Grizzly (16 page)

The forest telegraph worked overtime. Beavers slapped their tails on the cold water, warning of danger. Birds chirped and flew, fluttering their wings, to alert ihe forest's inhabitants that the most dangerous predator of all was approaching.

But, as the long day wore on, the beast stayed well ahead of his pursuers.

The pain in his jaw had begun to bother him again, and the bullet wound in his neck throbbed. He was angry, and frustrated, and above all, he was hungry.

Don had returned to base twice for fuel. Now, near sundown, this was his third run. Once again, Kelly instracted him to head for the high camp area.

"We haven't seen a trace of him up that way," Don said. "What makes you think he's going back into the high country?"

"Because he's a bear, and they like to establish a routine. They don't stray from it."

"This one managed to get all the way down to the lodge. I'd call that straying."

They flew through a cloud of smoke from one of the deliberately set fires.

Kelly said, "Yeah, but he ran into lots of trouble. I think Tom hit him. There was hair near the tower. And we've got a small army in the field. He knows it. His logical move is to head for someplace safe, because it's getting too hot and noisy down here."

As the chopper circled, rising slowly up the elevations of the mountain, Don said, "And you're going to help him make up his mind."

"That's what we're doing right now. Showing him that it's going to be mighty uncomfortable if he insists on staying down on the low slopes. He'll get the message.''

The beast ran, moving faster, through the underbrush. Twice some strange object in the sky had passed over him, making fluttering sounds. Both, times he had been near cover, and had melted into it, freezing until the creature, whatever it was, had passed over.

The beast was beginning to feel penned in. In every new direction he took, he sensed menace and although he feared no animal in claw-to-claw combat, he dreaded the invisible fang the two-legged ones had that could reach through the air and tear at hair and throat.

Occasionally, he found traces of the markings he had made to identify his range.

Perhaps within that territory things would be better.

Ponderously, he turned uphill.

"There!" Kelly yelled, pointing. "Right near the camp site."

He took over the controls as Don grabbed for one of the rifles.

"Hey," Don said. "That's not our bear. It's a deer."

"I know. Drop him."

Don hesitated. Shooting from a vehicle, even a chopper, is against every sporting rule hunters know. "It's a doe," he said.

"Shoot, damn it. We need bait!"

Kelly brought the helicopter in low and smoothly. Don chambered a bullet, brought the crosshairs to bear on the deer's neck, and squeezed off.

She went down, all four legs splayed out, as if a string had suddenly snatched her life away and left only a chunk of flesh bleeding in the forest.

Scott heard the shot, not too far away. But he paid it no mind.

"Damned silly hunters," he muttered. "Shooting at their own shadows."

With the chopper tied down securely in the clearing, in case of a sudden wind, Don and Kelly had made camp near it.

They'd dragged the deer to the edge of the clearing and gutted it out.

"If he's down-wind, he'll smell this," Kelly said, deliberately puncturing the intestines. The foul odor almost made him choke. But to a grizzly, it was perfume.

They had set up a blind near the chopper, with pine branches piled atop a boulder.

Don scowled at the rifle he held. "This is a regular army piece," he said. "We should have brought something with glass sights you can flip over, to shoot down the barrel in close work."

"It'll do," Kelly said. "Just put the first one between his eyes and you won't have to worry about any close work."

"I'm not so sure," Don said. "That big baby seems to lead a charmed life."

The beast nosed out the dead deer. But there was another odor mixed with its blood and the ripe scent of its torn intestines. The acrid, disgusting spoor of Man.

The grizzly moved carefully. There was danger here.

But, more importantly, there was food.

The two men talked quietly. They knew that they shouldn't, but the night was dark and lonely.

"What about Allison?" Don asked. "Are you two serious.

"I don't know," Kelly said.

"Well, take it from an expert.
She
is. So if you don't like the game, you'd better get out of it."

Kelly thought for a moment.

"No," he said finally. "I think I like the game."

