Nate King sat up late, thinking. Seated beside the crackling fire, his fourth cup of coffee cupped in his big, callused hands, he reviewed the events of the day and made plans for tomorrow. His body was bone tired, but his mind was racing like an antelope.
The hunt was under way. From now on, Nate couldn’t afford to relax his vigilance, not for so much as a second. He must be fully alert every waking moment, and when he slept, he must do so with one ear primed. The tension would grate on his nerves, but it couldn’t be helped.
Nate went through this every time he went after a griz. Hunting one wasn’t like hunting elk or buffalo or even mountain lions. With elk and buffalo it was a simple matter of tracking them down and getting within rifle range. Mountain lions were more elusive, but once a hunter learned an individual cat’s favorite haunts, picking it off was simple.
Grizzlies were another matter entirely. They were as elusive as ghosts and as wily as foxes. Getting close enough to shoot one was extremely difficult. And if they discovered they were being stalked, more often than not they would turn on the person stalking them. The hunter would become the hunted.
Nate had high hopes, though, that the hunt for Scar would soon be over. Wild animals, like humans, were creatures of habit. They settled into daily routines, from which they seldom deviated. They foraged over specific areas, slaked their thirst at certain spots. When moving about they tended to use the same trails. Nate had found the one Scar used the night before, when he dragged off the woman. Should Scar decide to pay the village another visit tonight, odds were he would use the same trail again.
The rogue would be in for an unwelcome surprise.
Nate owned two, custom-forged bear traps made from tempered steel to his specifications by a master blacksmith. Their spring-powered jaws were powerful enough to shear a ramrod in half. When they fastened onto a grizzly’s leg, the bear was as good as done for. For even if it tore its leg loose, or chewed off its paw as some grizzlies had done, the loss of blood always made them easy to track and slay.
Nate was confident the trap he’d set would snare Scar if the rogue came anywhere near it. He had added an inducement the griz couldn’t resist. In one of his parfleches, wrapped in an old cloth, was part of the hindquarters of the black bear that nearly killed him. As soon as he had recovered from the attack, he had gone back to the ravine to salvage what he could of the remains. Fortunately, scavengers hadn’t found the body. And because it lay in a perpetually cool, shadowed cranny, putrefaction hadn’t set in. Nate had skinned it and taken a lot of meat and fat back with him, along with the special part.
On the frontier nothing was ever left to go to waste. Every part of an animal was either eaten or put to some use. Indians, for instance, used buffalo hides not only in the making of their lodges, but for robes, moccasins, leggings, mittens, shirts, dresses, breechcloths, and underclothes. Bone was used to make arrowheads, dice, ladles, knives, and sewing needles.
Frontiersmen relied on bears for a variety of items. Bear hides were popular as rugs and robs. Bear fat was rendered into soap. Claws were worn as necklaces or used as awls. And a certain part of a she-bear was smeared on the trigger pans of traps to entice other bears into coming closer, just as beaver musk was used to lure other beaver into beaver traps.
By morning, if all went well, Scar would be caught or crippled. Nate would finish the man-killer off and light a shuck for home. He couldn’t wait.
A mile or more to the north a wolf howled, the plaintive wail ululating like the cry of a lost soul. Nate wondered if it was the same wolf that tried to get at the horses earlier. He could have killed it if he were so inclined, but he chose to scare it off. He couldn’t spare the time to clean and cure the hide, and he had enough pemmican and jerky to last weeks.
Not all mountaineers were so considerate. Some were downright kill-crazy. Every animal that came close was fair game for their guns, even when they had no need of meat or a new hide.
Nate had never been like that. The way he saw it, other creatures had as much right to live as he did. He never killed unless he had to. Like now. If ever there was an animal that deserved to die, Scar surely qualified. The rogue seemed intent on wiping the Utes from the face of the earth.
Suddenly the night was rent by another sound, a tremendous, sustained roar that filled the valley from end to end. It came from the direction of the gully. Grabbing his rifle, Nate leaped to his feet. It had to be Scar! The griz was caught in the trap and venting its pain and rage. But as he listened more closely, a kernel of doubt took root. He had heard grizzlies roar before, and this roar wasn’t so much one of pain as it was defiance and challenge. He tried telling himself he was imagining things, but as he sat back down and poured himself another cup of coffee, he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that something had gone wrong.
