by Gary Paulsen
Susan. No smaller tracks, no children’s tracks.
She’d been off in the canoe along the shore picking raspberries and hadn’t been there at the time of the attack. Two canoes. He shook his head and winced at his own ignorance. Of course they had two canoes. All the gear and people couldn’t travel in one.
Susan had taken the other canoe and gone berry picking either on shore or the other end of the island. Had come back later, after the bear had fed or before, but after the attack and the bear had surprised her, no, seen her coming and gone to meet her and then chased her back to the canoe and out into the water. There were bear tracks in the soft mud of the bank off to the south side that he had missed before when he’d first arrived and they went for a considerable distance, out of sight.
So.
The bear had attacked, maybe fed on Anne but had still been around, perhaps rummaging further in the cabin when Susan returned from berry picking.
Perhaps she called, sensing something was wrong, and the bear had heard her and gone after her. But she was close to the canoes and had gotten back in and out in the water, into apparently deep enough water, before the bear could get to her.
Fast. She’d been fast. The bear had cut the corner and not run the trail — which explained why Brian hadn’t seen his tracks coming up when he first arrived — and she still beat him. God, he thought, she must have been terrified; worse, far worse, she had no idea about her parents.
But why hadn’t she come back? It had been two, three days judging by the fly eggs and worms, and she still wasn’t there.
And where were the smaller ones? Brian hadn’t seen any of their tracks nor, he swallowed uneasily, any other signs that they’d been nearby when the bear attacked.
Had the bear gotten Susan and the children, taken them somewhere else?
“Come on,” he said to the dog. “Stay with me. . ”
He moved at a trot down the shoreline of the island, the dog now slightly in the lead, heading south, and the bear tracks lined out in front of him along the bank, through the willows and hazel brush, but always close to the shoreline. Now and then the tracks lunged at the water, then back. .
God, he was playing with Susan. She was working the canoe along the shore, trying to get away from the bear and get back to camp from the other side, and the bear was playing with her, teasing her, jumping toward her whenever she came too close to shore.
All around the island, and then off, as she must have hand-paddled toward the main shore and when Brian waded across the shallow water he saw where the bear had followed her down the main shoreline as well. But then, after a hundred yards or so, the bear had tired of the game and stopped and moved back in the direction of the island but up into the trees and harder ground and tight grass and Brian lost his trail there.
All right, then why didn’t she come back to the island? Or a better question was why did the bear stop following her along the shore?
Brian came up with two reasons. First, she had moved away from shore, out into the lake, and with only her hands to paddle she could not move the canoe well. If a wind came up, even a small wind, it would blow her where it wanted and if she was lucky it would blow her out into the lake, away from the bear. If she had been unlucky and the wind blew the canoe into shore. .
He shook the thought off. The second reason she might have stayed away from the island was that it became dark. Paddling by hand, splashing and clawing, trying to move possibly against the wind and making all the noise in the world, there was no way she could bring herself to approach the island in the dark with the bear possibly, probably, waiting for her. No way.
So she worked her way into the deep part of the lake, or more probably the wind took her, the prevailing north wind, and blew her all night to the south end of the lake, into the large marsh and willows and swamps Brian had come through.
He might have passed not too far from her on his way north. Or she might have blown to shore on the east side.
And there she might be. Without a paddle she could never get the canoe back north and it would be suicide to try to work by foot along the bank with no weapon.
He stopped, looking at the shoreline and the dog. Her whimpering had stopped and her hair was down. The bear was nowhere near.
He would have to go back, get his canoe, find Susan. She had to be somewhere south on the lake, trying to work north, trying to get back.
He started jogging back, the dog keeping close to his side. Evening was coming and part of him knew that he should bury Anne and David but he knew it would have to wait.
They had to find Susan.
Find out what happened to the children.
Before the bear.
• • •
They found her just before dark.
He and the dog had been walking the shoreline, scanning the edge of the water and peering out toward the center of the lake as they kept a wary eye on the edge of the woods.
She was four miles down the lake, on the east shore, dragging the canoe along the shallows on the lake edge so she could jump in and push out if she saw the bear.
He saw Susan long before she saw him because he was watching the dog and saw when she lifted her nose, catching the scent of something, someone, familiar and loved. Susan was intent on watching the thick foliage on the shoreline. When she was just a hundred yards away he called.
“Susan!”
And it startled her so that she jumped into her canoe as if to hide and when he got closer he saw that she was half crazed with fear and exhaustion. And he understood. He had felt the fear himself and she probably hadn’t slept in two or three days and nights.
“It’s me, Brian. . You don’t know me but I spent some time with your family. . ”
He pulled up alongside her canoe and held the two together.
“Bear. .,” she said. Her hair was matted and there were scratches on her face and arms. She had been in the water so long she couldn’t speak without her teeth chattering. “Bear. .”
“I know. I know. Here, wrap in this and go to sleep. I’ll pull you back.” Brian took his sleeping bag and reached across into her canoe and wrapped her in it and forced her to lie in the bottom while he tied a line to her bow, fed it back and started paddling, pulling her canoe behind him. The dog jumped into the first canoe, settling near Susan, who didn’t notice her presence through the crushing exhaustion that overtook her as soon as she sat down.
