Brilliant sunlight pierced the forest canopy in glittering shafts. High in the trees birds warbled and chirped. Squirrels leaped from limb to limb. Occasional butterflies flitted energetically about in the perpetual search of their kind. Bees buzzed in quest of pollen. Nate King couldn’t imagine a more idyllic scene. The grim mood of the Utes seemed drastically out of place, and several times when he glanced back, he almost smiled at their tense postures and wary expressions. It was eloquent testimony to the effect Scar had on them.
Neota shared their unease. He rode with a bow in his left hand, an arrow already notched to the buffalo-sinew string.
By Nate’s reckoning they were approximately four miles from the village, high on a thickly timbered slope. The chief looked at Hototo and made a few comments. The old warrior, in turn, glanced at him.
“Neota says we are near the clearing where Sakima’s woman was found, and where Scar ambushed them. You will be able to pick up his tracks there.”
Nate had already taken a good gander at the rogue bear’s prints shortly after they left the village. Clearly impressed in mud along the river’s edge were a perfect set of front paw prints no different from those of any other grizzly except in one regard: their size. They were some of the largest Nate ever saw.
But large or no, Nate still had confidence in his ability to bring the bear to bay. He had yet to meet a griz that could get the better of him. But he mustn’t become overconfident. Cockiness led to mistakes, and could prove fatal.
Suddenly Neota reined up and pointed with his bow. Ahead was a clearing. In the center lay the dead woman, her skin as pale as marble. Her right arm was missing, and her face partly eaten. Sprawled near her, contorted in their death throes, were the five warriors Scar had slain. Of Scar himself there was no sign.
Nate nudged his bay on, then realized no one was following him. “Are the rest of you coming?” he asked Hototo.
“No” was the frank answer. “To go closer is bad medicine. We will watch and warn you if Scar appears.”
To debate the issue would be pointless, so Nate rode on. Dismounting at the clearing’s edge, he looped the bay’s reins and the packhorse’s lead rope around a low limb. The dead warriors had been horribly savaged; two had their chests ripped open, another was missing his jaw and throat, and the last had been gutted.
Scar had left plenty of tracks in the pools of now-dry blood in which the bodies lay. One set led to the west, where crushed grass and flattened vegetation pointed Nate in the direction he must take. The hard-packed soil did not retain tracks well, but a bear Scar’s size and weight could not avoid leaving ample sign.
Climbing back onto the bay, Nate reined toward Neota. “I will go on alone from here. I suggest you keep your people close to the village until this is over.”
“Be careful, Grizzly Killer. Scar always watches his back trail. No one has ever taken him by surprise.”
“Maybe I will be luckier than most,” Nate replied, and rode westward. The hunt had begun. He had six or seven hours of daylight left. More than enough, if Scar was like most grizzlies and had holed up until nightfall.
The spoor showed that Scar had been moving at a snail’s pace. Evidently he wasn’t worried the Utes would come after him, and had taken his sweet time getting wherever he was going.
Nate held to a trot, the lead rope wrapped tight around his left wrist. The bear was making his job ridiculously easy. He would overtake it in an hour or so, and pick it off from a distance. By tomorrow he would be on his way home. He couldn’t believe how needlessly worried he had been, and he smiled at his foolishness.
The trail angled higher. Nate figured the grizzly must be lying low in a thicket or a gully, and he was so intent on spotting likely hiding places that he didn’t keep an eye on the scrub brush on either side of him.
Suddenly the bay snorted and whinnied. Before Nate could react, a massive bulk hurtled out of the pines and slammed broadside into his mount. He had a flashing glimpse of large gleaming teeth and raking claws, and then he was thrown from the saddle and both he and the bay were tumbling pell-mell down the slope.
Nate had the presence of mind to cling to the Hawken and clasp his other arm protectively over his pistols. Cartwheeling end over end, he smashed into a sapling and winced as pain lanced from his right shoulder clear down to his toes. The sky and the earth changed places a dozen times before he came to rest with a bone-jarring halt against the charred stump of lightning-blasted tree.
Expecting the grizzly to be almost on top of him, Nate heaved to his feet and wedged the Hawken to his shoulder. But there was nothing to shoot. The slope above him was empty of all save the bay, which was struggling to stand. The packhorse was in full flight down the mountain, packs and parfleches bouncing and jiggling as if they were strapped to an earthquake.
Bewildered, Nate focused on the spot where the bear sprang at them. It wasn’t there. He searched right, he searched left. He searched high, he searched low. The griz was nowhere around.
