Eric watched Nicole climbing out of her sleeping bag and gave her a tentative smile. “Good morning.”
She nodded curtly, still bitter from the day before. “May I have my shoes, please? It’s very cold.”
He scrambled to his sleeping bag, retrieved her shoes, and tossed them to her, then sat down on a stone next to the creek. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I wish I dared make a fire, but the mountains will be crawling with company today.” When she didn’t answer, he looked up at the sky. “The sun will be high enough soon to take off the chill.”
Nicole slipped into her shoes without looking up, then tied them with an angry yank. She stood up and ran her hands through her tousled hair, her back turned on him.
“Nicole,” he ventured, “look, I’m sorry about yesterday. I—”
She spun around. “Are you?”
“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “Yes, I am.”
“Then let me go!”
He shook his head slowly. “I can’t, Nicole.”
“Your family is free!” she cried, clenching her fists. “You can let me go now!”
Eric stood up. “Cliff hasn’t come back to the camp yet. They think he was caught.”
Her head shot up in surprise; then her eyes narrowed into angry slits.
“And so it goes, huh? Everytime your little revolution loses somebody, Nicole is dragged back up the mountain.”
Her fury was suddenly so intense that she no longer trusted her voice. She grabbed her tote bag and, without so much as a second glance, stalked off toward the creek.
“Nicole,” Eric called as she disappeared into the trees. “Don’t forget to shout every minute or two.”
He gave her a full five minutes before he called the first time. By then she had washed and was pulling a brush through her hair with short, angry strokes. His voice floated through the trees, almost lost in the gurgle of the stream.
“Nicole,” he added after his third call, “I know you’re angry. But if you don’t answer now, I’ll have to come down there.”
“Go ahead,” she muttered, stuffing her brush back into her bag.
“Nicole!” His calls were coming more rapidly and sounded louder now. “I’m not playing. Either you answer or I’m coming down.”
“Don’t bother,” she said to herself as she stood up and picked up her bag. Suddenly her eyes widened. What if you do come down! The thought nearly took her breath away. Quickly she scanned the ground and found what she was looking for: a stout tree limb with a thick protrusion on one end. Her heart pounding, she dropped her bag and snatched up the limb. It was heavy, and she clutched it tightly to steady the trembling in her hands. She looked around quickly, then darted up the trail a few feet and ducked behind the thick trunk of a towering spruce. As she raised the club high in the air, her eyes widened in terror. Cricket! What if the dog came around the tree first and started wagging her tail? Nicole felt her knees go weak as the crunch of Eric’s feet could be heard coming through the trees. Cricket gave a sudden yelp, and Nicole heard her crash off through the forest, barking wildly.
“Be quiet, Cricket!” Eric hissed, now only a few yards above Nicole. “You’ll have every man on the mountain after us over a stupid rabbit. Nicole, don’t you be stupid either.” He was muttering to himself now as he came down the trail. “If you’re trying to run away, I’ll—” Both his words and footsteps stopped simultaneously, and Nicole knew he had spied her bag on the trail.
With an exclamation of surprise, he leaped past her hiding place and crouched down to look at the bag. She took two steps forward and swung the club down, putting four days of frustration, pain, and bitterness into the blow. The knobby end of the limb caught Eric above his right ear. With a sharp grunt, he sprawled forward, crashing onto his face.
Nicole flung the club away, turned, and ran blindly up the path. Not until she had gone fifty or more feet did she get a hold on her panic and pull herself to a halt, leaning against a tree to catch her breath. As she stared back down the path, she straightened slowly, exultation shooting through her. Eric hadn’t moved. She had done it! She was free!
For a moment Nicole nearly turned back to see how badly she had hurt him and to get his pistol, but then panic hit her again, and she broke into a run back toward the camp.
Eric had left the horses saddled in case they were discovered by Guardian patrols and needed to move swiftly. Now she murmured a quick thanks for that. She undid the halter rope of the packhorse, slapped its rump sharply, and yelled. The horse leaped forward in fright and bolted off through the trees.
In an instant she grabbed the rifle from Eric’s sleeping bag, untied the other two horses, swung up on the mare, and, yanking on the reins of Eric’s mount, dug her heels into the mare’s flanks.
By the time she had dragged Eric’s horse through the heavy timber for over an hour, Nicole decided he wouldn’t be able to find it again. She emptied the food and extra ammunition out of his saddlebag and shooed the horse away to fend for itself.
