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Chapter One – Sabertooth in the Snow
Bearpaw Springs National Park
Saturday, December 3
Dr. Holly Garland stood on the edge of a meadow and stared in disbelief at her laptop screen.
Maybe six weeks alone in this isolated wilderness has gotten to me, she thought. Maybe something I ate for breakfast has me hallucinating Ice Age megafauna.
Smilodon fatalis, popularly known as the sabertooth cat or sabertooth tiger, had gone extinct in North America roughly ten thousand years ago. They were known only from skeletal and fossil remains.
And she’d just caught one on video. Or had she?
Freezing water dripped off the hood of her hiking jacket and the end of her chilled nose. Wind-driven rain soaked her mud-splashed jeans from her knees down to the tops of her hunting boots.
Even worse, the downpour was rapidly turning to sleet, lashing her exposed hands and cheeks with icy needles.
And this was still her dream job.
Ever since high school, she wanted to become a wildlife biologist. After completing her doctorate at Colorado State University last spring, she’d found a contract-to-perm job with Idaho Fish and Game and moved north to the small town of Bearpaw Ridge.
Her first month on her research assignment here in Bearpaw Springs National Park had been a slice of paradise. The mountainous scenery was spectacular. The November weather had been unseasonably dry and sunny, and her remote cabin was comfortable, with running water and solar panels for electricity, plus satellite Internet.
Best of all, she had the perfect excuse for skipping this year’s holiday season with her stepmother’s family in New Jersey. That was worth any amount of minor discomfort from the cold and wet.
Holly had woken up this morning to the patter of raindrops on her cabin’s metal roof, a sign that an extended autumn dry spell had finally broken. Over breakfast, she looked at the weather forecast and saw heavy snowfall predicted to start around 6:00 p.m., continuing with high winds and whiteout conditions over the next two or three days.
Facing the prospect of a weekend confined to her cabin, Holly rushed out to complete her tasks for the day. These included collecting bear scat samples and checking the footage on each of the dozen motion-activated trail cams she’d mounted in her research area.
So far, cameras #1 through #6 had been a disappointment. Plenty of deer, elk, rabbits, and squirrels, with one exciting glimpse of a cougar.
No bears, though they’d been active earlier this week, foraging for the season’s last few insects, nuts, and berries.
Now, the mixed rain and sleet pelted her relentlessly as she slogged across a meadow. She waded through hip-high stalks of dried wildflowers as a dense mat of grasses squelched beneath her sturdy hunting boots.
She paused at trail cam #7, fastened to a tree with a good view over a stand of chokecherry bushes that bordered the meadow. She pulled off her gloves, then opened an umbrella to shield her laptop from the downpour before extracting the trail cam’s SD storage card.
Holding the umbrella’s pole between her chin and shoulder as the wind played tug-of-war with it, Holly hunched over. She balanced her computer on one hand as she fast-forwarded through shots of yet more deer, a small herd of bighorn sheep ewes and their half-grown youngsters, a bull moose, and a lone raccoon.
Where did all the bears go? she asked herself. I thought this camera would be a sure bet, since the bushes are still loaded with chokecherries…
Then something huge, shaggy, and feline triggered the camera as it strolled across the meadow.
Holly peered at the image. At first, she thought it might be a bobcat or lynx.
Then she realized it was gigantic. “What the hell?” she muttered.
She tapped the rewind key with a freezing-cold finger, then froze the image and tapped another key to zoom in.
The big cat caught on the trail cam looked like a combination of a lion, a tiger, and a bobcat. A striped coat of tawny-gold and black over its back shaded into cream on the chest and belly. Its eyes were large and golden, with round pupils similar to a lion’s. Huge ivory canines curved down from its upper jaw, and a generous black mane flowed over its neck and muscular shoulders and hung around its throat in a shaggy ruff.
No. It can’t be! I have to be seeing things. Because this—this is impossible, Holly thought.
Shock and excitement rushed through her, making her stomach feel like she was plunging down a rollercoaster.
Holly rewound the footage for the third time, looking for evidence that this was some kind of prank, maybe an incredibly detailed life-sized puppet or a lion costume.
But it looked utterly real, right down to its graceful gait and stumpy tail. As it padded through the meadow, it paused frequently to survey its surroundings and sniff the air.
