Grizzly (17 page)

"Good-night," Kelly said.

"Nighty-night," said Don. "Later on, if you feel a wet snout on your face, it isn't me. Whatever you do, don't move, and especially don't kiss it back."

"Very funny," said Kelly, chuckling. At least Don was back to his usual good spirits.

Distantly, a wolf or wild dog howled.

"I feel the same way, good buddy," said Don Stober.

The wind moaned and more clouds invaded the star-speckled sky, and soon the two tired rangers were asleep.

Scott was moving before the sun came up. During the long night, he had slept only fitfully. Once he had been awakened by the crashing of some large animal through the brush, and before dozing off again had taken careful note of its location. That would be the first area he investigated when daylight came.

His breakfast was a double handful of raisins and dried fruit. Today's ranger carried compressed ration bars, or instant breakfasts marketed for the harried commuter. They were convenient and good, but Scott still preferred the old ways.

As a treat for Tex, he had brought along a small package of sugar cubes.

Now he held out two, and the horse lipped them off the palm of his hand. Tex nibbled on them while Scott saddled him up.

"Those boy scout rangers," Scott said, adjusting the cinch, "what do they know? Biggest mistake they ever made was in cutting down on horseback patrols, started using those four-wheel drives. You can't talk to a jeep; can't scratch its ears, either." He gave Tex a few gentle scratches, and the horse made a snorting sound of pleasure. "Sure as hell can't feed it a lump of sugar."

He tied his blanket roll on behind the saddle, and took one last walk around the rough camp area to make sure he hadn't left anything.

To the horse, he said, "Okay, looks like we've got everything we came in with. Let's hit the trail, partner."

He swung himself up into the saddle, and guided Tex over the mountainside toward where he had heard the noise last night.

The grizzly had eaten perhaps half of the hundred-and-sixty-pound deer, and had buried the rest for later use.

The carcass was not totally buried, for the bear had merely scooped out a shallow pit with his claws, and tumbled mixed earth and leaves over the grave.

In two or three days, longer in cold weather, the meat would reach that ripe state of decay that appeals so strongly to a bear's appetite. If the blow flies got to it, and the carcass became maggot-infested, so much the better.

The bear was thirsty now, and he had a craving for something acid—perhaps late berries, if he could find some by the stream, or an entire village of ants dug out of their hill.

His keen nose told him that the nearest water was over the next ridge.

The grizzly set out toward it.

It had been a long time since he'd wanted fish. But now he did.

Scott studied the sign.

Something had come through here in a big hurry.

It might have been a bear . . . or maybe a stray moose. It was hard to tell. The ground was so hard and rocky, whatever tracks there were had not left clear markings.

His hand touched his radio.

No. He did not want to mislead the searchers. If they came up here and found only a moose in early rut, the real quarry might be escaping through the area they'd left unprotected.

Whatever it had been, it had followed a natural trail which was grown up with disuse. Branches were broken, or twisted, along its path.

There was plenty of clearance for him and the horse. Slowly, alert to any movement, he traced the animal's marks of passage.

The sun was up now, and felt warm on his face. He cocked his head and listened. Around him, the forest was still—but somewhere ahead, and not too far away, birds cried a warning. Was it because of the approach of man and horse . . . or for some other intruder?

He checked his holster to be sure the tranquilizer gun was there.

Tex made a snorting sound.

Scott patted his neck. "Easy," he said. "I know. You smell something you don't like. It's all right, boy. We're looking for him."

The tone of his voice soothed the horse.

Warily, he urged Tex forward.

Now the birds fell quiet altogether.

The horse shied, and almost threw him. Scott tightened the reins, squeezed his knees to maintain balance.

Something had torn up the earth here in the center of a small clearing. It looked like a rough grave.

He dismounted and went over.

Blood seeped through the earth and leaves. He scraped away at the mound, and saw the mutilated head of a doe deer.

She had been half-eaten. Both ears were gone, and the white of the skull showed through the mangled flesh in several places.