"Good. You won't find many better than that girl."

"What about you?"

Don shrugged. "I get a little tail here and there. That's all they are to me, nooky. A quick score. I don't hurt anybody. The ones I pick, that's all they're after too."

"That's pretty temporary, isn't it?"

"Sure. But look who's talking. You've got four years on me, buddy. Wait until I'm your age, maybe I'll think about settling down too."

"It's a short life," Kelly said. "I'm starting to realize that I've wasted most of mine up until now."

"Different strokes for different folks. You used to be one kind of guy. Now you're becoming another. It happens."

"Why? Because of one girl?"

"Nope. She just came along at the right time. You're lucky. The two of you are synchronized, just like the blades on that chopper of mine. Do you know what would happen to that bird if those blades came out of sync, and started doing their own thing out of step with each other? It'd tear apart in mid-air."

Thinking of the night in her cabin, Kelly nodded. "Yes," he said. "I know what you mean."

"Why don't you take twenty? I'il keep watch. If I get sleepy, I'lI wake you."

"All right," said Kelly. "But if you see that son of a bitch, shoot first and wake me later. We've got to put him down."

Almost gently, Don said, "We will, Kelly. Don't worry.

Scott pulled the horse up short. "Whoa, Tex," he said. "I think we've gone far enough for tonight."

He thought he had been on the trail of the beast, but now he was not so sure.

He picketed the horse near a trickle of water, where there was good grass, and made a wide circle.

Yes, something had moved through here. And it had

slept, or at least rested, among the spruces.

He felt the matted pine needles.

They seemed warm.

He went back and unsaddled Tex, then rubbed the horse down carefully.

"You stay right here and eat some of this nice grass," Scott said. "I'm going to make myself a bed up there." He nodded up into the trees. "But don't you worry, if our friend turns up, I'll keep him away from you."

Tex whinnied, and began to drink.

Although only a horse, somewhere in his thoughts was a question:

Where was the nice smelling one who used to ride him?

The beast moved cautiously toward the food. He made no sound as he crept through the forest. If he could, he would feed without the two-legged ones even knowing he had been there.

But if he had to, he would challenge them, despite his fear of their invisible fang.

Kelly was half-dozing when the bear came.

The beast had approached down wind from the gutted-out deer.

He moved silently, carefully. His feet felt the forest floor and drew back from each dry twig before it had a chance to snap. No Indian could have moved more stealthily.

It was past midnight, and both rangers were dog-tired. Don Stober was sound asleep, breathing noisily through his mouth.

The night was cold, and both men were wrapped in their sleeping bags. The rifle lay against the boulder, with a high-powered flashlight beside it. There was a round in the chamber, but the safety was on.

A pale sliver of a moon hung just above the pine trees. Its light was wan and seemed hardly brighter than that cast by the multitude of stars which twinkled through the dark ceiling of the sky.

On any other occasion, it would have been considered a beautiful night; the kind of night made for love.

But this night, with its chill air and the gentle moan of its wind, had been made for death.

It was the snapping of a bone between mighty jaws that brought Kelly fully awake.

The bear had approached the clearing with care; he knew that the two-legged ones were near, because their scent was almost unbearably strong.

But the beast's hunger made him careless. With his great strength, he might have snatched up the deer carcass and run, to devour it once he had outdistanced the men.

Instead, his mouth drooling with saliva, he could not resist chewing into one of the hindquarters.

The blood was delicious in his mouth, and he bit down too hard, crunching the leg bone.

Kelly sat up with a guilty jerk of his head.

The bear froze. It was very dark. Perhaps the man would not see him.

Carefully, Kelly peered around the boulder. He thought he could see a great dark shape near where they had staked out the deer carcass. He reached over and punched Don in the ribs. Don mumbled something.

Now the dark shape was moving. Kelly aimed the flashlight, and switched it on.

Powered by a six-volt lantern battery, its beam made a golden shaft through the ground mist.