“What the hell?” Nate blurted. He had seen the thing with his own eyes. Or glimpsed it, at least. It should have come after them after bowling the bay over, to finish what it started.
“This makes no damn sense,” Nate said, and ran toward his mount. Along the way he snatched his beaver hat, which had gone flying when he tumbled and was stuck to a bush.
The bay was none the worse for the fall. Scratched a little, and bruised a little, but that was all. Nate’s saddle had saved it from serious harm. Across one side were claw marks where the bear’s raking paw had narrowly missed Nate’s leg. The horse was quaking like an aspen leaf in a strong wind, and he patted its neck to calm it down.
Nate stepped into the stirrups. He still couldn’t spot the grizzly anywhere. Inexplicably, it had run off. He hankered to go after it, but the packhorse came first. The panicked sorrel was still in full flight and wasn’t likely to stop until it reached the valley floor. Reining around, he slapped his heels against the bay, sending it down the slope at a gallop.
The packhorse was courting disaster. Its lead rope was dragging and could wrap itself around a trunk or catch on something else at any moment. Which could bring the sorrel crashing down with a busted leg or two, or a broken neck.
Nate was a skilled horseman. Decades of mountain riding had honed his ability until he could hold his own with a Comanche. And the bay was the best mountain horse he ever owned. So it wasn’t long before he was only a dozen yards behind the sorrel, and rapidly gaining. He kept one eye on the lead rope, which flapped and jerked like a bullwhip; twice it almost caught on trees, another time on a boulder.
As if that were not enough, several of the packs were coming loose. Nate had tied them good and tight, but they were being severely jostled, and it was a wonder any of them were still lashed on.
Suddenly a meadow broadened out before them, and Nate seized the moment. Slapping his legs hard against the bay, he pounded up alongside the packhorse, lunged, and seized the lead rope. Instead of trying to stop the runaway on the head of a coin, he slowly brought it to a stop.
“You lunkhead,” Nate groused at the panting sorrel, although he couldn’t really blame it. A charging grizzly was enough to scare the daylights out of anything.
Facing the mountain, Nate swept the higher elevations for sign of the bear. “Where the devil did you get to?” he wondered aloud.
Runt no longer thought of himself as Runt. He was no longer the smallest of his kind, but a giant among giants. Invariably, when he encountered others of his kind, he dwarfed them. In the recesses of his consciousness he was aware he had changed, and the change demanded a new way of thinking about himself.
It came to him one evening at an alpine lake. He had gone to the water to slake his thirst, and as he lowered his head, he saw his reflection. Saw his grotesquely twisted features. Saw the patch of hairless hide. Most noticeable of all were the thick ridges of bulging scar tissue that crisscrossed one another, like so many entwined snakes. There were so many, the whole left side of his face appeared to be one huge scar.
From then on, that was how he thought of himself: as Scar. It was a constant reminder of what the Feather Heads had done to him. A constant reminder of what they had done to his mother. And a reminder, not that any was needed, of what he must do to them.
At the moment, Scar lay in a thicket on a mountain slope overlooking a valley where he had found yet another Feather Head lair. And, moments earlier, a mystery that baffled him.
Scar had never relented in his campaign to wipe the Feather Heads out. He hated them as much now as he did the day they slew his mother. He had killed countless of their number, and he would go on killing them until the day he died.
Just the night before, Scar had dragged a female Feather Head from her conical den, knowing a pack of males would come after him, as they always did. He had slain five of them before the rest could flee, and then gone off to rest.
The clomp of hooves awakened him. Scar assumed the Feather Heads were hunting him, but when he crept lower, all he saw was a single two-leg and a pair of Manes. This two-leg had a strip of Wood Eater hide on its head, and instead of being bare-skinned, as was Feather Heads’ wont, it had hair all over the lower half of its face.
Scar had crouched and waited, and when the Feather Head was close enough, he charged, intending to bowl the Mane it was riding over, then dispatch the Feather Head while it was down. But a startling thing happened. As he rammed into the Mane, he caught the two-legs’ scent. The wind had not been blowing right for him to catch it sooner, and the instant he did, he realized a staggering fact: This wasn’t a Feather Head!
Scar’s nose was the one sense that never betrayed his trust. His eyes might deceive him at times with tricks of light and shadow. His ears were not always accurate in gauging distance and direction. But his nose never lied, never failed, never deceived. If his nose told him the creature was not a Feather Head, then the creature wasn’t.
