Just as Sandy craned around to locate Mr. Cook, the corner of his eye caught a lightning-fast motion. It happened so quickly and was over so fast that Sandy wasn’t sure, at first, whether he had actually seen it.
Something vaguely earth-colored had dropped silently from a tree behind Mike and was now hidden under a cover of tall grass that ran along the border of the clearing.
Uneasily, Sandy swung around and moved closer to the waving grass under the tree. He saw a flurry among the stems and then what looked like a ripple of motion less than forty yards behind Mike’s back.
Sandy broke into a quick trot, narrowing the range to approximately sixty yards. Mike was completely unaware of what was going on behind him, and Sandy felt no inclination to shout. A startled cat might jump before he was properly in position.
There was another rippling movement from the clump of grass. Then slowly the tangle of underbrush parted and Sandy saw the mountain lion.
The big cat’s head was flat against the ground and his eyes were fastened on Mike. Sandy sensed that the beast was gathering itself for a spring, and suddenly he knew that he would have to fire quickly.
Now that the crisis had come, Sandy was surprisingly calm. He brought the rifle up to his shoulder and nestled his cheek comfortably against the stock. As the mountain lion loomed up into the field of his telescopic sight, Sandy noticed that his eyes were thin slits of yellow. They looked malevolent and deadly. Powerful muscles at the joints of his shoulders gathered and hunched into hard knots. In another moment they would uncoil, sending two hundred pounds of clawing death down on Mike’s unsuspecting back.
Bracing himself for the gun’s recoil, Sandy took a deep breath and squeezed slowly down on the trigger. The intersection of the two cross hairs was centered on a spot directly above and behind the cougar’s foreleg. Sandy could feel the trigger pressing harder into the crook of his finger as he held the rifle steady. He closed down the last sixteenth of an inch and held his breath.
The cat made his move a split second before Sandy fired. Then three things happened simultaneously. Sandy’s rifle roared out, missing a fatal spot, but slamming into the cougar’s side. Mike whirled around at the sound of the explosion, saw the cat and backed away instinctively. As he stepped back, his foot caught on a stray root and he sprawled awkwardly to the ground, losing his rifle. The impact of the bullet momentarily broke the lion’s charge. The force of the blow sent him spinning into the earth with a spine-tingling scream of pain and rage. By the time he clawed back to his feet to renew his attack, Sandy had managed to pump another shell into the chamber.
This time he didn’t miss. He caught the cat three inches behind the shoulder and could almost see the slug smack home. The lion lunged through the air, jerked once and slumped to the ground, barely fifteen feet from Mike’s frightened face.