The Lazarus Key, Chapter One
Yellowstone National Park / Wednesday, June 9; 9:32 PM
Ollie fed me GPS coordinates as I made my way through Yellowstone’s winding trails. My boss’s call for me to check in on an out-of-town game warden screwed up my arrest of poachers I’d spent all day tracking. This warden was on the move, and it’d taken me over two hours to reach his last reported coordinates, but he wasn’t there. I burned a good twenty minutes searching for him in the area and finally found him several hundred yards off near Skunk’s Gully, kneeling, tucked in tight behind a bush.
He blended near perfectly into the foliage. He had his back to me, looking through a pair of night-vision binoculars. We didn’t get anything fancy like NVBs in Wyoming, which meant South Dakota had a lot bigger budget. Still, I intended to ask Ollie about ordering a pair, but I already knew what his answer would be. Game wardens had to buy just about everything they carried except for the geo-tracker fobs each of us were assigned. They wouldn’t have sprung for the trackers except that the FWS was part of the government, and the government loves to keep tabs on its people.
I gave a low whistle. We game wardens tended to do that rather than calling out to each other. It seems to disrupt nature less.
“I already knew you were back there,” he said softly without lowering the NVBs. Another thing wardens don’t do is whisper. We talk quietly to not startle wildlife (or poachers), but we never whisper. People tended to over-express sibilants, especially the letter S, when they whisper. And the last thing a skittish animal wants to hear is something that sounds like a giant snake.
At least the guy seemed like a pro. I sidled up next to him, took a knee, and set down the two rifles I’d confiscated from poachers an hour earlier and hadn’t had time to drop them off at my truck.
I couldn’t make out what he was looking at in the darkness, so I asked him, “What’re you looking at?”
He jumped even though he would’ve heard me settle in alongside him. “You’re a woman.”
“Yeah. And you’re black.”
That gave him pause. “It’s just when they said they were sending a guy named Frank—”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Now, how about you tell me what we’re looking so I can get to the more interesting topic of why I got called in to babysit an officer who’s way out of his jurisdiction and is carrying all kinds of fancy equipment.”
“I’m on vacation.”
“Looks more like poaching to me.”
He grimaced. “It’s not.” He handed me his NVBs. “At your one o’clock, forty meters out. Just under the limestone ledge.”
No wonder I couldn’t see it in the dark. Forty meters in the forest during the day was a long way to see. Even with his fancy NVBs, it took me a good seven seconds to bring the cat into a clear view. Ollie had said it’d be a big cat. I expected a mountain lion. It wasn’t that. I refocused the glasses. At first I thought it could be a tiger—the shape was right, but this thing was even bigger… and it had two long saber teeth. “Holy crap.”
“You see it?”
“Yeah. I see it.” I was still working on believing it.
Being a Wyoming game warden, I’m used to getting animal calls in Yellowstone. Two weeks ago, it was a bear. Last week, a monkey terrorized a family in an RV. Yeah, someone’s pet monkey got loose and snuck into a camper in the middle of the night and raised a ruckus. It really should’ve been a park service call, but the wardens get called in far too often.
After all, we’re the ones with the guns.
But one thing I never planned on was being sent to track a supposedly extinct saber tooth tiger running through Yellowstone.
The other officer reached for the gun lying next to him on the ground. “I need to get within range to tranq it.”
In the dark, I’d mistaken the tranquilizer gun for a shotgun.
“What are you doing with a tranq gun in Yellowstone?” I asked.
“I always carry one in my truck. Guess I brought it with me on this hike out of habit. You always carry two rifles?”
“One for each hand. And don’t change the subject. This ain’t South Dakota. That makes you out of your jurisdiction. You don’t have the authority to carry tranqs in Yellowstone, let alone Wyoming.”
“I’ll give you a really nice apology later. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m a little curious about the giant cat over there because I can tell you one thing: we sure as bunny tails don’t have anything like that in the South Dakota.”