Two hours later she heard the helicopter. At first she felt it as much as heard it. When the pulsating waves became the distinct roar of an aircraft, she gave a cry of joy. Swinging down quickly, she wrapped the reins of her horse around a tree limb and ran toward a large area where the trees were widely scattered and the brush was low. But before she reached the clearing, the helicopter came in at about five hundred feet, almost directly overhead. She screamed and yelled and waved her arms wildly, but she was still in a fairly thick stand of trees, and the helicopter swept over her and was gone.
With disappointment so sharply bitter it almost made her choke, Nicole slowly lowered her hands and turned back. “Hey!” Her mouth dropped open as she saw her horse, frightened by the pounding noise, disappearing through the trees, taking her bag, the rifle, her food, and her transportation with it. She leaped forward, dodging branches and jumping over logs in a wild attempt to catch it. “Come back here!” she screamed.
For a maddening half an hour she tried to recapture the horse, but every time she got within thirty or forty feet of it, the wildeyed animal bolted headlong into forest. Exhausted, on the verge of tears, afraid that Eric was conscious now and looking for her, she finally gave up and let it go.
With a moan that was half pain and half pleasure, Nicole peeled off her socks and thrust her throbbing feet into the icy water of the stream. Wearily she lay back on the grassy bank and closed her eyes, letting the sun, now full of afternoon heat, beat on her face. The warmth soothed and relaxed her, and for the five-hundredth time she cursed her stupidity in tying the horse so carelessly.
In the three hours since she’d lost the horse, her feet had felt every rock, every twisted root, every uneven stump and log she’d stumbled over. Soon after the horse bolted, Nicole had found a small creek and followed it downward. It joined another creek and then another until it formed a small, turbulent river, now a good fifteen or twenty feet across. Three times she had had to ford streams, and her wet socks and tennis shoes only added to the misery of her feet.
She thought about Eric. She had no doubt he would try to find her. She was certain he could track the horses, but she’d been on foot for the past three hours. That would make it far more difficult, if not impossible. And even if he could do it, it would certainly slow him down considerably. He’d be at least two hours behind, perhaps three or four.
Nicole sighed, telling herself to get up and race the night and the man coming after her, but her body rebelled, and she decided that she had a right to pamper it for once. She closed her eyes again and thought only of how good the sunshine and the cool water felt.
Nicole awoke with a start and lifted her head, looking around wildly until her eyes focused on the river and she remembered where she was. She sat up with a jerk, and her hands flew to her cheeks, feeling the hot, sunburned skin. She squinted up at the sun and gave a cry of dismay. It was noticeably lower. Perhaps an hour, maybe an hour and a half, had passed since she had lain down.
Berating herself for her stupidity, she reached for her shoes and socks, but her hand froze in midair. A loud crash in the underbrush off to her right was clear and distinct, and with a start she realized that that was the sound that had awakened her. She scurried the few feet to the nearest clump of brush and dove into the foliage, her heart pounding furiously.
For a moment she heard only a curious shuffling sound, then the distinct noise of something heavy moving through the brush. Suddenly she went deathly still. It was not Eric. From around a thick clump of mountain-currant bushes, a massive brown shape lumbered into view, sniffing at the ground. Though it was still nearly forty or fifty yards upstream, the golden-tipped fur, the jutting front shoulders, and the square snout were clearly visible. It was not just a bear—it was a grizzly!
Not daring to move, Nicole watched in horror as the animal stopped and stripped several branches of their berries, then pried up a rock as big as a bread box with ease, looking for grubs. If it smelled her—she shuddered. For the moment the wind was blowing downriver, carrying her scent away from the grizzly, but in a few more yards the animal would be close enough to catch her scent no matter how the wind blew. It splashed into the river, looking for fish, and turned its back on Nicole’s hiding place. Gently and with infinite care she backed out the other side of the bush, giving her shoes and socks one last longing glance.
In a sudden flash of inspiration, Nicole decided to circle wide and head back up the hill. The bear was moving downriver, and she wanted to be where it had already been, not where it was going.
By the time she had moved in a wide circle around the bear, her hopes were soaring and she moved a little more quickly. She was concentrating so hard on watching the brown mass in the river that she didn’t see the cubs until she nearly stumbled onto them behind a mountain birch tree. They had their backs to her and were trying earnestly to pull open a rotting log half buried in the forest soil. They gave one startled bawl, leaped straight up in the air, raced across the ground, and shot up the nearest pine tree like two simultaneously ignited brown rockets.
