The beast turned its pale yellow eyes towards me and dropped Buddy from its bloody maw. Buddy twitched, howled, whined and thrashed as he struggled in the waters. The pointy ears of the cat were pressed back against its skull, one of them a mangled mess of fur and red. The throat and shoulder of the killer creature were slick with a slimy mix of blood and slobber. It let out that spine tingling growl that mountain lions were given by the devil himself to frighten the world and I realized that it was going to pounce on me.

I stopped running and stuck my arm in between it and my body. The jacket was wrapped around my forearm, my legs braced for impact shoulder width apart and my free hand held the hunting knife firmly in a reverse grip. The creature ran a few steps and leaped at me with a howl.

We tumbled into the freezing water with it brutally tearing into my left arm. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as the cold soaked through my clothes. The fabric of my arm shield was ripping along with my flesh and I could feel bones breaking inside my hand with the pressure of its jaws. The claws ripped open my bicep and my knee as it grabbed me in its grip. I stabbed the cat repeatedly in the throat and chest with my knife. The cat shook and tore at me with its sharpened tools. My blade lodged in the ribs and slipped out of my blood-slick hand as I fell before the onslaught. The wounded and enraged creature pushed me down into the water and gripped me with its claws. Powerful jaws sank sharp teeth into my shoulder again and again to rip at my wounds.

Then it collapsed on top of me. It felt like two hundred pounds or more pushed down on me and trapped me beneath the water. The fight was over and I was drowning in barely two feet of melted snow runoff, unable to lift the carcass off of me or get out from under it.

Elizabeth tipped the heavy creature's body into the water and pulled my bleeding popsicle of a body up into the world of oxygen. I gasped and choked in the shivering wet of my shredded clothing as she helped me over to the rocks. I flopped neatly onto my ass and clutched my ruined arm in an attempt to slow the pulsing blood that was splashing onto the thirsty dirt.

She yanked my belt off and tied a tourniquet around my arm as I hissed against the pain. I was shaking with the cold water and adrenaline as my eyes fluttered. I couldn't stay awake. It kept getting dark around the edges.

"Stay with me," Elizabeth yelled as she slapped me in the face. The white painful flash brought me back. "Don't you go into shock, goddamn you." She slapped me again. This time I heard Buddy whining pathetically. "Stay with me!"

"Get the dog," I said with slurred speech as I tried not to pass out. I looked over towards the shallow waters where he thrashed and said, "don't let Buddy drown."

"Don't tell me what to do, you stubborn bastard," were the last words I heard before the world went dark.

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