It took almost an hour for Joshua Ames and the two animal control officers to return on horseback. Joshua lead one extra horse, while the second Animal Control officer had the other horse.
“All of the herd appears to be here,” Albert told them, “most of the rest were simply close to the other edge of the valley.”
“All twenty three?” Joshua gave a smile, “that’s good news then!”
“Twenty two, actually,” Albert sighed, “the Grizzly got one of ‘em.”
“I went around the edge, make sure there weren’t any hiding in the woods or that there weren’t any surprises,” I spoke up, “It looked like it wandered close to the edge of the clearing and the bear grabbed it there.”
“Where did the bear take it?” the first animal control officer asked.
“Off in that direction…” I pointed.
“Which is unimportant,” Joshua said slowly after a moment, and looking like he was doing a lot to just calm down, “this isn’t my father’s ranch land. I’m not sure who owns the land or if this state or federal land… but if anyone owns this area, it’s the bear. The cattle shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
“With all due respect,” the first Animal Control officer replied, “this isn’t an Animal-Person like Officer Wayne, here. He has all the instincts of a dominant predator in Asia, but he also retains everything we consider to be Human. His service to the Police Department had proved that. This is a mundane Grizzly. One of the largest land predators in the world, and one of the most aggressive. It’s already came onto your land once and killed a cow there and now has killed another. It will associate your ranch with food, and has probably learned that cattle are easy to kill. Removing it is the practical option of protecting your ranch and the people in the area.”
“Bears have large territories,” the second Animal Control officer added, “it may not bother you… but it still could go onto another rancher’s land.”
“So you’re going to kill it for being a bear and doing what a bear does in its own natural habitat?” Albert asked.
“To protect the town, yes…” the first Animal Control officer answered.
“We have no complaint against this bear,” Joshua answered, “and the time he came on our land, his natural prey was in short supply that year… and in this case, we’re well away from the ranch itself. You feel you have to do something about the bear? Tranquilize him and move him to a more appropriate area or sanctuary… AFTER we get these cattle back to where they belong.”
“It might be best to move the cattle back to the ranch before considering to do anything with the bear,” Officer Barnes answered, “should it realize we’re here and close to it… we could have worse trouble, particularly if it’s a mother with cubs.”
That got the two Animal Control officers to sigh heavily and then nod.
“We’ll see what can be done with the bear later,” the second Animal Control officer, “but we will have to deal with it. It’s nothing personal against you, Mr. Ames, it’s for the public’s safety should this bear be accustomed to cattle… we don’t want it to ravage anyone’s heard and we don’t want to have to answer calls about people wounded by a bear.”
“If you can do it without killing it, you’d have my blessing,” Albert Ames replied as he managed to mount the horse that had been brought for him.
The two Animal Control officers nodded.
“So, what’s you’re plan for moving ‘em, pop?” Joshua asked as the subject of the bear seemed to be dropped for the moment.
“I’d think we’d fan out and move them up toward the slope they came down,” Albert answered, “It isn’t super steep, and if we can keep them at a gentle walk, they’ll handle it okay. Officer Wayne, if you could stand off to the southern edge of the clearing, you can move slowly to make sure none run to the south. The rest of us will then ride around to the other side here and urge them back. I’ll stay closer to the north end.”
“Right,” Joshua nodded, “I can take the other wing.”
Albert nodded and turned to Officer Barnes who was just mounting his horse, and the two Animal Control officers.
“We want to do this slowly,” Albert instructed, “the last thing we want is a stampede. If they run, they’ll lose focus and that slope could become a tripping hazard for them. Keep your horses at a slow pace.”
“We’ll try,” Officer Barnes managed, though looking very uncomfortable, as though he wasn’t used to riding horses.
“Don’t worry,” Joshua told him, “You’ll do fine.”
Officer Barnes managed a nod and then slowly got the horse to follow Albert Ames and the others around the cattle. I slowly shrugged and then walked toward the southern end of the clearing again. I didn’t go to the area where the cow that had been killed had been, but I did make sure I was in a position to make sure the cattle didn’t flee south. The last thing I’m sure anyone wanted was to have them stampede there and end up running into that Grizzly, again.
After a few moments, the others reached their positions. The cattle “mooed” a bit, and the ones that were laying down got up again.
“Okay!” Albert called out, “move them forward!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Moving the cattle proved rather easy. They kept it at a slow pace back to the slope and then back to the Ames’ ranch. The only difficulty that they had was that once the cattle got up the slope, they began to wander in any which way and it took Albert Ames and Joshua a little while to corral them back into a group and allow Officer Barnes and the Animal Control Officers to move the cattle forward.
Officer Barnes managed to do alright though, from what I heard, he did not like the bouncing up and down on the horse’s back. If I had been light enough to ride a horse, I’d probably feel the same way. Part of me wanted to razz him a little and ask if he’d be singing soprano in the choir sooner or later.