Nate stayed up another hour in the hope of hearing Scar roar again or make some other sound, but in vain. At last he leaned back on the parfleches serving as his pillow, pulled a blanket to his chin, and closed his eyes. The Hawken lay beside him, and his pistols were still wedged under his wide leather belt. He placed a hand on each, then tried to drift asleep. But rest was denied him.
It had been years since Nate last hunted a griz, and he had forgotten how his mind would constantly race. He’d forgotten how sharp his senses became and how his nerves were always on edge.
The prospect of imminent death always made a person feel a thousand times more alive. At any second the bear might come rushing out of the darkness. Nate scanned the bare slope he had deliberately chosen for his camp but saw no cause for concern. Closing his eyes, he tried to relax.
Nate reminded himself that nothing could get close without the horses alerting him. But it was small comfort. Grizzlies were incredibly swift. Faster than a man running flat out, faster than a horse at full gallop. Were Scar to rush him, the horses’ whinny might come too late. The rogue would reach him before he squeezed off a shot.
For another hour or better Nate tossed and turned. Finally his weary body refused to be denied and he drifted to sleep despite himself. He dreamed he was stumbling through a forest as black as pitch. His footsteps were unnaturally loud, his breathing was like the wheeze of a bellows. He was afraid, deathly afraid. Something was stalking him. He couldn’t see it or hear it, but it was there nonetheless. On he stumbled, bumping into trees and boulders everywhere he turned and praying for a glimmer of light that never came. Then, after an eternity, he heard a sound behind him. He turned, and out of the darkness swooped a gigantic mouth rimmed with teeth as long as sabers. He tried to cry out, but the giant maw snapped shut, and his last sensation was of his body being cleaved in two.
With a start Nate sat up. He was caked with sweat and his heart was thumping as if he had run ten miles. His throat felt parched, and when he tried to swallow his mouth was as dry as sand. He pulled his hands from under the blanket and was horrified to see them shaking. He tried to stop it and couldn’t.
The last thing Nate needed was for his nightmares to return. Throwing the blanket off, he poured a cup of cold coffee and raised it in trembling fingers to his lips. He drank in gulps, feeling slightly better with each swallow. The tremors passed, but he was deeply troubled. The hunt had hardly started and he was a wreck. He couldn’t battle the bear and his own mind, both. It wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.
Nate yawned, and was surprised to detect a brightening of the eastern sky. Dawn wasn’t far off. He had slept longer than he thought, but nowhere near enough. He still felt tired, drained, and his day was only beginning.
Picking up a stick, Nate poked in the charred remains of the fire until he uncovered a tiny glowing ember. A handful of dry weeds sufficed to rekindle a flame, and soon he had fresh coffee perking. A couple of hot cups and several pieces of pemmican later, and he felt invigorated enough to saddle the bay and load the packs on the sorrel.
As a golden crown lent regal elegance to the horizon, Nate rode eastward. Most hunters would be anxious to reach the gully and learn whether Scar had been caught in the trap, but he held the bay to a walk. The truth was, lingering anxiety, courtesy of his nightmare, had formed a knot of dread deep in his gut. He wasn’t the least bit eager to get there. Quite the contrary.
Eventually, Nate came around a bend in the trail and there it was, mired in shadow, its mouth gaping like the teeth-rimmed maw in his nightmare. Nate drew rein. He had to get control of himself. He was acting like a child, not a grown man. Dismounting, he tied the bay and the sorrel to a pine, pressed the Hawken to his shoulder, and slowly advanced. He had only gone a few yards when the sight of fresh bear tracks brought him to a stop. They overlaid his own from the evening before. Scar had been there, all right.
Firming his grip on the rifle, Nate edged nearer. If Scar had been caught in the trap, then he might still be there. The stake was solid iron, and Nate had yet to see the bear that could pull it out of the ground. The links were as big around as his wrist, much too thick for a griz to bite through or snap.
The temperature was in the fifties, but to Nate it felt a lot colder. Another step, and he was in the gully. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and when they did, even longer for him to make sense of what he was seeing. His special custom-made trap was gone. The leaves and pine needles he had covered it with were churned and scattered, and where the trap should be was the slumped body of an animal a lot smaller than a bear. Its back was to him, and Nate couldn’t quite identify it.
