Frank and Chuck stepped well back and gave the man and bear plenty of room. Girdler walked his bear down the aisle like he was taking a horse for a walk and went back to Bo-Bo’s special quarters.

Sturm got everyone simmered down enough to yell, “That’s tomorrow.” He let that go for a second, then yelled, “Tonight!” and turned his cowboy hat upside down.

Jack came down, carrying a mason jar filled with twenty-nine of Sturm’s checks. V-shaped slices of each of the dogs’ ears had been stapled to the checks. Each check was blank, just waiting to be filled out and signed by Sturm, just for bringing their dogs to the fight. Jack dumped the jar into Sturm’s upturned hat as Sturm said, “We’re gonna draw these names out at random. Soon as the names are read, well pretty soon after, the house’ll issue its odds.”

Of course, it was all a show. Jack had the whole sequence memorized. Frank had taken a good long look at each of the dogs and ranked them according to the most dangerous down to the least. Jack memorized the dogs and spent a few minutes in the back, arranging the checks into the seemingly random order, twisting them into a tight circle, then fanned out the ends, so it looked like it was just a big wad of knotted up paper. When he dumped them into Sturm’s hat, it just turned them right side up, so they would be easier to read.

Jack reached into the hat, pretended to search around for a bit, and pulled out the first check. He handed it to Sturm. Sturm read the result and held up the check for everyone to see. “Desperado! Desperado!” For the first round, Frank went for a dog a little on the slow side. Not too weak, but not too strong either, compared to the other twenty-eight dogs. He wanted to see what the lioness would do with a fighting dog with still plenty of fight left, at least compared to the pound dogs.

A stocky guy still wearing sunglasses and at least a couple hundred dollars on each ear and a thousand on his fingers came down. He took the check from Sturm, folded it once, and tucked it into his back pocket. A few of his buddies shouted encouragement in Spanglish at him. He went through the office upstairs and down a flight of wooden stairs into the aisle behind the scenes. He went down the aisle, got Desperado, and waited. The dog knew damn well something was up, and began to growl.

Frank slammed the chute gate open and stomped his foot, just once. The lioness shot out of her cage. Chuck hit her with pepper spray and kept spraying her through the chain link fence until she hit the auction yard floor. She circled, hissing and spitting and rubbing at her burning eyes.

Chuck and Pine snapped a handle originally used for a shovel over Desperado’s collar and led the dog, a half-blind pit that limped slightly, away from his owner into the chute. The dog didn’t want to go down into the pit. He growled louder. A quick jab from the cattle prod helped him along.

The cat didn’t need any encouragement. It wasn’t much different than the practice session with the pound dogs. The lioness, already primed and conditioned, went after Desperado immediately, before the cattle prods could come out. The dog tried to follow the cat with his good eye, but when the cat came at him from the left side, where Desperado’s eye was nothing but a ragged, terrible wound, as if a fine steak had been gouged at with sharp spoon. The lioness ripped the dog’s body back and forth, snapping the neck faster than Asshole #1 could pop open his cell phone. Desperado was dead inside seven seconds.

The men were impressed. More money was laid down.

The lioness flung the corpse at the back of the pit, near the chute. She shrank into a spot between the dog owners and the hunters, up in the front, refusing to look at the body. Chuck dragged the dead dog out with a long gaff, originally designed for hauling 100-pound tuna out of the ocean.

Jack read two more names. “Scorpion” and “El Perversio.” Based on how fast the lioness had killed an experienced fighter, Frank chose one of the strongest dogs, Scorpion, and a dog near the bottom, El Perversio. Scorpion had both eyes, most of his muscle; El Pervesio had three legs. The entire process was repeated, all the way through until the cat killed both dogs. She was smart, and went after Scorpion first, holding El Perversio off with her left paw. That fight lasted fourteen seconds.

The lioness was panting, so Frank opened the chute and placed a five-gallon bucket half-filled with water on the floor and stepped back. The cat came forward sniffed, and lapped at the water. Frank studied her and decided to gamble. The cat had to die in the fourth round, yet Sturm wanted the hunters to believe that she could just keep killing dogs all night long, so Frank had to make it look realistic. He chose three of the healthiest and most vicious dogs. They weren’t the biggest, but he knew they would be some of the toughest. He rested his beer on the fence, holding it loosely with his right hand, fingers slowly working in code. His eyes remained on the cat. Six. Nineteen. Twenty-seven.

Jack, who was seemingly looking at Sturm the entire time, nodded. He pulled out the checks and read the names aloud. “Shadow of Death. Pansy. Tr—” But before he could finish, Pine tore up into the stands and knocked one guy on his ass. Pine must have caught the hunters making a bet between themselves.

While the first hunter struggled to push himself up from in between the bleacher seats, Pine alternated between jabbing the second hunter in the chest with his index finder and driving the first hunter on his back deeper into the narrow gap between the benches. When Pine finally let the guy up, the hunter was spitting blood.

Nobody had any objections to placing all bets through the house after that.

Jack repeated the first two names and read “Trigger” for the third round. Frank knew the cat would kill all three, she was that tough, but it would be a good fight. The dogs would undoubtedly get a few good licks in, maybe tearing her open a little in the process. With all the blood in the auction yard floor, Frank figured it would be tough for the hunters to get an accurate fix on the cat’s condition.

The dogs were released, and the lioness took on all three at the same time, one with her right paw, one with her left, and the dog in the middle with her teeth. Pansy, the dog under her left paw, got loose and circled around the back, snapping at her back legs. Pansy got hold of the lioness’s dew claw just above her back left foot, and nearly tore it completely off. The dog sank it’s teeth into the meat of the of the cat’s leg, just under the knee. The lioness whirled, Shadow of Death still hanging limply from her jaws, and broke Pansy’s neck with one swipe. Trigger was kicking in a slow circle, dragging his intestines through the dirt.

Girdler, who had been keeping track with his watch, hollered, “Two minutes, forty-three seconds!”

Frank immediately saw that she left a track of fresh blood every time she took a step with that back left paw. No one else could see it, the chain link fence was too constricting, and there was simply too much blood on the auction yard floor. But Frank knew it was over. This was fresh; there was an unmistakable sheen under the lights. But like cats everywhere, she hid any outward evidence of the wound and never altered her rolling, sinuous walk. This was an instinctive trait, hiding any weakness or sickness from possible predators. So no one suspected. No one knew. It would help.

* * * * *

“She’s wounded,” Frank said. Nobody listened. But that was okay. It was his job to make things realistic, so he took a chance that this bunch would be ready to brush off his warning. “I said, she’s wounded.”

Sturm watched him. “Heads up,” he hollered. “The vet says she’s wounded. I don’t see it. Any else see it?”

Frank didn’t point out the location. He wrote it down on a twenty, and wedged it into the edge of the cage. “When it’s over, you check and see what I put down. You’ll find the wound on her. You can see the blood already.”