Karen let half of her breath out and focused on the bobcat's shoulder. Zing sang the string--the cat was down. Unable to control her excitement, and certain of her kill, Karen quickly lowered her bow, packed her gear, and jacked the 25 feet to crisp ground below. She untied her bow and moved confidently toward her trophy, leaving everything else on the tree.

Where was that cat?

"Rats!" she thought, "what a rookie stunt! I know I hit it--didn't I hit it?"

About that time she heard a low growl, something hit her in the back, and she was on the ground. Her bow flew out of her hand, and she found herself brawling with the same cat she had just shot. At least she thought it was the same cat--who was quibbling! She grabbed the cat behind its canines, but this was not a housepet, and it immediately began twisting its head to get Karen's fingers out. She barely managed to extract them in time. The cat was determined to get to her throat, her head, but she managed to get her hands around its throat instead. Not without a price, though, for it raked the side of her face with one paw, drawing blood.

Even as Karen thought she was losing her battle, she thought, "It's bleeding too! I did hit it!" And the cat began losing some of its fight. Karen got her left knee up between the narrow animal’s legs, and wedged her parka covered forearm between her face and the cat’s bared teeth. For a second she had the cat pinned and with her right hand she reached for her knife. It was under the cat's back left leg, which was clawing at Karen's side. Karen pushed up on the writhing, clinging cat's head with her left arm and finally got hold of her knife, though not before a claw penetrated her glove and exacted a nasty wound on her hand. Distracted, Karen lost the advantage for a moment and covered her head with both arms. The cat's claws tore at the parka, and Karen fell back onto her right side under the cat's momentum--and onto the hand holding the knife.

The knife! Karen pulled her knees as close to her chest as her heavy clothing would allow and maneuvered her right arm under and to the front of her body. With all the effort she could manage, Karen rolled the cat, pushed its forelegs and head away from her with her left arm, and sat on the cat's back legs. Her right hand now free, Karen stabbed the knife up into the cat's still twisting abdomen, right under its sternum.

At first the cat seemed wilder and stronger, and its twisting knocked Karen’s hand from the knife handle, though the blade remained in the cat, who landed several more tearing blows on Karen's upper arms. Then it began gasping, its mouth remained open, but it stopped trying to bite her. The cat’s determination, and its fight, faded as the knife injury took its toll.

Karen finally was able to twist out of the cat’s weakening grip. The cat made another swipe at her legs, leaving another brutal wound, but the cat was done. Karen backed away, unable to stand, but out of reach of the dying cat.

When she woke she was cold, very cold. She remembered what had happened and jerked upward. She paid in pain for her quick move, but she had to know...and there it was. The cat lay unmoving, obviously dead now, ten feet from her. She tried to stand and yelped in pain. It was midday, the warmest part of the day, but she was shivering, deep shivers that made her whole body lurch. She checked her many wounds and knew she had to get them tended to quickly or risk infection, worse because they were caused by a wild animal... But at least the bleeding seemed to have stopped.

"My cell phone," she thought. "I need help getting out of here." She flipped it open but there were no bars. "How could that be?" she thought in despair, "I had a signal...25 feet up in a tree," she groaned. "I had a signal in the stand, but there is no signal on the ground." She looked around behind her and saw her gear still on the tree 15 feet away. "Of all times for me to break the rules and hunt alone, tell no one, and walk a quarter of a mile into the boonies." She did not think even her best friends and hunting buddies Marian and Buck would think to look for her out here, either.

"Okay," she thought, "I can use a pep talk about now. What are my options? How about I stand up, first?" She tried to sit up, but could not do it. Tears came to her eyes from the pain. She pulled her knees up as far as she could, teeth gritted, and rolled to one side. Her hand touched a sapling she hadn't seen before. "Oh, thank you, Lord." She pulled herself toward it until her knees were at the base of it, then she used both battered arms to pull her body up off the ground. Stifling a cry, she finally managed to reach a near standing position. Try the phone again. Still no signal. She turned it off to save the battery, wishing now that she had left it off all morning.

It was then that she saw the coyote. His head was low as he checked her out, his tail wagging slowly. Coyotes, coyotes, she combed her memory. Is it better to stare them down or to ignore them? She had her wild animals mixed up.

They are pack animals, she thought, praying that her decision to behave aggressively was the correct one. She stood as tall as she could and leaned slightly forward so as to appear larger. She growled, a low warning growl, something she often did with her dogs at home when she wanted to establish that she meant business. The coyote blinked and dropped its head a bit lower, but never took its eyes off her. Its tail stopped moving.

"What does that mean?" she thought. "Omigosh, pack animals. That means there could be..."

The second coyote moved across behind the other one, and remained, flank side toward her, staring just as the other one was. Trying not to seem as though she was injured and in pain, but aware that the coyotes were there because they smelled blood, and lots of it, she suddenly realized that maybe they were not there for her, but for the cat.

