Longarm and the Wolf Women (16 page)

Something told him Magnusson was near. If the snorts were made by the mountain man's wolf, there would be no doubt.

He moved into the shrubs, swept several branches away with his rifle barrel, and peered through the gap.

His lips formed a small O, and the tendons in the back of his neck drew taut. Not fifteen feet away, a massive grizzly stood on its thick back legs, pulling berries from spindly shrubs growing in the cracks and fissures of a rocky scarp.

Longarm tried to keep his hands from shaking as he slowly . . . ever so slowly . . . withdrew the rifle from the tangle of branches, letting the bows slide slowly back into place.

Shit . . .

He backed away from the shrubs, putting first one foot down, then the other, unconscious of the fact that he was holding his breath. The snorts and snaps continued as before. The bear hadn't sensed him.

After he'd put each foot down four times, holding the Winchester straight out before him, he turned slowly and began retracing his trail, moving as quickly as he could without snapping twigs and pine needles under his cavalry boots.

Suddenly, when he was halfway down the slope, the snorting grew louder. Brush thrashed violently.

Longarm whipped his head around.

The bear glared at him through the shrubs, the sky's umber light glinting in its dollar-sized brown eyes and in the honey and berry stains basting its snout.

“Oh, shit!”

The bruin loosed an enraged wail and bolted toward Longarm, shaking its head, the thick, cinnamon hair around its neck and hump standing straight up in the air.

Longarm bolted forward, heart turning somersaults as he sprinted down the slope, bulling through branches and leaping occasional rocks and deadfall. He didn't have to turn his head to know the bear was charging. He could hear the enraged bellows and the thunder of breaking branches, feel the ground vibrating under his pounding boots, about forty yards behind.

At the very edge of the forest, his left shin struck a rock half-buried in the loam and pine needles. He flew forward and felt both feet fly up behind him. Losing the rifle, glimpsing it sliding through the grass along the slope ahead of him, he hit the ground on his right shoulder and rolled.

As he rolled, he caught harrowing glimpses of the bear bulling through the trees behind him, snapped branches flying every which way around it.

Longarm dug a boot into the turf, stopping his fall. He lunged to his feet, saw his rifle lying against a tree stump, picked it up, and continued running as the bear broke through the forest behind him and hurled itself downhill like a landslide.

Longarm's horse had spied the bear. Its eyes were white-ringed as it pulled back on the tied reins, laying its ears flat against its head, curling its tail, and screaming.

The mule had already slipped its lead rope free of the saddlehorn and was buck-kicking and braying in terror as it disappeared through the brush of the incline below the trail.

Longarm leaped over the cutbank and hit the trail flat-footed. He ripped the reins from the tree root with one hand and glanced up slope.

The bear was barreling toward him like five or six beer kegs loosed from a dray, two red eyes gleaming against the dark green forest and its tangled, cinnamon fur. Its bellows rattled Longarm's eardrums. The forest had slowed its descent of the slope, but it was closing fast.

The lawman leaped into the saddle, nearly falling over the other side as the horse lunged sideaways from the bank. He nearly dropped his rifle as the horse swung around and lurched down trail, following the long, dry creek bed they'd been following uphill for several miles.

The grizzly's bellows sharpened. Longarm glanced behind as the bear leaped off the bank, lost its footing, and rolled into the creek bed, dust and rocks and pinecones flying up around it.

For a moment, Longarm thought the bear would give up the chase. But the grizzly bounded off its left shoulder and regained the trail in two long strides, its massive flanks jouncing, propelling it forward on its plate-sized front paws, the curved tines of its brown claws chewing up the trail as it ran.

The horse was eating up the ground in a hell-for-leather run. The bear was gaining, growing in the periphery of Longarm's vision like a collapsing mountain wall whirling toward him.

“Fuck!”

The bear came to within ten feet of the horse's bouncing rump—close enough for Longarm to get a good whiff of the fetid hide, see the dust billowing from its curly, matted coat, see the dust caked to its honey-basted snout.

