Rushing through the trees, he did his best to focus on anything but the searing pain radiating across his back. Squinting upwards as the bright early afternoon sunlight briefly flared, he was momentarily blinded before the tall pines again blotted out the sun. Grimacing, he used his free hand to adjust the bloody t-shirt wound tightly around his back. He felt the first probing tendrils of a fever snaking their way in. He knew better than most how dangerous infection could be in the backcountry. It would have to wait. Everything would have to wait now. Briefly slowing, he shrugged to adjust the crushing weight of the little one’s limp form over his shoulders. The hot, shallow breath of his young charge tickled his cheek as he resumed his previous pace. The desperate urgency of the moment threatened to swallow him whole.
Although moving fast, he felt himself fading. He wasn’t the man he’d been this morning, the hard won ease he’d developed in the wildest of places was slipping. As he slid forward through the forest, he knew there were miles yet to go over difficult terrain. He was hounded by his decisions from earlier that day. Had he done what was right? Or, in following his heart, had he doomed them all?
Willing his mind to focus on anything but the surging pain, he stepped away from himself. He knew this, his body knew this. Putting everything aside, he switched to autopilot; it was the only chance they had. While his body glided onward, Grant Walker concentrated on what had happened that day.
#
High in the bowl of a windswept alpine meadow, he’d patiently waited, pressing his body into the dark earth beneath him. With his camouflage and the riotous bursts of color from the surrounding wildflowers he was able to break up any recognizably human form. Even after all these years and the countless hours logged tracking these creatures, he remained stunned by what he saw.
Two hours into his morning watch, as night faded to a dusky dawn, Grant had noticed movement almost directly in front of him. The larger one appeared first, eyes shifting to and fro as she assessed the meadow for threats. Seeing none, she let out a soft grunt and looked over her shoulder, almost instantaneously the smaller creature scampered into view. Without hesitating, he launched himself into the cold stream that jogged through the meadow and began splashing noisily as he hunted fish. Grant knew these two, a mother and son pair that he’d developed a particular affinity for. He’d been following their family group for the last three summers.
Grant watched as they idly picked raspberries on the bank of the stream. Just as the little one plunked down and began popping the fruit into his mouth, chaos exploded in the field around him.
There was a dream like quality to the moment as his eyes snapped to the mother. Grant saw the startled look on her face and watched as it morphed into panic, then rage. The cascade of emotions came so rapidly, so fluidly, so human-like that the researcher in him momentarily ignored the impending danger.
Leaving heavy grunts hanging in the cold morning air behind him, a massive male grizzly bear moved rapidly along the banks of the stream heading straight for her and the little one. The mother screamed in protest as the bear picked up speed, moving like an arrow toward its mark. Grant saw the grizzly’s muscles shiver and flex, his flanks shuddering in effort as he roared toward the protective mother.
Grant felt that peculiar vibration in his chest cavity, a vocalization that was in a range just below that of human hearing, the mother’s desperate call for help rumbling in his stomach, his lungs, and his heart. He watched the quick movement of thick ropes of muscle under the dense mat of dark, coarse hair; he saw how her brow furrowed in something akin to righteous indignation as the bear drove toward her. She picked up a large rock and flung it at the bear as it closed in, scoring a direct hit. Staggering briefly, it quickly resumed its loping gait. On it came, a deadly wall of muscle, teeth and claws. With one hand she shoved the little one deep in the surrounding bushes, and without hesitation charged the bear.
They came together with the force of a thunderclap.
For all the speed the bear had picked up, she moved in a way that was hard to describe. In just a few strides she covered yards of ground. She dropped low and tried to hit the bear below the head with one of her massive shoulders in an effort to trip him up. As the bear fell, his claws drew a ragged line of torn flesh down her back. Gasping loudly in pain, she staggered back, still consciously circling the bear away from her offspring. Scrambling back to his feet, the bear reared on its hind legs, drawing himself up to his full height of over ten feet. Wounded but not cowed, the mother unleashed a scream that was filled with horror, rage and somehow tinged with sadness. Grant watched her desperately scan the area for help, but none was coming. She was alone. He covered his mouth to stifle a yell, adrenaline pulsing through his body as he watched from fifty feet away.
Quickly refocusing back on the enemy, she turned and set her shoulders as only a mother could. She leapt, driving a massive fist into the grizzly’s head. Stunned, the bear moved back before lunging at her with a huge paw of razor-sharp claws. He connected with her upper leg, a splash of bright red blood shooting outward. Dropped to one knee now, she swung hard at the bear and connected time and again . . . but it wasn’t enough. She let out a cry of mortal agony as the bear slashed her through the midsection. The little one, tiny in his rage, dashed out of the bushes, shrieking in fury as he charged the bear, doing whatever he could to protect his mother. The bear repelled the valiant attack with a casual swipe of his paw, raking deeply across the thigh of the little one and sending it sprawling feet away.
Lying on the ground and bleeding profusely, she could only roar in horror as the bear moved toward her child. Unchallenged, the grizzly sauntered almost languorously across the remaining distance to the little one. A tiny helpless scream of fear made its way to Grant across the open ground.
It was too much for him to handle.
He couldn’t have the deaths of these two on his conscience.
Without thinking, he shakily stood up from his concealed position, his mind doing all that it could to keep him from what his heart told him he must. Through all his years of research, he knew the greatest risk in the backcountry was getting caught in the open with a grizzly. Overriding decades’ worth of caution did not come easily.
