The nylon rope bit into Mike’s chest so deep he’d lost all feeling in his hands. There was only a dull, throbbing ache and the heavy thud of his heart echoing in his ears. Three paces away, the mountain lion stopped—a massive male with amber eyes that held a primal power so intense Mike instinctively held his breath. Death hadn’t come on silent paws as he’d always imagined; it was standing right there, looking him square in the soul.
Despite the terror, Mike Miller didn’t look away. He stared back at the predator, hoping against hope that the animal’s memory was as long as the legends said. It had been eight months since Mike had returned to his remote cabin on the edge of the Blue Ridge Wilderness and stopped dead in his tracks. There, on the matted grass by his porch, lay a female cougar, emaciated and exhausted.
Beside her, barely clinging to life, was a cub about the size of a large dog. Its front right paw had been mangled by a steel trap. The bone was exposed, and infection was already setting in. But the mother didn’t snarl; she just watched the man. She looked at him exactly the way this male was looking at him now: with a silent question and a desperate kind of trust that most people think animals aren’t capable of.
Mike hadn’t hesitated. He’d brought the cub inside, sedated him with a heavy dose from his vet kit, and performed a rough but necessary amputation. He’d cauterized the vessels and stitched the wound by the light of a kerosene lamp because his generator had kicked the bucket a week prior. His hands had shaken—not from fear for his own life, but for the cub’s. He knew if the little one didn’t make it, the mother waiting outside would tear him apart.
Mike Miller, 37, a wilderness ranger and Army vet, wasn’t a man who believed in fairy tales. He knew nature was indifferent and that instinct usually trumped gratitude. A mountain lion was a two-hundred-pound killing machine, built by the woods, for the woods. Yet, looking into those amber eyes, he whispered through cracked lips:
— “It’s me, buddy. It’s Mike. You remember, don’t you?”
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