CHAPTER 25

“Ah, hell, it’s back!” Dutch McCrae said, sitting bolt upright against his saddle, his soogan slipping down his chest.

“Damn!” said Jackson.

“That beast is right angry or he’s right hungry,” said Leech Davis, sitting up in his own soogan and reaching for his rifle.

“Or both,” Angus opined, wishing he hadn’t said it when he saw Nate, also sitting up, looking up at him, wide-eyed. Angus tossed a crooked, sun-bleached chunk of solid driftwood onto the fire. “He’ll stay away as long as we keep the fire built up.”

Dutch turned to look at the dwindling supply of wood beside the fire ring. “Yeah, well, it ain’t gonna last long. An’ whose gonna go out an’ fetch more . . . with that demon on four legs stompin’ around, hungry for more than a few morsels of human flesh!”

“Easy, now, easy,” Angus said.

But he himself jerked with a start when another bugling cry rocketed out of the darkness.

“Whoah!” Nate said, stiffening and staring off to his right, the direction from which the second cry had come. The first had come from straight off in the darkness beyond Angus.

Angus rose, his Spencer under his arm.

Jackson rose, too, his Winchester in both hands. He looked at Angus. “He’s coming closer. Are you sure . . . I mean good an’ sure . . . he won’t come near the fire?”

No, Angus said silently to himself. He was no longer sure. He just knew that most bears would stay away from a fire. He had no idea what this one was capable of.

“Yes,” he said aloud.

Jackson arched a knowing brow at him. “You’re not sure.”

Another bugling cry, and everyone in the camp jumped. Even Angus, though he thought he’d been prepared for it.

“Just keep your wits about yourselves,” he said, quietly. “An’ keep your long guns handy. If he comes into the firelight, aim for the heart. Shoot an’ keep shootin’. One of our bullets is bound to penetrate that thick hide of his.”

Again, came another bugling cry of the most intense anger Angus had ever heard given voice to by man or beast. He felt his own hand shaking as he clamped it around the Spencer, standing at the outside edge of the firelight. He whipped around, for that wail had come from behind him now as he gazed off to the east.

It had come from the west, and it had been closer than the last one.

Dutch gained his own feet now, looking around warily. “He’s movin’ around us. Tryin’ to trick us. An’ he’s comin’ in.” He pumped a cartridge into his rifle’s action. “Oh, he’s comin’ in for the kill, all right, an’ let there be no mistake!”

“Dutch!” Jackson scolded.

“Easy, Dutch,” said Leech Davis, staring westward, cradling his rifle in his arms.

Nate walked up beside Angus. “Grandpa, I got a confess to make. I’m—”

“Scared. Don’t blame you a bit, boy. But it’s going to be all right. If he charges the camp, I’m ready for him.”

Of course, he’d been ready . . . or thought he’d been ready before . . . but he’d been too nervous to place any of his shots where they’d needed to be placed to kill the beast. Next time—and he hoped there wouldn’t be a next time—he’d place his shots better.

The roars that turned the men’s and the boy’s guts to jelly continued along with the big beasts’ heavy crackling footsteps and growling, thrashing sounds as it moved around the camp, pushing through shrubs and snapping fallen branches. At one point there came grating, sawing sounds accompanied by more angry wails that caromed from one near ridge to another, echoing madly.

The men and Nate, standing around the fire, turned to track the beast with their gazes. A couple of times, Angus got a brief glimpse of the bruin’s silhouette as it moved around the camp, from one side to the other, circling then stopping abruptly and switching course. At one point, Angus saw the two red, glowing eyes roughly fifty yards out beyond the circle of wavering, guttering firelight.

That made his heart hiccup, caused more cold sweat to pop out on his forehead and dribble down his bearded cheeks.

The horses were frightened, too. They also tracked the bruin’s movements with their gazes, swinging their heads this way and that, whickering, stomping, pulling at the halter ropes tied to the picket line strung between pines.

Angus kept one eye skinned at Dutch McCrae. The big, bearded Pinkerton was also sweating profusely and flinching and starting with each new noise the bear made. The man was terrified. Angus was himself; only a fool would not be. But Angus found himself feeling almost as anxious about what Dutch would do in his irrationality as he was about what the terrorizing bruin might do.

Finally, wound up as tight as a Swiss watch, Dutch did it. The springs inside him finally sprung.

Angus couldn’t have stopped him even if he’d been closer.

The man jacked a live round into his Winchester’s action, and yelled, “That tears it! I ain’t gonna stand around an’ listen to this no more. I’m gonna put a stop to it!”

Jackson swung toward him, but McCrae had already stomped past him before he could grab him. Suddenly, Dutch was swallowed by the heavy darkness beyond the camp, shouting and cursing and bellowing: “You want some o’ this, you big stupid beast, then come an’ get it!”

Now there were two separate sets of thrashing sounds—those of the bear and those of McCrae, for whom the beast’s rampage had driven him over the edge and into madness. His rifle was a .44. It would have to take a damn well-placed shot for a .44 round to penetrate the beast’s thick hide. He’d either have to make a head shot or a heart or lung shot. Preferably, one of the former because the beast could live to do a lot of damage with a round lodged in only its lungs. Hell, Angus had heard of grizzlies running a mile, roaring, with bullets lodged even in the heart.

“Dutch!” Davis shouted.

“Don’t do it, Dutch!” Jackson bellowed, cupping his hands around his mouth.

