Bear Adventure

by Anthony McGowan

  Amazon and Frazer could hear the paws striking the ground just behind them. Hear, even, the hot breath of their pursuer. Only the bear cub seemed oblivious to the danger. He had been walking all day, and the swaddled security of the bag had lulled him into a stupor.

  The one advantage Amazon and Frazer had was that they were heading downhill. Most animals would much rather run on the flat – or even uphill – than down. Mountain bikes, however, more than any other form of transportation ever devised by humankind, were made to go down.

  Instinctively, Amazon and Frazer stayed close together, carving left and right in unspoken harmony. But no matter how quickly they went, and no matter how handicapped the cougar was by the awkwardness of bounding downhill, it was still gaining on them.

  Right in front of Amazon and Frazer rose another huge rock. Frazer was on the left, and so naturally broke that way. Amazon went to the right.

  The mountain lion was briefly confused by the split, undecided about which way to go. In its confusion, the cougar’s front feet slid, then caught in the ground, and the animal half somersaulted into the rock. It was badly winded, but not seriously hurt. And now it was madder than ever.

  Amazon and Frazer met again on the far side of the boulder. Without knowing exactly what had happened behind them, they sensed that they had gained some time.

  They were now only fifty metres from the treeline. However, the trees represented anything but safety. They had been just about able to hold their own cycling downhill on the open mountainside, but in the forest they would hardly be able to cycle at all, and the cat would be in its element.

  Then Frazer saw what he had been looking for: the rough trail that they had taken round from the cliff side of the mountain continued on. It would lead them away from the route back to the campsite, but, he reasoned, that was something they could put right later on. Staying alive, not getting back, was the pressing issue.

  ‘Head for that trail,’ he yelled, and pointed at the gap in the dense line of trees.

  Just before they entered the dark of the forest, Amazon looked back over her shoulder. And there, a streak of dark gold against the grey slate, she saw the cougar giving chase.

  The trail was similar to the one they had taken to reach Mount Humboldt: well-worn earth, generally flat, with a few small rises and undulations. In other words it was a perfect cross-country bike ride. Or it would have been had they not had North America’s most dangerous predator on their tail.

  They were going in single file now. Frazer had ushered Amazon ahead, saying, ‘You first, Zonnie – that way I know I haven’t left you behind.’

  Another time, Amazon would have stopped to argue the point, but she told herself she’d get him for it later. Except that she wouldn’t be getting him, because she knew that for once he was talking good sense. It also meant that he was the one who would be in the most danger. The fear of putting Frazer in peril made Amazon pedal even faster than she would have done had it been her own life at stake. And it wasn’t just for Frazer: there was the precious cargo he carried – the orphaned cub.

  And so they flew through the forest. She took jumps without even thinking. By the third one she was able to marry technique with courage, and she heard Frazer’s shouts of encouragement gradually give way to whoops of admiration.

  She looked back a couple of times. Frazer thought she was checking on him, but she was really looking beyond him along the trail for their hunter. And she saw nothing.

  But then there came a subtle change. Each rise now seemed a little longer than the subsequent fall. And the flat sections were no longer quite flat, but inclined slightly upwards. They were climbing. It was slow and undramatic, and had they been walking they would hardly have noticed. But on a bike it was different. The little moments of rest provided by the down sections were gone. Now every metre forward had to be bought with effort.

  Sweat began to pour down Amazon’s face, stinging her eyes. She wiped them with her sleeve, hit a root and almost fell.

  ‘Careful, cuz!’ shouted Frazer from behind.

  She was too tired to shout back.

  And the worst thing was she didn’t know how long this would continue for. Most big cats, unlike the hunters of the dog family, don’t have the stamina for a long chase like this. A lion or leopard would have given up long ago, after its first rush was thwarted. But Amazon just didn’t know enough about the cougar to figure out if it was the same.