With a roar that split the mountain stillness, the mother grizzly swung around and exploded into a lumbering run of incredible swiftness. Bare feet forgotten, Nicole leaped into motion, her legs a blur. She covered the tiny clearing in three great leaps, then darted back to her right when the thick trees cut her off. The mother bear didn’t even slow down to check on her cubs—she had the threat to her offspring in sight and was bearing down on it like a missile.
Nicole screamed and changed directions, cutting back down the hill toward the river to get greater speed. But the brown mass of fury instantly corrected her own charge to head her off, closing now at three times Nicole’s speed. Intent only on escape, Nicole did not see the sharp stone protruding out of the soil, and her bare foot slammed down on it with full force. She gave a sharp cry of pain and sprawled headlong, like a baseball player in a desperate slide toward home base. Too close to brake its lumbering attack, the bear overshot her and hit the river in a great spray of water. The momentum carried it completely across the stream, and chunks of turf flew as the animal clawed at the ground, trying to halt her charge and change direction.
Comprehending only that she had been given another few seconds of life, Nicole scrambled to her hands and knees just as a white streak flashed past her, snapping and snarling as it hit the river to meet the onrushing bear head on. Nicole stared for a moment, then cried out with a sob of relief, “Cricket!”
The German shepherd, though outweighed by nearly a thousand pounds, was a flashing fury of its own, darting in to nip at the grizzly’s flanks, then barely jumping clear of a swipe that would have taken her head off had it connected.
“Nicole! Run!”
She jerked around. Eric was running pell-mell down the river bank toward her, pistol in his hand. She leaped up, only to collapse instantly as her foot hit the ground, leaving a smear of blood.
Eric reached her and jammed the pistol back in its holster. “Come on,” he said urgently, jerking her to her feet and putting his arm around her waist to support her. “Let’s get out of here!”
The mother grizzly saw the movement and, with a bloodcurdling roar, caught Cricket with one massive paw and sent her tumbling tail over nose and yelping in pain. The bear crossed the river again in two splashing leaps.
“Run, Nicole!” Eric shouted, giving her a hard shove as he spun around, yanking at the pistol. As it came out of the holster, the bear was on him. He had time only to hurl it into her face as he dove to the side. The gun caught the bear just above the eye, causing her to jerk away, but her paw flashed out as she hurtled past him, catching Eric’s leg in a sweeping blow that turned his diving fall into a head-over-heels crash into the brush.
“Eric!” Nicole’s scream was lost as the bear wheeled around. But once again Cricket smashed into the fight, slashing at the bear’s hind flank and heading off the attack. With an astonished cry of rage, the grizzly swung around to meet her attacker, forgetting Eric. But Cricket had learned a painful lesson. A snarling, snapping fury, she circled the bear again and again, driving her slowly down the hill but always staying clear of those massive, flashing paws.
Nicole reached Eric in a hobbling run. He rolled over, writhing in pain, and she gasped as she saw his upper thigh. A two-footlong patch of his pant leg had been sheared away as cleanly as if cut with scissors, and even as she stared in horror, four bright red streaks blended into one great smear of blood.
“Eric, help me!” She put her hands under his arms, trying to drag him up the hill. “Help me! We’ve got to get away!”
“Get out of here!” he cried hoarsely, trying to pull himself up. Then suddenly his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, dragging out of her grip.
“No, Eric! No!” Nicole sobbed. She tried to drag him but his dead weight was too much to move more than an inch or two.
The battle between Cricket and the grizzly was still raging only twenty or thirty yards from where Nicole and Eric lay defenseless. Another lucky swipe of the paw and Cricket would be—
With a cry of surprise, Nicole spied the pistol lying on the ground a few feet away. She scrambled for it, then hobbled to her feet. Fearful of hitting Cricket, she pointed the gun above the bear’s head and pulled the trigger.
The grizzly jumped five feet sideways with a startled roar, and as Nicole fired again, it broke into a lumbering run into the trees and out of sight with Cricket at her heels. Nicole continued firing blindly, compulsively, until the hammer clicked on already spent shells; then, trembling violently, she let the pistol drop, put her hands to her face for a long moment, then hobbled back toward Eric’s still form.