“Hey!”
Grant tried to yell but his voice wouldn’t come. He ripped off his camouflaged mask and hood and breathed in deeply. He exhaled and bellowed, “Hey, over here, you huge bastard!” It was only at this moment that Grant realized that he didn’t have a plan. With the exception of his knife he had no other weapons, and if he got close enough to that monster to use it he was going to have bigger problems. Suddenly, he remembered, the flare gun! He kept it for only the direst of emergencies. Clearly this situation qualified.
The bear half-turned from the little one to look at Grant. Ribbons of icy dread coursed through his body. The mother looked toward Grant as well, and in alarm their eyes met. In that instant, he could feel that somehow she understood. Blinking, she broke the connection. Marshaling the last reserves of her waning energy, she began crawling toward her killer, thundering her dying fury at the bear, reaching out to pull him closer to her and desperately trying to keep him away from her offspring.
Frantically digging in his backpack, Grant’s hand closed on the familiar heft and shape of the flare gun. He moved toward the death-locked pair, stopping when he was within twenty feet to take aim. He was counting on the velocity of the flare to scare away the bear—there was no backup plan. The bear loomed over the mother as she sought to hold its attention. He steadied himself for an instant. As he aimed, everything else fell away.
He fired.
He hit the bear with a glancing shot across the left side of his face. The flare burned brightly before ricocheting wildly off into the field. Roaring in pain, the enraged grizzly charged Grant. In an instant it was on him. Grant tried to dive out of the way but a massive paw raked deeply across his back as it flashed past him. Overwhelmed by the pain, Grant dropped to all fours. Choking back the bile that swelled up from his empty stomach, Grant shook his head to clear the dizziness threatening to envelop him. Looking up, eyes squinting against the pain, he watched the bear retreat into the tree line. Total silence poured into the clearing as adrenaline surged through Grant’s body.
For a long moment there was nothing. Only his rasping breathes as he fought to calm himself. As the pounding in his ears died and the pain dulled, new sounds penetrated the fog around him. He began to hear her again. Quick, thin breathes that came from nearby. Shaking, he slowly rose to his feet. Looking down, Grant noticed that he still clutched the empty flare gun. Dropping it, he turned and took a cautious step toward the mother. She was on her side facing away from him, laboring to breathe, her chest heaving in ragged gasps. Grant gave her a wide berth as he approached. Groaning with effort, she rolled onto her back to face him. He heard a low guttural growl that was cut off by a quiet cry of pain.
Unconsciously, raising his hands as if to say, “I’m not a threat,” he immediately felt ridiculous. How would she know what that meant? He slowly kept moving toward the little one, who he could hear whimpering a few feet away in the brush. He heard the growl again as she tried to move toward him, but was unable. Grant put his hands up once more and backed slowly toward the little one. Looking down, Grant saw that his breathing was shallow, his eyes were closed and he looked to be in shock from the deep gash on his thigh. Crouching down, the little one’s large dark eyes fluttered open. Whimpering loudly as Grant leaned in, the little one looked toward his mother before losing consciousness.
Grant heard the mother frantically inching closer but getting weaker and losing more blood with every beat of her heart. Grimacing as he stood, Grant looked down at her. There was nothing to be done. Her wounds were too great; too much blood was already lost. Shifting, he looked at the little one; there was hope for him yet.
In an instant, he made up his mind. Working quickly, Grant unzipped his suit and whipped off his undershirt, tearing it into strips that he began to tie around the leg of the little one to stem the blood loss. When Grant felt better about the bleeding, he bent down and picked the him up. Although he was only about four and a half feet tall, he weighed more than Grant expected. Hoisting the little one up, he walked the short distance back to the mother. Her dark brown, almost black eyes watched him intently the entire time. Nearly unable to move now, Grant gently laid her child in her arms. He’d never been this close to one before and a detached part of him marveled at her immense frame up close.
With great effort, she caressed the little one, making low, soft cooing sounds. Once again Grant felt the rumble in his chest, as she communicated in a frequency he could not hear. Suddenly feeling like an intruder, he turned away. Reaching into his pack, he found a clean t-shirt. Groaning in pain, he wound the shirt tightly around his pulsing back. Gingerly zipping his camo back up, he turned to face her. Unable to move now, she simply stared at him. A deep sadness bridged the gap between them. Kneeling, he gently touched the child’s head. He made eye contact as he put his hand on her massive forearm.
“I know you don’t understand this, but I will protect your child with my life.” Ever so slowly, she placed her immense hand on the little one’s leg wound. The meaning was clear, he nodded, gently squeezed her arm and put his hand over the cloth covering the wound.
She shuddered once and was gone.
#
Catching his foot in a tangle of brambles, Grant was unceremoniously dumped back into the present. Trying to keep his balance, the weight of the little one shifted. Scrabbling to hold on as he fell, he was unable to get his hands down in front of him. Seemingly in slow motion, he crashed down to the forest floor. Grant watched helplessly as the little one tumbled away, slamming into the trunk of a nearby tree with a soft gasp of pain. Immediately trying to get up, Grant collapsed back to the ground as the pain swelled dangerously. His head swimming, Grant raised himself to one knee as the edges of his vision began to grow indistinct and dark. Just as he reached the little one, the pain overwhelmed him. With a quiet sigh, Grant crumpled on top of his young charge and promptly passed out.
