Animal Behavior by Gabrielle Holly Read Free Book Online Page A

Gwen’s
stomach knotted and she immediately regretted her impulsive act of bravery.
    Gwen jogged backward and her boot lodged between two rocks.
She lost her balance and fell, dashing her head against the hard, frosty earth.
Pain exploded in her skull and when she opened her eyes, tiny dots of light
danced in her field of vision. Stunned, she groped blindly for something to arm
herself with.
    All these years I worried about eating refined sugar and
avoiding antibiotics in my chicken and I’m going to die in a mountain lion
attack? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!
    Jezebel had scrabbled to her feet and charged the cat. She
was barking madly despite the bloody claw marks staining the fur around her
neck. The cat turned as if readying to strike again when another set of barks
and the shouts of a man issued from the woods.
    Gwen blinked away the fog and saw a black Lab rush into the
clearing, followed closely by a hunter. The man pointed his shotgun toward the
sky and fired off a warning shot. The cougar snarled and bolted into the
underbrush.
    Struggling up on her elbows, Gwen touched the back of her
head and felt the goose egg that had already puffed up under her scalp. She
brought her hand to her face and was surprised to find that it wasn’t covered
with blood.
    The hunter strode into Gwen’s field of vision, glanced at
her, then at Jezebel. He locked eyes with the golden retriever for a moment, and
the dog quieted and flopped down on her uninjured side. The Lab stood beside
his master’s knee and let out a single bark.
    “The cougar is gone, Bob. Go lie down now,” the man
instructed and his pet dutifully complied.
    The stranger slid a leather pack from his shoulders and
knelt next to the Jezebel, presumably deciding that the dog was in worse shape
than the woman. He rummaged through the pouch, pulled out some first-aid
supplies, then began tending to the golden’s wounds. He kept his attention on
his work as he spoke. “Lady, are you nuts? What are you doing out here alone
anyway? And why are you off the trail?”
    “I was…it was… I was trying to… Is my dog going to be okay?”
    The man glanced up. “She’s going to need stitches, but it
could have been much worse. I’ll just—” he stopped mid-sentence and craned his
neck to the left and right, as if trying to take in all angles of Gwen’s head.
He slowly shook his head and huffed, “Are those earphones?”
    She yanked on the dangling cord and it took her a moment to
realize that her MP3 player was no longer attached. She shoved the tangle of
white wire into her coat pocket. “Ear buds ,” she said quietly.
    “Sorry?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
    She cleared her throat, “They’re ear buds. They fit inside
your ears. Earphones sit on the outside. I was listening to my Spanish language
course.” She grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “You know? Multi-tasking.”
    The man looked Gwen over, top of head to tip of toes. “Oh.
You’re one of those.”
    She’d been slapping the dirt from her skinned palms and
froze mid-clap. “One of those ? One of what ?”
    “Well, I’m looking at a girl sitting in the dirt with brand
new three-hundred-dollar hiking boots—the blisters are killing you, right?”
    She squinted, searching her mind for the right words to fire
back, but he continued.
    “Let’s see, the jacket must have run about the same as the
boots and I’d bet my left nut that if I searched every last one of those eighty-seven
pockets I wouldn’t find an emergency match, a bandage, a compass or even a
granola bar.”
    Gwen dug into her right breast pocket and triumphantly held
up a foil-wrapped granola bar.
    “Don’t tell me—fat-free, right? Yeah, limiting your fat
intake is always a great idea when you’re roaming around in the woods. And speaking
of fat intake, it looks as if that dog of yours is about to have a heart
attack. I’m guessing that you and the barrel with four legs don’t take too many
nature hikes.”
    She