Brian's Hunt (6 page)

Dawn, first light, found him packing the canoe to leave. So much of what drove Brian now was instinct, feelings, what he used to call hunches but what he now thought of as logical flows of information from his subconscious based on knowledge that he sometimes did not quite understand.

Usually, it was right and he had learned to trust it. When he had awakened this morning something, an inner force, had made him pack the canoe and get ready to head out.

North. Where he thought the dog had come from—something pulled him north. And now there was a distinct urgency he still could not understand except that it had something to do with the dog and the wound and the fact that he was sure a bear had done it and there was no reason for the dog to leave its camp simply because a bear had hurt it . . .

Unless.

And he could not think of the
unless
with logic because there was no logic to it. Just the urge to go, to make a start.

And so he packed the canoe and when it was packed he tied cord to the two back quarters of deer to hang them over in the water. The coolness of the lakes and rivers would keep the meat fresh for at least a day. He slid the canoe out sideways to the bank and signaled with his hand for the dog to jump in and by the time the sun was over the tops of the trees and warming his back he was stroking the canoe across the lake.

He had in mind, if there was any true plan at all in his thoughts, to find the Cree camp and ask them if there were other trappers nearby and see if they had had a problem with a bear.

That was as far as his thinking went, along with the fact that it would be nice to meet Kay-gwa-daush. He should have been happy, or at least felt pleasure at going to see old friends, but instead he found himself pulling harder at the paddle all the time.

Clawing ahead, frustrated that pulling the two deer legs through the water slowed the canoe, not smiling, not happy at all, but reaching forward harder and harder with the paddle, ripping the water back alongside the canoe . . .

End of lake. Another beaver dam. Over it, reload, back in water, dog in canoe, tearing down the stream, looking ahead, always ahead and not even thinking now, just pulling the canoe forward.

End of lake. Beaver dam. Stream through swamps, more dams, more work over them, stroking, stroking to yet another lake.

And then dark.

He had not stopped the way he usually did, still in light, to find a place. He took a clearing with a slight angle and stumbled around in the dark to find wood and it was truly late by the time he was ready to get water on to boil and cut pieces of meat to make a stew.

He gathered more wood in the dark, made a hot fire to get the water boiling as fast as possible and did his daily gear check by firelight.

When he finished, the stew had boiled and he drank the broth, ate the meat, fed the dog from the rest of the back leg and lay down to rest.

He ached and was tired from paddling hard. Sleep should have come fast but he lay on the grass, his mind tumbling, wondering how far there was yet to go. He had thought it wasn’t over thirty miles, from the way the camp had been described, but he had come close to thirty miles today and didn’t seem to be near a big lake, although a lot of that travel had been back and forth because the country was flat and the streams wandered. He knew for a fact that at one point he had paddled two miles east and west to go less than half a mile north.

The dog seemed to be affected by his mood and even after eating did not lie peacefully and sleep as she had the night before but instead sat near Brian, almost leaning against him, looking into the darkness and periodically whining softly and the direction it was looking was north.

Something there, Brian thought, there was something up there the dog knew about and didn’t like and he knew it must have been what caused the wound and the way the dog was looking, trying to see through the darkness, her nostrils flaring as she tried to get a smell, her ears perked for any sound, whatever it was must be getting closer.

Brian threw some leaves on the coals to make bug smoke and slept, finally, on the ground with no shelter except for a Polarfleece pullover draped over his side. He was up before dawn, starting the fire again, heating water to drink, feeding the dog a bit of meat and into the canoe and paddling at first light.

At first he was stiff and his back sore, but the lake was about a mile long and by the time he reached the outlet at the end the stiffness was gone and he was back to clawing with the paddle.

More beaver dams, more streams, another lake, then another series of dams and streams and swamps and then a change.

At first he wasn’t sure what it was—something was different. It was the same water, the same canoe, and he paddled the same way but there was a change around him and when he was moving along the edge of a stream under an overhang he realized what it was—the woods were different here.

There was less sound, less small movement. Before, there had always been something happening, some indication of nature, and here . . . it had changed.

A quieting that wasn’t there before, and not caused by the canoe passing. Before, the canoe had had no effect at all. But he hadn’t seen a moose in hours, and before, they had almost been common; he hadn’t seen birds, but more, hadn’t heard them either.

There was man here; he was getting close to man.

And in another mile the stream he was following widened into a shallow entrance to a large lake that led away to the north. It was at least five miles long and widened rapidly to the left and right as he entered it and then seemed to narrow to a point at the end, five miles away.

The lake was shaped like an arrowhead, or nearly so, and more, even in the afternoon heat mist he thought he could see a large island at the far end.

It was the right lake, where his friends were camped, and he pulled the remaining deer leg back into the canoe to make the paddling easier and started pulling for the island. But it was as if the Fates, having been kind to him for so long, decided to make up for it. A breeze started coming from the north, with clouds, and it quickly turned into a wind, then a strong wind hitting him head on, and where he had been making three and sometimes four miles an hour he was now down to barely one, and some chop was splashing over the bow.

He slid sideways to the left, close to shore, but while the chop diminished and he was no longer shipping water the wind was still as strong and the trip across the lake that he’d thought would take little more than an hour was suddenly a six-hour pull, and that only with hard work.

Still, his stomach was full of good meat and water and he was strong. He kept up the pace, accepting the three-quarters of a mile an hour as it came to him, and after four hours was only a mile and a half from the island when a new strangeness hit him.

The wind had been blowing straight from the island to him, all his way across the lake, and yet he smelled nothing. If they were camped there, on the island, they should be burning fires for cooking and heating. But he could smell nothing.

Not the slightest whiff of woodsmoke. The wind was blowing directly at him from the island, right across him, and there was no odor.

And the dog . . .