Confused, Nate inched forward. He nudged it with the toe of his left moccasin and it flopped over. Instinctively, he leaped back, and came within a hair of squeezing the trigger. For of all the animals in the wild, the kind lying at his feet were as universally feared as grizzlies. It was a wolverine. Or, rather, half a wolverine—specifically, the upper half. The lower half was nowhere around.
Bending, Nate saw shreds of fur and stringy bits of flesh dangling from the severed waist. The serrated pattern was typical of his trap. Apparently, the wolverine had blundered into it before Scar came along. But where was the rest of the wolverine? And what had happened to the trap?
Bear tracks lined the right-hand slope. Turning, Nate cautiously went up it. The sun was high enough now, the gully was awash in light. So was the lower half of the wolverine, on its back at the top, a puddle of blood staining the earth under it. A little farther on was the trap. Or what was left of it.
Nate raked the woods for sign of Scar before venturing closer. He had a feeling the bear was long gone, but he wasn’t taking chances.
The trap had cost Nate more than five ordinary beaver traps combined. The blacksmith who made it assured him nothing short of a keg of black powder could destroy it. Yet here it was, wrecked beyond repair. Both the upper and lower bows were bent, the base twisted, the dog crumpled like so much paper. Sliding his left hand through the metal loop at the end of the anchor chain, Nate carried the trap over to the packhorse. Although it was useless, the steel could be reused.
The sorrel snorted and shied at the scent of the wolverine blood, and Nate had to grab the lead rope to keep it from rearing. Removing a pack, he put the trap inside and quickly tied the flap shut again to smother the odor.
What next? was the question uppermost on Nate’s mind. He had counted on his traps to bring a swift end to the hunt. But now that Scar was familiar with them, snaring the man-killer would be that much harder.
Forking leather, Nate rode to the top of the gully and took up Scar’s trails where it entered the woods. The griz had headed straight on up the mountain at a sustained lope, rare for a bear unless it was after prey. He reckoned Scar had a ten-to twelve-hour lead. Overtaking him would take most of the day.
Images of Winona and Evelyn briefly filled Nate’s thoughts. He missed them more than ever, and it didn’t help his peace of mind any that it could well be weeks before he saw them again.
Nate began racking his brain for a means of killing Scar sooner rather than later. Steel traps were well and dandy, but he had slain a lot of grizzlies long before he owned one. He should do as he had done in the old days, and rely on his wits and his woodcraft.
By noon Nate was above the tree line. Scar’s tracks skirted a talus slope and paralleled a ridge leading southwest. From there they climbed a short slope to a narrow ravine. Nate immediately drew rein. Horrific memories of the mauling knifed through him. Once again he felt the black bear’s teeth slicing into his flesh. Once again he winced to the slash of powerful claws.
Nate stared into the ravine’s shadowed depths. No way in hell was he going in, not even if he knew for sure Scar was in there. Clucking to the bay, he wheeled and rode back a dozen yards to a cluster of boulders. Roosting on one about waist-high, he munched on jerky while mulling his options.
There was a very good chance Scar would return to the ravine along about sunset. Nate could set the second trap, but in light of the condition of the first, he might end up losing both and have nothing to show for it.
Approximately eight feet to Nate’s right, where the ground started to slope down the other side of the mountain, stood a rock slab half the size of his family’s log cabin. Biting into another tangy piece of jerky, he led the horses over and hid them behind it, out of sight of the ravine.
Nate flattened and snaked around to where he had a clear shot. Folding his arms, he rested his chin on his wrist and settled down to wait. Of all the virtues a hunter possessed, patience was the most valuable. Being a competent tracker was of benefit. So was the ability to put a lead ball through a fist-sized target at fifty paces. But neither benefited a hunter much if he lacked the patience to follow spoor from one end of the earth to the other, or to lie in wait for hours on end for his quarry to show itself.
Nate had always prided himself in that regard. When he was younger, he could wait motionless from sunrise until sunset if he had to. But it had been years since he had been called on to do so; years since his hunting skills had been taxed to any great degree. Without realizing it, his skills had atrophied. He had grown soft around the edges, and was no longer the man he had once been.
That became evident two hours after Nate took up his post. His shoulders and knees took to hurting, and his nerves to sizzling like bacon in a frying pan. He could hardly stand to lie still. Repeatedly, he resisted an urge to rise and stretch his legs.
Nate blamed married life. Or, to be more exact, what he had let married life do to him. He had it too easy. Three delicious meals a day, every day. A down bed to sleep in at night, every night. A roof over his head to keep him warm and safe. Abundant game for the table, often a stone’s throw from his doorstep.
