The forest was so close that I'd normally hear all kinds of small creatures but it was unnaturally still. I tried to tell myself it was simply the evening quiet that starts when the wind dies and the cooling earth changes and softens, giving daytime creatures time to hide and nighttime ones to awaken. It happens at almost the same time every evening. Six o'clock. The time the forest service lets people burn brush because the wind has abated. A time when the day birds are scurrying home and night birds coming out and the deer are rising from their beds to begin feeding in those clearings where they can see predators in time to make their escape. I told myself it was quiet because of all those things, not because the cougar was near. But I didn't believe myself.
I wanted to scream. To run. To hide. But I had to stay. The horses were my responsibility and I’d protect them as best I could. But nothing happened during my walk around the Green Forest grounds.
Max was on duty next. “Get some sleep, Maggie. If anything happens I’ll handle it.”
“Do you think the cougar will come tonight?”
“This guy's wounded so it won't behave like a normal big cat. There's no telling what it'll do. I won't make predictions.”
I indicated the horses. They moved restlessly in their stalls, which was uncharacteristic. Normally they were more than ready to sleep when night fell. "They didn't get enough exercise."
"Or there's a cougar nearby and they are scared."
"They need to run." These horses were born to go miles without tiring. Today they'd not gone anywhere. "You can't judge the nearness of the cougar by their activity now any more than you can predict the weather."
"You predict the weather pretty accurately if I remember right. But if the cat doesn't show in a week, you can take the horses a short ways along a trail. With me in the rear.”
I decided in some part of me that the cougar was gone on to some other state. Because I wanted it to be true. A week. Just one week and life would return to normal. "I walked all around the place and nothing happened."
"I'll take my grand tour next, when it's darker." We closed and locked the barn door, shutting out the soft sounds of the horses. Then we moved to the porch where Max dropped onto the swing and stuck those long legs out in front of him and stuffed a pillow behind his head. He pushed with one foot and the swing moved gently. Then he closed his eyes and might have been asleep. But I knew him well enough to know that wasn't likely the case. He could erupt at a moment's notice.
I eventually dragged a mattress onto the porch and used that for a makeshift bed, determined to stay close all night long in case I was needed. As the hours passed I found myself dozing whenever Max was on the porch, lying awake whenever he took a turn around the property.
It was almost midnight when I insisted on taking a turn again. "Nothing has happened. It'll be just another routine circling of the property." The moon that had been full and bright the other nights was obscured behind hazy clouds, and the stars were all but blotted out. Still it was light enough that I didn’t need my flashlight to see ahead so I let it dangle from my free hand, the one not holding the shotgun.