When he and Casey had broken camp and saddled both mounts, Lonnie checked his snare. He wasn’t surprised to see that it hadn’t been sprung. He gathered up the trap to use later, stowed it in his cavvy sack, and swung up onto the General’s back.
He and Casey moved out, looking around nervously. A half hour later, they were moving down through the forest stippling the same ridge that the horses had stared at before. Only, Lonnie and Casey were quartering east and hopefully away from any danger the horses had scented.
The hope was short-lived. Just when Lonnie had noted that both horses looked considerably calmer, the General suddenly pricked his ears.
A few seconds later, Lonnie heard what the General must have heard—a loud, bugling cry dripping with savage menace and which seemed to echo forever amongst the pine tops. The cry swirled wildly around Lonnie, disorienting him. It was soon joined by the echoes of cracking, breaking wood and snapping branches, and the thuds of some large, four-legged creature moving toward him.
CHAPTER 39
The General tossed his head wildly and loosed another piercing whinny.
Casey’s filly, Miss Abigail, joined the stallion a half second later with her own ripping whinny. Lonnie whipped his head around to see what appeared to be a cabin-sized creature moving down the opposite, wooded slope, ahead and on his right and obscured by pines and aspens and occasional tamaracks and spruces.
Sunlight shone on the beast’s cinnamon fur that rippled as it ran down the slope, mewling and snarling.
Holding his reins tight in both hands up close to his chest, Lonnie shouted, “Bear!”
He meant to add, though of he course he hadn’t really needed to, that they’d best make a hard run for it. But as though Casey’s chestnut was violently offended by the word “Bear,” the horse pitched suddenly off her front hooves, lifting her head and fear-sharp eyes and buffeting mane high in the air to Lonnie’s right.
Casey screamed, “Lonnie!”
The boy reached for the girl, to try to keep her from falling out of her saddle, but Casey went flying backward off the chestnut’s rump. The General gave a similar, sky-clawing pitch onto its rear hooves, causing Lonnie, who’d loosened his grip on his reins and was leaning too far out from his saddle, to lose the reins all together. Knowing that he was going to fall now no matter what, he kicked his boots free of his stirrups and gave a shrill curse that his mother would not have approved of but would no doubt have forgiven him for, under the circumstances.
That was a vague, short-lived thought, gone without a trace before the ground rose sharply at an angle to smack Lonnie on the shoulders and the back of his head. He cursed again as he rolled down the slope they were halfway to the bottom of, wincing as a sharp stick poked his right thigh.
When he rolled up against a thick, half-rotten log, bells tolling in his head and his brains feeling as though they were about to slither out his ears, he looked up. Casey was rolling toward him on his left, her hair and the slack of her coat flying wildly.
The girl’s tumble was stopped by a slight, flat shelf in the slope that was heavily padded with forest duff. She lay for a moment, head on the downslope, feet on the upslope, arms and legs akimbo.
The forest was spinning crazily around Lonnie. There was an old leaf in his right eye, causing that eye to burn. There was another one in his ear, and bits of leaves and pine needles in his hair. Some had fallen down the back of his coat and his shirt, raking his skin.
Despite his disorientation, he managed to gain one knee.
Casey was also climbing to her feet, leaves and pine needles falling from her tangled hair and her shoulders.
The mewling and growling continued to grow louder, as did the thuds of the running beast’s four feet. Lonnie turned to see that the bear was only a few yards from the bottom of the ravine that was only about a twenty-foot gap between the steep slopes. He turned to Casey at the same time that Casey turned to him, her mouth and eyes wide, and they screamed each other’s names at the same time.
Lonnie turned toward where he’d been thrown off the General’s back. Both horses had fled into the ravine and were now galloping out of sight, the General leading the chestnut, both horses trailing their reins, until they were gone from view altogether.
Not only were both horses gone, but Lonnie’s Winchester was gone, as well.
“General, you gall-blasted son of a worthless cayuse!”
Lonnie grabbed his hat off the ground and scrambled up the slope and over to Casey. As he did, he cast another look down the slope at the bear.
