Page 18 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
“It is.”
“I have questions. I’m going to need to speak to—”
“No.”
“You want us to investigate?” Dalton says, taking the pages from my hand and holding them out. “We need to be able to interview the witness.”
“Ask me your questions. I’ll answer if I can and relay answers if I can’t.”
Dalton’s jaw sets. “That’s not—”
“What if this were reversed? If one of your people saw something, and you needed me to help. Would you let me speak to your person?”
It’s not the same. Our people are refugees, promised privacy. His are employees. But if we say it’s different, we give him valuable information.
“That would depend on the situation,” Dalton drawls. “If we deemed it urgent, we’d let you speak to them. Is this urgent?”
“I don’t know. Is it urgent to you? Seems to me this problem affects both of our settlements, and I might argue it’s more urgent for yours than mine. You have women. We do not. We are a town of men chosen for their fortitude. This mountain man clearly didn’t want to tangle with our person. Would he think the same about all of yours?”
“I’d rather tangle with one of your boys than with…” Dalton nods my way. “But I will take the point that this threat affects us all, and I’ll grant you your privacy as much as I can.” He looks my way. “Does this work?”
I make a face. “Not ideal. But, sure. If I can ask some questions, that’ll have to be enough.”
CHAPTER SIX
After I question the man, Dalton and I are off, tramping through the woods in silence. After about a kilometer, we pull off the path and find a log to sit on.
“Well?” I say. “What do you think?”
Dalton scratches his stubble. “Not sure what to think.”
I take out the pages, along with the notes I made. “Could this be Max’s Bigfoot?”
“Seems likely.”
According to the report, the miner had been working the claim when he’d walked away for the main reason anyone leaves a wilderness path or campsite—to take a piss. While he was doing that, he’d heard something, thought it was one of his coworkers playing a joke, and turned around sharply to, well, to spray the prankster. There are aspects of male humor I will never quite get, and from the way Dalton cocks an eyebrow at that part, there are aspects he’ll never get either.
Anyway, our miner wheeled to spray his prankster and found himself looking at a guy dressed in skins. A big, brawny man—well over six feet, according to the miner—with scraggly hair, a long brown beard, and wild eyes. He’d lunged at the miner with what looked like a homemade blade. The miner shouted, and the man took off through the forest.
My questions had been about exactly how the guy was dressed. All the report said was that he was wearing “skins.” People up here often wear tanned hides and furs, and there’s a huge difference between a person wearing homemade buckskins and boots and a wild man draped in the raw hides of dead animals. Apparently, whoever took the report failed to realize that, and when we asked, the answer was clear—this was not tanned and sewn clothing. It was hides. More specifically, bear hides … or at least one bear hide, worn in a very significant way.
The figure had been draped in a bearskin, like some kind of Viking berserker. The hide still had the skin of the head attached, which the man wore on his own head. He had the forelegs apparently tied over his own arms, with the paws—and claws—intact. Why they decided this wasn’t report-worthy, I’ll never know. Maybe they thought “wild man of the woods” covered “wearing a bearskin like a Halloween costume.”
Does this match what Max saw? Yes. Gunnar and Max had both seen ears and paws, which is explained by the costuming. Max saw human eyes. Gunnar had only seen a brown-furred face. A man with a long brown beard and hair wearing a bear-head hood would explain both.
We’d found fur and large indistinct prints. The costume explains the fur, and the large man explains the prints, with the bearlike one being from the hide.
“It also explains the behavior,” Dalton says. “Max and Gunnar saw it moving on two legs, further and faster than we’d expect from a bear. And getting close to humans isn’t normal bear behavior.”
“It is normal human behavior.”
He nods and looks out over the forest with frustration and worry.
“We scouted before we built,” I say. “Multiple times.”
“Not well enough, apparently.”
I shake my head. “We’d never have found Lilith’s cabin unless we walked into it. The miners arrived after us—that’s just bad luck. As for a guy living in the woods?” I shrug. “I’m hoping he’s just passing through. It’s fall, and everything in the forest is settling in for the winter. If he’s nomadic, like Jacob, that’s what he’s doing. Passing through looking for a good spot.”
