“They say opposites attract. Buzz helps me get photos I like, and I help him document.”

“He bullies you, eh?”

“It’s not always like that. He turns controlling on the hunts. It’s part of him I accept. We all have our flaws.”

“Yes we do, boy. Some more than others.”

Aaron grunted as he shifted the wooden tripod across his shoulder. His canteen jangled in front of him and he swung an arm out, catching it, untwisting the cap and bringing it to his mouth. His light blonde locks lay clumped with sweat across his forehead. “How many mountain lions have your hounds treed?” Aaron asked.

“At least two dozen,” Leaf said. Leaf lifted his cap, waving it at what few white hairs remained on his freckled scalp.

“How many have they lost?”

Leaf squinted into the canopy. “Plenty. The lion is a crafty animal, eh? Many go into the bogs and that’s that.”

“I’ve hunted large swaths of the U.P. with Buzz,” Aaron said. “We know this might be a last refuge, right. I guess my question is how many of the big cats are left?”

“You just saw it,” Leaf said.

Aaron turned to Leaf, checking his face for a hint of sarcasm. There was none.

“How can that be? The country is wide, endless.”

“Yes but the woods are gone in many places, and not all contain these granite mountains, eh? Roads cut through everything now except for the ground yer standing on.”

Aaron’s gentle mouth twisted into a frown. Chills crossed his back. Everything they were doing, everything they had done was wrong, he thought. These woods should not fall to the axe. This last lion should not fall to the rifle. He spit into the moss, trying to cleanse the bad taste from his mouth.

Buzz’s voice floated back to them. “The hounds have her, up the mountain!”

Aaron and Leaf bolted through the forest and came upon the wall of granite. Then they picked their way up each boulder and ledge.

Above them, Buzz climbed the granite mountain like a bear, rifle in his right hand. Seventy yards ahead the hounds barked frantically. The trees thinned here, only growing in sandy pockets of soil collected in the crevasses. The hounds had their hinds to Buzz, muzzles jerking up and down. They retreated, attacked, and retreated again.

They had the lion trapped against a granite shelf.

A hound leapt forward and the mountain lion swatted at it, hissing and baring fangs. The lion’s aquamarine eyes bored into the hounds with complete condescension, knowing full well it could take them all. As the lion caught a glimpse of Buzz, its eyes changed.

Buzz raised his rifle.