by Gary Paulsen
End of lake. Another beaver dam. Over it, reload, back in water, dog in canoe, tearing down the stream, looking ahead, always ahead and not even thinking now, just pulling the canoe forward.
End of lake. Beaver dam. Stream through swamps, more dams, more work over them, stroking, stroking to yet another lake.
And then dark.
He had not stopped the way he usually did, still in light, to find a place. He took a clearing with a slight angle and stumbled around in the dark to find wood and it was truly late by the time he was ready to get water on to boil and cut pieces of meat to make a stew.
He gathered more wood in the dark, made a hot fire to get the water boiling as fast as possible and did his daily gear check by firelight.
When he finished, the stew had boiled and he drank the broth, ate the meat, fed the dog from the rest of the back leg and lay down to rest.
He ached and was tired from paddling hard. Sleep should have come fast but he lay on the grass, his mind tumbling, wondering how far there was yet to go. He had thought it wasn’t over thirty miles, from the way the camp had been described, but he had come close to thirty miles today and didn’t seem to be near a big lake, although a lot of that travel had been back and forth because the country was flat and the streams wandered. He knew for a fact that at one point he had paddled two miles east and west to go less than half a mile north.
The dog seemed to be affected by his mood and even after eating did not lie peacefully and sleep as she had the night before but instead sat near Brian, almost leaning against him, looking into the darkness and periodically whining softly and the direction it was looking was north.
Something there, Brian thought, there was something up there the dog knew about and didn’t like and he knew it must have been what caused the wound and the way the dog was looking, trying to see through the darkness, her nostrils flaring as she tried to get a smell, her ears perked for any sound, whatever it was must be getting closer.
Brian threw some leaves on the coals to make bug smoke and slept, finally, on the ground with no shelter except for a Polarfleece pullover draped over his side. He was up before dawn, starting the fire again, heating water to drink, feeding the dog a bit of meat and into the canoe and paddling at first light.
At first he was stiff and his back sore, but the lake was about a mile long and by the time he reached the outlet at the end the stiffness was gone and he was back to clawing with the paddle.
More beaver dams, more streams, another lake, then another series of dams and streams and swamps and then a change.
At first he wasn’t sure what it was — something was different. It was the same water, the same canoe, and he paddled the same way but there was a change around him and when he was moving along the edge of a stream under an overhang he realized what it was — the woods were different here.
There was less sound, less small movement. Before, there had always been something happening, some indication of nature, and here. . it had changed.
A quieting that wasn’t there before, and not caused by the canoe passing. Before, the canoe had had no effect at all. But he hadn’t seen a moose in hours, and before, they had almost been common; he hadn’t seen birds, but more, hadn’t heard them either.
There was man here; he was getting close to man.
And in another mile the stream he was following widened into a shallow entrance to a large lake that led away to the north. It was at least five miles long and widened rapidly to the left and right as he entered it and then seemed to narrow to a point at the end, five miles away.
The lake was shaped like an arrowhead, or nearly so, and more, even in the afternoon heat mist he thought he could see a large island at the far end.
It was the right lake, where his friends were camped, and he pulled the remaining deer leg back into the canoe to make the paddling easier and started pulling for the island. But it was as if the Fates, having been kind to him for so long, decided to make up for it. A breeze started coming from the north, with clouds, and it quickly turned into a wind, then a strong wind hitting him head on, and where he had been making three and sometimes four miles an hour he was now down to barely one, and some chop was splashing over the bow.
He slid sideways to the left, close to shore, but while the chop diminished and he was no longer shipping water the wind was still as strong and the trip across the lake that he’d thought would take little more than an hour was suddenly a six-hour pull, and that only with hard work.
Still, his stomach was full of good meat and water and he was strong. He kept up the pace, accepting the three-quarters of a mile an hour as it came to him, and after four hours was only a mile and a half from the island when a new strangeness hit him.
The wind had been blowing straight from the island to him, all his way across the lake, and yet he smelled nothing. If they were camped there, on the island, they should be burning fires for cooking and heating. But he could smell nothing.
Not the slightest whiff of woodsmoke. The wind was blowing directly at him from the island, right across him, and there was no odor.
And the dog. .
She was up now, on all fours, whimpering more loudly than ever before, mixing those sounds with low growls, her ears up, then down, then back up again, listening, then hiding, then listening again. Aggressive, but worried?
Brian paused and something made him reach out and take a broadhead out of the quiver and lay it across the bow even though the moment without paddling cost him his forward motion. He thought, This is silly, I’m being a worrywart, but positioned the bow close to himself just the same.
Then dug with the paddle again, pulling hard for the island, the dog whimpering and growling.
I just wish, Brian thought, I could smell their smoke.
9
At first he thought they were just gone, perhaps back to a town for some reason, although he knew they hated cities as much as he did.
But no dogs barked to greet him, and there was no noise at the island, no sound, not even birds singing. By the time he pulled the canoe up onshore next to one of their canoes — a thick glass — hulled eighteenfooter — he knew something was wrong.
