remember. Something like the fetid, putrid stench of bear oil smeared on a warrior’s skin, or the bear grease rubbed into his braids … a smell so suddenly recognizable as the red nigger rushed close enough to grapple with you—
With their snorts of surprise and curiosity, he watched them both lumber his way out of the willow. But the moment he fell back to his haunches and struggled to drag his legs back under him, the two grizzly cubs skidded to a halt, whirled ungainly, and bumped into one another, their eyes frightened of this big creature they had just discovered. And then they began to whimper.
A sure call for their mother.
So fast did the next few heartbeats thump within his chest—enough time for the sow to burst through the thick willow brush behind her cubs. Time enough for her to stick her nose into the breeze and size up the threat posed to her offspring. Time only for him to start scooting backward.
She shakily rose on her back legs, opening her massive jaws and rolling back her muzzle to expose those yellowed fangs dripping with foamy slobber.
Glancing at the rifle that lay between them, Bass got only to his knees in that instant the sow dropped to all four and heaved his way with a lurch. Shoving the butcher knife into his left hand with that half-peeled willow branch he was already holding, he yanked out his pistol and raked back the goosenecked hammer, getting it up in front of him just in time to blot out her snout as she opened that gaping maw and began to roar.
He felt the pistol buck in his hand as she was yanked up short—immediately swiping the arm and that tiny weapon aside as smartly as she would swat a troublesome mosquito, the pistol’s smoky bark buried beneath the terrible battle cry of a mother wronged and duty bound to protect her young. She brought that paw up to rub at the side of her jaw where the ball smashed through her face. Then gazed down at her enemy and grumbled something great and fearful at the back of her throat the moment she rocked back down onto all four and lumbered into motion.
In that final moment before she swatted him, and the pistol went wheeling into the willow, he remembered how the thick tufts of green grass exploded into the air as she sank each paw into the ground, how the glittering sand spurted from each foot in a golden cascading spray as she exploded toward him.
One powerful paw crashed over the rifle and the heavy trap sack as she scrambled past the cubs and closed on her prey—the open sack clattering across the wet earth, the rifle cartwheeling end over end toward the water lapping against the rain-dampened sandbar.
With her huge maw open and dripping with that terrifying roar, the sow bellowed the grizzly’s battle cry as she pounced upon Bass with such a powerful rage that she bowled both of them over, spilling them across the wet sand and into the tall grass like the large rawhide balls small Indian boys batted back and forth across the ground in their exuberant, youthful games.
He felt the sudden, hot tenderness at his back, rolling groggily onto an elbow, knowing she had caught him with a paw, raking him with one or more of her four-inch claws as she burst past him—
Already she was catapulting onto her hind legs, digging in with her forepaws, wrenching up sand and grass as she righted herself and twisted about in her turn. Angrier perhaps that she had not crushed the puny creature in that first grand charge. Just the way she had had to deal with any male she encountered ever since that day in early spring when she had emerged from her den with those two young cubs given birth and suckled during the last of winter’s rage suffered on this north country.
Leaping across those last ten feet, the sow cut off the light, cut off all air as she dropped out of the sky onto the trapper scrambling like a crab to get out of her path. He landed on his back as everything went black, went suffocating.
Scratch cried out as she reared back suddenly and smacked him with a monstrous paw, as if he were no more than a bothersome badger she was trying to dig out from beneath a rotted log. The fire around his lungs was so great, it felt as if his ribs had been torn loose from his chest as he was hurtled to the side on the sandbar.
Again she bellowed as he blinked grains of sand from his eyes, dragging his cheek off the ground, finding her resting on all fours a few yards away, turned to look at her cubs. Calling to them noisily with those jaws, that curving muzzle drawn back to expose the rows of monstrous yellowed teeth.
The moment the two cubs started his way, Bass shoved onto a hip, his chest refusing him a deep breath, his back burning, hot one instant, icy cold the next as the wind slashed across it. If he could run now, he might stand a chance of getting to the rifle a heartbeat before she got to him. Just spin around as he cocked the hammer, fire as she settled upon him again—
Then he knew it was too late already. That flicker of time’s candle to consider what to do and how to do it had already cost him his chance.
Just take her with his own bare hands.
When she spotted him rising to his knees, coming shakily to his feet, she wheeled fully on him. Then twisted her head to locate her cubs the moment before they bounced against her.
Enraged, her hump hair stiffened. The sow batted the first aside, backhanded the second, sending them both sprawling away toward the cutbank, yelping and whimpering as they tumbled to a stop, licking at their bruises. Then she slowly turned on the trapper, wobbly on his two legs.
He tried to blink the sandy grit from his eyes, clear the dry shreds of cobweb from his head as she flexed her back, shifted her feet, planting them squarely as she rose on those huge, haunches. Then she too stood on hind legs. And windmilled at the air with those long, deadly instruments, her claws bared, glinting in the last rays of the sun.
Just take her with his own bare hands.
And for the first time he realized his hands were not empty.
In the terror of her first strike, he must have gripped on to what he had been holding with the might of a trap’s jaws. In his left hand remained that chunk of willow limb a little thicker than his own thumb, already sharpened at the end.
And in his gritty right hand was the bone handle attached to that curved, ten-inch blade of Mexican steel.
Tottering on her hind legs, the sow lumbered forward, closing those last few yards, towering over the puny human by more than a foot in shaggy, silver-tipped height. Sawing her arms back and forth, she pounced the last two steps and blacked out the sky once more as her awful roar deafened all sound from his ears.
His back burned anew as she clutched him into her with one great paw, burying his face in her chest. Lunging with all he had in that weakened left shoulder, Titus sank the sharpened end of the branch into her thick hide, sensing the point pierce that heavy layer to plunge on into the muscle, shoved on past bone. He felt her jerk as the willow spear went home, driven deep within her lights.
Knowing in that next instant it was not enough to kill the she-brute.
Again she raked at him, and again. Her shaggy forearms only brushing, bruising, battering his shoulder blades and the small of his back as she struggled to rake him with her claws—but she held him too close to get at him. Too close, right there against her: smothered, trapped against the beast that was about to finish him off.
Gagging, Bass could smell nothing but the rank odor of her damp hide, the milk going sour at her two shriveled dugs.
Knowing by this time of the season she was likely giving up nursing the two cubs, teaching them instead to feast on plants and small animals, ants and that meat of whatever big game presented itself to them.
Meat. Four-legged or two. Including a hapless trapper.
As he felt her crush his chest with a fiery pressure, the sow straightened to full height, dragging his feet off the ground, shaking him helplessly against her great stinking mass. He dangled in her grip, his legs flopping like one of his sister’s sock dolls.
How he needed a breath of air. Just one breath more. Sensing his supper rise against his tonsils, Bass gasped, sickened by the dank sour-milk odor of her as he drew back the butcher knife and plunged it into her chest.
Too low!
