Bear Adventure

by Anthony McGowan

  ‘The next night I built up a fire so big you could have seen it from space. And I did something else. I stayed beside it all night. I didn’t want the wolves slinking down to the tent, with me inside. So I sat there with the Colt 45 in my hand. The rifle – it was this same one here – was, as you can see, a single-shot, bolt-action gun, and I needed something that could shoot a lot faster than that. Plus, the range was going to be close, so I didn’t need the accuracy of a rifle.

  ‘Anyway, I sat with my back to the fire. I heard Roger talking to Dad, trying to soothe him to sleep, and I watched the stars come out, and then the moon rise, but it was only a sliver, like a fingernail held up to a candle. I was wrapped in a blanket, and had the gun on my lap.

  ‘And, although I was determined to stay awake, I fell asleep. One second I was awake, the next, dreaming. I don’t know what it was that woke me up, maybe an owl hooting – well, whatever, but whatever it was it saved my life. Because there, right in front of me, was the leader of the wolf pack – the big black wolf, like something out of a fairy tale or a nightmare. And he was so perfectly still, had it not been for the last of the flames from my fire reflected back from his eyes, making them look like the red eyes of a demon, I would never have seen him. And I reached down and picked up the Colt 45, and I pointed it at the wolf.’

  ‘Did you shoot him, Dad?’ asked Frazer, his eyes wide and glimmering in the light of the fire.

  Hal was silent for a few seconds, and then he continued. ‘I pointed the gun at the wolf and I pulled the trigger. But I hadn’t taken off the safety. Schoolboy error. It hardly made a sound – the pistol, I mean – when I tried to fire it with the safety on. But somehow it startled the wolf, and it leapt away.

  ‘I don’t know why, but I have a feeling it had been there for a long time, watching me, trying to figure out who I was. It could have killed me pretty easily, I guess. And the fact that it could have killed me, and didn’t, and that I tried to kill it, and failed, well, that changed me. From that day to this I’ve never killed another animal, except for a fish for the pan.

  ‘The next day the wolves stayed with us, but I never felt the same threat from them. I left some of our food behind at the campsite as a kind of offering, so maybe they were just following us to get some more.

  ‘Anyway, late that day we hit a logging road. We got lucky – a truck came along after a couple of hours. The trucker was this French Canadian guy. He couldn’t believe what we’d done. By that stage my dad was completely out of it. At first the trucker didn’t want to take my dad in the truck with us because he said he was drunk. But Roger, well, Roger just blew a gasket. He took the rifle and said that he was going to shoot the French Canadian guy in the leg if he didn’t take us straight to the nearest hospital.

  ‘The trucker just looked at Roger. He didn’t even blink. He wasn’t afraid, but he agreed. I guess he got the message. So then he drove us back to Anchorage.

  ‘My dad was in the hospital there for three months. The infection had gotten into the bone and it was all they could do to save the leg. He walked with a limp from then until the day he died. He still did what he could to help us with our conservation projects, but he wasn’t the same man, and basically, from the moment of the crash, it was me and Roger together against the bad guys.’

  There was a long silence after Hal Hunt stopped speaking. Then Frazer cleared his throat.

  ‘Gee, Dad, I’ve never heard you talk about that before. I guess it explains a lot.’

  ‘No, son, it doesn’t explain anything. It’s just a thing that happened. I … we … moved on. Talking of which, we’ve got work to do tomorrow, so I suggest we all get some shut-eye.’

  It was cold in the night. Amazon and Frazer slept with their clothes on. In the night Amazon woke up.

  ‘Frazer,’ she said quietly to see if her cousin was awake. When she got no response, she pinched him. ‘Frazer!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘What? I was asleep … what are you asking?’

  ‘I thought I heard something.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  I don’t know. Moving. Noises. A bear, maybe.’

  ‘Nah – we tied all the food up in a tree away from the camp. There won’t be any bears. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Wait – there again. That noise.’