As he pulled in the dog jumped from the canoe onto land but did not leave him, did not run up the shore. She stood near him, pressing against his leg while he tied the canoe to a limb.
He took his bow and put his quiver over his back and nocked a broadhead in the string and thought, All right, crazy as this is, I’ll just take the teasing if they see me walk up all ready.
From the beach where their canoe had been tied a track curved up about fifty yards to a camp area and he could see they had constructed a cabin about fifteen feet square with unpeeled logs and a tarp for a roof pulled over a ridgepole to make it peak and drain off water.
But no people.
All right, they were gone. That was too bad but they would come back and. .
The door to the cabin was open. It was made of three rough planks chopped from soft pine and hung on leather hinges — he could see that much when he was twenty yards from the cabin — but it stood open and they would not have left the door open that way.
The dog stopped, her nostrils flared, and all the hair on her back went up in a thick ridge and she growled in a low, steady rumble.
Brian put his three pulling fingers on the bowstring, ready to draw and release, and moved closer to the cabin.
Then the smell hit him. Not smoke, not woodsmoke, but the smell of blood, musty, rotten smell of spoiled blood and flesh. He stopped again, flaring his nostrils, taking the offensive odor in, trying to see all around and up and down at the same time, holding his mouth open and his breath to hear better and that was when he heard the sound of flies.
All right, he thought. All right. They left some meat here and something broke into the cabin and got at it and let the flies in and. . and. . and. .
It was all wrong. So wrong. He had never felt anything so powerfully wrong in his life and every
thing in him wanted to run, get away from this place, but he knew he had to go on, to go in the cabin. .
He stood to the side of the door, eight feet away. “Anybody in there?” Then, to the woods, more loudly, “Is there anybody here?”
Nothing. Just the continued buzzing of flies, no other sound, and he stood another second and a half, nervously fingering the bowstring; then he took a deep breath, held it and stepped into the cabin.
There were no windows — the only light came through the doorway and from a dim glow that worked down through the tarp roof — and for moments he stood inside the doorway virtually blind in the sudden darkness.
Then he stood aside and let the light in and at the same time his eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
“My god. .”
The words slipped out without his knowing, or caring. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside the cabin.
Sacks, boxes, sleeping bags, bunks, snares, traps and provisions were torn open, thrown everywhere, ripped opened and flung in piles like so much garbage.
But no people. So they had gone somewhere, maybe in the plane, and probably a bear had gotten into the cabin — and indeed, he saw slash marks on a sack of flour that could have come from bear claws — and torn into everything. .
But no, that was too easy. There was more and part of him knew it, knew there had to be more, though he didn’t want to admit it and he saw then what he had missed at first.
The flies. There was a buzzing of flies everywhere but the sound was deceptive because the flies were all back in a corner where torn sleeping bags covered something, something. .
Brian moved to the corner and with no breath left now, only fear, he reached for a corner of the torn sleeping bag and pulled it away and saw the body, a human body doubled up and jammed back in the corner, covered, and it was Kay-gwa-daush’s father, David, destroyed, face torn, neck torn open, one arm ripped half off the body, stomach torn open. .
“Arrggh!” Brian turned and instantly vomited, almost hitting the dog, which had followed him into the cabin, growling openly but crying and whining as well, looking at the dead man. “Oh my, oh my, ohmyohmy. .”
He couldn’t think, couldn’t react, couldn’t do anything except stand and throw up and try to make what he had seen not exist. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t actually be, not this, not this terrible thing. .
But he turned back and David was still there, in a cloud of flies, and a part of Brian’s brain went on automatic and saw things he could not stand to look at, could not bring himself to openly acknowledge.
David was dead in the corner. It couldn’t be but it was, he was there and torn terribly apart. It had to have been a bear. A bear, a rogue bear, had broken into the cabin suddenly and attacked and overpowered David and killed him. .
He had fought, or tried to fight. There was a rifle, a 30–30 in the corner by the body with the lever pulled open. David had tried to load it and the bear had come so fast he hadn’t had time to get a shot off. Perhaps the gun had been in the corner and the bear had burst in and David had tried for it and the bear had gotten him first. .
What of the others? There was David’s wife, Anne, and the little boy and girl. And Susan. Kay-gwa-daush. Oh god, he thought, oh god, what of them? Where were they?
He turned away from David — there would be time later for what was necessary there — and looked through the rest of the trash in the cabin, turning over paper and bags and bunks. There were no other bodies.
Outside then; David later, but outside for now. There had to be sign. He had missed things coming in because he’d been nervous. There must be sign, tracks, and when he went outside he was appalled at how much he’d missed on the way up to the door of the cabin.
There, in the soft earth to the side away from the hard-packed trail down to the lake, were clear prints of a bear, a large bear, a huge bear. The prints had to be nearly six inches across and even taking into account the way they spread in soft earth the bear had to be over five hundred pounds.
