| I hadn’t been able to get close enough to Burt to tell him what I had seen. Now that he was in the truck I could walk around the same side of the flatbed as he, when we went to the back to load the cougar. That was when I casually told Burt to not give himself away but to search the trees across from the other flatbed. I told him to look eight feet off the ground for a reflection of the cop’s lights when they happened upon the set of eyes. Once alerted he saw them right away same as myself. They were hard to miss once you knew to look that far off the ground. They hadn’t moved since I first noticed them. I told Burt in a quiet tone that the elk was far enough onto the flatbed that I could take off and it would ride back there at least far enough for us to put some distance between us and this current location. We successfully loaded the cougar onto his flatbed and didn’t bother to strap it on. The big cat would ride just fine with just the wench cable strapped around its mid-section. Once we got the cougar loaded up the cop took off. He barely waited for us to clear the edge of the truckbed before killing those lights and taking off. That freaked both of us out and we sort of gave our plan away by the way we both ran to get our positions. Burt raced up and climbed behind the wheel of the flatbed while I rushed on past him to get myself into the cover of those wonderful headlights of the truck. next page |  |