A Soldier's Pledge

by Nadia Nichols

  She fumbled in the dark until she found it, then switched it on. Light illuminated the cabin’s interior. Jack was sitting up, pulling on his prosthesis.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” she said, reaching for her .44 Magnum pistol. “If it’s a bear, I’ll fire a few shots in the air. The noise will scare it off.”

  “Scare it off or piss it off,” he said. “Get the bear spray out of my pack.”

  “This pistol will do the job.” She checked the pistol and pulled on Jack’s headlamp. As she reached for the door, they heard a loud burst of ferocious sounds behind the cabin. A fight had begun and was rapidly escalating between the dog and the intruder.

  “Wait for me!” Jack ordered, but Cameron was already descending the cabin steps. From the sound of the commotion, there was no time to waste. First thing she did when she reached the bottom step was fire a shot into the air. The .44 Magnum pistol had a deafening report. Ears ringing, she rounded the corner of the cabin, the sounds of the fight undiminished. Whatever was happening was life or death, and Cameron walked right into the middle of it.

  The darkness was thick, and the headlamp cast a bright but narrow beam into a whirlwind of dark motion as Mama Dog fiercely defended her den against a bear that had invaded her territory and threatened her pup. Cameron had made the hole under the cabin larger with the shovel. Was the pup still alive or had the bear already reached in and killed it?

  Cameron fired the pistol in the air again, then fired a third shot, but Jack was right. The noise had no effect. The bear was completely focused on killing the dog that was attacking it. Mama Dog darted in and sprang back out of reach, snapping at the bear, then retreating as the bear lashed out. Again she sprang in, again the bear drove her back. When the bear turned toward Cameron, Mama Dog lunged forward and seized onto the bear’s flank. The bruin bawled, whirled and with one great powerful swat sent Mama Dog tumbling through the air.

  “No!” Cameron was raising the pistol to shoot the bear when Jack’s hand came out of nowhere. With one quick move, he wrested the pistol out of her hands and pushed her behind him. He took two steps forward, pistol in one hand, bear spray in the other, and the moment the bear’s head turned from the fallen dog to look toward Jack, he sprayed it point-blank in the face from a distance of less than ten feet. The bear let out another furious bawl and stumbled backward, then turned and lumbered blindly into the thick spruce forest behind the camp.

  Mama Dog lay on her side. Her eyes were open, but blank and unfocused. Was she dead? Cameron dropped to her knees beside her, then felt Jack’s hand grip her shoulder.

  “Get inside now! That bear could come back,” he ordered. “I’ll carry her in and then check for the puppy.”

  The puppy! On hands and knees Cameron scrambled toward the hole. She stuck her head through the opening and felt a rush of relief when she saw the small pair of eyes reflected in the light of the headlamp. She wriggled forward until she was under the cabin, and seized hold of the frightened pup. There was no time for gentleness. Jack was right. That pissed-off bear could return at any moment. She gripped the yipping struggling pup firmly by the scruff of its neck and wriggled backward until she was free of the den. As she rose to her feet, Jack scooped Mama Dog into his arms, and together they beat a hasty retreat into the cabin.

  Once inside, Jack laid the dog on the floor beside the lower bunk, lit the oil lamp, then took the headlamp from Cameron and went back outside to close the bear shutters. Cameron cradled the frightened pup against her and crouched beside Mama Dog, who lay motionless. Jack came back inside and closed and barred the door behind him. He knelt beside Cameron to examine the injured dog.

  “I don’t see any blood, but that bear really clobbered her,” he said. “She might have internal injuries. Let her see and smell the pup. That might help.”

  Cameron placed the pup on the floor beside Mama Dog. Lobo crowded up against his mother, pushing between her head and chest and hiding his face against her warm fur, but she made no response. Her breathing was labored and her eyes still half-open with a fixed stare. Cameron sat beside them and leaned against the bottom bunk. She was shaking now. Shaking all over. She couldn’t have stood if she tried. She wanted to touch Mama Dog. Stroke her gently. Let her know she was okay. Instead, she looked up at Jack.

