Battle of Wills

by Victoria Gordon

'I… I really don't know what to say,' she replied finally. 'I mean… I could handle the house, but the job? What would Frank Hutton think? I can't imagine him going along with it.'

  'Have you got anything better to do?' It was a typical Mrs Jorgensen approach, direct and to the point.

  'Well… er… no. But I don't know when this job will be over. I mean, it could be next week if we get enough rain, or it could be going right through October if it gets dry again. But of course you know that.'

  'Not a problem; I wasn't thinking of leaving until November.'

  Seana laughed nervously. 'You've really got it all figured out,' she said. 'I don't even know why you bothered to ask, in fact. You might as well have pulled a Ryan Stranger approach, and just told me.'

  It was, she realised immediately she'd said it, quite the wrong thing to have said. Despite her crusty, competent exterior, Mrs Jorgensen was easily as sensitive as Seana herself, and the remark had clearly hurt.

  'Oh, I'm sorry; I shouldn't have said that, and I honestly didn't mean it,' Seana sighed. 'It's just that… well, Ryan makes such a habit of trying to organise my life as if I were a child… oh, I guess I'm just all mixed up. Of course I'll do it for you, provided of course you can wangle Frank Hutton into agreeing.'

  It looked for an instant as if her friend was about to cry. The soft blue eyes grew even softer as relief poured into them. 'I'm glad,' Mrs Jorgensen said quietly, 'but let's not talk about it any more now. There'll be time in the morning, and you'll have had time to sleep on it.'

  By morning, a glorious, cloudy, drizzly morning that promised even heavier rain as the day progressed, Seana was doubly sure that accepting Mrs Jorgensen's proposal was a good idea.'

  'Good,' said Mrs J. when Seana voiced her decision. 'Now off you go and play towerman. I'm going to just clean up these few dishes and then I want to see about some nice fat grouse for lunch.'

  Seana felt much better about it all, and she scampered up the long ladder like a happy squirrel, not even breathing hard when she finally reached the top.

  The view was magnificent, until she glanced down at a willow thicket not half a mile from the cabin and 6aw with alarm the white moose… her moose… savagely shaking his enormous antlers. Grabbing up the binoculars, Seana could see the leaves and bark flying everywhere as the animal lunged and slashed and lunged again. She almost believed she could hear his angry grunts as he polished his antlers in preparation for the battles ahead.

  Shorn of their velvet, the moose's antlers were an ebony black in the daylight, and as she watched longer, she realised he wasn't fully into his rutting season, but was only playing with the willow thicket, testing his strength and cleaning the last shreds of dried velvet from his antlers. She watched for several minutes, then did a thorough scan of the area to see if there were any hunters who might present danger to the animal.

  No worries; they were all driving up and down the tower road, but the only person she could see on foot was Mrs Jorgensen, safely clad in red as she stalked her luncheon of grouse.

  Seana looked once more at the moose, her mind shifting to Ryan and his claim on the animal. 'Well, we'll see about that, too,' she muttered to herself. Unable to forget the magical occasion when she and Ryan had shared the moose's ethereal majesty, she found his claim maddening, infuriating.

  How could Ryan possibly be so insensitive? Or, she wondered, was she reading far too much into one episode in a relationship that had since been anything but peaceful?

  It was approaching noon, and Seana was seriously thinking about lunch when she looked down to see Mrs Jorgensen slowly walking up the tower road with several ruffed grouse slung over one shoulder. And she hadn't even heard the shots, 'Which says a lot about my powers of observation,' she muttered to herself.

  The woman's scarlet tunic made her movements easy to follow, although she periodically disappeared from sight owing to twists and turns in the road. Concentrating as she was on the red jacket, Seana didn't consciously notice, at first, the silvery-brown shape that occasionally came into view several hundred metres behind Airs Jorgensen, paralleling her path but staying in the brush beside the road.

  And when she did notice, her first reaction was that it must be a dog… until she used the binoculars and saw the animal's peculiar, distinctive, rolling stride.

  'Oh, my God!' she gasped as recognition dawned. Then she flew to push open one of the tower's hinged windows.

