“I don’t need him to,” Moose said. “I ain’t dumb. You got your head in the clouds.”
“I doubt you comprehend at all,” Wendy said.
Moose bunched his fists. “Keep talking to me like that and so help me, I’ll pound you.”
“Talk a little louder so the bloody bears will know we’re here.”
“They already do.”
“Is that true?” Wendy asked Fargo.
“Odds are,” Fargo said.
“Then how do we sneak up on them?”
“We don’t.”
“Is this like tiger hunting? Do we go in and make a lot of noise and drive them toward the Indians? Or do the Indians drive them toward us?”
“Drive a grizzly?” Moose said, and laughed.
“We go in and hope we get off a shot before they claw us to bits,” Fargo said.
“You make it sound as if we’re depending entirely on luck.”
“Now the foreigner gets it,” Moose said.
Wendolyn muttered something about Yanks, shouldered his elephant gun, and walked away.
Moose chuckled. “I reckon I hurt his feelings.”
“Go easy on him. That elephant gun of his could come in handy.”
“That reminds me,” Moose said. “I’m been meaning to ask. What the blazes is an elephant, anyhow?”
Fargo had been keeping an eye on the sun, and now he stood. “I’ll tell you later. It’s time to start in.”
“Look out, Brain Eater,” Moose said. “Here we come.”
Firs grew high and straight and thin. They were so closely spaced that their trunks were in perpetual shadow. Fargo and the others had to thread through a maze of narrow gaps, often with limbs practically poking them in the face.
Of all the places the two grizzlies could pick to lie low, this was especially dangerous. The bears could charge out of anywhere at any time.
Fargo held the Sharps in his left hand with the stock on his leg and the barrel against his chest where it was less apt to be snared by limbs. Moose was thirty feet or so to this right, Wendy about the same distance to his left. So far they had penetrated over a hundred yards and the only sign of life had been a few birds and a chipmunk that chattered and scampered off.
Fargo probed the shadowed gloom. A mistake could cost them their lives. His nerves were on edge. When a finch took startled wing, he gave a slight start himself.
Skirting several tightly clustered boles, Fargo drew rein.
On the ground were droppings. That they were bear was obvious.
That they were left the day before would be easy to confirm but he didn’t climb down and risk being pounced on. He clucked to the stallion.
The minutes crawled. It was half a mile to the middle of the stand. The heat and the quiet took a toll. Drowsiness nipped at him but he shook it off.
They spooked a rabbit. They sent a doe and two fawns bounding off. A cow elk snorted and plunged away through the undergrowth in a panic.
Fargo had not seen bear sign since the droppings but now he came on a tree with claw marks and another where the bark had been rubbed off and crinkly hairs stuck to it.
Wendy drew rein and extended an arm.
Fargo looked but didn’t see anything. He thought it must be the Brit’s imagination. Then a large shape detached from a mass of shadow. Snapping the Sharps up, he was about to shoot when the shape stepped into a sunbeam. “Another damn elk,” he said in disgust.
The firs seemed unending. With the sun screened by the tall trees, Fargo had to guess how much time had passed. About an hour, more or less, he reckoned, when the Ovaro pricked its ears.
Ahead, something moved.
Fargo brought the Sharps up again but snapped it down. He stopped and waited for the approaching rider to reach him. “Any sign?”
“No,” Bird Rattler said. “You see bears?”
Fargo shook his head.
“They not here,” the warrior stated the obvious, sounding as disappointed as Fargo felt.
Red Mink and Lazy Husband converged from either side. Moose and Wendy joined them, and the looks on all their faces said all there was to say.
Fargo reined down the mountain. It would take them until long past dark to reach the meadow. Were it not for Cecelia and her children, he’d make camp in this valley and head back to them in the morning.
The buzzards were gluttons. They had eaten down to the skeleton and half a dozen were up to their feathered bellies in intestines and organs. The stink was abominable.
Fargo gave them a wide berth. The feeling that had pricked at him all day came over him stronger than ever. He stopped and stared at the ungainly birds and racked his head for a reason.
“What’s the matter?” Moose asked. “I want to get back to Cecelia quick as we can.”
“Something’s not right,” Fargo said.
“About those beastly scavengers?” Wendy said, viewing the vultures with distaste. “They’re ugly blokes, I’ll grant you, but they serve a purpose. I’ve seen their like on every continent.”
“Not them,” Fargo said. “Something else.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I wish to hell I could.” Fargo watched a buzzard tug at a strip of flesh that was stuck to a leg bone.
“Let’s keep going,” Moose urged. “It’ll be dark soon and Cecelia and her little ones are alone.”
“You act like their father,” Wendy teased.
“Maybe I will be,” Moose said. “Cecelia is looking for a new husband. I might not be much of a catch but she says I can be trained.”
Wendy laughed. “Ah, yes. Don’t you find it ironic that women marry a man and then want to change him into something he wasn’t when they said ‘I do’?”
Moose shrugged. “I don’t mind changing some if I get to be in the same bed with her every night.”
“Sex,” Wendy said. “The great equalizer.”
“God, you talk peculiar. And you better not be thinking of Cecelia when you say that word.”
“Perish forbid,” Wendy said.
Moose motioned impatiently at Fargo. “What are we waiting for? Those bears ain’t anywhere near here.”
“No, they’re not,” Fargo said, and the vague notion that had been troubling him was suddenly clear as crystal. “Son of a bitch,” he blurted.
“What’s wrong?” Moose asked.
“Why didn’t I see it sooner?”
“See what?”
“Brain Eater never came back to her kill.”
Moose looked as confused as a human being could be. “So she didn’t come back? What difference does that make?”
“A grizzly wouldn’t let that much meat go to waste unless it had a damn good reason.”
“She wasn’t hungry or she was busy with the male,” Moose said. “When bears mate they don’t think about food as much. I’m like that myself but after it’s over I’m always hungry as can be.”
“Brain Eater didn’t finish the horse because she wasn’t here,” Fargo said, “and if she wasn’t here, where was she?”
“I still don’t savvy.”
Fargo raised his reins. “Ride,” he said. “Ride like the wind and hope to God I’m wrong.”
18
A full moon cast the meadow in pale light. They came out of the trees and drew rein, their exhausted horses hanging their heads.
Wendy cleared his throat. “I say, the fire has gone out. Weren’t they supposed to keep it going night and day?”
“Cecelia!” Moose hollered, and used his heels with no thought to his own safety.
“Damn,” Fargo said. He went after him. He still hoped he was wrong but the Brit had a point; the fire should still be burning. Fire was one of the few things most bears were afraid of. Cecelia knew that. And with her children at stake, she wouldn’t let it go out.
Moose frantically bellowed her name. He was the first to reach the camp. Drawing rein, he exclaimed, “My God! The lean-to!”