than simply hanging on to a horse and throwing one measly spell.
I stewed over that all the way to the next settlement, a place called Bejmar. They weren’t too pleased to see us at first. Like the other settlements that had managed to survive the grubs and mirror bugs, they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they didn’t have much of anything to be hospitable with. As soon as the words “saber cat pride” were out of Wash’s mouth, though, the man on gate duty hurried off to ring the alarm bell. All the folks who’d been out in the fields dropped what they were doing and came running. By the time we’d finished telling our story to the settlement magician, everyone was inside the walls, and within half an hour of our arrival, the settlement had sent out message riders to the two nearest settlements and started collecting all the people and guns they could spare.
Wash and Professor Torgeson assumed that they’d be going out with the settlers to hunt saber cats. The professor offered to let me stay in Bejmar with our packhorse and supplies, and I even thought about it for a minute or two. Part of me wanted nothing to do with hunting because I was still shaking from the suddenness of the attack and the way I hadn’t seen that third cat coming up behind me until after it was shot dead, but another part of me wanted a chance to prove I could do better. There was something else, too — a big, foggy feeling that included the grubs and the dead countryside and the settlements and most of the people we’d met west of the Great Barrier, all in a jumble. I couldn’t put a name to it, but it was pushing me to go along and do whatever I could. So I swallowed my worries and told the professor that I thought the hunters needed as many folks as they could get and it wouldn’t seem right to stay safe in the settlement.
The settlers were extra careful that none of the livestock got left outside the palisade walls after dark, and the settlers who weren’t heading out next morning stood watch all night long. Saber cats have been known to claw their way right over a wall to get at the horses and cows, so everyone was tense.
Next morning, we rode out to take care of the pride: five settlers, Wash, Professor Torgeson, and me. After what we’d seen with only three animals, I wasn’t sure that we had enough people, but Professor Torgeson said we’d be meeting up with folks from the other settlements around. A full pride of saber cats and sphinxes was too dangerous to let alone, especially if they were mostly starving, and all the settlements in the area would cooperate to get rid of it.
I had the repeating rifle that Robbie had given me, and most of the settlement folk had something similar, though their weapons all looked well used. The folks from the other settlements caught up with us around mid-morning — five men from Neues Hamburg and three men and a woman from Jorgen. That made seventeen of us. I still wasn’t sure it was enough, since we didn’t know how many cats there were, but Wash and the settlers seemed to think it was reasonable.
After a quick discussion, they decided on a man named Meyer to be leader of the whole group. He was a bluff blond man with sharp eyes that never smiled even when his mouth did. I didn’t care for him, but all the settlers knew him and plainly trusted him to do a good job.
We went on slowly. It took all morning and a bit of the afternoon to go back over the distance that had taken two and a half hours with just Wash and the professor and me. Wash and Professor Torgeson stayed in front, working a variation on the travel protection spells. This time, we didn’t want to drive the wildlife off; we wanted them to come out where we could see and shoot them. In order to do that, we had to know when they were coming, and from what direction.
Long about mid-afternoon, we got to the hill where we’d faced the saber cats the day before. As soon as we came in sight of the dead animals, Mr. Meyer signaled everyone to stop. “Mr. Morris says we’re getting close,” he told us. “We’ll leave the horses here. Any volunteers for guard duty?”
After a minute, two of the settlers nodded. They didn’t look too happy about staying behind, but someone had to. The horses would panic if they smelled cat, and we’d never get close to them.
We picketed the horses, and Wash and the professor set up a protection spell around them. Protection spells are usually meant to go out as far as they can, to keep the wildlife as far away as possible, but this time they had to keep it as close in as they could. The men who were staying looked uneasy about it, and I didn’t blame them. They wouldn’t have much in the way of warning if the saber cats decided to come through the protection spell, the way they had the day before. Nobody made a fuss, though. We all knew that we were hunting for a mixed pride, saber cats and Columbian sphinxes both, and the sphinxes were particularly sensitive to magic. If they noticed any spells, there was no telling what they’d do; they might run off before we could kill them all, or they might charge, the way the three scouts had charged us the day before. So the spell couldn’t go much past where the horses were picketed.