Page 15 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
In a close encounter with a bear, a knife would be better than a rifle, but we’re not looking for a close encounter. If Louie was, that’d mark him as a macho idiot. But he just admitted to hunting wolves from a plane, and his confusion over our guns suggests he only shoots them after someone else has set them up and handed them to him. Even then he’s shooting from a distance. A very long distance in a very safe environment.
Is he refusing to fire the rifle because he isn’t accustomed to the type and afraid he’ll do badly? Or is he lying about all of it, knowing we aren’t going to have the kind of high-powered distance rifle he claims to use?
If he’s not a hunter, why insist on joining the bear hunt? Did he only challenge me to a shooting contest knowing no one would allow that? Claiming credentials without needing to prove them?
Dalton’s shoulders drop, just a fraction, which tells me he doesn’t see any point in pursuing this. He glances my way. I nod. Pushing Louie to shoot won’t resolve anything. If he does poorly, he’ll blame the gun.
Better to let this ride.
Better to let him think he got away with it.
“Anything else?” Dalton says to me.
I shake my head.
He turns to Louie. “You’re not hunting this bear. It’s extermination, not trophy gathering. You’ll return the knife to Mathias and then report to Phil in the morning. Tell him you’re on shit duty for a week.”
“Shit duty? What’s that?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. Cleaning up the shit.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Dalton takes Louie to town while I walk back with Gunnar. I’ve decided I’m not going to comment on him breaking the rules. If he were a resident, I’d have to. His safety would be my primary concern, above any other rights. But Gunnar is … Well, Gunnar is special. In many ways, as Anders would say.
Gunnar was part of the construction crew. After he “helped” us when two coworkers went missing, he declared he’d earned a spot on the smaller crew that would stay until construction was complete. Then, after everyone except Yolanda and Kendra left, he wrangled a spot on staff.
There’s an element of blackmail in that. Gunnar had seen things he shouldn’t have, and he manipulated his way onto the staff because manipulation is what Gunnar does best. He’s not even subtle about it and, oddly, that makes it harder to refuse him.
Gunnar plays his cards faceup. He’s also a good worker. So we didn’t fight to send him home. That doesn’t mean we trust him. There must be a reason why he was so eager to stay. But Gunnar’s open honesty applies only to his actions. His past is a closed book. No, his past is—as far as Émilie’s private investigator can tell—an empty book. Devoid of anything suspicious. Which makes me even more suspicious.
For now, Gunnar is on the staff because at least then I can keep an eye on him. If he chooses to go into the forest knowing there’s a grizzly, that’s on him. At least if he gets eaten, I won’t need to waste more time puzzling over his motives for staying in Haven’s Rock.
* * *
We get to bed at a reasonable hour, meaning “before midnight.” We want to be up at dawn for the hunt, and we manage to not only do that but slip off without anyone delaying our departure. It helps, of course, that dawn comes before six and, as fall settles in, early-morning temperatures aren’t much above freezing. When we leave, the town is dark and silent.
We start where yesterday’s hike had abruptly ended. From that spot—where Max and Gunnar saw the grizzly—we attempt to follow the bear’s trail. We’d tried that yesterday, but neither Storm nor Dalton had been able to follow it far. The trail was easy where the bear had bolted, crashing through undergrowth. But that segment only lasts about twenty feet. Then the visible signs vanish, as if the beast calmed down and ambled off.
Either Dalton or Storm should still be able to find something. They don’t. The bear headed into a rocky area, and they lost the trail there yesterday. We try again today with the same results.
When we can’t go forward, we go backward. Max said he’d first seen the bear across the dried-up streambed, and Dalton finds signs of it near there. We pick up that end of the trail, with the same results: we can follow the trail for about a quarter mile before it disappears, having looped from that same rocky stretch it returned to later.
The rocky stretch suggests the bear came from the mountain nearest to Haven’s Rock. On earlier forays, we’ve spotted bears up there. That isn’t surprising—mountains are prime grizzly habitat.
The problem is that we presume there’s more than a single grizzly on the mountain, meaning we can’t shoot the first one we see. That’s why we’d wanted the trail. Without that certainty, we aren’t shooting.
We spent the next few hours scouting the mountainside and spotting only a moose and a few mountain goats.
“I want to try the trail again,” Dalton says. “It bugs me that we’re losing it like that. Rocky ground means I’m less likely to see signs of disturbance, but Storm should be able to follow the scent.”
Storm’s ears tilt back, as if she’s catching her name and thinking the tone means she’s done something wrong.
I pat her head. “Let’s take a play break first. We have plenty of time and—”
Storm’s head rises, a growl vibrating through her.
“We are approaching!” a voice calls. “Our weapons are lowered, and we expect the same from you!”
