“No.”
“Don’t press your luck,” he said, his voice like a growl.
She ignored his warning.“Are you going …?”
“Dammit, get inside before I carry you there.”
“You won’t know how to find them.”
She was the most infuriating woman he’d ever met.Her face was so pleading, so earnest, those soft eyes so determined.Damn, but she got under his skin.
“Look, lady,” he finally said.“You can’t shoot, can you?”
She tipped her chin up defiantly.“Of course I can,” she said, but those unbelievably honest eyes gave her away.
“Christ, you’re a lousy liar,” he said, exasperated.“If you’re right and that little cub’s in trouble, the mother’s going to be damned dangerous.I can’t worry about you and help him.”
“What if something happens toyou?”
He knew her concern wasn’t for him but for herself.After all, hadn’t she just tried to kill him?He looked at her coldly.“Clint said he would be back.Hewillbe back.”
She gazed up to the side of his head where blood had congealed and dried.“Are you … are you all right?”
“No,” he said.“Now get inside.”
“If I promise not to leave …”
“Miss Randall, don’t even suggest it.Don’t ask me for a goddamn thing.You want someone to help that cub, then you get inside.”His usually indecipherable eyes were raging.She stepped back into the cabin.
“You might pray that Mama bear gets me before I return,” he said in a low, furious voice before he slammed the door closed and locked it.
He stood there for a moment.Christ, his head hurt.He hadn’t had any sleep in more than thirty hours, and he didn’t know how to deal with a woman so unlike any other he had met.She never did what he expected.To risk everything to escape and then return because of a bear cub?He hated the thought that sheknewhe would go after that cub and had returned because of it.At least she’d had enough sense to come after him rather than trying to do something on her own.
Rafe realized the contradictory nature of those thoughts and chalked it up to his exhaustion.
He swiftly unsaddled the horse and put him in the stable.He couldn’t take the horse.After getting a whiff of the bear, the bay would be nearly uncontrollable.And God knew what he would find.Rafe had seen what those steel-jaw traps could to do an animal.
Cradling the rifle in his arm, he started through the woods at a slow run.Halfway to the fall, he heard the poignant cries of the cub, the frantic grunts of the mother, and he increased his pace until he saw them directly ahead.
The black bear rose up on its hind legs, its teeth bared.Rafe froze, keeping very still until the bear remembered his scent.Then his gaze moved and found the small cub.Its leg was caught in a trap all right, and it was crying in anguish, moving frantically to free itself, gnawing at its own wounded leg.Blood covered the ground.
Rafe very slowly pulled on his gloves.“It’s all right,” he said to the mother bear in a crooning low voice.“I’m here to help.”
The bear growled, pawing the air threateningly, and Rafe hoped he wouldn’t be faced with the choice of killing the mother to save the cub or killing the cub so it wouldn’t suffer.He moved a few feet closer, all the time crooning, “I’m a friend.”
The mother bear moved closer to the cub, then came down on her four paws.She still made snarling sounds, baring her teeth, but as Rafe continued his approach, the bear gave way, falling back, leaving the way open toward the cub.
“You understand, don’t you?”Rafe said in the same calm voice.“You know I just want to help.”
But when he was nearly at the cub’s side, the mother lunged at him, swatting him with a paw.A claw caught his left arm, and he felt ripping pain, blood running down his arm.
The cub whimpered, then resumed gnawing on its own leg.Rafe would have to kill the cub, and the mother bear too.He couldn’t leave the small creature to suffer, and he knew the she-bear would never let him go.
But just as his right hand reached for his Colt, the mother moved to the cub.Her large tongue ran over her young, and then, surprisingly, she moved back, as if she had suddenly made a decision.Rafe took his hand away from the gun and leaned down, his fingers gently petting the cub to show the mother he meant no harm.There was a low growl but no more.
Ignoring the pain in his arm, Rafe reached down, anchoring the trap with his booted foot and taking the steel jaws in his right hand.He pulled with all the strength he could muster, and the trap opened.The cub dragged free its mangled leg and crawled away several feet, whimpering softly all the while.
The mother bear loped over to her cub, her tongue running over the leg, trying to heal it.Rafe watched them for a short while; then he took off his now-bloody shirt and ripped a piece of cloth from it, which he tied tightly around the gaping wound.He swayed for a moment, wondering what to do.He just couldn’t think.