She was up now, on all fours, whimpering more loudly than ever before, mixing those sounds with low growls, her ears up, then down, then back up again, listening, then hiding, then listening again. Aggressive, but worried?

Brian paused and something made him reach out and take a broadhead out of the quiver and lay it across the bow even though the moment without paddling cost him his forward motion. He thought, This is silly, I’m being a worrywart, but positioned the bow close to himself just the same.

Then dug with the paddle again, pulling hard for the island, the dog whimpering and growling.

I just wish, Brian thought, I could smell their smoke.

At first he thought they were just gone, perhaps back to a town for some reason, although he knew they hated cities as much as he did.

But no dogs barked to greet him, and there was no noise at the island, no sound, not even birds singing. By the time he pulled the canoe up onshore next to one of their canoes—a thick glass-hulled eighteenfooter—he knew something was wrong.

As he pulled in the dog jumped from the canoe onto land but did not leave him, did not run up the shore. She stood near him, pressing against his leg while he tied the canoe to a limb.

He took his bow and put his quiver over his back and nocked a broadhead in the string and thought, All right, crazy as this is, I’ll just take the teasing if they see me walk up all ready.

From the beach where their canoe had been tied a track curved up about fifty yards to a camp area and he could see they had constructed a cabin about fifteen feet square with unpeeled logs and a tarp for a roof pulled over a ridgepole to make it peak and drain off water.

But no people.

All right, they were gone. That was too bad but they would come back and . . .

The door to the cabin was open. It was made of three rough planks chopped from soft pine and hung on leather hinges—he could see that much when he was twenty yards from the cabin—but it stood open and they would not have left the door open that way.

The dog stopped, her nostrils flared, and all the hair on her back went up in a thick ridge and she growled in a low, steady rumble.

Brian put his three pulling fingers on the bowstring, ready to draw and release, and moved closer to the cabin.

Then the smell hit him. Not smoke, not woodsmoke, but the smell of blood, musty, rotten smell of spoiled blood and flesh. He stopped again, flaring his nostrils, taking the offensive odor in, trying to see all around and up and down at the same time, holding his mouth open and his breath to hear better and that was when he heard the sound of flies.

All right, he thought. All right. They left some meat here and something broke into the cabin and got at it and let the flies in and . . . and . . . and . . .

It was all wrong. So wrong. He had never felt anything so powerfully wrong in his life and everything in him wanted to run, get away from this place, but he knew he had to go on, to go in the cabin. . . .

He stood to the side of the door, eight feet away. “Anybody in there?” Then, to the woods, more loudly, “Is there anybody here?”

Nothing. Just the continued buzzing of flies, no other sound, and he stood another second and a half, nervously fingering the bowstring; then he took a deep breath, held it and stepped into the cabin.

There were no windows—the only light came through the doorway and from a dim glow that worked down through the tarp roof—and for moments he stood inside the doorway virtually blind in the sudden darkness.

Then he stood aside and let the light in and at the same time his eyes became accustomed to the darkness.

“My god . . .”

The words slipped out without his knowing, or caring. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside the cabin.

Sacks, boxes, sleeping bags, bunks, snares, traps and provisions were torn open, thrown everywhere, ripped opened and flung in piles like so much garbage.

But no people. So they had gone somewhere, maybe in the plane, and probably a bear had gotten into the cabin—and indeed, he saw slash marks on a sack of flour that could have come from bear claws—and torn into everything. . . .

But no, that was too easy. There was more and part of him knew it, knew there had to be more, though he didn’t want to admit it and he saw then what he had missed at first.

The flies. There was a buzzing of flies everywhere but the sound was deceptive because the flies were all back in a corner where torn sleeping bags covered something, something . . .

Brian moved to the corner and with no breath left now, only fear, he reached for a corner of the torn sleeping bag and pulled it away and saw the body, a human body doubled up and jammed back in the corner, covered, and it was Kay-gwa-daush’s father, David, destroyed, face torn, neck torn open, one arm ripped half off the body, stomach torn open . . .

“Arrggh!” Brian turned and instantly vomited, almost hitting the dog, which had followed him into the cabin, growling openly but crying and whining as well, looking at the dead man. “Oh my, oh my, ohmyohmy . . .”

He couldn’t think, couldn’t react, couldn’t
do
anything except stand and throw up and try to make what he had seen not exist. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t actually
be,
not this, not this terrible thing. . . .

But he turned back and David was still there, in a cloud of flies, and a part of Brian’s brain went on automatic and saw things he could not stand to look at, could not bring himself to openly acknowledge.

David was dead in the corner. It couldn’t be but it was, he was there and torn terribly apart. It had to have been a bear. A bear, a rogue bear, had broken into the cabin suddenly and attacked and overpowered David and killed him. . . .

He had fought, or tried to fight. There was a rifle, a 30-30 in the corner by the body with the lever pulled open. David had tried to load it and the bear had come so fast he hadn’t had time to get a shot off. Perhaps the gun had been in the corner and the bear had burst in and David had tried for it and the bear had gotten him first. . . .

What of the others? There was David’s wife, Anne, and the little boy and girl. And Susan. Kay-gwa-daush. Oh god, he thought, oh god, what of them? Where were they?

He turned away from David—there would be time later for what was necessary there—and looked through the rest of the trash in the cabin, turning over paper and bags and bunks. There were no other bodies.

Outside then; David later, but outside for now. There had to be sign. He had missed things coming in because he’d been nervous. There must be sign, tracks, and when he went outside he was appalled at how much he’d missed on the way up to the door of the cabin.

There, in the soft earth to the side away from the hard-packed trail down to the lake, were clear prints of a bear, a large bear, a huge bear. The prints had to be nearly six inches across and even taking into account the way they spread in soft earth the bear had to be over five hundred pounds.