by Henry, Sue
Gradually, the bear seemed to settle on their position, possibly, though its eyesight was only average, catching a gleam from one of their guns, for the swaying motion of its head stopped, though it still rocked slightly from side to side. It roared again, sending chills through Rochelle, who held tight and sighted carefully with the .375 Weatherby Magnum, waiting.
Maybe it would avoid them, go away, just go away. Probably not. This kind of bear, already angry, would welcome something against which to vent its wrath. It could tear a man apart, puncturing lungs and breaking ribs with its claws, ripping body flesh with its teeth, tearing at scalp and skull in its jaws, dragging a body off to bury in a pile of dirt, leaves, and brush. She could be its next victim, as could Jensen and Caswell. The idea brought shudders and shaking hands, sweaty palms.
She wished Jensen had a rifle, and Caswell was, admittedly, no hunter. How good a shot was he? She knew that, without a doubt, her Weatherby was their best hope.
Swallowing hard, she forced the terrifying images from her mind, wiped her hands, one at a time on the shoulders of her jacket, and concentrated on what Norm had taught her. Relaxing her grip on the rifle slightly, she drew a deep breath and focused on the job at hand, banishing fear with facts. Take the head shot. Only hunters out for trophies should shoot for the heart, to avoid crushing and spoiling the skull for the taxidermist. Also, grizzlies, even with bodies full of bullets and hearts blown apart by exploding slugs, had been known to complete their charge and savage the shooter. In this situation, she aimed directly at the face, where she knew a hit in the eye, nose or forehead could stop the bear instantly.
Then there was no time for further thought. Dropping to all fours, the monster charged straight at them, so fast they could hardly react, and the incredible sound it made seemed to fill the world and shake them in it.
AS THE SNOW RECEDED. THE ABUNDANCE OF GREEN edible plants increased along with the daylight hours as each day crept closer to the summer solstice. Aklak soon found it unnecessary to be so far-ranging in search of food, though he still often covered more than a dozen miles between sunrise and the time it set, late in the purple haze of evening.
Years of feeding had taught the great bear exactly where to find the most prolific sources of tender young shoots and bulbs. Like all bears, he was a creature of habit, returning again, year after year, to locations most likely to provide the best food. Though he did not recall it, he had first grazed in some of these places as a cub, but it was second nature that drew him back, not memory. He did not even remember that he once had a mother to watch and from whom to learn. It was simply repetition and results that made him respond to what accorded the most gain for the least effort.
It was repetition and the instinctive promise of reward that drew him down among the small lakes of the plateau beyond Mount Susitna, to the rich sedges that grew thick in the swampy spaces between rocky ridges and lakes of varying sizes. There, he was content to stay for days, regularly filling his belly and napping when he was full, only to wake and feed again.
But this year there was something else that drifted ever so lightly through his mind: not a memory, more of an expectation of something he would soon find that was good to eat—not plant but animal—something for which he had intended to return. Something buried? If only he knew what—and where. So, slowly, as he consumed huge amounts of the satisfying, nutritious sedges, he gradually, unconsciously moved west, toward a larger lake, without planning, decision, or awareness.
Habit must offer security to brown bears, for they repeat actions not only independently, but as a species. Grizzlies are influenced enough by their customary inclination to make trails in certain locations that are used over and over for decades, perhaps longer, by large numbers of bears. Each walking precisely in the paw prints of the others, stepping exactly in the same spot, always with the same foot, they create depressions in the ground in a regular rhythmic pattern along a track. There is no mistaking it for anything else. Only the consistency of browns, one after the other, can create and maintain this particular mark on the earth, and it speaks better than words the significance of their habitual presence.
Aklak became conscious of the sound of the flying thing when it was very faint and far off, but when it grew louder, he growled deeply and unhappily in his throat. It was almost familiar—and not a thing he anticipated with pleasure. It was bad, unpleasant, threatening even. As it came closer and he could finally see it moving in the sky, he stopped eating and focused his attention, waiting to see what it would do.
It drew an arch and dived toward the ground, directly toward him. He ran, feeling that if he did not it would hurt him. He slowed when it retreated as it circled, then came at him again, roaring a challenge. He roared back, stopped, and raised himself to a standing position, reaching skyward, trying to drag it from the air, and failing.
Dropping back to all fours, he ran again, on and on, angry, uncharacteristically afraid, and frustrated, needing something on which to vent his fury, to reestablish his superiority, to inflict punishment. The flying thing followed, falling at him out of the air whenever he slowed, coming ever closer, but never, never within reach.
For several miles it chased him steadily over the plateau, until at last he crested a low ridge and suddenly became aware of something else—a smell. It was the smell of the animal he had subconsciously expected to find. Aklak stopped and searched with his eyes, but his nose and incredible sense of smell told him what he needed to know, that it was somewhere very close. Rising again to stand on his hind legs, he waited, watching and—there, to the left—saw the flash of something that moved.
He roared a challenge, but it did not rise to meet him. Though he waited, no stick spit fire in his direction. The flying thing in the air was not nearby, its sound only a whine in the distance, growing slowly louder. He ignored the increasing sound. Once again it had directed him to an animal that would be an easy kill, one he could drag away and bury. He sniffed the air and realized that it was not just one animal. There was more than one, all powerless and for him.
