Up on the Permian Ridge two miles north of Middle McKittrick Canyon a lioness had been shot and killed. Harland Roberts, Corinne Mathers, and two men from the New Mexico State Department of Fish and Wildlife had brought the body back to the park.

Anna's first lion had flies crawling from its mouth and blood, black as tar, matting the fur of its neck. The animal was five to seven years of age, weighed seventy-five pounds and was nursing at least one, possibly two kittens. The park's Public Information Officer released this information to the local papers suggesting it as the reason for the attack.

The kittens were not found.

The following day Anna rode Gideon up the four-mile trail to the ridge. As long as the light lasted she combed the area looking for the den. Near dark, when she knew her time was running out, she hobbled Gideon in a grassy place and climbed part way down the slope into Big Canyon, a wild area just to the north of the park's boundary over the Texas/ New Mexico border in the Lincoln National Forest.

Perched on an outcropping of limestone, she called down into the forested recesses of the ravines. "Come on kittens, here kitty, kitties. Come on."

The pathetic absurdity of it stung her eyes but she hoped, her heart in her voice, it would trigger some response; a sound from the cougar kittens. For an instant, as the call died away, swallowed by the trees, she thought she heard something. Not mewing, but a strange bird's call, or the wind on a stony bottleneck: four notes from a half-remembered song.

Again and again she called but never heard the sound a second time. Finally she came to doubt she'd really heard anything. Hope was such a creative companion.

Till the moon rose to light their way, Gideon had to pick his way down the mountain in darkness.

That had been nearly a week past. The moon was waning now, the nights dark till after midnight, the moon still up at nine a.m.