The shock caused Scar to whirl and lope off into the brush. He never liked being surprised, never liked new and strange things he could not understand. He was set in his ways, and he liked a world that was set in its ways, as well. The Feather Heads did much that he did not understand, but that was how they were. He had grown used to their strangeness.
This was different. This meant there was a new creature Scar must contend with. A creature that looked like a Feather Head and wore hides like a Feather Head, but, wonder of wonders, wasn’t a Feather Head.
No two creatures smelled alike. No two had the same scent, even though among the same kind of creatures, among the Shaggies and the Jumpers and the Musks and all the rest, there was a common element that identified them. A similarity in scent that set them apart from everything else.
The Feather Heads all had a certain odor about them. No two were the same, yet the commonality was there, underlying their individual odors. This new creature, this Wood Eater Head with hair on his face, had a radically different scent. It was a lot like the difference between what Scar thought of the Big Antlers and the Little Antlers.
The incident was troubling. Scar had grown to know the wilderness as well as he knew himself. He was familiar with every creature and their habits. To abruptly discover there was a creature he had never run into, and one that resembled his lifelong enemies, no less, was deeply upsetting, was deeply troubling.
Scar couldn’t make up his mind what to do about it. He always killed Feather Heads without hesitation. But he bore this new creature no ill will, and he wasn’t hungry at the moment. He was curious, though, intensely curious.
So it was that shortly after the new creature went flying down the mountain atop the black Mane, Scar rose and hurried after them. He could move fast when he wanted, and he moved fast now, keeping them in sight until they caught up to the smaller Mane and brought it to a stop.
Concealed in thick timber, Scar watched the new creature intently scan the higher slopes, looking for him. The creature climbed off the black Mane and spent considerable time rearranging bundles of hide on the smaller Mane’s back. Scar had seen similar bundles before, in the dens of Feather Heads. Whenever he ripped them open, he found things inside. Sometimes it was food. Sometimes strange things typical of strange creatures like the Feather Heads.
Wood Eater Head, as Scar was now thinking of him, finished fiddling with the bundles and climbed on the black Mane. He squinted at the sun, glanced up the mountain once more, then turned the black Mane and rode in the direction of the Feather Head lair down in the valley.
Scar followed. He wanted to learn more about this Wood Eater Head. Learning about new creatures was an ingrained habit, for the more he knew, the fuller his belly stayed. With Feather Heads, the more he knew, the more he could kill. Whether this Wood Eater Head deserved to share their fate had yet to be established.
Scar’s hump was bothering him from a feathered stick the Feather Heads shot into him earlier, at the clearing, but he gave it no more thought than he did his other wounds, both old and new.
Despite his size Scar moved as silently as a Slant Eye. The pads on his huge paws muffled the occasional crunch of a dry leaf or snap of a twig, and he was a master at avoiding low limbs and brush that might rustle against his coat.
Wood Eater Head kept looking back as if he sensed he was being shadowed, but he never spotted Scar. Scar made sure of that. Soon they reached a low slope and a game trail that wound toward the river.
Scar had used that trail the night before when he snuck down into the lair of the Feather Heads and dragged off the she. He saw Wood Eater Head study the trail, then stop the Mane and slide to the ground. Wood Eater Head knelt and picked up a brownish object. Breaking it apart, he sniffed it, then showed all his teeth, as if what he had found had made him happy.
The breeze gusted, bringing to Scar’s sensitive nose an odor from the object in Wood Eater Head’s paw. Surprise pulsed through him, for it was an odor he knew as well as he did that of his own body. Wood Eater Head was examining his droppings.
Scar’s curiosity intensified. This new creature must be hunting him, just as the Feather Heads had done so many times. But this time he sensed something was different. There was an aspect about this new creature that was troubling, something that set it apart from the Feather Head hunters.
Scar watched as Wood Eater Head climbed back on the black Mane and rode lower, following the game trail until the Mane was in close proximity to the river. There, it entered a steep-sided gully. Wood Eater Head dismounted. He removed a bundle from the smaller Mane’s back, a bundle that clanked and rattled as Wood Eater Head carried it into the gully and out of sight.
Scar had never seen a Feather Head do anything like this. He wanted to go closer, but he was wary of the Manes catching his scent and alerting Wood Eater Head. Experience had taught him the two-legs had poor noses but the Manes had fairly good ones, and even better ears.
Wood Eater Head came out of the gully without the bundle. He walked to the small Mane, opened a different bundle, and took out something small, which he stuck into the deer hide on his legs. He started back into the gully, then snapped his head up and glanced into the forest.