  'Mrs J! Mrs Jorgensen!' she shouted, 'Oh… oh… look. Look! Behind you…'

  Her friend looked up and waved a cheery greeting, then pointed to the grouse she was carrying. Obviously she had heard Seana call, but hadn't picked out the words.

  Seana screamed… as loudly as she could, this time. 'Behind you! A bear… a bear!'

  This time the message got through. Mrs Jorgensen turned with her shotgun at the ready, and although Seana could no longer see the bear, she realised that Mrs Jorgensen was properly warned and would be alert. Turning, she flung open the trapdoor and scurried down the ladder, still shouting encouragement and advice.

  The two women reached the cabin door together, but with no sign of the ominous follower.

  'Well,' said Mrs Jorgensen, 'I'm not real happy about that!'

  She had caught only a glimpse of the bear, which had seemed to take fright from Seana's screams, but went on to explain that the bear hadn't seemed nearly frightened enough.

  'Any bear out here that isn't mortally afraid of just the smell of a human is a damned dangerous animal. It's different in the national parks, where they get too used to people and where damned fools feed them despite the warnings, but out here the bear should be first to run, unless it's a female with cubs… or a grizzly.'

  They compared notes on the animal's description, and Mrs Jorgensen became even more convinced it might be a young, roving grizzly. So they spent the afternoon rigging a complicated system of tin cans on string, hanging cans from the eaves, from bushes all round the cabin, and even on the porch itself.

  Neither of them had been able to face lunch, but they savoured the grouse at dinner time, wrapped in bacon and gently roasted to succulent tenderness.

  There was no further sign of the bear, but when it finally came time for Mrs Jorgensen to return home, she insisted on leaving the shotgun, complete with several loads of double-O buckshot she found in her game bag.

  'I'll feel safer just knowing you've got it,' she said on departing. 'I'm not sure it'll be needed and I hope it isn't, and for goodness' sake make sure you don't go shooting Ryan if you get into another fight with him. It's for bears, dear, not wolves!'

  But as the days passed, Seana found no use for the shotgun at all, although she was forced to admit the bear had her thoroughly spooked. Not a day passed without her seeing the animal, although always at some distance and always from the safety of the tower.

  But at night! Only the wind ever stirred her tin can warning system, but the bear was out there… she could feel it. And when she was halfway down the ladder at lunch-time on the following Friday, a chance look downward almost shocked her into losing her grip on the cold steel rungs.

  The bear was almost beneath her, nearly close enough to touch as it nosed curiously around the front of her car.

  'Hey, get out of there! G'wan… shoo, bear!'

  She shouted and screamed and finally cried with frustration because the animal totally ignored her. It did peer weakly about when she screamed, but either could not or would not comprehend where the noises were coming from. Finally Seana climbed back up into the tower, where she grabbed up an empty soft drink tin and flung it at the animal.

  The bear gave a hoarse grunt and danced sideways when the can struck it on the rump after glancing off the bonnet of the car, but he then resumed his prowling survey of the car and wandered up on to the cabin porch.

  'A fat lot of good that did,' Seana muttered as the bear ploughed through the dangling tin cans without so much as a flinch. Clearly her warning system had provided only false security
, and that thought made her decidedly frightened.

  Deciding that discretion, in this case, most definitely was the better part of valour, she lost no time getting on the radio to relay her dilemma. The response, while overwhelming, was discouragingly frivolous from most quarters.

  'Go down and kick him in the rump,' came the response from Torrens Tower.

  'Put salt on his tail,' laughed an unidentifiable ranger in his truck somewhere to the south.

  Only Dick Fisher, dear, reliable Dick, had any really constructive advice, and even that didn't do much to improve Seana's ragged temper. 'You just stay in the tower,' he said. 'Ryan Stranger's going to drop by this evening and he'll take care of it.'

  'Oh, that's just great,' Seana replied. 'And what am I supposed to do in the meantime, starve. What if he tries to break into the cabin? Do I offer him half my lunch?'

  Disgusted, she slammed off the radio amidst cheers from the many other listeners, idly wondering as she did so why Ryan hadn't come on the radio himself. At the very least he might have cheeked to see if visitors were welcome.

