The old man had seen the blot of darkness moving against the lesser darkness of the forest. He shifted the rifle carefully up as the bear came into the light, and fired.

A fiery lance of pain shot through the bear’s leg.  He squalled and charged back toward the forest.

* * *

It had been six days since Tim had eaten anything but a handful of pine nuts, and now the squirrel stew was playing havoc with his stomach. He squirmed uncomfortably through the night in his pine needle bed. And he dreamed.

It was morning in his dream – a clear, Sierra morning with the great pines standing bold against the blue of the sky. Once again he had his rifle in his hands. He and his companion were crossing a meadow with the sun at their backs. The grass was wet with dew and the morning sun fell slantwise, casting their shadows before them.

From time to time he would glance at his companion. Sometimes it would be his father in jeans and cowboy boots, striding along with his quick eyes darting about. Then it would be his grandfather, whose brown eyes were nearly buried in a mass of wrinkles. Since it was a dream, Tim did not think it was strange that his companion could change from one to the other.

Across the meadow, a deer emerged from the forest. Tim raised his rifle and his companion – he wasn’t sure which one – whispered, “Steady!” Tim let the rifle settle into place for the fraction of a second it took for the barrel to become still. The deer was pinned on the rifle sight. He squeezed the trigger gently and the rifle leaped in his hands.

The deer stumbled, fell, and rose again to run. But he did not run toward safety. He ran straight toward Tim. Tim reached for the lever to jack up another cartridge, but his hands felt numb and useless. The deer’s forequarters were soaked with bright, red blood. The deer’s eyes were bright with anger; his antlers looked sharp and deadly. The skin of the deer’s chest shivered from the interplay of muscles beneath and each drop of blood stood clear and individual, carried like bright jewels on the tips of the deer’s coarse hair.

The deer’s great brown eyes held no human intelligence, yet Tim felt as if it were shouting a reproach at him for his clumsy shot. A watery weakness swept through him and he had to turn away from that calm, accusing face. And as he did, the weakness settled in his stomach and became genuine pain. He woke, chilled and sweating in his shelter.

* * *

Tim lay awake for an hour. Then he slept, and dreamed again.

This time he was in his parent’s house, and once again his father was there. It was a brief dream, almost a simple touch of memory. His father and mother sat reading and talking while Tim played on the floor. Tim slid from sleep into wakefulness and lay awake again, staring at the rough underside of his shelter roof and missing his home. more tomorrow

Tim hobbled to the aspen and cut a palm sized square of bark. With this to protect his hand from the tiny chips of volcanic glass, he pressure flaked the blades into shape using the point of his knife, working slowly and removing hundreds of tiny chips. The finished product had a smooth concavity down the length of one side where a previous flake had been removed and a rough concavity down the other side. It was crude, but it would serve.

The squirrel had been simmering all this time. The smell made it hard for Tim to concentrate on his work. Now he removed the carcass from the water. He tore at the meat with his fingers, removing most of the bones and setting them aside. Then he added pine nut flour and stirred. The broth thickened, the smell thickened, and when he could wait no longer, he ate, shoveling the stew into his mouth with a large splinter from his whittling.

When it was entirely gone, he refilled his bark basket with water, dropped in the other half of the carcass, and set it beside the fire to boil again.

Tim took time to slash the bark of a pine sapling in a dozen places so pitch would ooze out. The pitch would not come as readily in October as it would have in summer, but he hoped to get enough to set his spear and arrow points. Then he returned to the fire and worked steadily into the night.

Chapter 6

Hunger stalked the black bear, fueling his rage. He had eaten the leaves of willows, the inner bark from several pines, and had torn several rotting logs apart for the grubs within, but this alone could not supply his body’s needs. His sense of smell was almost entirely gone, and without it he could not find the food he needed.

Hunger and pain-fueled rage drove him back to the lower hills three nights later. He approached the scene of his downfall with care. He raised his head and instinctively tested the air, but it did him no good. His eyes saw only the usual dim shapes and his ears were spread wide. Somewhere ahead a pig squealed. It was a high pitched, momentary sound. The bear paced nervously. Hunger drove him on, while caution and the strangeness of the scentless night held him back.

Now he could catch some scent. Even his torn nose could register the smell of a pig pen at close range, and he could sense the ripe carrion smell of rotting flesh. Pushing forward to the point where he had broken through the pig pen fence before, he found it repaired. He pressed his muzzle through a square of wire and sniffed uselessly.

He heard a sharp metallic click. He paused cautiously, but the sound was not repeated and he had no way of knowing that it was the sound of a Winchester being brought to full cock.

The pig that he had killed lay rotting in the yard. Flies swarmed about it. The light from an electric light bulb mounted at the barn eaves fell across the body of the pig.

The black bear was wary and cunning, but he was not human. He could not know that no farmer would leave a rotting carcass in his yard, nor did he know that the electric light had only been placed there two days before.

The old farmer was waiting. He had sat through last night, and he had already sat several hours in silence tonight. He had left his shotgun inside, and sat in the shadow of his porch with a rifle across his knees. more tomorrow