  Just as Amazon was reaching the end of her ability to go on, she noticed that the ground on the right-hand side of the trail had fallen away. Looking over, she saw a ribbon of white water tumbling below. Was this the same river they had jumped earlier, or just another springing from the same mountain source? She didn’t know, didn’t really care, but the sound and sight – perhaps even the smell of the water – reminded her that she was desperately thirsty. She had never been this thirsty in her life – not even on the remote desert island she and Frazer had been marooned on not long before.

  She couldn’t go on.

  She had to drink.

  At the top of the next rise, she stopped and reached for her water bottle. There was a bare mouthful left. She tore off the top and gulped it down. So perfect, so cool. But so little of it. Frazer pulled up next to her.

  ‘We can’t …’

  ‘I know we can’t, but I was going to DIE!’

  ‘OK, I get it,’ said Frazer soothingly. ‘Anyway, I think maybe we shook that thing off. I don’t reckon it had ever come across two mountain bikers of our quality before. I –’

  It was then that the cougar leapt. And this time there was no sound. The whole concentrated energy of the beast went into this killing leap, with nothing left over for anything as superfluous as a snarl.

  Frazer and Amazon, standing astride their bikes, were close together. But the cougar had only one target in mind. It was going for the smaller and weaker of the two animals.

  Like other feline hunters, the cougar has two main killing techniques: the suffocating throat hold and the crunching bite through the spinal column. The former would be used to kill the bigger prey: white-tailed deer and elk, and even the odd moose. It could take many minutes to kill an animal like that, and it could be dangerous for the hunter. A struggling elk could easily kill a cougar with the point of an antler. The latter – the single savage bite slicing through the backbone – would be used for smaller prey. The cat regarded Amazon Hunt as small enough to be dispatched with a single bite.

  She never even saw the leap. The cougar had tracked them along the side of the path, silent and invisible.

  She did not see it, but she did feel it. Felt the lunging, shadowy doom of it.

  And so she ducked. No, it wasn’t anything as conscious as ducking. It was a flinch.

  It was not sufficient to make the cat miss its victim, but it did miss its precise target. Rather than the nape of the neck, the iron jaws and five-centimetre canines closed round the head.

  The hard, shiny, hairless head.

  Which promptly fell off.

  Had Amazon not snapped open the chinstrap on her helmet, the cougar would have taken her down with it. The cat, clinging with tooth and claw to the helmet, flew over her, and crashed down the slope, rolling and tumbling until it reached the turbulent waters below.

  The two Trackers did not wait to see what became of it. Propelled now by a new lease of terror-pumped adrenalin, they cycled. They could hardly have gone more quickly had rocket engines been attached to their bikes. They reached the top of the long, low hill they’d been hauling themselves up, and then zoomed down the long slope on the far side of it. As they cycled, they grew sure that this time they’d left the horror behind them.

  Amazon and Frazer climbed off their bikes and sat on the trunk of a fallen pine. The bear cub was still fast asleep in the rucksack. Amazon took the pack carefully from Frazer’s back, and cuddled it and the bear on her knee. It looked more like a toy than a real, flesh-and-blood animal.

  The forest
around them was dark and almost silent. It was growing much cooler, and the sweat from the hard ride felt cold on their backs. Spiders’ webs as big as cartwheels glimmered and shivered in the failing light. A few insects buzzed around, but it was too late in the season for the clouds of mosquitoes or blackfly or the other biting pests that can make life hell in the Canadian forests in summer.

  ‘How you doing, Zonnie?’ Frazer asked, looking at his cousin with some concern. Her face was blotched with red from the effort, but beneath it she was white and trembling. And her eyes brimmed with tears that she would not let fall.

  Frazer assumed that she was thinking about her brush with the cougar.

  ‘That was some lucky escape,’ he said, smiling. ‘If you hadn’t undone your helmet strap … well, maybe we could have beaten the cat off, but it wouldn’t have been easy. I read an account of a cougar attack on a family –’

  ‘I don’t care about the cougar,’ said Amazon tragically. ‘I’ve just killed a mother bear. I’ve made an orphan of this little one.’ Finally, now, the tears began to flow. ‘What can we do with it?’ she sobbed.