A tingle ran through Scar. The new creature was looking almost directly at him. Somehow, Wood Eater Head sensed he was there. He held himself as still as the trees and boulders as Wood Eater Head scoured the woods around him. Wood Eater Head did not spot him. At least, Scar did not think he did, but he puzzled over why Wood Eater Head showed his teeth again, then hefted the long stick he always held, and disappeared back into the gully.
That long stick vaguely troubled Scar. It had a faint musky scent about it, like that of the Wood Eaters themselves, who lived in stick homes in the water and delighted in gnawing down trees they used in making dams. It did not have a sharp point, like the long sticks of the Feather Heads, so it must not be used to thrust and stab, as theirs were. At one end was a thick slab of wood; at the other, a hole.
Loud clangs rose from the gully. Scar pricked his ears, trying to fathom what Wood Eater Head was up to. He heard Wood Eater Head grunt, and a raspy sound, like that of his claws on rock. Shortly after, Wood Eater Head walked out of the gully, straight toward the trees near where Scar lay. Scar tensed, but Wood Eater Head wanted only to gather up limbfuls of leaves and pine needles. Four trips Wood Eater Head made. Why, Scar had no idea. Presently, Wood Eater Head came backing out of the gully showing his teeth and bobbing his chin.
Wood Eater Head mounted the black Mane, stared toward the lair of the Feather Heads, then turned away from the river and headed west.
Scar was torn between his desire to see what Wood Eater Head had done in the gully and his desire to learn more about this unusual new creature. He stuck with Wood Eater Head, who roved up and down the lower slopes as if searching for something. At last they came to a broad area bare of vegetation. Riding to the center, Wood Eater Head halted and began to do the kind of things the Feather Heads did when they were settling in for the night.
Scar sank onto his belly. He had always been fascinated by how the two-legs created flame. The Feather Heads did it by rubbing two sticks together over dry grass. This new two-leg did it differently.
After gathering downed branches, Wood Eater Head squatted and opened a hide that hung across his chest. From it he took a small square of wood, which he opened. From that he took what appeared to be a piece of quartz and an unusual hard silvery twig. He also carefully removed something Scar could not quite see, and placed it on the ground beside the branches. Bending low, Wood Eater Head struck the silver twig against the quartz. To Scar’s amazement, fiery sparks shot out, like those that sometimes flew from flames the Feather Heads made. Soon a tiny claw of flame blossomed. Wood Eater Head puffed on the flame until it grew and began devouring the wood.
Ever since that fateful day Scar first set eyes on the two-legs, he had marveled at their wondrous abilities. Riding the Manes, loosing feathered sticks that hurt, creating flame, there was seemingly no end. They were unique among all the creatures of the wild. And undisputedly the deadliest.
Scar has seen Feather Heads kill Shaggies. He had seen them kill Large Antlers and Small Antlers. He had seen them kill Bounders. At one time or another he had seen them kill every other creature in the forest, from Winged Ones to the elusive Rock Walkers who inhabited the highest heights in the mountains. They were forever killing, killing, killing. Scar wondered if this new two-leg was the same.
Wood Eater Head filled a hollow silver stump with water from a hide and put the silver stump on a flat rock by the flame. Soon a rich, fragrant aroma filled the air, one Scar had never smelled before. He lifted his great head to try and pinpoint the source and spotted another creature that was also watching Wood Eater Head.
Well across the slope, crouched low to the ground, was a large wolf. Its gray coat blended seamlessly into the gathering twilight, rendering the lupine carnivore almost invisible. Scar had seen many wolves in his day, and they always avoided him. This one did not know he was there. It was staring hard at the Manes, and as Scar looked on, it began to slink down the slope toward the smaller one.
Oblivious to the newcomer, Wood Eater Head was rummaging in a bloated hide. Suddenly the black Mane whinnied and stomped. In a blur, Wood Eater Head whirled and snapped up the long stick with the small hole at one end. The wolf had frozen, but Wood Eater Head saw him, and the next moment a remarkable thing occurred. The long stick belched smoke and flame and made a noise like thunder, and simultaneously, a chunk of ground in front of the wolf erupted in a spray of dirt and stones.
Recoiling, the wolf spun and bolted into the trees. It didn’t look back, didn’t stop. Wood Eater Head slowly lowered his smoking long stick and showed his teeth yet again. He seemed to like doing that a lot. Stepping to the black Mane, Wood Eater Head stroked it and voiced soft sounds that made Scar think of the sounds Caregiver uttered when he was small.
