were hanging back. Waiting.
Pike said, 'Waiting.'
'That's what they said, yeah.'
That evening Pike phoned a man in Los Angeles. Two days later Pike's rifle arrived. He set out for Angoon.
Wilderness swallowed him..Trees as old as the land pushed from the earth to vanish into a canopy of green. Rain leaked through their leaves in an unwavering drizzle that left Pike wet to the bone. The steep sides of ',he creek were so tangled with ferns, saplings, and the clawed stalks of devilclub that he slipped into the water and waded. Pike loved this wild place.
The others had come earlier in the spawning cycle when the creek was filled with fish. Now, dead salmon littered the gravel bars and hung from roots like rotten drapes. Easy meals weren't so easy. Pike reasoned that the mad boar would have driven away the cubs, sows, and smaller boars to keep the remaining fish for himself.
Pike hiked for the rest of the day but found nothing. That night he returned to his camp. Pike hunted like that for five days, each day working farther upstream. He paused often to rest. The scars in his lungs made breathing painful.
On the sixth day, he found the blood.
Pike slipped around the uprooted base of a fallen alder and saw streamers of crimson like spilled paint splashed on a gravel bar. A dozen dog salmon had been scooped from the water, their torn flesh bright with fresh blood. Some were bitten in half, others were absent their braincase. Pike froze, absolutely still. He searched the devilclub for eyes that stared into his own, but found nothing. He took a butane lighter from his pocket and watched the flame. The wind blew downstream. Anything upstream could not smell him coming.
Pike crept to the gravel bar. Tracks as wide as dinner plates were pressed into the mud showing claw marks as long as daggers.
Pike hefted his rifle to settle his grip. If the boar charged, Pike would have to bring the rifle up fast or eleven hundred pounds of furious insanity would be on him. A year ago he would have had no doubts about his ability to do it. Pike released the safety. The world was
not certain; the only certainty was within you.
Pike waded upstream.
The creek turned sharply. Pike's view ahead was blocked by a fallen hemlock, its great ball of roots spread like a towering lace fan. Pike heard a heavy splash beyond the deadfall. The splash came again; not the quick slap of a jumping fish, but something large pushing through water.
Pike strained to see through breaks in the deadfall, but the tangle of roots and leaves and limbs was too thick.
More splashes came from only a few feet away. Red flesh swirled around him and bounced off his legs.
Pike edged around the deadfall with glacial silence, careful of every step, soundless in the wild water. A dying salmon flopped on a knobby bank, its entrails exposed, but the boar was gone. Eleven hundred pounds, and it had
slipped from the water into a thicket of alder and devilclub without making a sound. A single huge paw print showed large at the edge of a trail.
Pike stood motionless in the swirling water for a very long time. The boar could be laying in wait only ten feet away or it could be long gone. Pike climbed onto the bank. The boar's trail was littered with bones and the slime of rotting fish. Pike looked at the dying salmon again, but now it was dead.
Pike eased into the thicket. A shroud of ferns, devilclub, and saplings closed around him. Something large
but unseeable moved ahead and to his right.
Huff!
Pike raised the gun, but the devilclub clawed at the
barrel and was stronger than his bad arm.
Huffy
The boar blew air through its mouth to taste Pike's smell. It knew that something else was in the thicket, but it didn't know what. Pike wrestled the gun to his
shoulder, but could not see where to aim.
SNAP!
The boar snapped its jaws in warning. It was setting itself to charge.
SNAPSNAP!
It could split this brush like tissue; its attack might come from anywhere. Pike braced himself. He would not retreat; he would not turn away. That was the single immutable law of Joe Pike's faith--he would always meet the charge.
SNAPSNAPSNAP!
Pike's strength failed. His shoulder quivered, then lost feeling. His arm trembled. He willed himself to hold firm, but the rifle grew heavy and the brush pulled it down.
SNAP!
Pike crept backwards out of the thicket and into the water. The snapping of steel jaws faded into the patter of rain.
Pike did not stop until he reached the bay. He pressed his back to a towering spruce and worked to bury his feelings, but he could not hide from his shame or his pain, or the certainty that he was lost.
