When it's dead, she thought, and that's what this lion- or some lion-will be if the hunt's not stopped.

Again she looked at the slides. She was not mistaken. Proof.

Proof of what, she wasn't exactly sure. Proof there was something fishy about the Drury Lion Kill.

"Proof we should look at this whole situation a little more closely before we go bashing around in the wilderness with dogs and guns killing off the wildlife." Anna sat in the Chief Ranger's office. She'd been waiting at the door when Corinne Mathers arrived for work at eight a.m.

Chief Ranger Mathers was a small woman but big breasted and big hipped, with short, iron-gray hair that curled naturally around her ears. Her face was round, suggesting both plumpness and softness. Neither was accurate. Corinne Mathers had come up the hard way. There were only a handful of women Chief Rangers in the National Park Service. She'd started when "girl" rangers wore mini-skirts and were allowed badges exactly half the size of those the men wore. Mathers was smart. And she was harder than flint.

"Though I may not agree with your conclusions, you've been thorough, Anna. Good attention to detail, I'll give you that." The Chief Ranger tossed the slides down onto a yellow legal pad covered top to bottom with notes too small to be read upside down. Anna resisted the urge to rescue her fragile evidence.

"Then you'll stop the hunt."

Mathers took off her glasses-aviator style with gold rims-and pinched the bridge of her nose as if the little red marks there pained her. "It's not as simple as that, Anna."

"It's as simple as that. Just call off the dogs."

The Chief Ranger replaced the glasses and leaned across the desk. Her hands were folded on the legal pad, on the two ignored slides. "No. It's not." Deliberately, as if she wanted Anna to commit each word to memory, she said: "The cougar that we know to have killed Ranger Drury has already been dispatched."