Scott nodded. Half to himself, half to the horse, he said, "We've got him, Tex."

The horse, nervous, pawed the ground. Only years of training kept him from tossing the reins and fleeing down the mountain. But the man's presence, and his calm voice, held the animal in place.

Scott said, into his radio, "Hey, Kelly, how about it? Do you copy?"

He had to call twice more before receiving an answer.

"Scottie! Where are you?"

"Up by December Gap. On the west slope. I think I'm on our friend's trail."

"Are you sure? We're over in the Spring Meadow area, and we know for sure he was here last night. We baited him out with a deer carcass and damned if he didn't steal it right from under our noses."

Scott chuckled. "Well, look no further. He buried what's left of it right here."

Kelly said, "Can we get the chopper in there?"

Scott looked around. "That's a negative. Too many trees. There's a clearing maybe half a mile down the slope that might work."

"You stay put until we get there," Kelly ordered. "Don't start any arguments with that grizzly. I saw him last night. He's big, and he's mean."

"Ten-four," said Scott.

He switched off the radio and replaced it in his belt holster. To Tex, he said, "Ten-four means okay in radio talk, Tex. And in my talk, it also means a lie. If I wait for them to get up here, he's going to get clean away—either that or they'll spot him from the chopper and shoot him dead."

He checked the tranquilizer gun to be sure it was loaded. The big shell with its glass pellet was chambered.

Scott took a rope from his saddle bag and, with distaste, knotted it around the remains of the deer. He threw a half hitch over his saddle horn; patted Tex on the flank. "Hup, boy. Pull him out of there."

The horse backed up and the deer carcass slid out of the shallow grave. The left rear leg was gone, and the abdomen had been savaged until the animal was almost cut in two there. The horse whinnied and tried to get away from the bloody thing. Scott caught the reins.

"Ho, ho," he soothed. "It's all right, boy."

Tex gentled somewhat, but the sharp smell of blood kept his ears flicking nervously.

Carefully, Scott mounted. "We're going to drag this carcass and leave a blood trail," he said. "Mr. Bear'll come back and find his lunch missing, and my guess is he'll take out after it. We'll be waiting. There's a good perch a quarter of a mile up the mountain that'll give me a better shot at him than I could get here."

The horse pranced and tried to get further away from the dead thing on the ground. But now he was tied to it.

Some think that animals have premonitions of danger and doom. An example is the howling dog outside a death watch.

No one has ever attributed such foreshadows to man's servant, the horse, however.

But at that moment, Tex seemed to feel a cold wind, coming down the mountain and chilling him worse than the coldest winter he had ever endured.

Kelly radioed the grizzly's new location down to the men at the ranger station, and to those who had camped out on the mountain.

"Get some troops around by the big rock slide," he ordered. "If he gets past us, and the rangers on the slope, he might come down that way. Don't take chances."

"That's what you should have told Scottie," Don grumbled.

"I told him to stay put," Kelly said, loading the rest of the gear into the chopper. "He said he would."

"I heard," said Don. "The difference is, you believed him. I didn't. That man's crazy. I'll give you five to one he's on that bastard's trail right now with his little pop gun and a glass bullet."

He would have lost. Scott wasn't on the grizzly's trail.

The grizzly was on
his
.

Scott's plan would have worked if he had taken just two minutes more lead time over the grizzly. The protective ledge where he planned to wait in ambush was actually in sight up the slope.

The attack came without warning, and was horrifyingly effective.

The beast appeared suddenly just feet away, rising up out of the small trees and underbrush like a giant mass of golden hair, shot through with white and dark. He towered over the horse and rider and his jaws

gaped wide, all white teeth and flowing saliva. His roar was a fearful obbligato to the frightened cry of the horse, whose feet pawed at the rocky hill and slipped as the animal tried to leap into flight.

Scott had almost no time to react, but his hand dipped for the tranquilizer gun. There was no time to draw the rifle from its scabbard on the right side of the saddle.