He was still furious and hostile, ready to rend, to tear. Dropping down, he waited no longer. Roaring his anger, he charged straight at the prey in the rocks.
Then the sticks he had not been able to see, had not thought dangerous, barked at him and fire filled his consciousness—fire and an agony of confusion.
He could not see. For what seemed like a very long time, he fell as his forelegs and paws crumpled under his weight and would not move. Searing pain filled his huge head, but his body, flat against the ground he could not feel, was numb. He tried to growl, but only a gurgling sigh escaped his ruined throat. It seemed darker, and suddenly, cold, and the only thing he could smell was his own blood.
Then, slowly, there was nothing, and Aklak, the great brown bear—fine young chief, elder brother, lord of the woods, the unmentionable one, real bear—as unconscious of dying as he had been of being, was no more.
22
ROCHELLE, WEATHERBY STILL CAUTIOUSLY AT THE ready, stood looking down at the huge, shaggy carcass of the bear on the ground where its charge had ended, conscious of fear gradually ebbing in her system. The hair on her arms still stood up and her skin felt icy, as if adrenaline had heated the blood that ran through her veins, forcing terror instead of sweat to rise and chill as it evaporated. No wonder they refer to fear as cold, she thought, shivering as she relaxed. Sure that the bear was dead, she sighed in relief and lowered the rifle. Somewhere, nearby, a bird called, and the sun seemed exceptionally bright, making her eyes water.
Jensen stepped up to lay a hand, wordlessly, on her shoulder.
Two bullets from the Weatherby had struck the animal, one full in the mouth, wide open in the roar of its charge, one splitting the skull just above the left eye. Destroying the huge throat, the first had passed on into the neck, cutting the spinal cord, paralyzing the enormous brown as if it were a marionette with suddenly severed strings.
Caswell’s shot had ta
ken out the other eye, passed through the brain, and out the back of the skull. As they stood over the carcass of the incredible animal, his hands still shook as they clutched the Springfield. Chelle’s were steady, but her white knuckles matched her pale face. They couldn’t tell what Jensen’s shot had done, because the monster bear rested belly down, covering the chest at which he had aimed. Later they would know that he had missed the heart by less than a finger’s width.
“I’ve never seen one so huge,” Cas said, taking a deep breath, “though it looks smaller now than it did standing up, coming at us. Thought we’d never be able to stop it. A few more feet and I’d be wishing for clean underwear.”
“A few more feet and you wouldn’t have to worry about clean underwear,” Jensen said, calculating the distance between the dead brown and the rocks from which they had fired. “Couldn’t be more than a dozen feet.”
“Have you ever seen one this close?” Chelle asked him.
“No, and I don’t intend to ever again, if I have any choice in the matter. You’re one hell of a shot with that Weatherby, Chelle. Don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s too big.”
She smiled, shakily. “Thanks. It’s a good gun, but there really wasn’t a lot of choice, was there?”
Once more she looked at the bear and acknowledged that part of what she was feeling was sorry. Blood-soaked and lacking dignity in the position of its sprawling body, still, even in dying, it was beautiful, awesome. She knew and understood something of why Norm had so loved the great brutes, with their rich, colorful pelts and savage strength. This death, however, was an unnecessary waste. She felt herself growing angry at its cause and, somehow, again, with Norm, for inspiring these feelings—and everything else.
“Where’s that plane gone?” Jensen asked, suddenly, beginning to think about something besides the bear they had just killed. “We’ve just been damn lucky. But, whoever these guys are, they’re serious. Someone from that camp will be heading this way shortly. We’d better get ourselves away from here.”
“You’re right,” Cas agreed. “But what about the bear?”
“Well, you can stay and skin it, if you like.” Alex grinned. “Me. I’m making tracks.”
“No way. I’m with you. I meant we’ll have to report it.”
“We’ll report all of this, so let’s make sure we get the opportunity. I’d like to know what happened to Tobias. He’s the only one we haven’t seen, and I expected him to show up in their camp, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did. That’s another thing we’ve got to watch out for.”
“What are we going to do about Ed and my plane?” Chelle asked, when they were well on their way, cutting east around the end of the lake, the way they had come. “I want my plane back. Whoever that guy is, he hazed that bear with my plane. That really ticks me off.”
“We’ll get it for you, Chelle,” Jensen promised, as they reached the top of the ridge above the crooked lake and skirted a thick stand of spruce and willow. “Just not right now. But, if I knew where that guy in the plane has gone, and that he wouldn’t be back for long enough, I’d be tempted to try a hostile takeover of their camp. There’s only two of them left, and one of those is Landreth.”
“You know, that’s not a bad idea.” Cas stopped to comment. “Let’s take a look over the ridge and see if they’ve brought the Cessna back yet. It can’t hurt to look.”
When they reached a space to peer between the brush, the bank of the lake held only the poacher’s plane, no sign of Chelle’s 206.
“Well? What do you think?” Cas questioned.