The bruin wasn’t cabin-sized, Lonnie could see now that it was closer. But it was at least as large as a good-sized freight wagon. It would probably have dressed out close to a thousand pounds. Its long, shaggy, cinnamon fur was silver-tipped across the hump behind its head, forming a silver swath down its back to its broad rump.
It was now lumbering up the slope in the direction of Lonnie and Casey, shaking its heart-shaped head with one straight and one ragged, flopping ear, and opening and closing its mouth as though showing off its long, yellow, razor-edged teeth, one strategic swipe of which could very likely tear Lonnie in two …
The sun flashed off its large, glassy brown-black eyes, which owned the mind-numbing, cold-blooded savagery of the wild primeval. The grizzly was like the cold soul of the universe that would kill you without thinking only because, if it thought about it all, it would have regarded life as nothing more than silly ornament.
Lonnie locked gazes with the beast for a single moment, and the universe yawned at the boy. His belly tumbled into his boots. The beast’s mindlessly brutal eyes silently vowed to impersonally, without malice, rip Lonnie limb from limb and to devour every inch of him and to chew his bones clean afterwards, simply because he was hungry or because his territory had been invaded, or merely because he could.
That gaze almost caused the boy’s knees to turn to warm mud and to buckle.
Leaving both him and Casey a sure, easy meal for the charging bruin …
Lonnie shook himself out of the trance. Feeling a cold sweat bathing every inch of him beneath his clothes, he charged up the slope, grabbed Casey’s hand, jerked her brusquely to her feet, and then turned and started running toward some rocks he’d only half taken note of.
Many of the rocks appeared to be boulders. They’d probably tumbled long ago from the ridge crest and now rested haphazardly and like giant, fossilized dinosaur eggs amongst the trees. Lonnie thought that he and Casey might be able to find sanctuary somewhere amongst those rocks though he had no idea where, exactly. Maybe they could climb one of the boulders, some of which appeared nearly as large as a two-story house.
Lonnie knew that grizzlies—and the big boy after him and Casey was surely a silvertip griz, if it was anything and not a rabbit!—could climb trees large enough to hold their weight, or could tear down the tree that couldn’t hold them but which housed their prey.
Could they climb rocks, as well?
As Lonnie ran, breathing hard, he felt Casey pulling back on his hand. He turned toward her. She was limping badly.
“Casey, come on, we gotta—!”
“It’s my ankle again!” she screamed as she dropped to a knee. “I’m sorry, Lonnie!”
She glanced back at the bear charging up the slope behind them. The big, shaggy, snarling beast was within seventy yards and closing fast. The bruin might have been large and ungainly, but it seemed to be running as fast as General Sherman could gallop when given his head.
The ground rumbled beneath Lonnie’s boots. As the morning breeze swirled, it filled Lonnie’s nose with the beast’s heavy, sickly sweet fetor. It was the stink of a large, dead, vermin-infested, shaggy thing wrapped in the rotten cucumber stench of a rattlesnake den.
Casey peeled Lonnie’s hand from around her wrist. “Run, Lonnie—for godsakes, let me go, and run!”
“Not a chance!” Lonnie hollered, crouching to drag Casey’s squirming body over his shoulder.
He
turned toward the upslope and amazed himself by how fast the ground seemed to be passing beneath his hammering boots. By how quickly the jumble of scattered, gray boulders was growing larger ahead and above him …
“Lonnie, you damn fool!” Casey screamed, punching his back with the ends of her fists.
Lonnie figured that Casey weighed maybe only ten or fifteen pounds less than he did, but with his heart’s fierce pumping and the weird, powerful energy surging through his veins, the girl seemed to weigh nothing at all.
Lonnie gained the stone escarpment jutting out of the side of the slope, and without even pausing to plan his course, he headed for a narrow, dark cleft in the bulging stone wall ahead of him. If the cleft went nowhere, and was shallow enough for the bear to reach in for them, Lonnie and Casey would be bear bait.
Fortunately, while the cleft was indeed only about six feet deep, it didn’t dead-end. Its ceiling opened onto more, higher rocks, and Lonnie thrust Casey up through the open ceiling and onto what appeared to be a granite ledge above them.