"I've played this wrong, I should not appear to compete for the carcass." What would happen if she withdrew from the competition? How on earth should she behave now? If she appeared too weak, they would probably attack. No wild animal would pass up a free meal. If she threatened their free access to the cat, they might also attack. On the other hand, the coyotes could not miss the fact that, bloody or not, she was the victor in a fight with an animal they would never try to take on individually. That might put them off except that there were two of them.

Then a third coyote moved in from the right to join the others. It glanced at the cat casually, almost with disinterest. It was clearly the leader. Karen fixed her own stare on it, increasing her scowl, leaning more aggressively, and again growling, as deep and loud as she could. Lazily, it turned its head away from the cat and met her eyes, waiting. Karen forced herself not to think about what a third coyote did to her odds in a fight, even in their minds, and she could see that the presence of the third one was giving the others more confidence in their attitudes toward her.

Karen's hand meanwhile had crept up to a small limb extending from the back of the sapling. "It's winter, the sap has withdrawn," the tree might be brittle enough to let her break off the branch. If it were spring, she would have to twist it, which would place her ability to protect herself in question. They would take her then. If she were to do anything, it must be decisive.

Snap! and the branch was off the sapling and in her hand. "Thank God!"

The third coyote gave her his full attention.

Her left arm screamed in silent pain as she transferred the heavy limb to her right hand. The whole time she maintained her aggressive stance. She prepared for a stab of pain and raised her right arm, brandishing the limb over her head. At the same time, she began making the loudest sounds she could, and still maintain a low pitch. The lead coyote flinched and the others ran. The leader sauntered off after them, seemingly trying to save face. The coyotes regrouped about 30 yards out.

Karen hollered and shouted some more, and even managed to stomp a foot with convincing ferocity. The coyotes blended into the trees.

"My bow, where is it?" She looked around and then she realized that somehow it had wound up less than a yard from where she stood. Uttering an ear-piercing threat to the coyotes to keep them away, she quickly used the branch to pull the bow towards her, then to hook it and pull it up until she held its comforting weight once again. With the branch still in her right hand and her bow in her left, Karen felt more like she might make it through the day alive.

"I have five arrows. Three coyotes and maybe more that didn't come into view," she calculated. "One thing is for sure, if I shoot, I really have to make it count." She wondered what she should do next, though. She held the branch up between her body and the tree and removed her cell phone from her pocket. She turned it on, while scanning all around where she stood. When the phone came on she had one bar. She pressed the memory keys to call her best friend Marian, but the call was dropped at once. Karen turned off the phone and decided to go for her gear at the tree.

No coyotes in sight.

Mustering as much noise and large movement as she could manage--this was no time to sneak, she knew--Karen took a bold step away from the sapling--and fell to a knee.

Instinctively, as she struggled again to regain her feet, she mimicked the sounds of a fight between two predators. "Good thing there's no one around to hear me do THAT," she thought, then changed her mind. She wished there were someone who COULD hear her.

As a hunter, Karen knew she could not afford to make any sound or movement that made her appear weak. So every effort she made had to appear deliberate, strong.

It took her twenty minutes to make it the short distance to her tree. Once again she tried to get a cell phone signal. Nothing.

"I have to go up," she thought, "I wonder how far I need to go to get a signal?"

She looked around. The coyotes had reappeared. She hissed and brandished her weapons. They gave her a wide berth and went for the cat. "Glad I could help," Karen thought wryly. Keeping an eye on the coyotes, she climbed into her stand, ignoring the pain. By the time she was hooked back into her safety equipment, she was worn out, but she knew she could not stop there. She had to go up. Not just for the signal, but to be out of reach of predators. Ten feet, maybe? Would that be enough? Could she do that?

BOOM!

Karen nearly fell out of the stand. What on earth? It wasn't till she saw her friends Marian and Buck coming toward her that she realized what she had heard was a gunshot.

"Girl, the NEXT time you plan on going so far off the beaten track," said Marian.

"You best take us!" finished Buck. "Now let's see them cuts. You got the first aid kit, Marian?"

"You betcha, bro."

"But how did you know?"

"I couldn't find you to see if I had left my Accounting text book at your apartment when we were studying the other night."

"So Marian called me, and I called your mom—I thought maybe you were over there. But she said you had gone hunting."

Marian added, "And of course your mom has a key, so Buck came and got me and we went over there, and we found your map and your notes."

"When we couldn't raise you on your cell phone, we just thought you didn’t have a signal or forgot to charge your phone. Still, it would be unlike you to not charge your phone before a hunt. But when you didn't show up by lunchtime..." said Buck.

"We decided we better come bust up the party. Looks like we missed the fun. Come on, girlie, those cuts aren't pretty. We better get you to the hospital,” said Marian.

“Come here, you!” said Karen, but couldn’t raise her arms to hug them, which finally made her cry. “Thank you! I didn’t know if I could make it up that tree!”

“Why were you going up the tree instead of out of the woods?” asked Marian.