Nate’s life had become as soft as a city dweller’s, and he had paid the same price a city dweller paid. It had long been his opinion that civilization dulled the mind and turned hard muscle to flab. He had seen it happen many times. Former mountain men who left the high country for the lowland took to eating too much and drinking too much and idling away their time on a tavern stool or in a rocking chair. Men who could once climb the highest peaks without breathing hard couldn’t climb a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing.
Nate wasn’t quite that bad off, but he was far from satisfied with his performance so far. The nightmares had a lot to do with it, but not all. He needed to buckle down. He needed to toughen his mind and body, particularly the former. Otherwise, he might as well mount up and head home like a licked cur with its tail between its legs. And that he would never do. Call it pride. Call it stubbornness. He had never given up in his life, and he would be damned if he would start now.
The itching faded. His nerves quieted. Nate lay as still as the rock slab as its shadow crawled toward the ravine. His stomach growled off and on, then stopped entirely. He grew drowsy but fought it off.
Sunset was a spectacular rainbow of vivid hues, a blazing tapestry no seamstress could copy. Mars appeared, the prelude to more stars winking bright. And still Nate lay in wait for Scar. Gradually the sky darkened, the wind intensified. It had to be two hours after sundown when Nate reluctantly conceded that the grizzly wasn’t going to show.
Stiffly rising, Nate stretched to relieve a kink in his lower back and stomped his moccasins to alleviate cramps in his calves and thighs. His long wait had been for nothing. Scar had gone on out the other side of the ravine and must be miles from the valley. In the morning, Nate would work his way around to the other side of the mountain and take up the trail. At the moment he needed to find a spot to pitch camp, preferably somewhere with water and grass for the horses.
Descending a mountain in the dark wasn’t for the timid. A single misstep could prove costly. Consequently, it took Nate twice as long to go down as it had to go up. He’d about resigned himself to going clear down to the river when a vagrant gust of wind set the bay to nickering and bobbing its head as it always did when water was nearby. He gave the horse its head and within minutes had reined up in a verdant glade nurtured by a spring.
Mechanically, Nate went through the motions of stripping the bay and the sorrel. He gathered wood, got a fire going, and put coffee on. Disappointment ate at him like acid. He couldn’t delude himself any longer. The hunt was going to take a lot longer than he wanted. He thought of Winona and grit his teeth.
Damn that grizzly, anyhow.
Once, long ago, a large group of Feather Heads gave chase after Scar attacked their lair. There were too many for Scar to fight, so he tried to shake them off his trail, without success. They were persistent.
Scar was able to keep ahead of them, though. He had learned that while Manes were fast on flat, open ground, they did not do as well in heavy timber, and were slower than newborn fawns on steep slopes. So he led the Feather Heads straight up a mountain. Several times they had to climb off their Manes and lead them, it was so steep.
Still, Scar realized they were not going to give up. Eventually they would catch him. He could not run forever. But he could make a stand. So when he came to a gorge, he hurried into its shadowed depths and crouched behind some large boulders.
In due course the Feather Heads followed him in. The gorge was so narrow, they had to ride in single file, exactly as Scar foresaw. He waited until they were almost on top of him, then tore into them with his claws flying. They fought desperately. But in the narrow confines they could not exploit their greater numbers. Singly and in pairs they opposed Scar, and singly and in pairs they died. Only a few made it out alive.
Scar had learned an important lesson, one he never forgot, one he tried to use again this day to kill Wood Eater Head. The hairy-faced hunter was only one creature, but Scar had seen what the creature’s strange thunder stick could do. And just as he knew he should avoid a rabid wolf or a she-bear with cubs, so he knew, too, that the thunder stick was capable of doing him great harm, perhaps even inflicting a fatal wound. He must not let the Wood Eater Head use it against him.
Scar had noticed how the Wood Eater Head spent the night on a slope barren of plant growth, and how when riding the black Mane, the Wood Eater Head always stuck to open ground. The strange two-leg was deliberately avoiding heavy brush and closed-in spaces, which hinted to Scar that the two-leg, and his thunder stick, had a weakness.
After leaving the gully where Wood Eater Head had placed the object that killed the wolverine, Scar headed straight up the mountain to a ravine near the crest. He had been there before. There were many turns and twists, many boulders to conceal him. He would let the two-leg get close, then spring before the two-leg could resort to the thunder stick.
