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me?”
    Ben figured a dash of humor couldn’t hurt. “Not until he goes in the house and gets his dentures.” Reaching out to coax the cougar closer, Ben peeled back one of the cat’s lips. “See? Hardly any teeth.”
    Jeremy smiled faintly. Apparently still shaky in the legs, he let Ben support more of his weight. “Is he a real cougar?”
    What had worked once might work twice. “Nah,” Ben said, “he’s stuffed. There’s a winder behind his right ear. When I want him to move, I crank him up.”
    Jeremy rewarded him with a grin that dimpled his cheek. “That’s silly.”
    “Got you to smile, didn’t it?”
    Jeremy shrugged. Taking stock of his small face, Ben noted that some color had returned to his cheeks and that his lips no longer looked blue.
    “He isn’t stuffed,” the child observed. “I see him breathing.”
    “No, he isn’t stuffed.” Ben gave Methuselah a scratch behind the ear, which earned him a wet nuzzleon the wrist. “He’s just a poor old toothless cougar who’s missing a front foot and almost blind.”
    “I’ve never seen a real cougar before. Only on TV, and they were scary.”
    In that moment, Ben knew he was a goner. Something about this child touched his heart. Maybe it was the unlikely mixture of timidity and courage that had so quickly melted his resistance. Or maybe it was just those big brown eyes that appealed to him in a way that defied explanation.
    “Most cougars are pretty scary animals,” Ben said. “And they’re dangerous, as a rule. But Methuselah is an exception.” He allowed the cougar to sniff the child’s shirt. “He’s just saying hello. Can you say hello back?”
    “Hi, ’Thuselah.” Jeremy touched a fingertip to the cat’s nose, then jerked his hand away. “What happened to his foot?”
    “He got it caught in a trap.” Judging by the confusion in the child’s expression, Ben decided that he’d never heard of an animal trap. “A trap’s a gadget made of steel that resembles the jaws of an animal with very large teeth.”
    Withdrawing his arm from around Jeremy, he lifted his hands to approximate the size. Startled by his sudden movement, Jeremy hunched his shoulders and threw up a frail arm to shield his face.
    Ben felt as if a horse had kicked him in the guts. A child didn’t flinch that way without good reason, and he had a very bad feeling he knew what it was. He remained stock-still, a dozen different reassurances circling through his mind—first and foremost being that he would never hit a child—but the words wouldn’t come. Not that it mattered. Words were pitifully inadequate weapons against fear.
    Jeremy slowly inched down his hand to peek at Benover his wrist. When he finally determined that it was safe, he lowered his arm. The high color that flagged his cheeks told Ben that he was embarrassed. Ben remembered how he’d felt thirty years ago in a similar situation.
    His voice grated like a rusty hinge as he continued his spiel, explaining how a trap worked. He watched Jeremy closely as he talked about springs and releases, and described how the jaws of a trap snapped closed.
    Jeremy slowly relaxed. Ben doubted the boy was registering much of what he said, but again, it wasn’t words that mattered.
    “The trapper lays the trap on a well-traveled path and hides it with brush and grass. When an animal happens along and steps on it, the spring mechanism snaps the jaws closed.”
    “What happens then?” Jeremy asked.
    “The teeth bite into the animal’s foot, sometimes to the bone, and it can’t get away because the trap is anchored.”
    “Does it hurt?” Jeremy asked solemnly.
    Ben looked deeply into Jeremy’s eyes, and he knew this child had experienced pain. “Yes,” he replied, his voice going thick. “It hurts a lot.”
    The boy glanced at Methuselah. “How come do people set traps, then?”
    “People just do it because—actually I have no idea why. They just do, is all.”
    “What happens to the