The Bangtail Ghost by Keith McCafferty

Author:Keith McCafferty [McCafferty, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Bright Carpet

The headline on the front page of the Tuesday afternoon edition of the Bridger Mountain Star was top of the fold.

KILLER CAT KILLED IN CHASE

County Breathes Sigh of Relief

Sean, sitting opposite Martha at her kitchen table, read the lede out loud:

A mountain lion believed to have killed and partially eaten a woman in the Gravelly Range last November was trailed by hounds Sunday and shot dead. Hyalite County Sheriff Martha Ettinger confirmed that the same animal may also have claimed the lives of one or more other Montana residents in nearby mountain ranges within the past several months.

Clarice Kincaid, 38, of Mesa, Arizona, and formerly of St. Ignatius, Montana, was killed the night of November 24. Her death caused alarm and some panic among Hyalite County citizens, sparking increased sales of firearms and vigilance over children and pets.

“I’m just happy we got him before someone else lost their life,” Ettinger said at a press conference this morning. “We put a lot of man-hours in on this hunt, and for a while there I was afraid the cat had more than nine lives.”

The lion was killed after a six-hour chase on Sunday by Buster Garrett, whose four hounds treed the lion in the Wolf Creek drainage of the Madison Range on a ranch owned by well-known Hollywood actor Joshua Byrne. Garrett was accompanied on the trail by private detective Sean Stranahan, 40, a member of the sheriff’s task force. The adult male lion weighed 176 pounds and appeared to be in good physical condition, with the exception of a broken canine tooth.

Ettinger said the tooth linked the cat to Kincaid. Her body showed a bite pattern consistent with the injury to the cat’s teeth. A DNA analysis will be conducted to verify that the lion is the same one that killed Kincaid.

Ettinger, who spearheaded the task force’s hunt, refused to release the names of other possible victims, pending genetic confirmation and notification of next of kin.

“Let’s all get a good night’s sleep tonight,” Ettinger said. “The long nightmare is over.”

The story jumped and Sean turned the page to see that he had a photo credit. It was a picture he’d taken with Garrett’s cell phone. The photo showed the big man holding up the dead mountain lion in a bear hug, the cat in the foreground in the wide-angle image, which stretched its size, the congealed blood making a horror of Garrett’s face. The photo had been taken with a flash and the cat’s eyes glowed an eerie green-white.

“I wonder what causes that.” Sean’s voice was casual. He didn’t really expect a reply.

Martha took the paper.

“It’s called the tapetum lucidum,” she said. “It’s a layer of cells behind the retina of the eye. The English translation is ‘bright carpet.’ It helps night vision by bouncing back the image to the retina. The eyes of golden-eyed cats like mountain lions glow green, the eyes of blue-eyed cats, like Siamese, glow red. I came into the house when we had

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