“No.”
“A different bear?”
She sucked in another breath. “Folks say Brain Eater is big. Maybe the biggest bear ever. This one was middling.” Again there was a hiss after each word and sometimes between each syllable.
Fargo’s questing fingers ran along her arm to her hand. She gripped his fingers so hard, her nails dug into his skin.
“We’ll get help,” he promised.
She didn’t respond.
Boots thudded and Rooster returned. He struck a lucifer and held it aloft.
“The lamp is on the table,” Fargo said.
A rosy glow filled the room. Its light bathed the woman, and Fargo’s gorge rose. He tasted bile and swallowed it back down.
“God Almighty,” Rooster breathed.
She had been torn to ribbons. Red furrows ran down her arms, her chest, her legs. In some places she had been clawed to the bone. Her left ear was missing and her left cheek had been shredded, which accounted for the hissing. Her right eye was emerald green. Her left eye wasn’t there.
“Ma’am?” Fargo said, gently squeezing. “It would help to know your name.”
Her right eye remained fixed on the rafters.
“Ma’am?” Fargo touched her good cheek. When she didn’t blink or say anything, he felt for a pulse.
“Is she?” Rooster said.
Fargo nodded. He closed her right eye and stood. “She said it wasn’t Brain Eater.”
“There’s another bear?” Rooster said skeptically. “Do you believe her?”
“I’m inclined to.”
“Why?” Rooster asked.
Fargo pointed at her head. “She still has her brains.”
7
They buried her at first light. They buried the remains of her husband and son, as well. The husband’s throat had been torn open but otherwise he didn’t have a mark on him. The boy had been mauled.
“They’ve both got their brains, too,” Rooster observed as he and Fargo were filling in the shallow graves.
Fargo searched for sign and found tracks in the dirt near a rickety chicken coop. The bear had left the chickens alone. It hadn’t touched a milk cow in a plank shed, either. Only the people.
Kneeling, Fargo studied the print of a forepaw. It was considerably smaller than the tracks of Brain Eater.
“I’ll be damned,” Rooster said, looking over his shoulder. “So there are two. What the hell is going on here?”
Fargo was as perplexed as his friend. It was rare but not unusual for a grizzly to turn into a people-killer. But for two grizzlies to do so at the same time in the same area was unheard of.
“Do we go after it?”
“We sure as hell do.”
For the first mile it was easy enough. The bear had made a beeline for the high country. It plowed through thickets rather than go around them and once it stopped to claw at a tree. But then they came to a rocky slope and the tracks disappeared.
Fargo and Rooster roved back and forth for more than an hour and couldn’t find so much as a partial print. Several times Fargo climbed down to examine patches of bare earth but it was always the same; nothing. They met at the top, and Rooster swore.
“It’s as if the damned critter vanished off the face of the earth.”
Fargo continued searching but in another half an hour he admitted defeat and they turned their horses toward town.
“The folks in Gold Creek ain’t going to like that they have two bears to deal with,” Rooster said. He blinked, and grinned. “Say. I wonder if they’ll post a bounty on this one, too.”
“I’m not so interested in the money anymore,” Fargo said.
“Are you loco? What other reason would there be to hunt them?”
“To stop the killings.”
“You’re not letting it get to you, are you? We’ve seen worse. Remember that time the Bloods caught those trappers?”
“I remember,” Fargo said, wishing he didn’t.
“A hunter’s got to keep a clear head,” Rooster said. “Feelings only cloud the thinking.”
Gold Creek lay peaceful under the morning sun. As luck would have it, Rooster spotted Theodore Petty entering a barbershop. They drew rein at the hitch rail and went in.
The mayor was in the chair and the barber was placing an apron over him.
“Mr. Strimm,” Petty said. “And Mr. Fargo, isn’t it? Come for a cut and a shave?”
“No,” Rooster said. “We’re here to tell you that you’ve got a bigger problem than you thought you had. Or more of one, you might say.”
“What are you talking about?”
Rooster motioned at Fargo. “Why don’t you tell him, hoss? I’m tuckered out after being up all night.” He sank into a chair along the wall and wearily leaned his head back.
Petty listened without once interrupting until Fargo was done. “That had to be the Nesmith family. Nice people, but stubborn. They were warned to come into town until the bear was disposed of but they wouldn’t listen. They thought the bear wouldn’t bother them, as close to town as they were.” Petty rubbed his jaw. “Are you
“The tracks aren’t the same.”
“How can this be, two bears at once? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Rooster sat up. “You better post a bounty on this one, too.”
Petty’s head snapped around as if he were a turkey gobbler that had heard the call of a rival. “So that’s what this is, is it?”
“Mayor?” Rooster said.
“I only have your word for it that there’s another bear,” Petty said. “Maybe there isn’t. Maybe you concocted this tale to try and get more money.”
“We didn’t concoct the dead family,” Rooster said.
“No, I doubt you’d lie about something like that.”
Rooster pushed out of his chair and stabbed a finger at the mayor. “But we’d lie about a second bear? Is that it? Why, you miserable son of a bitch.”
“Here now,” Petty said. “I won’t be talked to like that.”
“You just called us liars, damn you. If I was twenty years younger I’d bust you one. I still might, if you call me a liar again.” Rooster marched to the door and swept it open. “Coming, pard?”
Fargo went out and closed the door and stared at Rooster, who was muttering to himself.
“What?” the old scout demanded.
“You’re a silver-tongued devil,” Fargo said.
The Nesmith family was well liked, and the news of their deaths spread like a prairie fire. So did news of a second bear. By the middle of the morning another exodus of bear hunters had taken place.
Fargo and Rooster weren’t among them. They drank and played cards at the Three Deuces and discussed how they were to find their elusive quarry.
“If all we do is go look for tracks every time somebody is killed, it could be months before Brain Eater is careless enough that we get a shot at him,” Rooster summed up their situation.