  “If we’d caught her last night, this wouldn’t have happened,” she said.

  Jack blew out his breath and glanced at his watch. “It’s a little after three. It’ll be getting light soon. I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

  They drank coffee and waited for the dawn, and the silence between them became an unbridgeable abyss. When the first bird song alerted them to morning, Jack went outside and opened the bear shutters. Mama Dog’s eyes had closed, but she was still breathing and the pup was still cuddled up to her. Cameron was sick with remorse. She should have insisted that they catch Mama Dog last night. She should have done it herself when Jack wouldn’t help. So far she’d done everything wrong on this trip. Every. Single. Thing.

  “All’s clear outside,” he said when he came back in. “We can carry the dog down to the canoe in my sleeping bag after I get everything packed up. We should make the Mackenzie River by early evening, camp there, then go on to the town in the morning. They must have a veterinarian there, right?”

  Cameron sat in silence, not responding. What point was there in telling him that veterinarians were a southern luxury? The pup roused, rooted hungrily down its mother’s side and began to nurse. Mama Dog’s eyes flickered, and she tried to arrange herself to allow the pup better access.

  “That’s a good sign,” Jack said. “If she hasn’t died yet, she’ll probably make it.”

  “I’ll take care of them both if she lives,” Cameron said, keeping her eyes on Mama Dog. “They’ll have a home with me.”

  “Who’s going to look after two dogs while you’re flying hunters all over the territory?”

  “I’ll manage. They’ll be well cared for, which is more than you’d be able to do, soldiering in Afghanistan.”

  Jack thought for a moment. “The trapper who built this camp probably owns the dog. He might have something to say about it.”

  Cameron shook her head. “He left her behind, and in my book, that’s abandonment. When he did that, he forfeited any ownership he might have had. If we hadn’t come along, she’d have starved to death and the pup, too, or been eaten by that bear. She’s mine now. They both are.”

  “So, by your reasoning, if Ky were still alive and someone else came down this river and found her and took her in, she’d belong to them now, even if I showed up a year later, searching for her? Finders, keepers? Possession is nine-tenths of the law?”

  Cameron met his gaze. “You’re going back to Afghanistan, Jack. Back to the army. What would you have done if you had found Ky? Would you have loved her up and then left her behind again with your sister? Was that your plan? I don’t see how you can possibly explain abandonment to a dog. Twice.”

  Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know where you’re taking this conversation, but I don’t want to talk about Ky anymore, or all the things I’ve done wrong. I’m going to fix breakfast, and then we’re going to pack up our stuff, load the canoe and head downriver. You can sit there and blame me for every bad thing that’s happened on this trip, but like I said before, I never asked you to come along.”

  “Believe me, I wish I hadn’t. And don’t fix breakfast on my account. I’m not hungry.”

  She brooded in silence while he cooked oatmeal on the cookstove. When the pup was done nursing, she picked him up. His belly was round with milk. He was relaxed now and not the least bit afraid of her. He chewed her fingers, licked her chin and then fell promptly asleep in the cradle of her arms. Mama Dog gave a long sigh and her eyes closed halfway. Cameron wondered what she’d do if she stroked her. Would she growl, or would she trust
them now? Would she realize they’d saved her life and the life of her pup, and were only trying to help her?

  Cameron reached slowly and stroked Mama Dog’s head, ready to draw her hand away quickly if she should snap, but she remained motionless. Not so much as a twitch of an ear or the flicker of an eyelid. Still as death. She bent closer, listening, waiting to see Mama Dog breathe, waiting to see her rib cage move up and down, holding her own breath because she didn’t want to take another until she was certain. She watched for what seemed like a long time.

  “Jack,” she said, her voice faint. “Mama Dog’s not breathing. She’s not breathing! I think she’s dead. I think she just died. I think she fed her puppy one last time, and then she just died!”

  Jack crossed from the stove, crouched and rested one hand on Mama Dog’s rib cage for a long moment, then checked for a pulse in her femoral artery. He stroked Mama Dog’s head very gently several times, then looked up at Cameron and shook his head.