It was into dark by this time and there was a stout evening north wind and a chop. It would take five or six hours to pull the two canoes against the wind back to the island. Good. She needed the rest. She did not know about her parents yet, or had only guessed, and when she found out it would be terrible for her.
Any rest she could get now would be a godsend.
10
The world came to them.
Not at first. At first there was a time Brian did not like to think about or remember but knew he would have in his mind for the rest of his life.
She had been virtually unconscious when they arrived, back at the island, just at dawn. He had left her sleeping and the dog leading — always in front now — her hair down, no sign of the bear, Brian had taken the time to wrap the bodies in blankets and ponchos and pull Anne back to the cabin and use a shovel to make a shallow grave in a clear spot by the east wall and bury them next to each other.
Then he had tried to clean the cabin a bit and had buried the dead dogs in another shallow grave and then gone back down to the canoe and washed in the lake repeatedly before waking her up and holding her and telling her that her parents were both dead.
She had guessed that something terrible had happened because they had not come looking for her but even so the shock was profound. She had sobbed for hours while he sat there, on the bank of the lake, his bow next to him and the dog sitting a little away, holding her while she cried, feeling as helpless and awkward as he had when the badly wounded dog showed up. Between sobs, he was relieved to learn that the other two
children, Paul and Laura, were visiting relatives in Winnipeg.
Then she had gone to the new graves and put crosses made from boards on each and then gone into the cabin. Brian had tried to straighten some of it, and used lake water to wash where her father had lain. In part of the wreckage that he had not uncovered, she found a shortwave radio with a transmitter. It had been knocked sideways but she put it back on a shelf and hooked it to a storage battery and the radio still worked. She called the authorities and Brian was amazed at how fast things happened. Not three hours after she called, a plane landed on the lake and three men got out, the pilot and a Canadian Mountie and a Natural Resources ranger. They talked to Brian separately from Susan and asked him details he was glad she didn’t hear and when it was done they stood by the cabin.
“You have relatives to stay with?” the Mountie asked Susan. She nodded. “An aunt and uncle in Winnipeg. .”
“We’ll fly you there,” he said. “If you want we’ll gather your stuff for you.”
“No. I’ll get it.” She moved to the cabin and the Mountie turned to Brian.
“I’ve heard of you. You’re that boy who survived after the plane crash.”
Brian nodded.
“Do you want to fly out?”
Brian shook his head. “I’ll stay.”
The Mountie studied him for a moment, then nodded. “As you wish.” He turned to the Natural Resources ranger. “And you, are you going to kill this bear?”
The ranger shook his head. “There are many bears here, perhaps scores, within ten or fifteen miles. We wouldn’t know which one to kill.”
Brian stared at him, started to say that they had tracks, they knew the bear by his sign, they could find him, but he held his tongue. It wasn’t the same for everybody, the bush. They had planes and guns and radios and GPS but in some ways they had no knowledge because they had all the gadgets; they missed the small things because they saw too big.
Brian had never seen the animal but knew the bear intimately, how it moved, how it turned, how it thought. They could be looking right at it and all they would see would be weight and girth and hair color and genetic codes and biospeak and would never really know the bear.
He said nothing. But he understood that they were wrong. He knew the bear. He would find the bear.
Susan came out of the cabin with a canvas bag full of her things and they hugged and she saw what he was thinking, what he had to do, because she whispered in his ear, “You must be careful. He is not like other bears. He is a devil muckwa, a devil bear. Be careful. . ”
Brian at first said nothing, still holding her, then said what was most in his mind: “I need to see you again, when this is done. There are things that need to be said.”
She nodded. “I understand. I left a letter for you, in the cabin. My address and phone numbers are there. I’ll wait. Find me when you come out. . ”
Then Susan and the men climbed onto the floats of the plane and into it and the pilot spun around and took off and in moments Brian was alone with the dog, even the sound gone.
Just the lake and the island and the woods. . and the bear.
The bear was still out there and it was not right, not now. The bear had been wrong, had gone too far.
Brian would find him.
And he would kill him.
It was personal.
THE HUNT
He left the canoe but he took the dog, his knife, the bow and his quiver, light moccasins, a plain dark T-shirt and a lightweight, dark green pullover.
He took matches and one small aluminum pan. He did not know how long this would take, only that he would not stop until it was done, but he wanted to travel as light as possible.
When he waded the shallows and went to the main shoreline he stopped and used dark mud to streak his face and neck, then slid into the foliage following the bear’s tracks. He would lose them later, he knew — they were very old tracks anyway — but in the meantime they would help him to further understand and know the bear and he would hold them as long as he could.
Initially the bear moved along the shore, working in the soft mud, following the canoe with Susan until the wind blew it away from him; then he turned and went up, away from the lake.