  In the relatively short time they’d been hanging out together Frazer had never seen Amazon cry before. In fact, if anyone had asked him, he’d have said that nothing could make Amazon Hunt cry. Well, perhaps he should have known that nothing could make Amazon cry for herself. She was sobbing not for her own misfortunes, but for the little creature in their care, and for the harm – albeit accidental – she, or rather they, had caused.

  Frazer put his arm round her.

  ‘Zonnie, maybe you haven’t noticed it, but you work for one of the best-resourced animal welfare organizations on the planet. We have links to every responsible zoo and wildlife park in the world. And back on the farm in New England we have plenty of room for a bear. So don’t worry about Goldilocks here. We’ll find the right home for her.’

  Amazon couldn’t help but smile through her tears.

  ‘Goldilocks?’

  ‘Well, yeah, I know Goldilocks wasn’t technically a bear, but she hung out with bears. And, well, this little girl does have mighty pretty blonde hair.’

  Amazon’s smile grew, and then faded again.

  ‘All you mentioned were zoos … Is there no way we could give Goldilocks to another mother bear, so she could grow up in the wild?’

  Frazer shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so. An adult bear that wasn’t this one’s biological mother would probably kill it. The best we could do is to give her a safe home, and maybe let her take part in a captive breeding programme – you heard my dad say how rare these spirit bears are.’

  Amazon’s head slumped, but then she sat up straight again.

  ‘Fine. I can’t bring back the mother from the dead, but we can bring this little bear back to safety. Now which way is the camp?’

  A shadow crossed Frazer’s face. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that might be a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Don’t tell me … your pack … the stuff I emptied out …’

  ‘Exactly. I didn’t have time to chew it over. But the map and my compass were in there.’

  ‘But we still have these,’ said Amazon, holding up her GPS watch.

  ‘Yep, we do, and that’ll tell us our position, but it won’t mean much without a map. But you’re right, there’s a compass function, and I think I know roughly what direction we need to head in. Trouble is, though …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, it’s getting late. It took us three hours to reach the mountain. Then we’ve come quite a distance further on. Not sure how far, but we were cycling at top speed for an hour. And the trails through these forests are pretty good as long as you’re travelling in daylight and can see where you’re going …’

  The startling reality of the situation dawned on Amazon.

  ‘Are you saying it’s too late to get back tonight?’

  ‘Afraid so, Zonnie. The best thing we can do is to find a campsite, build a fire and hunker down till morning.’

  Amazon Hunt thought about the cougar, then about the little bear. And then, as the first howl echoed over the wide forest, she thought about the wolves.

  Amazon had always loved the idea of wolves, but that howl, even though it sounded very far away, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. And of course there was Hal Hunt’s harrowing story about his and her father’s encounter, all those years before.

  However, before she had the chance to put her fear into words, Goldilocks woke up. Woke up and realized that she was not happy. She began to struggle wildly within the tight confines of Frazer’s backpack, emitting a stream of grumbles, yelps, wails, moans and growls.

  Strangely, this was exactly what Amazon needed. She had an almost magical way with animals, a sort of natural empathy that meant that dogs and cats would come to her unbidden, birds would lie quietly in her hands while she put a splint on a broken leg or wing, and that made foxes and badgers play happily with their young, even though she was only a couple of metres away.

  And she put that special ability to work now. She spoke soft, soothing words to the little bear. She let it chew on her hand – its teeth bit sharply to begin with, but then it settled down to a contented sucking on her thumb.

  ‘Guess she’s hungry,’ said Frazer, marvelling at the way that Amazon had soothed the tiny cub.

  ‘Duh!’ replied Amazon. ‘You’re missing your mother’s milk, aren’t you, little girl?’

  And the thought of that almost brought on another bout of silent weeping.