Longarm had a fleeting, bone-chilling vision of the bruin picking through his bloody bones. Then, suddenly, the horse began to gain ground. The bear fell back first ten yards, then twenty, thirty . . .

Longarm's heart lifted. He slid the Winchester into the saddle boot.

He peered forward over the horse's twitching ears and buffeting mane, then cast another glance behind. The bear continued running toward him but was growing smaller with every stride.

The sorrel was outdistancing the beast.

Longarm sighed. His lips curved a grin. He was about to chuckle when, turning forward, he saw the tree hugging the right side of the trail. It was an old, stout, lightning-topped fir. One stubby branch hung low. On the way up the creek bed, Longarm had had to duck under it.

Now he was too late.

The branch smashed into his chest. He heard himself grunt as the branch snapped. The blow punched him back against the horse's ass. He rolled over the tail and hit the ground on his chest with a loud “Ooooffff!”

Head reeling, he glanced up to see the horse fleeing off down the creek bed, stirrups flapping like wings, reins bouncing along the ground. In the opposite direction, the bruin thundered toward him, its bulky body growing larger once more, its head swinging from side to side on its bull neck as it closed to within fifty yards.

Longarm groaned and heaved himself to his feet. His chest ached, his knees and hands were scraped, and his head throbbed from the blow. He bit back the pain and scrambled up the creek bank, pulling at the old roots and chokecherry branches.

Bears couldn't see well. Maybe the bear hadn't spied his tumble, and would continue down creek after the horse.

As Longarm climbed the slope, breathing hard, casting glances at the raging beast behind him, he feebly pondered ways to save himself if the bear didn't take the horse bait. His .44 was in its holster, and if push came to shove, he'd use it on the bruin. But the shots would probably ricochet off its tough hide, enraging the beast further. He'd have to try something else first.

As he ran up the slope, wincing from the pain in his chest and head, he glanced behind him. The bear was lunging, raging up the bank, heading toward him.

Stupid fucking beast!
The horse would be tastier than Longarm, and there'd be a whole lot more to eat!

Longarm looked around for a tree to climb, but saw none with any low branches. Besides, the bear could probably shake him out of a tree.

He looked straight up the slope's shoulder, through the towering pines. At the ridgetop jutted a rocky spine with black gaps between the rocks. If he scrambled into those rocks, possibly finding a cave, he might have a chance . . .

He put his head down, scissoring his arms and legs, his thighs complaining against the slope's steep pitch. The skin along his spine crawled. He didn't look back, but from the deafening roar and the thunder of its running feet, he knew the bear was closing.

He stumbled, rolled, picked himself up, and tossed a quick glance behind. The bear loomed like a massive boulder, so close that Longarm could smell the fetid odor of its hide mixed with the berry smell and the sweet honey and dust.

He swerved toward the darkest gap—little more than a slit at the base of the stone wall. The bear's hot breath puffed against the back of his neck, its claws tearing at the sod not six feet behind him. He felt one of the tines slice the back of his vest, and then he lofted himself toward the gap.

He hit the ground on his shoulder and rolled into the gap, scrambling, kicking off the ground with his boots, tearing at the gravel with his fingers.

He snugged his back to the cave's rear wall, pressing his body flat against the cool, jagged stone.

He looked around quickly. It was a cave, after all. A shallow one. Maybe ten feet deep.

The opening was about three feet wide, but the ceiling angled slightly higher toward the back wall. The bear nearly filled the gap, tearing at the ground with its knife-like claws, snorting and bellowing like a schoolyard bully whose quarry had locked himself in the privy.

Longarm's heart pounded. He'd never known a fear so keen and primal.

The bear dropped to one shoulder and slid its head into the gap, opening its mouth and showing its jagged teeth, bellowing and snarling, blowing its fetid breath. In the dusky darkness, its eyes glowed insanely.

After the bruin had given Longarm a good, long earful of expletive-laced bear-talk, the beast withdrew its head.

“Sorry, you fuckin' demon,” Longarm snarled back. “Better luck next time!”

The bruin milled around outside the gap for a few minutes. Longarm thought it was about to leave, but it stayed there, pacing as if pondering the problem of how to snag its quarry from the hole.

