“That’s fucking dog blood,” somebody in the crowd shouted. He stumbled down the bleacher steps to the cage. “I’ll fucking bet you that goddamn lion is gonna chew through the next four dogs faster you can say shit. That bitch is mean.” He jammed a cigarette into his mouth, held a light to it, and inhaled. But the act of taking a deep breath jarred something loose, and he coughed up a thick tether of phlegm that unfurled in one long wave, the back end still clinging tenaciously to the side of his tongue. The other end stuck to his bottom lip and chin like a dead jellyfish. Either the guy didn’t notice it or just pretended it didn’t happen, he took the cigarette back out of his mouth as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, got out a twenty, stuck it in the cage. “Fucking believe it. I’ll take that bet. She’ll kill them dogs deader n’ shit.” He stuck the cigarette back into his mouth and finally got it lit.

“Sir, you do understand that Frank is telling you flat out, that that lioness, that beautiful specimen down there, that she’s not going to make this round, and you still want to bet?” Sturm asked the guy, but he was saying it loud enough so the crowd could hear.

“You’re goddamn right,” the smoker yelled.

“I’m telling you, that cat is finished,” Frank said.

“Go fuck yourself, retard.” The smoker wiped his chin. A chorus of insults rained down over Frank as hunters rushed to leave cash at the cage.

Plenty of men wrote their names on twenties and stuck them in the crevices of the cage. Frank yelled back. “Bunch of piss-brain morons.”

“Look who’s talkin’,” someone else yelled back.

Frank knew he’d take some shit for his gamble, and getting insulted was necessary part of the plan. But this was more than he’d expected. The men saw it as the perfect opportunity to air all their jokes and names in an open place. They unloaded on him. It was unnecessary. He got pissed. “Look, I’m telling you. She’s not going to make it. The wound is connected a major tendon back there—that back leg goes, that’s it. It’s over.”

“Hey, he got enough to cover this?” the smoker asked Sturm. Nobody paid the slightest attention to Frank, except to have fun at his expense.

“It’s covered,” Sturm said. He checked his watch. “One minute ‘til the betting window closes.” When the minute was up, a green hedge of cash had sprouted along one side of the fence. Sturm nodded at Frank.

Frank went back to the mouth of the chute clenching and unclenching his fists. That just sealed it. That cat was not going to finish this round one way or another. He bent over the water bucket, lifting it with his right, and helping guide it towards the small flap with his left. Conscious of his audience, he concealed a short, squat syringe with a modified plunger in his curled left hand. Instead of a needle there was just a wide snout of plastic and a cap. The cap was connected by a short piece of thread to his little finger; the syringe was connected to a horse catheter that ran up his arm and across his shoulders, filled with enough morphine to keep Chuck busy for the next year or two. If Chuck had seen Frank surreptitiously squirting all that morphine into the bucket, he might have wept. He pushed the bucket through the small gate while sliding the syringe up into his sleeve at the same time.

The cat sniffed the bucket as before and began to drink. Frank held off starting the round until the cat had lapped up her fill. It would take a while for the morphine to seep into the bloodstream through the stomach lining, much longer than injecting it into veins, but at least, when the time came, when the dogs finally got her down and her throat and belly were exposed, it would be as painless as possible.

Chuck gave her another blast of pepper spray just to piss her off and Frank turned the dogs loose. They swarmed down the narrow chute, and backed the lioness up against the far side of the floor. Men screamed and shook their fists. One dog got too close, and the lioness swatted at it, but that left her side open, and two more dogs lunged for her back legs, jaws snapping and popping in quick succession, like a string of firecrackers.

The lioness held them off for a while, killing one dog, but Frank could start to see that her reflexes were slowing. Finally, the biggest dog, a pit built like an anvil and accustomed to killing anything that moved, clamped on the cat’s right front paw and rolled into her, knocking her flat. The other surviving two dogs went after her face and she fought them off, best as she could, as the giant pit bull scrambled up and tore at her inner thighs.

Fourteen minutes later, she stopped trying to move and Sturm stood up and declared it finished.

* * * * *

Afterwards, when the men were gone, Jack laughed and shook his head as he opened the cage and let Frank out. “Would you just look at the balls on this one!” Chuck and Pine dragged the lioness out the front door to Sturm’s pickup. Up in the stands, Sturm kept his attention on his folded hands.

“Frank,” Jack explained patiently, “the whole point of throwing a fight is to make money off it, true. But if you’re throwing it, don’t to try and convince the gamblers to keep their money. Or, God forbid, they bet with you. You follow?”

Frank nodded, plucking bills off the cage. Every tenth one was kept in a different bundle.

Sturm laughed at Jack, then came down and for his ten percent. He said, “Well, well. This is all fine and I understand. First time you grew a pair and all that. Fine the first time. And as it happened, it worked like a charm. Them dumbshits went for it. You made some more money. Good.” Sturm tucked his cash away and glared at Frank. “But if you think you’ll ever, ever get away with that shit again, understand this. I will shoot you, no warning, nothing, I ever see you doing that. Anybody else around here starts questioning why you are somehow knowledgeable about the outcomes of fights, then you are putting our financial income in jeopardy, and I can’t have that. You’re on probation.”

“I didn’t th—“ Frank started.

“You didn’t think,” Sturm said. “I know already. Problem here is, the more I think about it, I don’t much appreciate your general attitude. I expected more from you, son. I would have thought you would have had all this figured out by now. You did once work at the racetrack, right? You were responsible for some things that left those horses dead. Or have you forgotten?” Sturm crossed his arms, waiting for an answer, demanding one.

“I remember,” Frank said.

“Then I would think that you would be coming up with all of this yourself. For a goddamn horse killer, you sure are a squeamish sonofabitch.” Sturm let the words hang in the suddenly quiet air. He spit. “Aw hell. That’s okay. Good for you. Hell, you told ’em. Told ’em not to bet.” He started to laugh. “’Ya’ll are a buncha’ dumb fucking cunts.’ Exact words.” The clowns started laughing as well, popping the tension like a knife in a balloon.

* * * * *

They followed Sturm out to the parking lot. It was now clear of any beer cans. Sturm did his best find any litter at all and trotted all over the place, but couldn’t spot one piece of trash. The place was otherwise empty; the hunters had gone back to their campsites.

Frank and the clowns clustered around Sturm’s pickup, staring into the bed at the body of the lioness. Underneath that was a bed of monkey corpses. The hunters had been pissed that the monkey with the earring had gotten away, so Sturm promised he’d drop all the monkeys at the taxidermist, who would then go through each one, looking for any evidence of pierced ears. Problem was, some of the heads were half gone.

Frank cracked a beer. “We’re gonna have problems with that bear. He won’t fight. Not like you want him too.”

“Nah. It’ll work the same,” Chuck said, leaning over so far that his chin and both wrists rested on the pickup, up near the passenger side of the cab. “We’ll just blast him with the pepper spray. That’ll get him goddamn set and prime.” He yawned. Jack stood next to him, but kept his eyes on the far off campfires, listening closely to the distant gunfire. Frank was alone at the tailgate. Pine and Sturm flanked the other side. The side of the pickup came up to Sturm’s adam’s apple. Theo’s shadow peered out from inside the cab, listening through the open back window. Chuck finished his yawn with a flourish. “Worked just dandy with the cat. Besides, Girdler said it would fight. ‘It’ll fight hard,’” he drawled, his imitation of Girdler dead on.