  Cameron pushed to her feet and sat on the edge of the bunk, the pup cradled in her lap. She struggled to process what had just happened.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “All this time she’s been out here trying to survive. She had this pup, and somehow managed to keep herself and her puppy alive. Then we show up out of the blue and feed her fish stew and plan to rescue her, and now she’s dead. What’s the point of it all? What’s the point of any of this?”

  Jack rose to his feet and went back to the stove, stirring the oatmeal. She heard the clank of the spoon against the side of the pan. She wanted to cry but couldn’t. She was too numb. Jack shut off the stove, divided the oatmeal and brought the bowls to the table.

  “Come eat,” he told her. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “She fed her pup one last time, and then she just died,” Cameron repeated, stroking the sleeping pup as tears trembled on her eyelashes. She looked again at Mama Dog, hoping to see that Jack was wrong, that she wasn’t really dead after all, but nothing had changed. “I don’t understand anything,” she said.

  “Come eat,” Jack repeated.

  “We should have caught her last night.”

  “I’m sorry, Cameron,” Jack said. “If I could change things, I would. But if we hadn’t showed up when we did, that pup wouldn’t be sleeping in your lap right now. The bear would’ve dug under the cabin, killed the mother when she tried to drive it off, killed the pup and eaten them both. That’s how it works in nature. You of all people know that. Bears don’t kill because they’re evil. They’re just trying to survive. I’m sorry about the dog, I really am, but right now I’m just damned glad that bear didn’t kill you because it just as easily could have if the dog hadn’t been distracting it. A pistol’s no match for a grizzly. It would take a twelve-gauge shotgun, rifled slugs and a lot of luck to kill one. Now come eat.”

  He spoke to her as if she were a child, and, like a child, Cameron moved to the table, picked up her spoon and forced herself to eat. Jack was right. This sort of stuff went on all the time in the wild. Life was hazardous, even for top of the food chain predators. There were no guarantees. She and Jack had almost drowned on this trip and were both lucky to be alive. And he was right. She’d been foolish to think she could take on a full-size grizzly with a pistol. That bear could easily have killed her with one swat, just like it killed Mama Dog. Jack could’ve been killed trying to keep her from being mauled to death, and this little fat-bellied pup that slept in her lap might have become a hungry bear’s next meal.

  Bad things had happened to all of them, but good things had happened, too. Maybe there didn’t need to be a reason for why things happened. Maybe there just needed to be the promise that each new day brought, and the hope that something good might come their way. Because sometimes, it did.

  After a glum and silent breakfast, Cameron set about the task of cleaning the cabin for the last time and packing up gear while Jack dug a grave for Mama Dog out behind the camp. The digging was hard, and it took awhile because he wanted the hole to be deep. Afterward he carried rocks up from the riverbank, and they built a cairn over the grave. When all was finished, they stood over the grave for a few moments. Cameron held Lobo in her arms. “I promise I’ll take good care of your puppy, Mama Dog,” she said.

  They finished packing in silence. Cameron ached all over, and her heart was heavy. It seemed like forever ago that she started out on this journey, this easy little trip that would net her so much money, enough to buy Johnny Allen’s red Jeep that she thought would change her life. It seemed a lifetime ago that she’d had such shallow aspirations.

  They lugged their gear down to the river, and before they loaded the canoe, Cameron wrote a note and left it on the table for the cabin owner, thanking him for the use of his cabin, telling him about the grizzly bear and Mama Dog, and where she was buried. She was torn about mentioning the pup, but in the end wrote that Mama Dog had died bravely defending a very young pup she’d birthed in a den she’d dug under the cabin. She listed the items they’d taken: the oatmeal, half the rice and some tea; the piece of sheet metal and roofing tar to patch the canoe; the two drop chains from the picket line. She left her name and contact information. Even if it violated the unwritten code of the north, she wanted to leave money in gratitude, to replace the items they’d used, but the irony was she had none. No money in her pockets. No money in her bank account. None.