“I might be a bit curious about it myself,” I said.
“Ordinarily, I’d say we sneak up closer, but it seems a might skittish, so I parked myself here to give it time to settle in. It’s a predator, so we might be able to encourage it to come at us. What d’ya think? Draw its attention?”
“How? You think, ‘here, kitty, kitty’ will work?”
“Has that worked for you in the past?”
“Not yet, but I’m an optimist. Okay, if you’re dead set on enticing that cat in our direction, my vote is you drawing its attention, and I tranq it.”
He grimaced. “Maybe we should try to get closer first.”
I handed the NVBs back to him and pulled out my own binoculars to see the strange tiger in a more natural way. Cats were nocturnal but they were also lazy. This feline was no different as it was currently taking a catnap under a ledge. It didn’t seem skittish to me, but then again, I’d just gotten there.
Two long and very large teeth glinted in the moonlight. Those still threw me. The cat was obviously some type of tiger. The stripes, coloring, and size gave it away, but I’d never realized tigers were so big, not that I’d ever seen one outside a zoo or the internet. Its long tail flicked away bugs while it rested.
“Good plan. What weight are those tranqs good for?” It weighed four hundred pounds, easy.
“They’ll take down a bear.”
“I hope you’re talking grizzly and not one of those cute lil black bears you have in the Black Hills.”
“I am.”
I checked each rifle as quietly as possible, making sure the mags were full and each gun had a round in the chamber before holding one out to him. “For backup, in case the tranq pisses it off.”
“Good plan,” he echoed my earlier words.
I considered calling Ollie, but he’d already mentioned that there were no other wardens nearby and park rangers didn’t carry guns, so a call wouldn’t do any good. By the time backup arrived, the cat would be long gone, and something that size could cause a heap of trouble in a mighty short period of time. I could’ve just imagined the headlines: Dozens of campers killed by giant tiger with saber-like teeth.
We made our way forward at a snail’s pace, moving as silently as possible. With every step, I put weight on my toes before my heels. It was an old Indian trick I’d picked up back in Montana, but I still needed to keep a close eye out for twigs and dried brush.
We paused every five yards to look through our binoculars. The cat was still lying down but it’d changed positions. At twenty-five yards out, our luck held, but we still had a stream to cross. It would be quieter than dry land, but there was always a risk of slipping on a loose rock and causing a splash. Since my fellow officer held the tranq gun, he maintained lead going into the water while I walked behind him, a few feet to his left so I could have a clear shot in case shit hit the proverbial fan.
Halfway through the stream, a shot rang out from the darkness to our right. Something big. Sounded like a .300 Winchester Magnum. Easy to tell because it’s a favorite caliber of big game hunters. We both ducked and dove for cover at the water’s edge, making a hell of a splash. The cat sprang to its feet. Two more shots fired in quick succession, followed by the cat’s screech.
Several more shots followed as a ruckus tore through the woods… and right at us. My compatriot thought fast and swapped the tranquilizer gun for the rifle. Tranquilizer darts were always preferred, but they took a lot longer than bullets to bring down an animal.
I swung my rifle up just as the cat broke through the brush. It saw us and opened its mouth wider than I would’ve thought possible and leapt with a growl that would’ve made anyone piss their pants. Let’s just say I was glad I was hip-deep in water.
We fired simultaneously, hitting the tiger multiple times in its head and exposed neck and chest. The AR-15s barely made the cut to take down a bear. They were nowhere near what we needed for a cat that size but put enough holes in anything and you’ll take it down. The cat stumbled and crashed a bare three feet from our position.
I stared at the wheezing tiger as its dying breaths whistled through bloody, gurgling holes in its chest. The poor beast seemed impossibly large up close, and a vise squeezed my heart because I’d been forced to shoot anything, let alone something so majestic.
The dirt kicked up next to me as another gunshot rent the air.
“Hold your fire! Federal agents! Hold your fire!” I yelled.
They didn’t.