  But as the bear kept her treed in the tower throughout the afternoon, she decided even Ryan's presence would be a distinct comfort. The whole thing became something of a game, though not without its sobering moments.

  The bear would disappear out of Seana's field of vision, so after a while she would start down the ladder with some vague idea of making a dash for the cabin. But as soon as she reached the ground, the bear would reappear, usually where she least expected him. It never made any attempt to charge her, but would simply stand and stare at her while she scurried back up the ladder, screaming with frustrated rage. It happened five times before she finally realised the stupidity of it all and gave up.

  'Damn Ryan anyway,' she said to herself as the hours passed and her hunger grew proportionally. 'If he doesn't come soon I'll die of hunger, and if he does, I'll have to listen to his superior, smug gloating and probably cook him dinner as well!'

  Then, leaning out of the cupola window… 'Stupid old bear, why don't you go someplace else to play? I'm not Goldilocks, you know. And this shouldn't be some kind of stupid game… I'm getting awfully hungry. Please… please go away!'

  She kept it up, wavering dangerously between sadness and outright hysteria, until it was getting almost too dark to see the bear. Suddenly, without any warning, the animal loped out from behind the cabin, down the tower road and out of sight in the thick timber. Seana was amazed, incredulous. Then she, too, was in motion, scampering down the ladder and legging it for the cabin as quick as she could run.

  Once inside, the shotgun in her shaking, tremulous hands, she stalked the windows like some defender of a pioneer fort, fearful of Indians. Then the reality struck her, and she raced to pour a tot of the medicinal brandy she kept for emergencies.

  'Lord, I'm cracking up,' she gasped, the glass trembling in her fingers. 'Cabin fever, that's what it is. The whole wretched thing is just an hallucination!'

  As the brandy fanned a gentle name in her empty tummy, she almost managed to convince herself. A second glass, this one fuller than the first, and she was sneaking out the door, shotgun in hand (just in case) to make a cautious circuit of the porch.

  'No bear,' she muttered to herself. 'No bear at all, never was a bear. Just my imagination. Couldn't be a bear anyway, bears don't play cat-and-mouse games with girls on forestry towers. But then what broke the string of cans on the porch, I wonder. And oh, my… what left all these funny tracks in the mud, here? People tracks? Not with claws like that they're not!'

  And she was scurrying back through the cabin door, shotgun held like a defiant banner. Once inside, she flung the bar over the door and rushed to close the flimsy curtains at the windows.

  Shotgun lying across the table, she was half-way through cooking her dinner when the flame, without warning, died. 'Oh, no!' she cried angrily, vividly conscious of the fact that she couldn't possibly wrestle another hundred-pound: propane bottle into position and keep an eye out for the bear at the same time.

  'Resourcefulness, that's what I need,' she muttered aloud. 'That's what the pioneer women had, and whatever my grandmother could handle, I can do too. The heater… that's it! Lots of firewood right outside on the porch. I'll just finish cooking on the heater.' No sooner said than done… after seven one-armed trips in which she toted firewood with one arm and kept the shotgun ready with the other. The result was total disarray of her neatly stacked firewood outside, and a worse mess inside.

  But she had two days' supply of wood inside with her and the door was safely barred. Twenty minutes and another brandy later, the meal was finished and at least she wasn't starving any more… 'just mildly tiddly, that's all,' she giggled.

  The gentle music of the heater had a soporific effect, soothing her both by warmth and by drowning out the myriad tiny sounds that she heard from the shadows outside. All were sounds she had long ago grown used to… a packrat bustling about on his evening rounds, squirrels having their bedtime scold, a bush rabbit chomping at the remains of the garden… but now each took on a threatening, ominous note.

  Sipping at yet another brandy, Seana was almost comfortable cataloguing them in her mind, trying to convince herself she wasn't frightened and had no reason to be. Then a new sound intruded, and she shot bolt upright in her chair, grabbing in panic for the shotgun.

  It was a deep, grunting squeal, an obscene sound that combined with growlings and scuffling noises that seemed to come from right outside the door. It was the most horrible noise she had ever encountered, and there was only one possible explanation.