Lonnie could smell the bear’s ghastly stench so strongly now that his eyes were watering and his lungs were contracting against it. He didn’t bother to look back, because he didn’t want to see what he knew he would. But in the periphery of his vision he saw the raging bull griz run up to the cleft, shutting out the light and filling the natural closet in the rocks with dark, stinky shadows and the ear-piercing echoes of its enraged roars.
The beast was so close to Lonnie that the boy could feel the heat of its dead-fish breath. He winced as one or two of the beast’s razor-edged claws—as long as pitchfork tines—tore into his back with one clean swipe through his coat and his shirt.
“Ow, goddangit!” Lonnie yelped.
“Lonnie!” Casey screamed, looking down at him from the ledge above him. Her blonde hair hung toward him, nearly grazing his forehead. She thrust her right hand down toward him, as well.
Lonnie ignored it and leaped up for a handhold on the opposite side of the cleft from Casey. He found one, found small cracks and ledges in which to stick his boot toes, and began climbing the eight-foot wall. He climbed in a mad, horror-stricken frenzy, feeling the bruin’s paws swiping at his boot heels. Lonnie hoisted himself over the edge and rolled clear of the dark cleft in which the bear’s roars continued to echo so loudly that they seemed to be originating from inside Lonnie’s own head.
The bear stench wafted up through the hole in the escarpment, between Lonnie and Casey on the other side of it, and for a quick second Lonnie thought of the ground giving way to vent the enraged screams of demons trapped in Hell …
Lonnie closed his eyes, relieved to be out of the beast’s reach. Gradually, his heart slowed.
But then Casey groaned. “Oh, no, Lonnie—he’s climbing up here!”
CHAPTER 40
Casey was kneeling on the escarpment, on the other side of the cleft up through which she and Lonnie had come. She wasn’t looking into the hole, however, but down the front side of the escarpment.
Lonnie leaped to his feet and ran to the edge of the large mound of rock he was on, and stumbled back a step when he saw the large grizzly standing on its hind feet, snarling up at Casey.
“Casey, get back!” Lonnie shouted.
But he hadn’t needed to. The bear lunged toward Casey, smashing its broad belly and shoulders against the side of the escarpment and thrusting its paws with extended black claws toward the girl, who gave a horrified scream and fell back on her rump, slapping a hand to her chest. Her pale face was mottle pink, her blue eyes sharp with mind-numbing fear.
The bear leaped up off its hind feet, trying to climb over the lip of the ridge and get to Casey, who scuttled back on her rump until she was pressing her back up against another boulder, knees drawn to her chest.
“He can’t get up here, can he, Lonnie? Oh, please tell me he can’t climb rock!”
Lonnie dropped to a knee to look down at the bruin shaking its head furiously. Lonnie saw that not only was one of the cross-grained beast’s ears shredded, but it had three long, dark-pink scars forming pale streaks down the left side of its face, beneath the left eye, which drooped a little. More signs of a violent past. The lip of the scarp was higher here than back where Lonnie had climbed up through the cleft. It was a good three feet above the bear’s head, and frustrating the bruin no end.
The beast kept lunging at the rock wall. It wasn’t showing much grace, however. And, thankfully, its timing was poor. Each time it lunged at the wall, its jump was off enough to keep it from being able to hook its paws over the lip of the rock. Lonnie didn’t know how much strength the bear had in its front legs—or were they arms?
Could it pull itself up over the rock if it managed to leap high enough?
In case it could, Lonnie looked around. The escarpment continued to rise behind him and Casey—one stone ledge after another. A few cedars grew between the stone slabs that formed the scarp.
“Casey!” Lonnie called. “Climb up as far as you can! Keep climbing until you can’t climb any farther!”
He had a feeling that if the bear could climb up to where he and Casey were now, it could probably climb all the way to the top of the scarp. But there was no point in the girl staying this close when she didn’t have to.
Moving gingerly on her injured ankle, Casey began climbing the slabs of mossy-green rock forming the higher scarp beyond the slope that the bear was still on.