The tracks coming toward the cabin were far apart and dug in hard, as if the bear had been running, running to break in? That didn’t make sense. And then he saw boot prints as well, running toward the cabin on the same line as the bear, and it made more sense.
David had been outside when the bear attacked and he had tried to run to the cabin and get his rifle. Had nearly made it. Had gotten his hands on the rifle and worked the lever but the bear was chasing him, was right on him and after he killed him had torn the cabin apart.
But Anne, and Kay-gwa-daush? Had they been outside as well?
The prints leaving the cabin were more measured, closer together, and he started after them and then stopped, thinking of the rifle, and then shook his head. He was not familiar with firearms and might miss if he ran into the bear, and besides, a broadhead was an incredible weapon when it got inside an animal.
He turned away, the bow ready, walking slowly, stopping every few feet and listening, listening. Whatever had happened, he thought, had happened days before; the condition of David’s body and the movement of maggots in the wounds told that.
“Anne? Susan?” He called several times but knew better. If they hadn’t answered when he first yelled coming to the camp they weren’t going to answer now. There had been two younger children as well, a small boy and girl, but he could not remember their names. Surely they weren’t dead as well. .
The kennel. There had been three or four dogs there, not loose but tied with short chains so they wouldn’t rip the gear up, and the bear’s tracks went at first back to the kennel and three dogs lay dead there, mauled only slightly. A fourth chain was there with a ripped nylon collar on the end and he looked back at the dog, which was still following him. “That was you? And you ran? But why not stay if Anne and Susan were here. Or the kids?”
Unless, he thought, unless they were dead. Please no, just please no, not any more, not now. .
But to the left of the kennel there were bear tracks heading off into the brush and alongside the tracks there was a skid mark as if the bear had been dragging something heavy.
No. Please no. .
It was not hard to follow the tracks and they didn’t go very far. Forty yards back in the brush he found the second body, partially eaten, the buttocks and thighs gone, lying on its face, the head hidden by black hair, the rest of the body covered with leaves and dirt as if buried to save for later.
Please no. .
He was sick but this time did not throw up and instead squatted by the head of the body and moved the hair away and saw that it was Susan’s mother, Anne. Her face was not torn but there was a strange angle to her head as though she had been struck very hard and it had broken her neck.
He fell back, weakened suddenly, and sat in the grass next to the body. Then he stood and left the body as it was — time for what had to be done later, when he’d found out about Susan and the other children — and moved back to the cabin area.
Trying not to think about the bodies — and this was nearly impossible — he forced his mind into a hunting-tracking mode and looked for sign. The water between the island and the main shore was very shallow, never over a couple of feet, and he quickly found where the bear had waded across and come onto the island’s shore. Huge tracks in wet mud, then muddy tracks in the grass, moving through low hazel brush up toward the dogs and the kennel, where the bear must have smelled the dog food, fish and beaver meat — the odor would carry with good wind for miles.
Everything in him wanted to hurry, to run, to scream her name and run, but Brian forced himself to be slow, to be careful.
The bear’s tracks were even, just walking, never hurrying until the last moment when he cleared the hazel and the dogs saw him and probably started barking.
There, by the kennel, he saw the tracks of two people, one large and one slightly smaller, David and Anne, and there was a dented bucket. They were probably feeding the dogs. The distance from the line of hazel brush to where they
were standing wasn’t ten yards, thirty feet, three bounds for the bear and he was on them.
Two seconds’ warning, at the most, and he was there, on top of them, dogs screaming, one blow for Anne, and Brian could see where her body hit, then David running for the only hope he had, the rifle in the cabin, the bear’s prints wheeling and digging as he went after David and the rest in the cabin. .
Then bear tracks back to the kennel, where he must have killed the dogs. All but one, the one with Brian, and then more tracks, bear tracks, around where Anne’s body had fallen and then the skid marks where the bear had dragged Anne away into the brush to feed.
No other new tracks. No small children’s tracks by the kennel or from kennel to house. No tracks of Susan. No newer tracks at all.
Maybe she was gone, gone to town, visiting friends or relatives back in the world, gone with the children.
He started a circle search, around the center of activity, the attack site and cabin, looping through the brush, close in at first, moving out four feet with each loop, looking intently, studying carefully each stick, each blade of grass, and on the tenth loop he found it and then felt stupid for not having seen it at once.
On the trail up from the lake, just to the side, two scuff marks as if somebody walking, somebody smaller than Brian, smaller than David, had suddenly stopped and then run, frantically run back down to the bank, and there were more skid marks where a canoe had been shoved away from the bank and here, hidden in the tall grass at odd angles, lay two canoe paddles where they must have fallen from the canoe when she flipped it over and pushed it into the lake.
She’d had no paddles, must have used her hands.
And there, at the side, more bear tracks where the bear had run down to the shore and then moved sideways, along the bank, probably following the canoe for a short distance.
On the ground by the first scuff mark was a small two-quart bucket and scattered around it were raspberries.