  Now Frazer heard it too.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like any animal I know,’ he said softly. ‘But it’s probably just a deer, or racoon. Or maybe a skunk.’ Deep down he had a slight fear that it might be the wolverine, come for a second chance at biting his butt. He’d rather face a bear any day.

  ‘Will you have a look, Frazer?’ Amazon pleaded. She was spooked, and Frazer knew that the only way to free someone of an irrational fear – hers of the bear, his of the wolverine – was with knowledge, with light. He took the torch from his pack, and carefully undid the ties fastening the tent flap. Amazon crouched behind him.

  Then, without warning, Frazer began to crawl out into the night. Amazon grabbed him.

  ‘Fraze, where are you going? What animal is it?’

  ‘It’s my dad. He’s crying. I think it’s about your dad. And I reckon I’m going to give him a hug.’

  Amazon drifted off to sleep to the sound of her cousin and uncle talking quietly beside the fire. And as she fell asleep she found hope in the story of the rescue. Like Roger and Hal Hunt, she would bring her own parents back from the wilderness.

  It wasn’t the sun streaming through the thin material of the tent that woke Amazon the next morning. It was the anxious sound of Hal Hunt’s voice outside, and the crackle of another voice coming in over the sat phone.

  ‘You’re sure? A Kermode bear …? And it definitely killed the boy …? Oh, I see. So they haven’t found … Wait, let me get those coordinates down. Yep, that’s not far from here. I can hike there in a couple of hours. Thanks, Drex. Goodbye.’

  Amazon shook Frazer awake, and they crawled out of the tent. Hal Hunt was already busy cramming a small daypack with supplies.

  ‘What’s happening, Dad?’ asked Frazer, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

  ‘Trouble,’ said Hal, his face stern and grim. ‘A group of hikers were out in the mountains not far from here. Last night they were attacked at their campsite. There was mayhem. Three of them were badly injured. There was a child with them – a six-year-old boy, out on his first camping trip. He’s … well, he disappeared. His parents, as you can imagine, were distraught. They searched everywhere for him, although they themselves were among those injured by the bear. They were picked up by a Canadian Mounted Police patrol this morning and flown out.’

  Amazon cut in: ‘You said it was a spirit bear that attacked the campers?’

  ‘A Kermode bear, that’s right.’

  ‘But surely not the mother we saw with the cub yesterday?’

  ‘No, I doubt that very much. It was too far away. And, besides, the campers spoke of a huge bear. They would have said that it was a grizzly if it hadn’t been for the colour. But that won’t save her.’

  ‘Why?’ cried Amazon. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Word about the attack has gone back to Prince Rupert and the other settlements, and every hunter around is going to be out here soon looking for spirit bears to shoot. A child has been killed, and there is going to be a price to pay.’

  ‘But that’s not right!’ said Frazer. ‘They can’t just shoot any old bear, can they?’

  ‘You’re forgetting what people are like. They want revenge. They want blood.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’ said Amazon. She was already in a fury at the thought of what might happen to ‘her’ bears, the beautiful mother and baby.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ said Hal, his face somehow finding an even deeper level of gravity. ‘I’m going to find and kill the bear that did this.’

  ‘No!’ screamed Amazon. ‘You said you’d never kill another animal …’

  ‘But, Dad,’ ad
ded Frazer, his voice cracked with astonishment and horror, ‘you can’t … There must be another way.’

  Hal Hunt shook his head.

  ‘Unless I get that bear – the right bear – then every Kermode bear in this province is going to be slaughtered. Finding the killer is the only way to save the rest of the species.’

  Frazer and Amazon both, reluctantly, saw the strength of the argument – and the pain it was causing Hal Hunt.

  ‘OK, Dad,’ said Frazer. ‘I’ll get packing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re staying here. It’s too dangerous out there with a killer bear on the prowl. And besides,’ he continued over the top of Frazer’s groan, ‘I’ll move more quickly on my own. If I can find the bear today then I can destroy it and get word back before any innocent bears are killed. I’ll check in every few hours on the sat phone – and you call me if anything happens here. Oh, that reminds me, the battery on the other sat phone is pretty low. Stick it in the solar charger and it’ll be good to go in a couple of hours.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Hal marched from the camp, calling out his last instructions.