Finally, after a good bit of snorting and bellowing, its front paws appeared in the gap, digging and tearing at the ground just outside. Soon, it had a considerable hole dug.

Longarm cursed. The damn thing was going to try and dig its way in.

Longarm hated to make the beast any angrier, but maybe drilling a .45 round into an eye would discourage it. He reached for his revolver. His right hand slapped only leather.

The revolver was gone.

He looked around the lumpy, gravelly floor of the cave, felt around with his hands, finding nothing but gravel and what appeared to be old animal droppings—probably bobcat. He must have lost the Colt in that last fall before he'd dived into the cave.

Fuck.

He looked at the bear. The beast suddenly stopped digging. The paws disappeared. A moment later, the bruin bellowed louder than Longarm had yet heard it. The reverberation made the rock shudder, loosed sand from cracks and pits in the ceiling. Longarm winced at the pain in his ears.

Apparently, the bear had dug away the surface sand and found solid rock.

When the bellowing stopped, muffled thuds rose. The bruin must have been pounding the stone wall above the cave.

“Give it up, buddy,” Longarm growled. “I wouldn't be that tasty anyway.”

The bear's thrashes and bellows lowered, as if, deciding Longarm were right, the beast had drifted off down the slope. It didn't go far, however. Longarm could hear it down there for a good fifteen, twenty minutes, thrashing around in the trees, clawing at trunks, snorting, and loosing an occasional bellow at the stars that must have begun kindling in the sky above the forest.

Longarm eased forward, crabbed toward the gap, and stuck his head out. Night had fallen, though the sky was still a soft green, several stars flickering through the pine crowns. He couldn't see the bear, but he could still hear him crisscrossing the slope, snorting and grunting.

The bear suddenly fell silent. Longarm frowned, pricking his ears. A splashing sounded—a stream of water hitting a rock or a log.

The damn bear was peeing, christening Longarm his territory. If he couldn't eat him, then, by god, nobody could.

The snorting continued intermittently for another hour, gradually getting quieter, until the only sounds were the gentle rustle of the breeze through the pine columns and a distant owl hooting.

Longarm waited in the cave another hour, to make sure the bear was really gone and not hiding somewhere, waiting for the rabbit to leave its hole.

Finally, Longarm crawled out of the cave and climbed to his knees, stretching his back, wincing as the skin drew taut against his bruised chest. He was still shaking, hesitant to move very far from his refuge.

Finally, keeping his ears pricked for any sound of the bear, he began moving down the slope. About ten steps away from the gap, he kicked his revolver, picked it up, and slid it into its holster.

Continuing slowly, warily, down the slope, he glanced northeast. “John, I hope you're faring a little better than me so far . . .”

At the same time, and eight miles as the crow flies northeast of Longarm, Comanche John was looking for a suitable camping spot as the night closed down over the narrow canyon he was threading through low, rocky hills and rimrocks.

He'd been skirting the edge of the Purple Buttes for the past hour. Magnusson's old cabin was somewhere in the Buttes—dug into the side of a bluff, if John remembered right—and he hoped he could find it come daylight.

This had been sheep country since the Basques had first settled here, and several sheep men still ushered their flocks down this way from Wyoming. John had seen no flocks today, but he'd seen the remains of shepherds' camps and what the coyotes had left of a couple of old ewes.

He traced a bend in the low canyon wall, a chill breeze nipping at him, and reined up suddenly. A seep ran out of the sand and gravel to his right, and the final pink glow of the dying sun winked off the water filling what looked like a wolf print.

John climbed heavily down from his saddle, walked around the front of his horse, and hitched up his buckskins as he crouched, staring down at the seep.

Sure enough. Wolf print.

Big one, too. And fresh.

His blood quickening, he walked around the seep, finding a whole passel of unshod horse prints and the tracks of slender, bare feet and heavy, thick-soled boots. A tomato tin was lodged between two small rocks, where old Magnusson or one his daughters had chucked it no more than three, possibly four hours ago.