Angus strode quickly over to the side of the camp from which McCrae had made his exit and squeezed his old, trusty Spencer in his hand, which was soggy with sweat inside his glove. Another bugling cry exploded out of the dark woods. Two quick rifle shots nearly drowned by the beast’s enraged wails, and then a man’s bone-splintering wail of rarified terror.

Running footsteps growing louder, a man’s shrill wail.

The bruin’s bugling cry.

The horses screamed.

“Get ready!” Angus said, dropping to a knee and raising the Spencer .56 in his lone hand and arm, which, having to make up for the loss of the other one, was corded and sinewy, as strong as that of a much younger man. “Remember—aim for the heart!”

Two glowing eyes swam up out of the darkness.

Dutch was running toward them. He’d lost his hat and his rifle, and he was scissoring his arms and legs.

“Help!” he cried. “Help meee!”

The bruin was closing on him quickly, close-set eyes glowing as red as a fire burned down to embers.

Dutch burst into the camp, tripped over his own feet, fell, and rolled almost into the fire.

When the bear entered the outside edge of the firelight, it stopped and rose onto its back feet, glaring at the campers, throwing its head back, and loosing more enraged cries at the stars.

“Shoot!” Angus bellowed.

He fired the heavy Spencer. The other men fired, as well, save Dutch, who lay near Angus and was staring back at the mountain of a bear before him in mute shock. Nate fired from his own knee beside Angus, firing and cocking, firing and cocking, the empty cartridge casings glinting in the firelight as they arced back over his shoulder.

The bullets made the beast’s long fur part. Dust billowed. It clawed at its wounds oozing crimson blood in the firelight before dropping back down to all fours, turning, and lumbering off into the darkness.

A specter birthed by the darkest night on earth.

A demon not unlike the one that had haunted and terrorized the Box Bar B the summer before.

Gradually, the enraged wails and the heavy thrashing sounds dwindled to silence. They were replaced by the distant yammering of a lone coyote as if sending out queries across the night, wondering what all the fuss had been about.

Angus gazed through the pale, wafting powder smoke toward where the bear had disappeared.

Dutch was the first to speak. In a hushed, quavering tone, he said, brushing sweat from his forehead with a sleeve of his frock coat, “There ain’t no killin’ it, is there. The beast won’t die. I seen blood, but . . .” He turned his terrified eyes to Angus. “He won’t die.”

Angus leaned against his rifle, the terror slow to die in him, his heart slow to ease its raucous drumming against his breastbone.

“Don’t make him more than he is,” he told Dutch, though he was speaking as much to himself as to anyone else. He’s a bear. That’s all. With that much lead in him, he’ll die. Likely just wants to choose his own place.”

Yeah, like the one from last summer . . .

That one had likely been just a bear, as well, despite its uncanny ability to seemingly read the minds of the men, including Hunter’s, who’d hunted it.

Angus had seen enough in his lifetime plus having been born and raised in the Smoky Mountains, the superstition capital of the South, to know there were some things that could not be explained.

Aside from Dutch, who lay on his side by the fire, they all stood staring into the darkness in which the bear had disappeared. No one said anything. The fire cracked, snapped, popped. Angus knew the others were as tense as he was, waiting for another bugling cry.

None came.

He looked east. There was a faint lightening in the sky over that way. It would be morning soon.

He said as much to the others.

“Let’s try to get a little sleep. Even an hour would help. If that beast comes back, and I don’t think he will, the horses will warn us.”

Only now were the frightened mounts starting to settle down.

Angus knew none of his trail pards was likely to get any sleep. Not tonight. Probably not tomorrow night. Probably not for a long time.

But trying might help settle them all down. He could sense their nerves dancing around just beneath their skins, as were his.

Gradually, they got settled back down, as did Angus and Nate.

Angus was surprised to hear Leech Davis snoring not long after Angus himself had closed his eyes.

He was so exhausted, he found himself starting to doze.

Then he must have slept. When he opened his eyes, lemon sunlight was angling down through the forest canopy. Jackson, Davis, Nate, and even Dutch McCrae appeared to be asleep, rolled up in their soogans. Angus wasn’t sure how he’d managed to fall asleep, but that was how tired he was, he reckoned. Not even the prospect of the specter’s returned had kept him awake.

He got up quietly. Might as well let the others rest for as long as they could.

Even Nate, lying belly down, head turned to one side, a little drool leaking down from a corner of his slightly open mouth, was snoring albeit more quietly than the others.

He grabbed his hat, then moved off into the trees to tend nature and check the horses. They all seemed settled, so he picked up a few dead branches, then returned to the camp and set them down quietly beside the fire ring and its pile of cold ashes and a half-burned pine knot that had been too green to burn all the way.

As he did, Jackson stirred, rolled onto his back, yawned, ran a hand down his face.

Angus glanced at Dutch lying on the other side of the fire ring from him, then started crunching up a dry pinecone in his hand for tinder. Something made him look back at Dutch, quickly.

“Dutch?” he said, his heart quickening.

The man gave no reply.

Angus rose on creaky knees, went over, and dropped to a knee beside McCrae.

The man’s eyes were open wide, but he wasn’t looking at Angus. He was looking right through him, the man’s eyes still owning the lunatic fear they’d shone a few hours before, when the bruin had been closing on Dutch, intending to rip, rend, and devour. His mouth was half open, twisted as though mid-scream.

Angus placed his hand on the big man’s chest, over his bedroll.

Stillness.

Jackson yawned and looked at Angus. He frowned. Davis was starting to stir now, as well.

“What is it?”

Angus removed his hand from the big man’s chest.

“Dutch is no more.”

Scared to death.