  ‘I don’t think the bear will come in this direction, but I don’t want to take any chances. So I’d like you two to stay in the plane. It’s not so important during the day, but that’s where I want you at night. Got that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ they both said, a little reluctantly.

  ‘I mean it. The bear that killed the kid … he just rampaged through the campsite, tearing everything up.’

  ‘We’ll stay in the plane, Uncle Hal,’ said Amazon.

  Hal looked at her, gave a brief, anguished smile and disappeared into the woods.

  The world – the great blue canopy above them, the deep green of the endless conifer forest, the black mountains and white peaks – seemed very silent after Hal Hunt had gone. Amazon and Frazer looked at each other.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Amazon asked.

  ‘We wait,’ Frazer replied. ‘And we fish.’

  ‘Seriously? You can’t mean it …’

  Amazon had been hoping – in fact, expecting – that Frazer would never agree just to sit around and wait. He was usually as irrepressible as a typhoon. Surely he’d be up for taking the bikes on a reconnaissance mission …?

  ‘But my mum and dad,’ she said, trying not to let her voice turn into a whine. ‘We could take the bikes and –’

  ‘I promised my dad, Amazon,’ replied Frazer, not meeting her fervent gaze. ‘You know me, I like to do … stuff. If there’s wiggle room then I wiggle. But Dad made me promise, and I’m going to stick to it. The thing about my dad is that he always keeps his word. And, because of that, it’s no fun at all when you break yours to him.’

  ‘But I just feel … useless,’ said Amazon. ‘I’ll go mad if we just hang around here doing nothing. I have this feeling that my parents are out there, just beyond my reach. It’s agonizing.’

  Frazer put his arm round her and squeezed. Because he was usually such a doofus, she kept forgetting how strong he was, for a kid.

  ‘Look, my dad will be here tomorrow. Then we can get back on the case. I told you – he keeps his word. Now with some people that just means that they don’t tell lies. But with my dad it’s not a passive thing like that – I mean, just not doing something bad. It means that what he says he’ll do, he does. He said he’ll find your parents, so he will. End of story. Now,’ Frazer continued as he hooked up the sat phone’s USB connector to the large black solar panel that charged it, ‘let’s see if you can remember how to catch a trout.’

  The fishing wasn’t great. They sat on the fat, cylindrical floats of the plane and dangled their rods (and their feet) in the placid waters. Amazon managed a spiny little number that she thought looked, with its glittering red scales and iridescent blue fins, rather beautiful. But Frazer shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Junk fish,’ he said, unhooked it and threw it back. ‘Full of bones.’

  The highlight of the morning was a visit from a huge eagle. The eagle’s body was a rich dark brown, streaked with golden highlights, but its head was clothed in pure white.

  ‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Amazon. ‘That’s a bald eagle, isn’t it? The same kind of bird Uncle Hal was helping.’

  ‘Sure is,’ replied Frazer. ‘They’ve made an amazing comeback. Like Dad said, they were down to just a few hundred pairs in the whole country, but now there are at least fifty thousand. It’s all because they banned that pesticide, DDT – the one my dad talked about.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one, except on the TV,’ said Amazon.

  And then she thought of all the animals she’d seen in ‘real life’ since she’d become a Tracker just a few months ago: tigers, leopards, bears, sea turtles, sharks. It was a dream come true, and she smiled to herself wonderingly.

  As they watched, the eagle flapped majestically across the lake, then swooped down and hooked a fish with one foot.

  ‘That’s the way to do it,’ said Frazer.

  But he spoke too soon. The fish was a big one, and it writhed and squirmed in a way that suggested that it very much didn’t want to leave its own element. The eagle tried to get its other set of claws round the fish, but failed, and the fish – a lake trout like the ones they’d sacrificed to the bears – splashed back down into the water.