In only a second Jensen’s frown of concentration vanished as he glanced at his watch, his decision made. “I’m going down there. It’s time for some answers and I want them now. This may be the best and only opportunity we get, and anything could happen in the couple of hours before your repair crew arrives. We’ve got the element of surprise and there’s two of us to two of them.”
“Three,” Chelle reminded him, reloading the Weatherby.
This time, however, things were not so easy or so smooth.
They crept in quietly through the brush until they were directly behind the camp on the low shelf that separated the plateau from the lakeshore. There, they split up, Chelle flattening herself on the ground between two rocks to cover the other two, aiming her rifle down into the camp. Jensen slipped away to the left, Caswell to the right, where the slope was somewhat steeper, in an attempt to climb down and reach the rear of the tents without being seen.
They were almost halfway, moving with great care, when a rock shifted and the ground avalanched from under Caswell’s feet. Flailing the air with both arms, one hindered by the Springfield, he attempted to retain an upright position, lost it, sat down hard and slid to the foot of the incline, rocks bouncing noisily around him. As he scrambled for cover behind a boulder of barely adequate size, the man Chelle had pepper-sprayed bolted from the nearest tent, rifle in hand. Close behind him, Landreth followed, his hands empty of anything but a cigarette. Without hesitation, the man with the gun swung it to his shoulder and fired a shot at Cas, which hit the rock just as he disappeared behind it, missing him by inches.
Alex had ducked behind the only trees of any size, two narrow pipe-cleaner spruce, minimal cover, which forced him to stand very straight in order to avoid revealing large portions of himself. He had, however, a limited view of the camp between the trunks that formed what amounted to a loophole through which to fire his .45.
“Throw it down,” he directed from this vantage point. “We’ve got you covered. Don’t fight it or you’ll get hurt.”
The rifle in the camp below was swiftly turned in his direction and a second bullet whanged into the earth of the hillside.
“Give it up. You must know there are three of us, all armed.”
“Yeah,” a snarl of a voice returned. “You’ve got the Lewis woman, right? Big deal.”
“No-o,” Alex heard Chelle shrill, as he shifted to get a look at the shooter. The man, he saw, had stepped back, grabbed Landreth around the neck from behind, and was using him as a shield. Ed struggled for a moment, but became more cooperative as the chokehold tightened.
With a crack, Chelle put a shot just to the right of the gunman.
“Let him go, you bastard. I’m very good with this thing. The next one goes into whatever part of you I can see, and there’s more of you than there is of him. Stand still, Ed.”
“Shoot me, you get him,” the shooter yelled back, beginning to move slowly, cautiously toward the water, dragging Landreth with him.
The roar of Chelle’s Cessna coming in for a fast landing drowned out whatever else he said, but did not halt his determined, step-by-step retreat. As the plane taxied swiftly toward the camp, Jensen could see that the pilot was alone and wondered, fleetingly, if the client hunter had been left to claim and skin out their bear. The unspoken question floated quickly out of his mind as his attention was caught by the floats of the Cessna coming to rest against the bank of the lake.
“What the hell is going on, Pete?” the pilot yelled, getting out to stand on one and starting forward to jump off.
The other waved his rifle in a warning gesture. “Stay back. They’re up behind the tents with guns—the Lewis woman and those two troopers that shot Gene.”
So, Jensen thought, they know we’re troopers, and they’ve been back to the other lake, where we got the one who tried to shoot Chelle in the swamp. Wonder if they pulled him down out of that tree.
“Shit. How’d they get by Darryl? Where is he?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t seen him. Stay out of range and turn that thing around so I can get to it and we can get out of here, damn you.”
“You think I’m leaving now, you’re crazier than I thought. Mortinson’s still up on the flat, waiting for me to come with another skinning knife.”
“Look. I don’t give a damn about your fuckin’ bear, Tom.” He stopped moving backward and glanced back to see what the pilot w
as doing behind him. “I’m not interested in getting blown away here.”
Tom. This had to be Stoffel’s cousin, Alex realized. The pieces were beginning to come together. Greeson was, as the Fish and Wildlife agent had suspected, running what he could of the illegal business as a big-game guide. They had accidentally stumbled—thanks to Rochelle’s determination to solve the question of her husband’s disappearance—onto what could have taken months, if ever, to investigate and find. The guy was doing the best he could to play it safe by using a plane he considered a throwaway if he were caught in the act of illegally hazing game. And he might very well have got away with it if they hadn’t shown up to complicate what he must have thought easy money with this standoff.
However Ed Landreth had become involved with this bunch, it was clear that they considered him expendable. What could be done now to gain the upper hand without further endangering Chelle’s brother? Perhaps some negotiations were possible. They had to assume that Greeson’s main objective would be to eliminate as many of them as possible. They were witnesses that could tumble his whole operation. He needed to establish control of the situation and it wouldn’t be long until he thought of using Landreth as a hostage, knowing his sister was part of the opposition. How could they act quickly to prevent that?
Jensen could see that Caswell, with very little maneuvering space in the shelter of his boulder, had somehow rearranged himself to be able to rise up and shoot quickly if required. A glance upward told him Chelle was also primed for action, but before he could decide exactly what to do, she suddenly stood up out of her protected position.