Moving the cattle back was slightly tougher for me then the search for them had been. As we moved back toward the ranch, the pace had reached a slow “trot” at times, depending on how fast the cattle were wanting to move. Now, when they sped up, I managed to jog along behind, though I kept to the rear of the overall column and didn’t really try to gain on them. As we went though, this pace took its toll on me.
In comparison between wild cats and wild dogs, particularly with wolves one could see the differences in their respective styles. Cats tended to have better acceleration and in the case of the cheetah could obviously obtain a greater speed then wolves could. But wild cats had poor endurance and generally gave up the chase if the prey animal managed to cover a relatively short distance. Wolves were recorded at running down prey for miles, or running at near sprint level speed for miles. Something no cat could do and something no human that I knew of could do.
I knew of these comparisons from my original research to help Molly and then looking through a few things about the animals that lived in the area around Columbia Falls. But that wasn’t the point, at the moment. At the moment, I was proving that tigers were not built to run for long distances. I managed to keep up, but as we finally came up toward the ranch fence again, I was nearly out of breath and feeling overheated.
“You okay, George,” Officer Barnes asked back, slowing his horse down.
He’d obviously heard my heavy breathing.
“I’m not built to run this long,” I managed to pant out.
And at that point I hit the proverbial wall. I couldn’t run any further, and stopped, panting heavily. At that point the second Animal Control officer noticed and called to his partner.
“Hey, Joe, do we have any water in our vehicle?” he asked.
“Yeah, a couple of bottles, why?” the first Animal Control officer, identified only as “Joe” answered back.
“Officer Wayne looks like he needs it.”
Joe looked back from his horse and looked to me panting there.
“Cats are good sprinters, but not good at long distance running,” the second Animal Control officer answered, “jogging behind us for most of the way is probably far more then he’s physically able.”
“Go on!” I managed to wave them off, “I’ll be fine. I just need to catch my breath.”
“With your fur, you may not want to overheat,” Officer Barnes commented.
“And we got it now,” Joshua called back, “just moving them into one of the other pastures, which wasn’t vandalized and doesn’t have our bulls in it. It’ll do until we can fix this section.”
“Thank you for your help,” Albert added.
I slowly managed to move to where we had earlier parked our car. Once there I opened the back door and sat down on the seat. Officer Barnes and the second Animal Control officer followed. After a few moments, and tying their horses to the fence, the Animal Control officer brought me several bottles of water.
“Thank you,” I answered and began twisting off the caps and drinking the water.
“It’s no problem,” the second Animal Control officer answered, “You helped us find all the cattle and underwent the long run back here.”
I didn’t answer as I opened up a second bottle of water and began to down it. After a few moments of sitting there and drinking water I began to feel much better. Shortly after, Joshua and Albert Ames arrived to take the horses back to their stables and their pasture.
“You okay?” Albert asked politely.
“Yeah, I’m doing much better now,” I answered, “thank you.”
“Thank you all for your help,” Joshua spoke up, “all we’ll want is for you to catch the guy that cut our fence.”
“We’ll do our best,” Officer Barnes answered.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We returned quietly to the station and made our report to Officer Howard on what had gone on.
“The rancher stuck up for the bear?” Officer Howard wondered.
“More like he accepted that the bear had killed the cow,” Officer Barnes answered, “though, I’d think that the Animal Control guys would go out to deal with the bear anyway.”
“By rule, they’re supposed to,” Officer Howard answered, “though, they could tranquilize him and either move him to a sanctuary or to a spot where there are even fewer people.”
“Yes,” Officer Barnes nodded, “the Ameses were most concerned with who cut the fence.”
He then produced the plastic bags with the samples that had been collected.
“We have these samples here that might give us some indication as to who our thief was,” Officer Barnes reported as he placed the bags on Officer Howard’s desk.
“I’ll send it in to the closest science lab,” Officer Howard replied, “they’ll get what we need… although if they don’t match anything on the local state files or the national files, it won’t be of much help.”
Officer Barnes and I nodded.
“Any guesses as to why he just let the cattle go?” Officer Howard wondered.
“Maybe the guy intended to come back for them,” I commented, “let them go lose and hope we don’t track them down and then come back for them when the “heat” is off… Other then that, we don’t have much.”
“We may know more when we know who the guy is,” Officer Barnes spoke.
Officer Howard slowly sighed heavily.
“Then we’ll simply have to wait for the crime lab to run through his blood sample and see if it matches anyone,” Officer Howard sighed, “In the meantime, we’ll all need to be vigilant. If he tried to steal one rancher’s cattle, he may try it again.”
“Of course, sir,” Officer Barnes and I nodded.