“It’s near town.”
He shakes his head. “East.”
When I frown, he only runs into the lead. We hit the cross trail, and he turns left. Heading east. To him, the voice must have sounded as if it came from that direction. Which means it’s also the same general direction where we’d heard a man and a woman talking.
When Dalton slows, I catch a woman’s voice again, a quiet—almost whispered—babble of desperation. I can’t pick up words, but I have a damn good feeling the “person” she’s pleading with is seven feet tall and covered in brown fur.
Dalton pauses, silencing our footfalls as he listens and pinpoints the voice. Then he sets out again at a lope.
We’re on the outer perimeter path we’d been patrolling earlier. It loops around the town, and when it turns south, the woman’s voice comes from the east. Away from town, like Dalton said.
He pauses again to zero in. Then he sets out, sticking to the trail until the sporadic voice comes again from our left, due east. From there, he motions for me to stay close behind him and starts into the forest.
It’s thick woods here, and with the early dawn, shadow quickly envelops us. I still have my bear spray in hand and my jacket open for the gun. Dalton has the rifle out—he saw that I’m armed with bear spray so he opted for the secondaryweapon. The last thing we want is to both be holding bear spray, come upon the grizzly, and realize it’s upwind, where spray will only blind us.
“Please, please, please,” the woman whispers. Her tone is strained, and there’s no hope of recognizing it.
The answer is a grunt and the sound of very large claws scraping the ground.
“Oh God. Please. Go away. Please.”
More scratching, harder now, and stifled whimpers from the woman.
Dalton motions for me to fall farther behind. I roll my shoulders in irritation, but I do as he asks, and Storm slows behind me.
I understand what Dalton means. He can’t see what’s going on ahead, and we can’t bust in like a train, all in a row. He needs space to back up fast if required. I just don’t like letting him go on ahead without me right there to protect his back. Yes, the threat comes from the front, but I’m not taking chances. If a bear charges him, I want to be right there.
He continues on, and I follow at exactly three paces. When he stops, I do, too. Then he eases to the side, maybe for a better look or maybe to let me look.
At first, all I can see is a bear. There’s no mistaking that massive brown bulk on all fours. When I ease to the right—away from Dalton—it comes into view. A thin and aging grizzly with a white scar running down its back haunch.
The grizzly we dealt with earlier. The one we stole Blake’s body from.
What I don’t see? The woman whose voice we’ve been hearing.
First, I make sure we’re downwind of the bear, which we are. There’s not much of a breeze, but it’s definitely coming our way.
Then I glance at Dalton, but his gaze is forward, watching.I scan the small clearing. There’s no sign of anyone. Just that grizzly, intent on scratching grubs from a fallen tree.
The tree is massive. I actually recognize it as one we’d marked last month for removal. It was one of a few that toppled during a windstorm. Massive conifers ripped out by their roots. Fallen trees are the first we harvest for wood, and this one is on the list, but it’s so big it’ll take a while to carve up.
The bear stops scratching and snuffles, and a half-stifled whimper echoes through the clearing.
Okay, yes, the woman is here. But where—?
My gaze flies to the tree. The grizzly is snuffling near the ripped-out roots. There’s a hollow between the tree trunk, the roots, and upturned ground. That’s where the woman is hiding. When I sidestep, I can make out what looks like a boot.
The bear scratches hard again, and the woman whimpers. Then the bear backs up to assess. I try to see how she’s wedged in, but I can’t.
The bear pushes experimentally on the tree. It must shift, because the woman yelps, but the trunk is a good five feet in diameter. It doesn’t move enough for the bear to get at her.
I glance at Dalton again. He has the rifle raised to his shoulder. The obvious solution is to shoot the bear. The problem is that Dalton must not be able to see how the woman is positioned either. If he shoots, and the bear moves, that bullet could kill whoever we’re trying to rescue.
The bear scratches again. Then it walks the length of the trunk. Dalton’s hands move on the rifle. He’s waiting for a shot that definitely won’t hit the woman. But the grizzly only walks a few feet and then paces back, never getting far enough away.
Our best bet might be to wound it. We’re almost certainly going to need to do more than that, but a wounding shot will get it away from the trunk, and then Dalton can fire properly.It still won’t be easy. Killing something this large and deadly never is.
Killing it, though, is what we’ll need to do, and we take responsibility for that. We chose to steal Blake’s body from the bear. Maybe that corpse would have been enough for it to survive hibernation. Or, worse, maybe in fleeing the bear, we’d pissed it off enough that it’s been stalking the woods, and now it has found a human, and it’s damn well not letting her go.