There was definitely something near the deer. Kelly tilted the beam up—higher, and higher, until it seemed he was aiming it directly at the moon itself.

At a point some fifteen feet above the ground, the flashlight found the grizzly's eyes.

They flamed in the darkness like two bright yellow balls. No one who has not caught the eyes of a wild animal in a car headlight or with a flashlight can even begin to imagine the intensity with which they capture, amplify, and reflect illumination.

It's a frightening sensation, when you are alone in the woods at night, to suddenly see two terribly brilliant orbs staring back at you from the darkness. And the reflection has an eerie quality of being
transparent
, as if you were looking through the amber eyes into another world.

Kelly almost gasped. He could not see any details of the bear's body or head, but the eyes, so high above the ground, were terrifying in themselves.

He punched Don again and whispered, "Hey. He's here."

Don mumbled, "Wha—?" and came awake.

His voice galvanized the grizzly into motion. The eyes vanished from Kelly's flashlight, and the two rangers heard the crashing of frenzied flight through the trees.

They leaped up. Don grabbed the rifle; Kelly took a bag of grenades, and the flashlight. They ran toward the deer carcass.

Kelly pointed, with the flashlight beam, at a tom patch of underbrush.

"He went that way," he said. "I'll lead. You follow with the rifle. But be careful which one of us you shoot!"

Almost at a full trot, they followed the bear's trail, which looked as if a bulldozer had rooted a path through the woods.

The grizzly was angry. This was not the first time today food had been literally snatched from his mouth. Without making it a conscious thought, he considered ambushing the two who were following him.

The plan was discarded immediately.

He feared that invisible fang.

But there was another way.

He increased his speed, and slowly, began to make a giant circle.

The two rangers were out of breath. Running uphill through a dense forest is not easy, even for a man in good shape.

They had lost the grizzly's trail and could not find it again. Angling back and forth along the mountainside, they hoped to cut it, but after fifteen minutes of fruitless searching, they abandoned the effort.

"You
had
him," Don said, disbelievingly. "You had the son of a bitch froze dead still in your light. And you didn't shoot. Why the hell not?"

"I thought you would."

Don cursed. "Well, we've lost him now."

"We were right behind him. How can he move without leaving a trace?"

"There's traces, only we'll never find them at night. He's long gone until daylight." Don coughed. "I ain't the man I used to be. We must have run a mile straight up the side of this lousy mountain."

"We might as well head back to camp and get some sleep," Kelly said. "We'll need to be as sharp as we can be in the morning."

"Kell . . ."

"I know. You don't have to say it. If I'd pulled that trigger, we wouldn't have to worry about tomorrow morning. I think when this is over, I'm going to pack it in, Don. A ranger who can't shoot when he has to isn't worth very much."

They descended in silence.

The deer carcass was gone.

Don Stober looked down at the bloody spot where it had been and unleashed a string of oaths that nearly turned the air blue.

"He doubled back," Kelly said, half in admiration. "The bastard lured us up the mountain, circled back, and went home with his breakfast."

Don said, "I used to believe that animals couldn't think, at least not like folks do. But this baby's been ahead of us every step of the way. I do believe the rascal's playing with us like we were toys."

"Maybe we are," Kelly said glumly. He examined the rest of the camp to see if anything else had been taken or damaged. But the grizzly had been satisfied with the deer meat.

Don peered into the darkness. "Maybe he's around here close, waiting for us."

Kelly said, "I think he went off somewhere to eat in peace."

"And once he's finished, what's to stop him from circling back again looking for a dessert course? I tell you, old buddy, this boy is scared."

"Me too," said Kelly. "Keep that rifle handy."

As Kelly dragged out his sleeping bag, Don said, "All right, but I think instead of snoring this time, I'm going to do me a heap of concentrated
listening
."

He spread out his own sleeping bag, crawled into it without taking off any of his clothing or even his shoes. The rifle was on the ground within easy reach.

The moon was higher now, and silvery white clouds scudded across its face.