Ollie fed me GPS coordinates as I made my way through Yellowstone’s winding trails. My boss’s call for me to check in on an out-of-town game warden screwed up my arrest of poachers I’d spent all day tracking. This warden was on the move, and it’d taken me over two hours to reach his last reported coordinates, but he wasn’t there. I burned a good twenty minutes searching for him in the area and finally found him several hundred yards off near Skunk’s Gully, kneeling, tucked in tight behind a bush.
He blended near perfectly into the foliage. He had his back to me, looking through a pair of night-vision binoculars. We didn’t get anything fancy like NVBs in Wyoming, which meant South Dakota had a lot bigger budget. Still, I intended to ask Ollie about ordering a pair, but I already knew what his answer would be. Game wardens had to buy just about everything they carried except for the geo-tracker fobs each of us were assigned. They wouldn’t have sprung for the trackers except that the FWS was part of the government, and the government loves to keep tabs on its people.
I gave a low whistle. We game wardens tended to do that rather than calling out to each other. It seems to disrupt nature less.
“I already knew you were back there,” he said softly without lowering the NVBs. Another thing wardens don’t do is whisper. We talk quietly to not startle wildlife (or poachers), but we never whisper. People tended to over-express sibilants, especially the letter S, when they whisper. And the last thing a skittish animal wants to hear is something that sounds like a giant snake.
At least the guy seemed like a pro. I sidled up next to him, took a knee, and set down the two rifles I’d confiscated from poachers an hour earlier and hadn’t had time to drop them off at my truck.
I couldn’t make out what he was looking at in the darkness, so I asked him, “What’re you looking at?”
He jumped even though he would’ve heard me settle in alongside him. “You’re a woman.”
“Yeah. And you’re black.”
That gave him pause. “It’s just when they said they were sending a guy named Frank—”
“Yeah, I get that a lot. Now, how about you tell me what we’re looking so I can get to the more interesting topic of why I got called in to babysit an officer who’s way out of his jurisdiction and is carrying all kinds of fancy equipment.”
“I’m on vacation.”
“Looks more like poaching to me.”
He grimaced. “It’s not.” He handed me his NVBs. “At your one o’clock, forty meters out. Just under the limestone ledge.”
No wonder I couldn’t see it in the dark. Forty meters in the forest during the day was a long way to see. Even with his fancy NVBs, it took me a good seven seconds to bring the cat into a clear view. Ollie had said it’d be a big cat. I expected a mountain lion. It wasn’t that. I refocused the glasses. At first I thought it could be a tiger—the shape was right, but this thing was even bigger… and it had two long saber teeth. “Holy crap.”
“You see it?”
“Yeah. I see it.” I was still working on believing it.
Being a Wyoming game warden, I’m used to getting animal calls in Yellowstone. Two weeks ago, it was a bear. Last week, a monkey terrorized a family in an RV. Yeah, someone’s pet monkey got loose and snuck into a camper in the middle of the night and raised a ruckus. It really should’ve been a park service call, but the wardens get called in far too often.
After all, we’re the ones with the guns.
But one thing I never planned on was being sent to track a supposedly extinct saber tooth tiger running through Yellowstone.
The other officer reached for the gun lying next to him on the ground. “I need to get within range to tranq it.”
In the dark, I’d mistaken the tranquilizer gun for a shotgun.
“What are you doing with a tranq gun in Yellowstone?” I asked.
“I always carry one in my truck. Guess I brought it with me on this hike out of habit. You always carry two rifles?”
“One for each hand. And don’t change the subject. This ain’t South Dakota. That makes you out of your jurisdiction. You don’t have the authority to carry tranqs in Yellowstone, let alone Wyoming.”
“I’ll give you a really nice apology later. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m a little curious about the giant cat over there because I can tell you one thing: we sure as bunny tails don’t have anything like that in the South Dakota.”
“I might be a bit curious about it myself,” I said.