“What are you going to do?” the girl called over her shoulder, grabbing a twisted cedar, which she used to pull herself up onto the next, table-topped boulder.
Lonnie wasn’t sure what he was going to do. But when he’d looked around and found a couple of loose, good-sized rocks, something occurred to him. He grabbed the rocks, returned to the edge of the lip where the bear had gotten a hold and was trying to climb, and slammed one of the rocks down hard on the beast’s left paw.
The boy wasn’t so sure that that had been such a good idea.
The bruin looked up at him and loosed a bugling growl even louder than before, spittle stringing off its long, curving fangs, its eyes nearly crossing. Lonnie stepped back and slung the rock as hard as he could. It smacked the bear right above its snout that was as wide as a wheel hub and as broad as Lonnie’s thigh. That only seemed to enrage the beast even more. It lunged toward Lonnie, turning its head this way and that, mouth wide, roaring.
“Lonnie, get up here!” Casey screamed above and behind him.
Something told Lonnie that the bruin was having enough trouble climbing the rock face that one more slam of a stone across its skull might discourage him, if it was possible to discourage a silvertip.
Lonnie sent the second rock hurling down toward the beast’s massive head. The animal had lifted its snout toward Lonnie once more, and the rock smashed into the dead, black, leathery center of it. The beast gave another bone-jarring roar that seemed to fill the whole valley, echoing, causing the escarpment to quiver beneath Lonnie’s boots. The beast appeared to jerk slightly, as though something had dawned on it. Lonnie watched in shock as the beast stepped away from the ledge, dropped to all fours, gave another, lower mewling growl, and then lumbered down through the trees away from the scarp.
Pine needles crunched and branches snapped beneath its heavy, running paws.
Lonnie staggered back away from the ledge in shock. His knees went weak, and he dropped to his butt.
Staring after the fleeing bear, Lonnie laughed with relief and said, “Casey—did you see that?”
A man’s voice said with sneering menace, “You did good, kid. You did real good.”
Lonnie whipped his head around. His heart jerked to life once more, and for a second he thought it would burst when he saw Shannon Dupree hunkered down on the flat-topped boulder beside Casey. The blond, yellow-eyed outlaw leader, wearing a sheepskin vest over his red-and-black-checked shirt, his hat tipped low on his forehead, had one arm wrapped around Casey’s shoulders. In his other hand, he held his Winchester ri
fle, the barrel of which he was pressing up taut against Casey’s right cheek.
Casey had gone white as a sheet. She stared dully at Lonnie. Her eyes bore into the boy with a vague, silent pleading as well as with mute apology.
Lonnie lurched to his feet, mind racing. He was still frazzled from the bear attack. To see Dupree squatting there beside Casey—it was all too surreal for his battered mind to wrap itself around, to understand.
“You did all right,” Dupree said again with his usual mockery, nodding. He glanced beyond Lonnie. “But I got a feelin’ it was Fuego’s rifle shot that really discouraged that bruin.”
Hoof clomps and the crunching of pine needles rose behind Lonnie. The boy turned, and his gut sank even lower when he saw the stocky, dark Fuego and Jake Childress ride slowly toward him, keeping a tight rein on their mounts that were tossing their heads nervously at the fresh scent of the kill-crazy bear.
Childress was leading Dupree’s calico gelding. Both men rode with their rifles across their saddlebows. Fuego’s eyes were dark, his mouth beneath his thick, black mustache unsmiling.
Childress was grinning, his too-close, pale-blue eyes glistening maliciously in the golden sunlight angling through the pines.
CHAPTER 41
Dupree said, “Kid, you stay right where you are, or I’ll drill a hole through this pretty little miss’s head. And you wouldn’t want that, now, would you?”
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Lonnie said, rage burning off his mind fog. He clenched his fists at his sides, yearning for his rifle. “You hurt her, I’ll kill you, you son of a—!”
“Nuh-uh!” Dupree said, grinning as he rose, making the girl rise with him but pulling his rifle away from her face. “What would your ma say about such barn talk, boy? If you ain’t careful, I’m gonna tell May, and she’ll wash your mouth out with soap!”
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