Chapter Seven

The next morning Warden McKay went out with Jeremy and the dogs before dawn. Cricket prowled around the house restlessly. Finally, at lunchtime, she heard her dad stomping the snow from his boots before he came in the back door. She held his radio and thick gloves as he pulled off his winter coat.

“We didn’t find him,” he said. “The dogs couldn’t find any signs of a cougar at all.”

Cricket let out a sigh. “That’s good, right?”

“Well, it would be, except something’s spooking Mr. Garrin’s horses at the stables. They kicked up a ruckus last night and again this morning.”

Cricket frowned. “Is it a different cougar?”

“Jeremy doesn’t think so. If there was a new cougar trying to establish his territory here, we should have found plenty of signs of it. It should have been easy for the dogs to smell,” he said as he sat down at the table with a stack of papers and files. “Whatever it is, this animal has caused more trouble than all the bears we had in August.”

Cricket couldn’t sit still, and it didn’t take much to convince Tyler and Shilo to walk down to Pat’s Garage.

“I’ve sure been selling a lot of ice cream this week,” Pat said, handing Cricket her change and a napkin for her ice-cream sandwich.

The girls scanned the magazines and listened to the conversation in the store. So many people had stories that it seemed as though the cougar had been taking a tour of the town, stopping to cause trouble at nearly every house and business.

“First a deer, then a house cat—it won’t be long before a person is attacked,” Mr. Garrin said, pushing up the brim of his cowboy hat.

Mrs. Steeves stepped up to the counter with a carton of milk. “Oh, do you mean Socks?” Her cheeks grew pink. “I guess you didn’t hear. Socks is fine. He must have been hiding. Probably scared to death of that cougar.”

Cricket looked at Shilo in surprise. Shilo shrugged. She hadn’t heard this either.

“You know, cougar attacks on humans are very rare. In fact, there have been fewer than thirty attacks on humans in the last hundred years.” Everyone in the store turned to look at Tyler. “That’s in Canada, of course. The stats are a bit different in the United States.”

Cricket rolled her eyes. Tyler was such a know-it-all. Obviously he had been researching cougars, even though school was still canceled.

“A cougar stalks its prey or waits for it to come to him. He has to catch it in two or three jumps. He doesn’t like to chase it. He’ll hunt just about anything if he’s hungry enough. He’ll even eat a porcupine—quills and everything—if he catches one.”

Mr. Garrin snorted in disbelief.

“Maybe your dad will set up a trap,” Pat suggested.

Tyler shrugged. “Maybe. Traps aren’t used to catch cougars in Alberta anymore. They’re shot with tranquilizers. But he could try to use one of the bear traps, I guess.”

“If that trap can catch a cougar or a bear, it could catch a dog too, right?” Cricket asked.

“You mean like a wolf?” Tyler asked.

Mr. Garrin snorted again. “There hasn’t been a wolf seen around town for years.”

“Not a wolf,” Cricket said, pulling her mom’s phone from her pocket. “I think it’s a dog, a really big dog. See these tracks?”

Pat raised his eyebrows, then shook his head. Mrs. Steeves glanced at the picture and patted Cricket on the shoulder.

Cricket sighed. They wouldn’t believe it could be a dog until they saw it. But Tyler had given her an idea. She moved to the back of the store and searched the shelves.

“Why are you looking at dog food?” Shilo asked.

Cricket pointed to the cans of food. “Which one do you think will be the smelliest?”

“That’s easy. This tuna one will be really stinky. But you don’t have a dog.”

Cricket shook her head.

Shilo’s eyebrows went up. “But you have a plan?”

Cricket nodded. Yes, she did have a plan.