over. Little chance she was relieved to see her master coming her way. He was all too slow.
While the protector backed up a few feet, he was in reality rocking back on all fours, as if cocking himself, preparing to launch his bulk right into his enemy. He crouched there, snarling, huge jaws frothing in anticipation, his body shuddering with uncontrollable passions. The same juices that prepared him to fight also readied him for coupling with a sow. And for now—the hot fire of those juices shooting through his veins and heaving muscles brought nothing but frightening confusion.
A few yards off the interloper lunged back, rising onto its hind legs, a forepaw ripping bark from a nearby pine tree. Shards of blackened bark exploded off the trunk in all directions, exposing the deep yellow wounds that would soon ooze with pitch.
Shuddering at the vicious explosion, Bass sank back on his haunches near the line of willows. Glanced at Hannah. Then swallowed hard as he turned his attention back to the two monsters. By damn, if a griz could do that sort of damage to the tough, hardened bark of an old pine tree, just think of what the beast could do against mere flesh and sinew.
Then the protector rose on his hind legs, head brought forward as far as he could out of the hump, jaws open wide, but only momentarily, until he began snapping them, clawing at the air, growling loud enough that the sound of both boars rocked back from the valley walls in a never-ending cascade of reverberation.
With a blur of silver-tipped shadow, the two bears lunged, closed, arms swinging, clawing, clutching their enemy at last. Snapping their muzzles ferociously, both tried repeatedly to sink fangs into the other—groping for an ear, biting the muzzle, sinking teeth into the tip of the nose or that thick slab of protective ridge of brow bone over an eye socket.
Then down they tumbled in a heap. Something akin to a frightened yelp burst from one of them as they flew apart, shaking their tough, thick hides … then wheeled quickly to relocate the adversary—charging on all fours.
When they collided again, the ground beneath Bass shook even more than it had before. As the grizzlies locked themselves together, their bodies rippled and shook with the strain of muscles tested to the maximum. Over and over one another they tumbled, smashing against the trunks of great trees and careening over saplings that snapped like kindling wood, four hind legs flailing, akimbo as each fought for balance, to seize the upper hand.
Then the protector found a soft, vulnerable target in the other boar’s snout—and clamped down with his mighty jaws.
Squealing just like a scalded hog, the interloper struggled this way, then that, to free himself. But in the end he flung the protector off only by pitching his opponent over his shoulder against an old pine that shuddered with the tremendous force of the blow as the protector spilled to the ground, having released his grip on the enemy. Shaking his head in a daze, the protector sat there a moment.
Sat there too long.
The bloodied interloper was upon him that quickly, sinking his teeth into the back of the protector’s neck, one front paw yanking the opponent’s jaws back as he raked and raked with the long claws, biting again and again, filling his huge mouth with the neck tissue there at the rise of the great hump.
Twisting to his left, then twisting to his right, the protector tried vainly to snap at the enemy who had its teeth sunk into his neck, long claws slashing at his vulnerable throat, hindquarters raking along his back. Blood glistened the protector’s coat from muzzle to rump as the boar rolled over, slamming its enemy against the tree. Still the interloper would not release his grip.
Groaning, growling, whining in pain and dismay, the huge protector nailed away at nothing more than thin air, unable to land a paw on his adversary stuck like a spring tick on his back. Meanwhile the interloper snorted each time he sank a more secure hold on the tough, thick hair and hide of the protector’s neck—a grunt of impending victory. He drew his head back slightly, eyes wild, taking measure of where next to plant his powerful jaws.
Suddenly the roar of the protector became a high-pitched squeal the instant he burst free of the enemy’s grasp. Free at last, he tumbled rump over head before he came up, dazed, surprised to find he had escaped. Now some ten yards or more away, he shook his whole body, licked quickly at one of the glistening wounds, then set himself for the interloper’s attack.
But instead of pursuing his adversary, the interloper settled to his rear haunches, his big tongue lolling out of those slabbering jaws to slap across the bloody slashes on his own muzzle, trying to ease the torment in that most sensitive part of his anatomy. He snorted and swiped at his muzzle with a paw slicked with drying blood and his enemy’s hair. Then he noticed the new scent. Turned to look. And finally discovered what it was that had lured him there from so far away.
Lumbering up the slope to the ruins of the elk carcass, the interloper sniffed it over from broken neck to the rear quarters, where the hide had been torn back and huge gashes made in the thick muscle. Then his nose nuzzled down toward the belly. With a ravenous roar he brought his muzzle out bright with gore and blood dripping, having discovered the soft innards.
At that provocation the protector leaped forward a few yards menacingly, snarling. But he was stopped in his tracks just as quickly as he had started for the interloper, which immediately raised himself halfway and growled that frightening roar of battle. It was enough to give the protector pause.
He settled back on his haunches as the interloper went back to his feast … then, while his adversary ate on the food just taken from him, the protector suddenly poked his nose into the air—as if catching the hint of something on the wind. A moment more and that battered snout sank slowly, his huge blood-flecked eyes narrowing as would any predator who has caught scent of his prey.
Titus watched the nostrils flare as more slobber drooled from the lower lips.
The bear raised itself to all fours and took a step from the trees when it was immediately stopped by a warning snarl from the interloper busy at its bloody feast. Instead of protesting, the defeated boar turned slightly and lumbered off at an angle away from the victor so that he would clearly present no threat to the carcass.
He had something else in mind altogether.
As the badly wounded grizzly cleared the shadows into the first spray of sunlight crowning the forest that dawn, Titus shuddered again. To watch the muscles ripple as it advanced, the way the long hairs of its coat alternately caught and hid the light with each stretch and contraction of its hide, and how the blood glistened at its torn neck, back in the dark furrows on the haunches, or gathered in frozen coagulate across the hump … his fingers tightened on the wrist of the rifle.
No. Bass refused to believe it.
But there was the monster, plotting a due course for Hannah.
Then the grizzly stopped, sniffed—and rose to its hind legs, measuring the breeze again. Slowly turning aside from the mule and its loud braying, as if it suddenly couldn’t hear the pack animal, or at least did not care. Eventually the snout came round to point in Scratch’s direction.
Titus froze where he was, squatting in the brush at the edge of the tall red-leafed willow. He was sure the beast could clearly hear his heart hammering in his chest.
After two lumbering steps forward the ungainly grizzly dropped to all fours, snorted, and turned back to its original course—the mule. For a moment he was relieved and let the air rush out of his chest in a great gust … until he realized the creature still wanted Hannah.
Bass hollered before he thought, before he could catch himself. And found he was on his feet, standing, bringing the rifle to his hip, laid over that left forearm still clutching the camp ax.
As if the beast ignored him entirely, the grizzly picked up its pace. Its huge frame rocked from side to side as it rolled on down the gentle slope toward the mule. Hannah thrashed and kicked—at times she turned her rump in its direction, preparing to deliver a sharp hoof against her attacker, then other times she tried to pull away at the end of the long rope, bawling, tail whipping in the breeze.
Before he realized what he was doing, Bass found himself sprinting on a collision course for the two of them, wondering if he was going to make it in time before the angry, bloodied grizzly lunged for the helpless mule.
“You son of a bitch!” he screamed.
For some strange reason the bear skidded to a halt at that, quartered to its left as it stretched up to its hind legs, there to stand and stare at him. Then, as quickly, it lunged forward onto its front paws again … as if suddenly discovering Bass. Wiggling its head around—the better to see with its poor vision and to smell with that powerful nose—the grizzly no longer peered at him with eyes filled by wild aggression. Instead they appeared confused, as the massive creature poked its long snout in the air and attempted to take its own measure of this strange, noisy,
