Nate gazed about him again at the dark cave mouths and the mostly rock valley floor and the bubbling cauldrons, and was glad they hadn’t. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything, Brother, anything at all.”
“Why did you come
“Better?” Elder Lexington said, and chuckled. “You will understand better when—” He suddenly stopped and glanced down. “Do you feel it?” he asked excitedly. “Do you feel the power of the Lord?”
What Nate felt was a slight shaking under his feet. The very ground was trembling, as a man might when he was cold. It lasted only a few seconds and stopped.
Clasping his hands, Arthur Lexington cried to the sky in rapture, “Thank you, Lord, for that sign! Thank for you answering Brother King and showing him the truth.”
“You think God caused that?” Nate asked in amazement.
“Of course. God causes all.” Lexington closed his eyes and his smile widened. “When I first heard of this place, I knew it was a sign. I prayed and I prayed and I had a vision. In it I saw a new colony. More than a colony, really. I saw a new city, a great shining city of brethren in the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. Thousands of us, many thousands, living as beacons to the rest of the world.”
“Praise you, Elder Lexington,” Sister Amelia said.
“Can you imagine, Brother King? The clean of heart, the very purest of the pure, letting their light so shine that God will look down from on high and be greatly pleased.”
Nate was about to ask how Lexington could speak for the Almighty when from down the valley, faint but unmistakable, came a piercing scream.
The clatter of the bay’s hooves on rock was like the beat of hammers.
Nate swept out of the valley and promptly drew rein. He glanced right and left but saw no sign of Sister Benedine. The scream had been her only outcry, and he was unsure which way she had gone. Then he spied her basket lying at the edge of the forest and he used his heels on the bay.
Scarlet drops spattered the basket and the grass. Fresh, glistening, dripping, the start of a trail of red that led into the trees.
Nate had his Hawken in his left hand. He rode slowly, cautiously. He had yet to determine who or what had attacked her.
Another dozen strides of the bay and Nate had his answer. He stopped and stared down in horror at the print clearly outlined in a plate-sized ring of blood. The shape, the size, the length of the claws. “Griz,” he said aloud.
The bay snorted and whinnied and stamped. It didn’t like the blood. It didn’t like the scent of the grizzly, either.
“Easy, boy,” Nate said, and patted its neck.
The thud of hooves, the crackle of brush, and Maklin was next to him. The Texan took one look at the print, and swore. “I heard the girl and saw you light out.” He raised his rifle. “She’s dead by now. You know that, don’t you?”
Nate nodded, and rode on. Every nerve in his body jangled with dread. He had tangled with enough grizzlies to be all too aware of how unpredictable they were, and how deadly. When aroused, they were savagery incarnate and virtually unstoppable.
“Those idiot Shakers are coming, but a fat lot of good they’ll be. You can’t fight a griz with love.”
“Quiet,” Nate said. He was straining his ears for the slightest sound. For all their bulk, grizzlies could be as silent as ghosts when they wanted to be, and it wouldn’t surprise him if this particular griz had heard them and was waiting to charge.
From somewhere up ahead came a crunch, as of teeth on bone.
The bay stopped and stamped. Nate quickly slid down and thrust the reins at Maklin. “Stay here,” he whispered, and advanced alone. He made less noise and with luck could take the bear by surprise.
The crunching grew louder.
Nate shuddered to think what was happening. Steeling himself, he crept past several spruce to a shoulder- high boulder. He crouched and edged far enough around to see a clearing on the other side—and what was in the middle of the clearing. His stomach did a flip-flop and bile rose in his gorge.
Typical of its kind, the grizzly was huge. Monstrous with muscle and bristling with hair, with a huge blunt head and a maw rimmed with razor daggers, it was chewing on a leg. Just a leg; it had ripped the limb off Sister Benedine and was feasting on the flesh.
The bear’s back was to Nate. He didn’t have a clear shot. Nor could he see Sister Benedine. Staying low, he began to circle. A few steps and he saw her.
The young Shaker lay on her side, her arms and remaining leg akimbo. Her cap was missing. Her dress was slashed and bloody and part of it, and parts of her, had been torn away. A crimson pool was forming under her; her cheek lay in her blood. Her eyes were wide.
Nate thought she was dead. Then she blinked, and moved. She was alive—and she was looking right at him.
“Please,” she said.
The bear growled and raised its red-rimmed mouth from her leg.
“Please,” she said again.
Nate knew what she wanted. He knew the risk it would put him in. He knew, too, what it would do to him, the nightmares it would bring. She wouldn’t survive what the bear had done; she was suffering terribly and would endure worse when the bear turned from her leg to devour the rest of her.
Nate raised the Hawken. He thumbed back the hammer. He pulled on the rear trigger to set the front trigger and curled his finger around the front trigger.
Sister Benedine did the last thing he expected. She smiled and said with tears in her eyes, “Thank you.”
At the blast the grizzly wheeled around and roared. Instantly, Nate clawed for a pistol. His were .55-caliber smoothbores. At this range they were almost as effective as a rifle. He swept one up and out and thumbed back the hammer, bracing for the bear’s rush and the onslaught of fang and claw.
Only the bear wasn’t there. The grizzly had spun back again and was halfway across the clearing. Bellowing at the top of its lungs, it plunged into the vegetation on the other side and crashed off into the woods, raising a racket that sent birds winging in panicked flight and squirrels scampering in fear to the tops of trees.
Nate waited, every sinew tense. He refused to accept the griz was gone. It would circle and attack. The seconds stretched into a minute and the minute stretched into several, and the bear didn’t appear. “I’ll be switched,” he said. Luck had favored him. The bear had been rattled by the shot and the smoke.
Nate moved into the open. Sister Benedine’s leg lay a few feet away, chunks missing from the thigh. As for Benedine herself, her eyes were still wide, but they were glazing over. “You asked an awful lot of me,” Nate sadly told the body.
With barely any sound at all, Maklin was there. He stood over Sister Benedine and said simply, “Hell.”
“She asked me to,” Nate said softly.
“You did right. That bear would’ve ripped her to bits. You spared her a lot of pain and suffering.”
Nate stooped and gently closed her eyes. “I’ll fetch a blanket and we’ll wrap her in it and bury her.” He turned as the undergrowth crackled anew. Into the clearing burst Elder Lexington and Sister Amelia and others. They showed little emotion as they ringed the ghastly corpse.
“Poor Sister Benedine,” Lexington said. “Taken from us when she was so young and so vibrant with the love of the Lord.”
“It was God’s will,” another Shaker said.
“His works He performs in mysterious ways,” remarked another.