“Ordinarily, I’d say we sneak up closer, but it seems a might skittish, so I parked myself here to give it time to settle in. It’s a predator, so we might be able to encourage it to come at us. What d’ya think? Draw its attention?”
“How? You think, ‘here, kitty, kitty’ will work?”
“Has that worked for you in the past?”
“Not yet, but I’m an optimist. Okay, if you’re dead set on enticing that cat in our direction, my vote is you drawing its attention, and I tranq it.”
He grimaced. “Maybe we should try to get closer first.”
I handed the NVBs back to him and pulled out my own binoculars to see the strange tiger in a more natural way. Cats were nocturnal but they were also lazy. This feline was no different as it was currently taking a catnap under a ledge. It didn’t seem skittish to me, but then again, I’d just gotten there.
Two long and very large teeth glinted in the moonlight. Those still threw me. The cat was obviously some type of tiger. The stripes, coloring, and size gave it away, but I’d never realized tigers were so big, not that I’d ever seen one outside a zoo or the internet. Its long tail flicked away bugs while it rested.
“Good plan. What weight are those tranqs good for?” It weighed four hundred pounds, easy.
“They’ll take down a bear.”
“I hope you’re talking grizzly and not one of those cute lil black bears you have in the Black Hills.”
“I am.”
I checked each rifle as quietly as possible, making sure the mags were full and each gun had a round in the chamber before holding one out to him. “For backup, in case the tranq pisses it off.”
“Good plan,” he echoed my earlier words.
I considered calling Ollie, but he’d already mentioned that there were no other wardens nearby and park rangers didn’t carry guns, so a call wouldn’t do any good. By the time backup arrived, the cat would be long gone, and something that size could cause a heap of trouble in a mighty short period of time. I could’ve just imagined the headlines: Dozens of campers killed by giant tiger with saber-like teeth.
We made our way forward at a snail’s pace, moving as silently as possible. With every step, I put weight on my toes before my heels. It was an old Indian trick I’d picked up back in Montana, but I still needed to keep a close eye out for twigs and dried brush.
We paused every five yards to look through our binoculars. The cat was still lying down but it’d changed positions. At twenty-five yards out, our luck held, but we still had a stream to cross. It would be quieter than dry land, but there was always a risk of slipping on a loose rock and causing a splash. Since my fellow officer held the tranq gun, he maintained lead going into the water while I walked behind him, a few feet to his left so I could have a clear shot in case shit hit the proverbial fan.
Halfway through the stream, a shot rang out from the darkness to our right. Something big. Sounded like a .300 Winchester Magnum. Easy to tell because it’s a favorite caliber of big game hunters. We both ducked and dove for cover at the water’s edge, making a hell of a splash. The cat sprang to its feet. Two more shots fired in quick succession, followed by the cat’s screech.
Several more shots followed as a ruckus tore through the woods… and right at us. My compatriot thought fast and swapped the tranquilizer gun for the rifle. Tranquilizer darts were always preferred, but they took a lot longer than bullets to bring down an animal.
I swung my rifle up just as the cat broke through the brush. It saw us and opened its mouth wider than I would’ve thought possible and leapt with a growl that would’ve made anyone piss their pants. Let’s just say I was glad I was hip-deep in water.
We fired simultaneously, hitting the tiger multiple times in its head and exposed neck and chest. The AR-15s barely made the cut to take down a bear. They were nowhere near what we needed for a cat that size but put enough holes in anything and you’ll take it down. The cat stumbled and crashed a bare three feet from our position.
I stared at the wheezing tiger as its dying breaths whistled through bloody, gurgling holes in its chest. The poor beast seemed impossibly large up close, and a vise squeezed my heart because I’d been forced to shoot anything, let alone something so majestic.
The dirt kicked up next to me as another gunshot rent the air.
“Hold your fire! Federal agents! Hold your fire!” I yelled.
They didn’t.
Copyright Rachel Aukes 2022. All Rights Reserved.