  The eagle seemed genuinely enraged by this whole business, and plunged back down after it. This time its descent was too steep to allow for the sort of delicate plucking manoeuvre that had caught the trout the first time. The bird went hurtling straight into the lake. There was a flurry of feathers and a flash of scales in the sunlight, and then the eagle hauled itself by sheer might out of the grip of the water and back into the air, carrying the fish securely this time in both sets of iron talons.

  Amazon was still gasping at the drama of all this when she heard something she really wasn’t expecting: music. She turned round and saw Frazer sitting in the pilot seat of the plane. He stuck his head out of the window.

  ‘Totally forgot that there’s a radio in here,’ he said, grinning. ‘Makes it all seem a bit less lonely, doesn’t it?’

  Amazon was going to say that the raucous sound of pop music just didn’t seem right in this beautiful, pristine wilderness. But then the music finished, and the radio station – a local Canadian one – went to the news bulletin.

  ‘ … teams of Canadian Mounted Police are still searching for Ben Waits, the child missing following the brutal bear attack in the early hours of this morning …’

  ‘Hey,’ said Frazer, ‘that’s –’

  ‘I know what it is. And shush, I’m trying to listen!’

  ‘ … described by one of the survivors as a “white monster, like something from a nightmare”. The search is centred on an area south of Mount Humboldt, where the party was camping before the attack. The state authorities have discouraged the groups of hunters who are approaching the area, saying that this is only likely to impede the search. In other news, The St Edward’s Island Redbacks lost a …’

  Frazer turned the radio off. ‘I hope my dad finds that rogue bear,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I hope he doesn’t, if it really is a monster.’

  Amazon, however, wasn’t really listening to Frazer. Something about the news report wriggled away in the back of her mind, like a worm on a hook.

  ‘Where’s the map, Frazer?’ she asked.

  ‘Back at the campsite. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something …’

  A few minutes later, the two of them were bent over the map.

  ‘That news bulletin said south of Mount Humboldt, didn’t it?’

  ‘Er, I can’t remember. Maybe.’

  ‘Well, I do remember, and it did. That’s where we were supposed to go and look for my parents. But your dad has gone north, hasn’t he?’

  Frazer’s face went blank, and then wrinkled in puzzlement. ‘Yeah, he did. My dad must have got confused somehow. That’s unusual – he’s n
ormally a pretty together guy when it comes to directions. Maybe he misheard …?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter why he went the wrong way, but went the wrong way he sure did,’ said Amazon. ‘Can you get your dad on the sat phone?’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  Frazer knelt by the phone, which was still attached to the black solar panel.

  ‘Oh rats!’ he spat.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I didn’t plug the charger into the mini SBB socket properly. The stupid thing hasn’t charged at all. In fact, now it’s completely drained.’

  ‘How long will it take before we can use it?’

  Frazer gazed at the blank screen and shook his head. ‘Hours.’

  ‘We haven’t got hours. That little boy’s out there all alone. Well, you know what this means, don’t you?’

  Frazer started to smile. He knew exactly what Amazon was thinking.

  ‘It means that we have to go to Mount Humboldt and try to find that kid.’

  ‘There’s only one way to do this, you know,’ said Frazer.

  ‘The bikes,’ replied Amazon, without much relish.

  The bikes had been Frazer’s idea, back in Prince Rupert, before they’d set out into the wilderness.

  ‘We’ll be able to cover way more ground than on foot,’ he’d argued.

  He also guessed that it might be fun.

  He and Amazon had spent half a day choosing the right bikes, while the rest of the expedition was being kitted out.

  ‘The big question is,’ he’d mused, looking over the lines of beautiful bikes in the shop, ‘do we go for full suspension or hardtail?’

  ‘Shall I just pretend to know what you’re talking about?’ said Amazon.

  ‘You can ride a bike, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course I can. I just haven’t done much mountain biking, mainly because there aren’t any mountains in the area of England where I grew up.’

  Amazon’s own bike was rusting in a corner of her parents’ garage, back in England. It was a straightforward trundler, with a shopping basket on the front, and brakes that stopped you five minutes after you started to squeeze them. But that didn’t matter as the bike couldn’t go much above the pace of a sloth wading through treacle.