  She had a job that included a moldy old house trailer with a leaky roof, and a boss who paid slave wages because he himself made so little that Jeri, who’d been with Walt forever, had finally up and quit. Well, it wasn’t just the pay. Another reason she’d left was because she was in love with Walt, and Walt took her completely for granted. Jeri was worth something to Walt. She was worth a lot, and her coffee was priceless, but Walt never told her any of that. Jeri would have stayed and worked forever for slave wages if he’d just told her how much she meant to him, but now she was gone.

  Men were fools.

  “Ready?”

  Jack’s voice from the doorway made her jump. She met his eyes, nodded. Not all men were fools, she amended silently as Jack placed a wad of bills on top of the note and set the oil lamp over it. They secured the door, the bear shutters, left the camp clean and shut up tight, then slid the canoe into the back eddy and loaded it.

  Cameron worried about the pup. “I’ll have to keep Lobo tucked inside my jacket,” she told Jack when it was time to get into the canoe. “I don’t want him loose in the canoe.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jack said.

  “I don’t know how to keep him safe other than to stuff him under my jacket. If he falls overboard, he’s done for.”

  “You’ll figure it out. Mothers are good at that.”

  His words had a calming effect. Her anxiety eased. She tucked the pup inside her jacket and climbed into the bow of the canoe. Everything would be okay. Lobo would be okay. She and Jack would work things out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THUNDER RUMBLED. A long dark skein of rain hung from the belly of dark clouds gathering in the mountains and darkened the pink glow of sunset. Jack guided the canoe ashore toward the back eddy of a stubby spruce-clad peninsula that jutted into the river. The point of land would make a good campsite. Cameron was tired. They hadn’t spoken a word since noon hour, when he’d put ashore for lunch. That had been shortly after the rapids, which they’d had to portage, unloading all their gear, carrying it down below the rapids, then lining the canoe down with ropes and reloading it. Exhausting work that had taken several hours out of their travel time.

  “Looks like we aren’t making the Mackenzie River today,” she said wearily when Jack headed for shore. She climbed out into the shallow water, carefully cradling the pup, and hauled the bow of the canoe ashore.

  “The Mackenzie might be around the next bend,” Jack said, “but it’s going to rain. We need to ge
t camp set up and get settled in.”

  She gathered driftwood with Lobo still tucked inside her jacket, then made a small cook fire on the rocky shore near their gear while Jack pitched the big tent. He loaded their sleeping bags inside while Cameron fixed a simple supper of panfried char and hot tea. The pup ate fish stew, a good-sized portion, and worried their bootlaces while they sat beside the fire and ate their own meal in silence.

  Thunder rumbled closer. Jack scooped the pup off the ground to save his laces and plopped him in his lap. “He’s a cute bugger,” he said, offering him a tiny piece of fish, which Lobo enthusiastically accepted. Cameron remained silent, and her silence was far worse than her angry words had been. Jack would rather she shouted at him than sit there quietly, brooding about Mama Dog and how they should have saved her, and would have, if he’d listened to Cameron. The wind began to pick up. Lightning flashed against the backdrop of the thunderheads. “Bed time,” he said, pushing to his feet with the pup tucked under one arm.

  They made it inside the tent just before the storm hit and the torrential rains came down. The pup wandered loose within the confines of the tent while Cameron pulled off her hiking boots and shed her outerwear, leaving her long johns on. Jack did the same. The darkness brought on early by the storm was welcome. The pup burrowed inside Cameron’s sleeping bag. She and Jack lay side by side, listening to the rain pound the tent fly like buckshot, listening to the deafening cracks of thunder that followed the brilliant flashes of lightning. They were close together but had never been farther apart, and even if they’d wanted to make conversation, they couldn’t have, which Jack figured was probably just as well.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY dawned overcast and cool, and they packed the canoe in silence, weary and lame and tired before they even got started. Breakfast was the last of their coffee and oatmeal while the pup ate what remained of the fish stew. The morning was overcast, windy, too cold for bugs. While they sat by the small fire Cameron had kindled to heat the water for coffee, they heard geese flying high above and spotted a ragged v heading south.