Though Rock would not normally hurt a cat, if they ran from him he would chase them. Any dog would. And who knew how far? This wilderness land went on for many miles.
Another shadow flashed through the mottled light, small and swift. If these were cats, they were not the three cats Charlie knew. Those three would not follow them secretly, they'd be right out in the open running beside the horses, begging a ride home across their saddles. Charlie had taken the young tortoiseshell up on the saddle with her several times, and the kit quite liked that excitement. Anyway, those three wouldn't be clear out here, miles south of Molena Point. Even on horseback, the riders were still a good hour from home. They were well south of Hellhag Hill, which was as far south, she thought, as Joe Grey or Dulcie ever ventured. Though the kit had come from much farther south when she first found the village, escaping from just such a band of feral cats. Small and hungry and troubled, Kit had taken refuge on Hellhag Hill and there, frightened and nearly starved, she had found the first two humans she'd ever been willing to trust.
Edging Bucky off the trail, Charlie looked back at Ryan and Hanni. "Go on. Whatever is there is small, I don't want to frighten it. I'm just curious. I'll catch up." And she headed alone into the woods, the buckskin stepping with exaggerated care and snorting. Behind her, the two women moved away, their horses' sorrel and gray rumps bright in the morning. Ryan glanced back at her once, frowning, then moved her mare up to match the gray's hurrying walk.
Charlie was glad Max wasn't there. If this was the feral band, Molena Point's police chief didn't need any more close encounters with speaking cats. He got plenty of that at home, though all unknowing. It was hard enough to keep the three cats' secret from him, without other sentient cats appearing. Approaching the dense woods, Bucky continued to stare and fuss, but he moved ahead sensibly. Bucky was Max's gelding, he was well trained and reliable. Though he would not so willingly have approached a band of coyotes or an unusually bold cougar. Cougars had attacked several hikers this year and, in one instance, a lone rider, raking and tearing the horse badly before the wounded rider shot him.
The three women were armed against that kind of danger. Three females traveling alone did not, to Max Harper's way of thinking, go into the California wilderness unprotected from some strange quirk of nature or a marauding human. These days, there could be a nutcase anywhere, the wild hills no exception. Particularly with marijuana growers squatting on state land, angry men who would kill to protect their lucrative illegal crops.
Charlie was police-trained in the use of a weapon and not, in any way, hasty or hot-headed. And Ryan and Hanni, having grown up in a law-enforcement family, had been well schooled from an early age. All three carried cell phones, but it would take a while for outside help to reach them. A Jeep could manage these hills, but they were riding the old original highway that had deteriorated over sixty years into a rough dirt track with patches of broken, washed-out blacktop-an impossible road for any car with only two-wheel drive. She entered the wood where the trees grew thick, the gelding picking his way among deadfalls, dry, rotting invitations to forest fire. Around them, nothing moved.
Where the trees parted sufficiently, thin shafts of light grew brighter as the sun rose. Away at the far side of the hill, the woods dropped into a ravine. Bucky's ears flicked and twisted, and his skin rippled with shivers. She could hear behind her the faint hush of the sea, then a distant click as one of the retreating horses stepped on a pebble. The pine forest was cold; she drew her jacket close. And suddenly for no reason she wanted to turn back. At the same moment, Bucky froze.
Something shone ahead, unnaturally bright between the trees, something glinting like metal. She frowned at the long silver streaks half hidden within the dark bushes.
No rock would glint like that, with those long, straight flashes where the sun shot down. Pushing Bucky closer, booting him deeper in among the crowding pines, she approached the bright gleams where a shaft of slanting sun picked out metal bars.
An animal cage. A trap. A humane trap, made of thin steel bars, not wire mesh as were most such cages. Its top, sides, and back had been covered with a heavy towel so that a trapped beast would settle down in the darkness and not harm itself lunging and fighting. A friend who worked for a cat-rescue group had told her that a trapped cat would fight its cage until it tore off hanks of its own skin, injuring itself sometimes so severely that it must be destroyed. The towel did not cover the front of the cage. She could see a cat inside, a big cat, crouching and silently hissing, its eyes dark with fear and hate.
Sliding off Bucky, she knelt to look. The cat fixed her with an enraged glare, a furious stare from keenly intelligent eyes. This was no ordinary cat. He watched her with intent human comprehension, and everything about him was demanding. Much as Joe Grey would have stared if he were caught in a trap. Though she could not imagine such a thing happening. Joe was far too wary.
How had this obviously intelligent creature let himself be caught? The huge, broad-shouldered tom exhibited such a deep and violent rage. This was a wild, rebellious intellect trapped not only in the cage but in a feline body with physical limitations that had betrayed him. With no hands to manipulate that complicated lock, he had no hope of escape. He glared at Charlie as if he would tear her leg off.
His rough coat was a mix of gray and tan and dirty white; his broad, boxy head scarred as if from fighting, his ears torn, his yellow eyes fierce. She had no desire to touch her fingers to the cage to see if this might be a domestic cat, an angry lost soul who might be longing to trust her. There was nothing lost about this soul. Enflamed, bedeviled, not to trust or be trusted.
His eyes never left her. His teeth remained bared in a snarl as lethal as that of any cougar, eyes like an imprisoned convict. She could see him debating how he could best use her, how he could force her to free him. Stepping away from the cage, she put her hand on Bucky's shoulder, steadying herself against the solid buckskin gelding. She stood silently for a long time watching the cat as he continued his careful assessment of her.
At last she knelt again, and spoke softly, though the other riders were on down the trail. "You run with the wild band. With the band that, almost two years ago, came to Hellhag Hill." Even as she said it, she thought, alarmed, that if he was one of that band, they might have come back searching for the kit.
But why would they? To take the little tattercoat back into their clowder? Why would they want her back? She had been nothing but an outcast.
Would they want to remove any cat of their kind from human company? Would they hurt Kit to keep their secret?
But that didn't make sense. If that was the case, why had they ever let her stay in the village? Why hadn't they taken her away at once?
Or was this a new and stricter leader? Charlie knew from Kit that the band had been ruled by a tyrant. Was there now a worse dictator, a beast even more predatory and controlling? Kit had said the leaders changed whenever a stronger male killed the old one. Was this tom even more anxious to keep his kind from being discovered? The cat continued to glare.