The grizzly flicked out his great paw, studded with six-inch claws, and before the naturalist's horrified eyes,
ripped
the screaming horse's head away from the mount's neck.

Reflexively, Tex shied away from the blow and as Scott tried to scramble from the saddle, the headless horse, amazingly, took two long strides up the trail, pumping blood from the torn neck arteries in hose-like streams.

Scott, riding the headless apparition, found his voice and shouted, "God damn you!" at the grizzly.

Then the dead horse faltered and, in slow motion, fell.

Scott was pinned under the twitching body.

The bear came toward him.

He tried to get at the rifle again. But it was out of reach under the dead horse.

The grizzly roared again. Cold fear gripped the naturalist. Inside his head, a voice cried,
Not me! Not now! I'm not ready!

He had seen many living things died. He had even been able to accept the abstract idea of his own death.

But now that it was upon him, he would not admit it into his presence.

Part of him wanted to plead for mercy, to beg God to save him. Another part fought back.

That part managed to free the tranquilizer pistol which was jammed between his crushed hip and the rocky mountainside. He cocked the hammer, lifted it, and aimed directly into the grizzly's open mouth.

Gone were all thoughts of capturing the beast, of studying it, of its value to science.

I want to live
, his mind shrilled.

He squeezed the trigger, and the charge exploded in the oddly shaped gun.

It was in that moment that his luck ran out.

Scott had been in tight spots before. But somehow he had always found that unexpected handhold on the cliff, that extra gasp of breath in the pounding surf, that lucky ricochet of bullet that stopped a charging water buffalo in Uganda.

This morning all the luck was gone.

A chance wind blew a small branch between him and the grizzly, the glass bullet struck it, and exploded in the air. The chemicals that were supposed to paralyze the bear scattered themselves over the swaying needles of the tree.

There was no time to reload. The enraged grizzly literally tore the horse's body away from him and hurled it against a rock. The body struck with a horrid belch of air being expelled from the dead lungs.

Scott managed to roll away from the beast's first charge. He caught up a deadfall branch. It was a poor weapon, but all he had. His leg hurt terribly. It kept him from even considering trying to outrun the monster.

He hoped that the beast would turn to the dead horse. It was food ready for the eating.

But red anger had taken control of the grizzly. He had been on the run from the two-legged ones as long as he could remember.

He advanced toward the naturalist.

Scott waited for his chance, then jabbed the fallen branch directly into the bear's eye.

The grizzly screamed with rage and pain, and Scott slipped around the edge of a rock ledge. If he could roll down the hill and get into one of the small caves. . . .

"He doesn't answer," Kelly said, pressing the radio beeper alert again. His open voice transmissions hadn't raised Scott, so maybe this would signal the naturalist that he was being called.

"I told you," Don said. "He's tracking that goddamned bear. Pay up."

"Let's get this chopper moving," Kelly said, strapping himself in. "I've got a bad feeling."

Scott might have been safe, because the bear, in pain, had drawn back, and now that the agony in his eye was subsiding, had begun to move toward the bleeding body of the horse.

Then the radio in the man's belt holster made a BEEP! that drew the grizzly's attention to him again.

Hopelessly, Scott began to run. But the bear was upon him in two strides, and the great talons ripped his windbreaker and his shirt, and half of his
chest
away, as Scott stared in shocked disbelief.

He fell to his knees and tried to stop the blood with both hands.

The huge claws tore a huge chunk from his back and shoulders.

Slowly, the man collapsed face down into his own blood.

The helicopter made a circle over the December Gap area.

"Nothing," said Don Stober. "Not a thing on the move."

"He's down there somewhere."

"Unless he got his position mixed up."

"Not Scottie. Make another pass."

"You're the boss. But if there's anything down there, we ought to have seen it. Scott's on horseback, isn't he? How the hell could we miss a horse?"

"How could we miss a fifteen-foot grizzly? But we have."

"One more pass coming up," said Don.

He tilted the chopper over so steeply that Kelly could look straight down through his side window at the spiked tops of the pines, pointing up at the rangers like so many green fingers.