But Wood Eater Head never entered the ravine.
Scar waited and waited, and when the sky grew dark and gave birth to stars, he crept to the entrance in time to see Wood Eater Head ride from behind a large slab of rock and head down the mountain. Wood Eater Head had waited all day for him to come out. The creature was as patient as he was clever.
Silently padding to the rim, Scar watched Wood Eater Head descend. He considered attacking, but there was a lot of open ground between them and there was the thunder stick to consider. He was also famished. He hadn’t eaten the night before and needed to remedy his oversight.
Turning, Scar traveled eastward to a tract of sparse firs and on down into the forest proper. He stopped frequently to raise his nose into the wind. Midway to the valley he was electrified by the scent of a herd of Large Antlers. Careful to stay downwind, he circled the meadow they were grazing in until he spied a calf.
The herd was clustered together out toward the center. Scar needed them to venture closer before he committed himself so he could strike quickly before they ran off or one of the big bulls challenged him. The bulls were as tall as he was and weighed almost as much, and their long antlers were as formidable as his claws.
Unaware of his presence, the herd came slowly nearer. Scar stood as if formed from stone, anticipating his meal. A few drops of saliva dripped from his lower jaw.
The Large Antlers were now so close, Scar heard the chomp of their teeth and saw them flick their ears. The calf and her mother were not yet near enough, but soon would be. Older shes, those with more experience, had their calves in toward the middle of the herd where the males could better protect them.
Scar saw a male lift its head and start toward the young mother. He could wait no longer. Exploding from cover, he roared as he charged. It had the desired effect of freezing the calf in place. Four bounds and Scar was there. Too late, the calf galvanized to life. Scar clamped his jaws on its neck and whirled as several males rushed toward him. He reached the trees before they could intercept him, and they did not follow him in.
The calf kicked a few times and was still. Scar carried it a goodly distance, to a spine overlooking the river, and sank down to gorge in peace. Ripping off great chunks of hide to expose the tender flesh underneath, he ate with relish. His gaze drifted to the Feather Head lair, off across the valley. Starlight bathed their conical dens. From the tops of most wafted columns of smoke.
Scar had been so busy dealing with Wood Eater Head, he had not given any thought to the reason he was there to begin with.
Tearing off a large chunk of meat, Scar chewed with little enthusiasm. He must never forget what the Feather Heads had done to Caregiver. Thinking of his mother made his heart heavy in his chest, as it always did. To this day he could still see her in his mind’s eye, as vividly as if she were standing right beside him. He relived, yet again, those terrible moments when the Feather Heads slew her, and by the time he was done eating, an old, familiar feeling had come over him. A feeling his insides were on fire. There was no resisting the urge that compelled him to rise and pad to the river. He forded it at a different spot than the last time, and concealed himself in a stand of cottonwoods.
Almost all the Feather Heads were in their dens, as was their custom after the sun went down. Several were over by the Mane herd, making noises together. He watched as one came toward the cones. Recognition flickered. It was the same two-leg who had led the Feather Heads to the clearing that day. He saw the two-leg stoop, push a hide aside, and enter a cone.
Lowering his head, Scar charged. He heard barking to his left and a shout from the Feather Heads near the Manes. He rapidly gained speed, hurtling past several intervening cones. From one stepped a Feather Head, who yelped and ducked back in. Scar let him go. He was solely interested in the leader of the pack. More shouts and screams pierced the night, and the leader poked his head out. He saw Scar.
Running flat out, Scar slammed into the cone with the force of a dozen stampeding Shaggies. His claws split the hide as if it were a long-rotten liver and suddenly he was inside. The leader of the Feather Heads leaped at him, wielding a long stick, but a swat of Scar’s forepaw sent the puny two-leg flying. Over against the other side crouched a she and several cubs. In a twinkling Scar was on them. The she reared and stabbed a sharp silver stick into his shoulder, then whirled to scoop up her cubs and run. Scar bit down on her head and felt her skull split apart. The cubs wailed like coyotes. He dispatched all three with a swipe of his paw, and he was out of the cone and racing for the river before the Feather Heads could rally and try to stop him. He made it across unhindered and looked back.
Bedlam had seized the Feather Heads’ lair. Feather Heads were running every which way, the females and young shrieking, the males bellowing in fury.
Pleased with himself, Scar loped off into the night.