Here the tracks were muddled in the soft pine needles and harder to follow, although the dog seemed to have been paying attention to Brian and moved ahead with her nose down. At first Brian was dubious — he still did not know dogs that well — but again and again when he lost the tracks and followed the dog he would come upon the tracks once more and after an hour of on-again off-again tracking he began to trust the dog completely.
It was like having another sense, not to mention a kind of early-warning radar. The smell was old and the bear long gone, Brian could tell that by the relaxed attitude of the tracking dog. They moved well together, and Brian learned more about the bear.
He was lazy. He did not climb hills but worked around the base of them instead, turning logs, ripping stumps, and he had distinctive paw marks. One claw was gone on his left front paw and one broken in half on his right. In mud or soft dirt it was easy to read him, know him, and just before dark Brian came on a place where he had lain to rest or sleep.
In some deep grass the bear had matted down an area to make a bed. Brian felt the ground, not sure what he was looking for, a touch, a feel of the bear, but there was nothing. The grass was cool, and had dew forming on it and the dog was still not nervous so Brian moved off to the side and made a small fire and heated water and chewed on a piece of jerky he’d found in the cabin.
Then he drank, put the fire out, moved back into the brush and settled in to rest. He did not think of sleeping, not yet, but halfway through the night even the mosquitoes weren’t enough to stop him and he trusted in the dog’s warning ability and dozed enough for his mind and body to rest.
Before light he was moving again, still following the dog when he couldn’t cut open sign, but by midday he decided that following the meandering track of the bear would not be fruitful. He figured he was perhaps four or five miles from the lake where the attack had happened and the bear was clearly not moving in any pattern, was just wandering, looking for food.
He would stay in the area and Brian could accomplish more by getting to what high ground the terrain afforded and hunting downward, trying to get ahead of him, knowing the bear hated to climb hills, and he left the scent trail and climbed a nearby low ridge.
For a moment the dog hesitated, standing on the scent trail, whining softly; then she seemed to shrug and follow Brian up the ridge, dropping into position just in front of him, ears perked forward, nostrils flared to take in the most scent.
And they worked that way most of the day, hanging to the tops of ridges, moving slowly. Brian would take a few steps, stop, listen, watch the dog’s back hair and ears — how had he lived so long without a dog, he wondered again and again — and they saw bear.
Three times he saw bear, one small female, two even smaller yearling cubs, but they all moved away from him and the dog when they saw him and when he moved to where they had left tracks he knew they weren’t the bear involved in the attack.
He knew the attacking bear’s tracks, how his right front paw toed in slightly, along with the missing claw and broken other claw, like a signature.
And no new sign all that day. Not until evening.
They had moved across a ridge that led up a small hill and somehow, hunting along the ridges, he had come back to a hill he’d moved across before.
He did not know it at first, not until he crossed the top, the dog moving just ahead of him, and he saw a place where they had stopped to listen and rest. He recognized a scrub oak tree he had leaned against because it had a twisted, bent fork about four feet off the ground.
“Well,” he whispered, his voice sounding strange to him, “we’ve come around. . ” He stopped because the dog had changed. She had been smelling the ground and her back hair suddenly stood on end and she growled.
&nb
sp; “What. .” Brian moved to where the dog stood, looked at the ground, but it was thick with humus and grass. He could read nothing. He held his breath, as the dog did, and they listened together but he heard nothing and he looked back to the ground and did not see anything until he had gone three yards farther along his own old track and there, where the grass had been worn by a white-tailed deer scraping, there was soft dirt and smack in the middle of the dirt there was a perfect print.
Large, huge, missing claw, perfect sign and very, very fresh.
It was the bear.
The Bear.
And it was following him, tracking him.
Hunting him.
Hunting him.
And for just that second, that long, long second, Brian went from predator to prey, felt a coldness on his neck, felt as a deer must feel when the wolves pick up its scent, as a rabbit must feel when the fox starts its run. . cold, no breath, everything stopped. No thinking. Just that long second of something even more than fear, something very old, very primitive.
The bear was hunting him.
Then it was gone. The coldness, the fear were gone and replaced by something even more pure, more primitive, as he thought of what was coming, what the bear’s tracks actually meant.
He did not have to hunt the bear any longer. It was hunting him, it would come to him, and it would be soon, soon.
Dusk now, he thought, dark in an hour, if it takes an hour. I passed here, what, three hours ago, and if he’s moving on my trail, how fast? Faster than me, certainly, he could be close, very close. In that split second he happened to be looking at the dog, saw the dog’s head turn to the left, and he dropped and turned at the same instant, heard brush crashing as he fell, brought the bow up, tried to pull the broadhead but too late, all too late.
The bear was on him, rolling him, cuffing him. The bow was knocked out of his hands, flying ahead, arrows spewing out of his quiver, the bear strangely silent, pushing, pounding him as he first rolled in a ball and knew that wouldn’t work, not now, not with this bear. This bear had come to kill him and he was going to kill him and there wasn’t a thing Brian could do about it. He tried for his knife but the bear knocked it out of his hands, knocked his arms sideways, grabbed his left arm in his jaws and flung Brian back and forth the way he would worry a small animal.