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up to light speed, finishing with a resounding crash. For the next half hour, Estelle let the natural momentum of the meal draw them together. Dr. Guzman didn’t allow the conversation to center on Butch Romero’s misfortune, and Francisco’s initial apprehension about what his father was going to say about the rattlesnake episode relaxed.
    They talked about Irma’s impending marriage and studies, but no one dwelled on what losing their
nana
would mean to the household. At one point, Estelle happened to glance across at her husband. Francis raised an eyebrow as if to say, “
and now what
? ” But he didn’t pursue the question.
    “Did you see the paper?” he asked instead. He cut another square of cornbread and balanced it on the edge of his salad plate. He leaned back in his chair, scooped the mail and the newspaper off the counter, and shuffled through them quickly, seeing the note from
Padrino
, Bill Gastner. He tossed the rest of the mail back on the counter and folded the newspaper neatly, presenting one of the inside pages to Estelle.
    The article included a photo showing Nate Underwood, a biology teacher at the high school, as he bent over an animal’s skull, probe in hand. It was a surprisingly good picture, taken from table level so that the skull appeared large and impressive, with the teacher looming in the background. Frank Dayan, publisher and sometimes roving reporter for the
Posadas Register
, had triumphed this time in his struggles with the digital camera.
    From the left, a student leaned over the skull as well, pointing a pencil at one heavy, blunt canine tooth.
    “I heard about that,” little Francisco said. He leaned over Estelle’s elbow to look at the picture. “Freddy found that.”
    Skull of Rare Jaguar Found
, the headline trumpeted. Estelle scanned the brief article.
A Sunday afternoon jaunt south of Borracho Springs ended with discovery of a jaguar skeleton by a local student. Intrepid explorer Frederico Romero, 18, said that the skeleton was found in the San Cristóbal mountains, in a small cave deep in Salazar Canyon within a few hundred yards of the crest.
    The rest of the article didn’t add many details of the discovery’s circumstances. Salazar Canyon was carved out of the north flank of the San Cristóbals, one of the few mountain ranges on the continent that ran east-west. Hunters like Sheriff Bobby Torrez would know the mountain range and its various canyons intimately.
    “I’d like to see that skull,” her husband said. “Did
Padrino
have something to do with all this? I saw the note from him.”
    “Curiosity, at the least,” Estelle replied. “Anything unusual, there he is, especially if it has something to do with local history. I’m guessing that curiosity has
Padrino
deep in his library, exploring. Irma tried to get him over for dinner, but he refused. I didn’t think that there has been a jaguar sighting in this part of the country in generations.”
    “That’s what the teacher said,” Francis added, nodding at the newspaper.
    She looked at the article again. “
At first, I thought it was a mountain lion skull,” Romero reported. The high school senior added that, “But then I found a little patch of fur that was still attached to one of the hip bones.” Biology teacher Nate Underwood agreed with his student’s assessment.
    “
The skull is much too heavy and broad to be a mountain lion,” Underwood said. “The jaguar is an altogether different genus—a much bigger, heavier, more powerful cat.” Underwood said that although now considered to be an endangered species throughout Mexico and Central America, the jaguar’s original range included portions of the Southwestern United States, particularly areas near plentiful water
.
    “
This animal might have died of old age,” Underwood said. “The teeth are blunt and show lots of wear. One of the canines is broken off near the jaw-line as well. This big cat wasn’t much of a hunter any more.