The blast of the long stick had echoed off across the valley. Scar had never seen anything like it, and he reviewed the sequence over and over; the blast, the smoke, the eruption of dirt in front of the wolf. The three were connected, he realized. In some mysterious manner, the long stick had hurled something at the wolf, just as the bent sticks of the Feather Heads hurled feathered sticks at him.
This new long stick with the hole at one end, then, was dangerous. Perhaps more dangerous than the other sticks. Scar had to keep that in mind. His interest perked as Wood Eater Head slid a thin reed out of the long stick and upended a buffalo horn over one paw. Tiny black particles spilled out, which Wood Eater Head’s paw poured into the small hole in the long stick. Then Wood Eater Head opened a hide that hung across his chest and took out what appeared to be a silver pebble. It, too, was shoved down the hole.
Mysteries on top of mysteries.
Scar spied on Wood Eater Head until a riot of stars dominated the heavens and Wood Eater Head had lain on his side by the flames and was nibbling on tiny pieces of dried meat.
Satisfied that Wood Eater Head wasn’t going anywhere, Scar rose and headed eastward. Pangs of hunger nipped at his stomach, but he suppressed them for the time being. He wanted to check on something first. On his right a bird took violent wing, screeching in terror. Ahead, several Small Antlers caught his scent and bounded hastily away. A little later, it was a lone Long Ears that took frantic flight.
Scar’s nose informed him when he was nearing the gully. He could smell the lingering scent of Wood Eater Head and the Manes. At the gully mouth Scar paused to test the breeze. Another scent registered. One he did not expect to smell. Impulsively, he entered the gully and stopped.
The air was laced with the odor of a Lesser Bear. A she, if Scar wasn’t mistaken. It was most noticeable lower down, and as he shuffled forward, Scar moved his nose from side to side, a whisker above the soil. A lot of leaves and pine needles had been spread across the bottom of the gully just ahead. Scar remembered the trips Wood Eater Head had made into the forest. The odor of the Lesser Bear became stronger the closer Scar drew to the leaves and pine needles.
Why that should be was yet another mystery.
A new scent brought Scar to a stop. It was the smell of freshly dug earth. Clods of it had been scattered on both sides of the leaves and needles. Wood Eater Head had been digging. But Scar saw no sign of a hole.
Scar went to place a paw directly on top of the leaves. Suddenly the wind shifted, as it frequently did at night, and another scent, one he knew all too well, was borne to him from the river. Throwing his head back, he verified a fellow nocturnal prowler was coming up the gully toward him.
Scar turned to the right and hastened up the side of the gully. Secreting himself in high brush where he could see the bottom without being seen, he glued his eyes to a bend farther down. He did not have long to wait. Around the turn shambled the one creature in all existence that wasn’t afraid of his kind, or any other animal.
Gluttons were the scourge of the mountains. Possessing voracious appetites, they never got enough to eat. Woe to the animal that crossed their path, for they would kill anything and everything with a savagery that matched Scar’s own. When challenged, even by Scar’s own kind, they never backed down. Yet for all their ferocity, they weren’t a tenth Scar’s size.
This one was barreling up the gully in customary fashion. The Glutton was almost to the leaves and needles when it caught the scents of the Lesser Bear and Wood Eater Head, and stopped. Its little nose twitching, it sniffed at the leaves and pine needles, then took a couple of steps.
Scar wasn’t quite sure what occurred next. There was a loud, rending snap, and the Glutton vaulted into the air. It landed on its back, its body convulsing violently, and managed a short, guttural growl that ended with the Glutton going limp.
When it was obvious the Glutton was not going to get up, Scar warily padded down into the gully. Where the leaves and pine needles had been was a shallow hole. Blood coated the ground, the Glutton, and the peculiar thing that had sheared the Glutton’s stout body nearly in half. A thing as hard as rock and twice as wide as Scar’s front paw. A thing with serrated fangs longer and wider than his own. A thing Wood Eater Head had left there, after digging the hole and covering the thing with leaves and needles.
Gradually, it dawned on Scar that Wood Eater Head had wanted a creature to step on the thing. Wood Eater Head had placed it there deliberately. Scar remembered how Wood Eater Head had examined his droppings, and how, shortly after, Wood Eater Head had placed the thing in the gully.
It wasn’t the Glutton Wood Eater Head had tried to hurt.
It was him.