  ‘Try some trail mix on her,’ suggested Frazer. ‘She’s old enough to be eating solid food as well as drinking milk.’

  Amazon sprinkled the seeds and nuts on her hand and presented them to the inquisitive nose. Goldilocks snuffled the mix of dried fruit and nuts, and then gobbled it up greedily. Two more handfuls went the same way.

  ‘Well,’ said Frazer, looking on, ‘I guess that we can eat worms and bark tonight. But we should find a better place to camp before it’s dark.’

  Goldilocks, calm and contented now, was stashed back in Amazon’s rucksack, and they climbed back on the bikes.

  ‘What exactly are we looking for?’ asked Amazon. She hadn’t done much camping, so she had to rely on Frazer’s expert knowledge.

  ‘Water, that’s the main thing. Of course we need shelter as well, but I can easily improvise something from branches. I’ve brought a little friend with me from the South Seas to help out.’

  ‘What, a coconut?’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  Then Frazer reached into a side pocket on his backpack and pulled out a long, straight-bladed machete. It gleamed evilly in the fading light. And, as ever when he pulled out his machete, he couldn’t stop himself from making a shwiiiiiinnnng noise, as though he were a knight or a samurai warrior in a movie. And, as usual, Amazon laughed at him for it.

  But she was also mightily relieved to see the formidable blade.

  ‘How do we find water? I don’t fancy going back and sharing it with that cougar …’

  ‘Zonnie, we’re in Canada, not the Gobi Desert. If we carry on, the water will find us.’

  And sure enough, after another fifteen minutes of cycling, they came to a stream that crossed their trail.

  ‘Will this do?’ asked Amazon. ‘I mean, it’s getting late …’

  She was right – the afternoon was fading fast into evening. And it was getting colder.

  Frazer looked around at the dense wall of trees and tangled undergrowth.

  ‘Well, it’s water, but there’s nowhere to camp here. Let’s see if we can follow the stream. In Canada water likes company.’

  ‘You mean leave the trail? Is that wise?’ asked Amazon. ‘What if we get lost …? At least here we know roughly how to retrace our steps.’

  ‘Hey, relax, if this doesn’t work out, we can just backtrack along the stream.’

  They had to dismount to follow the stream on foot, pushing their bikes along with them. The going was t
ough and they were constantly snagged by overhead branches and patches of briars and brambles. But soon the stream was joined by another flowing down from the high ground around them.

  ‘Here?’ asked Amazon hopefully. The bear on her back was getting heavier by the second, and she was desperate to lay down her burden.

  Frazer looked round, shook his head and forged on, using the mountain bike as a battering ram to force his way through the undergrowth.

  And then, after twenty minutes of hard slog, they saw the forest open up before them.

  ‘Exactly what I was hoping for,’ said Frazer.

  It was a lake – about as wide as a good stone’s throw, and three or four times that in length. All around it the trees had been cut back, leaving the banks clear and flat.

  Frazer nodded to himself. It was the perfect place to camp.

  ‘You see down the far end?’ he said, pointing along the length of the lake.

  Amazon looked and saw an untidy barrier of sticks and mud.

  Although she had never seen one before, she knew instantly what it must be.

  ‘Beavers!’

  ‘Yep, that’s it. The beavers made this lake by damming the stream we’ve been following. And you see that mound over there –’ Frazer pointed to a bank of mud swelling up from the water about five metres from the dam – ‘that’s the lodge where they live. The entrance is under the water so they’re completely safe from predators. They really are very clever animals. The lake creates the perfect environment for new saplings to grow up – which is exactly what they eat.’

  ‘They eat trees?’

  ‘Not the whole tree, just the layer directly inside the bark. But, apart from people, no other mammal creates their own environment like this. They are the great engineers of the animal world.’

  ‘Talking of making your own environment,’ said Amazon, ‘how about we do something to improve our own? It’s getting cold and Goldilocks and I would appreciate a fire.’