  'The bear,' she muttered in a low whisper. 'It must be…'

  During a brief lull in the racket, she waited for the sound of her warning system being disturbed, but it wasn't. Only the growling returned, this time off to the right of the doorway, but without tangible direction.

  Seana rushed to the nearest window, but with more light now inside the cabin than out, she couldn't see a thing. 'Damn!' she cried, then rushed to close the grate on the heater and blew out her candles. She returned to the window to sit with her nose pressed flat against the glass, peering into the malignant darkness from where the grunting, growling noises continued.

  She returned to huddle by the fire, but as the noises grew louder, more insistent, her fears grew more and more frantic. Finally she could take no more.

  Quietly sneaking to the doorway, she quietly removed the bar, eased the door open—just two inches, no more—then stuck the muzzle of the shotgun through, pointed it carefully upward lest she shoot her Volkswagen, and pulled the trigger.

  The blast lit up the night sky like a beacon, but Seana didn't see anything because she'd been holding the gun quite loosely and the recoil had thrown her back into the room with a badly bruised arm. But when the echoes had finished playing in the hills around her, she found that at least she'd stopped the growling sounds.

  All was silent until the growing roar of a truck engine sounded and headlights threw eerie patterns into the sky as it rounded the final curve and shot into the clearing.

  Ryan Stranger was on the ground and striding towards her before Seana could even think to put the shotgun away, and he quickly took it from her trembling fingers.

  'If I'm not welcome, you only have to say so,' he said in his usual, sarcastic, bantering tone. 'There's no need to start shooting…' And then, marvellously, he stopped talking and just gathered her into his arms as she burst into tears and outright hysterics, sobbing and crying and ranting totally incomprehensible things about bears and noises and spooks in the night. He held her for what seemed like hours before gently easing her away from him and steering her into the cabin.

  He closed the door, barred it at her insistence, then lit the candles and hauled out the coffee makings. And when Seana tried to speak, he shushed her. '

  'All in good time, ladybug,' he said. 'You sure do seem to have your troubles up here, and that's a fact.' Then he picked up the nearly empty brandy
bottle and looked at her wearily. 'Humph… hitting the bottle too, I see. I think maybe you've been up here too long.'

  The caustic comment did what nothing else might have accomplished in curing her fright. She felt the anger building inside her, and Ryan, too, seemed to notice it.

  'Yeah, that's better,' he chuckled. 'You'll make more sense angry than hysterical. Now just settle down a minute and try telling me what really happened… okay?

  'Why bother?' she snapped. 'All you'll do is tell me I did everything wrong anyway.'

  He didn't dispute it. 'You sure as hell didn't stay in the tower like you were told,' he retorted, and waved at the windows in an angry gesture. 'How much bloody protection do you think this place could offer?' he demanded. 'Any self-respecting bear could bust his way in here in thirty seconds flat.'

  'Well, I was hungry,' she protested. 'And… and… oh, what's the use?'

  'Well, just be glad he wasn't a damned sight hungrier,' Ryan scowled, rising to pour them each a cup of coffee. He handed Seana her cup, and although he shot her a withering glance when she deliberately added a shot of brandy, he didn't vocally object.

  They sat, both of them silent, as they sipped at the scalding coffee, then Seana flinched violently as she heard once again the horrible sound outside.

  Ryan leapt to his feet and extinguished the candles, then picked up the shotgun and eased his way to the door with Seana right at his heels.

  'Will you get back!' he whispered, his voice a snarling hiss.

  'No,' she replied just as adamantly. 'If you're going, I'm going too. You're not leaving me here alone.'

  His reply was inaudible, a curt nod of his head against the starlight through the half-opened door. Outside, there was silence, then the shuffling, growling, awful noise began again. It was enough to set Seana's teeth on edge, and she felt herself trembling uncontrollably.

  Ryan stood there, for ever, it seemed, listening intently. Then he turned and whispered cautiously, 'Have you got a flashlight?'

  Seana spent some time finding it, then at his direction turned it on and off for a split second, just to be sure it worked.