I stood absolutely motionless, my arm drew back on the bowstring as the agent passed in front of the buck I had trailed tirelessly for the last hour. It freaked and bolted as it caught his scent, eliciting a rapid response from the man I knew as Morrell. His weapon of choice for hunting humans was a Tec-9 and he fired it on single shot. The buck took two steps and was down. He cursed, went over to the carcass and kicked it but didn’t bother to check if it was dead.
I waited for ten minutes before he moved off and only when his radio crackled did he do so. His conversation was brief, someone else had reported seeing signs of human passage three miles due south of our position. I knew it wasn’t from us, we hadn’t made it that far or near the ridge that was being described to him.
When I was sure he was far enough away so as to not hear me, I checked the buck. He had hit the animal in the gut but it was still alive and suffering. Slitting its throat, I eased its pain and marked the spot where it lay so I could return to it later.
Tracking Morrell was easy---he was nowhere near the woodsman he thought he was and I made it all of twenty feet from him before I triggered his sense of being spied on. He froze and slowly turned his head around. I was standing in the shadows under a large cedar tree wearing camo. He could only have seen me if I moved and I wasn’t stupid enough to do that. I could have taken him then and there, but I was more interested in finding the NSA agents’ base camp.
Blue jays squawked to the left of him and distracted his eyes away from my position. His weapon came up so fast that it could have qualified as an old West fast draw. When the noise turned out to be a bear cub, Morrell cursed and backed up, clearly alarmed at its presence. Which meant of course, that Mama was close by. I waited curious as to what he would do, being an Easterner without any idea of what a grizzly was capable of, he had no clue what he was in for and I certainly wasn’t going to offer suggestions.
When big Mama bear charged out of the brush, he managed to get off two or three rounds before the grizzly hit him full bore. His scream was magnificent, full-throated with terror and echoed. I would have bet that his fellow agents heard it all the way to Fort Meade. It scared me enough to remain frozen and watch as she mauled him to death, going for his liver and guts, satiating her winter-long hibernation. Two cubs joined her. She seemed to totally ignore the rounds that had pierced her hide. I barely saw any blood on her.
When there wasn’t enough left to identify the man, she stood up on her hind legs and afforded me a close-up of the bullet holes. They had merely grazed her heavy bones and not done much damage at all. Bellowing, she stared directly at me.
I spoke in Siouan, thanking her for defeating my enemy and she ambled off without a backward glance, her cubs trailing obediently behind.
There were blood and tissue scattered everywhere. I went through what was left of his gear, removing his weapons, radio, canteen, maps, and sat-phone. The rifle was useless, she had mangled the barrel and no bullet would manage to explode from it without blowing up in your face. Taking the gear was a calculated risk, his remains were clearly the result of a bear attack but bears didn’t need cell phones, guns or maps. Aiken would know something; some human had taken those objects.
I debated whether to try and backtrack Morrell or bring back the deer to the cave; opting finally to bring needed food to the agents. I found the spot where I’d cached the buck, luckily the bears hadn’t touched it.
Dressed and quartered, I managed to carry a side back, leaving the rest up a tree for the return trip. I could have dragged the whole thing but I might as well have started a bonfire with signs depicting my position to one and all.
I moved cautiously, scanning in 360◦ before I committed to a movement. Because I was being hyper-vigilant, I caught the faintest blur of motion out of the corner of my eye.
Staring past the deer’s shoulder hanging on my own, I picked out two men gliding through the woods to my left. Both wore Real-tree camouflage and carried hunting rifles. They appeared to be locals, not Federal Agents and were comfortable in the woods. If they were locals from the Government offices, they would have to be out of the Colorado office stationed near the Air Force Base. They clearly knew how to maneuver in the terrain, wore the appropriate gear and only luck had kept them from spotting me before I had seen them.
If they had been Natives, they would have smelled the deer carcass and recognized the odor of blood.
Once more, the spirit guide of my great-grandfather stepped in to tweak fate. The mama grizzly came between me and the men, forcing them to back up slowly as she rambled her way through the thickets between her and them. She ignored them but they did not stick around to tempt her patience. They were long gone when Morrell’s two-way radio crackled with static in a query over his position and failed check-in.
The grizzly looked up from her feeding, saw me, smelled the deer meat and stood to her impressive seven-foot height. I knew she had scented my kill, her nostrils flared and she surveyed me, the intruder in her realm. Dropping back to all fours, she chuffed and went about her business. Rolling logs and digging through them for grubs was the only thing on her mind.
I told her thanks in Siouan and asked for her blessings as I turned my back walking away from a top predator in perfect safety.
Back at the cave, I crawled in after calling softly before I stood. The light from the lantern flickered on and both men flanked me, guns drawn. With me in the crossfire.
“You’d shoot each other,” I pointed out as I dropped the meat.
“Looks like it but we angled it so we wouldn’t,” Anson shrugged. He eyeballed the deer. “You gonna butcher that?”
“Well, our food out here doesn’t package itself in nice, neat plastic. So yes, I’m going to cut it up. We can smoke what we don’t eat.” I deposited my stolen gear on the cave floor and both men went over the collection.
“Did you kill someone to get this?”
“No. I didn’t have to. Mama Grizzly did it for me.” Delaney picked up the Tec-9 ammo clips.
“Where’s the gun?”
“You ever see what a large Grizzly bear is capable of doing to a steel car? She bent that barrel like it was overcooked spaghetti. Anyone tries to shoot with it---well, they’ll blow off their face or hand. Or both,” I said grimly. “I took what was left that she didn’t destroy and what we could use.”
“Will the agents know you took them?” Anson asked.
“Once they find the remains, they’ll know a bear killed him. Maybe they’ll think the bear dragged off the rest. She did maul his pack and his clothes.”
“Did it…eat him?”
“Guts and innards,” I agreed. “That’s one critter you don’t want to piss off.”
“Of course, you being Indian might have something to do with getting the bear to help you,” Anson said and I stared at him. I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or truthful so I ignored his comment as I cut the venison into steaks, chunks, and strips. Most of it, I fileted into thin strips, laying them out on Morrell’s space blanket.
Back outside in the woods and this time it took me twice as long as normal to collect what I needed because I was both searching for green willows and watching for enemy stalkers. The willows I found downslope near the beginnings of a small stream. I took a few from different spots so that there wasn’t an obvious bare patch. Cutting the lathes close to or under the soil, you would have to be actively searching to find it.
I’d taken one of those parachute cord bracelets from the dead man and used it to tie the bundle of willow switches together which left my hands free for my bow. I must have been a strange looking creature to the animals in the woods.
When I approached the cave, I made sure that it was from a different direction and to leave no tracks. Waiting, I scanned the entrance and surrounding area using the corners of my eyes, the part that senses movement in the unconscious section of the primitive brain. It did not sense danger so only then, did I crawl through pushing the bundle before me.
In my absence, one of the agents had made a small cooking fire and had scrounged camp ware. I laughed. A metal hubcap made a great frying pan laid on the coals and the dead man had obliged us with a few pots from his backpack. Boy scout stuff made of cheap tin and folded inside itself.
They watched curiously as I sat on my haunches and wove the willows into a grill-like lattice that I set against a small, natural overhang in the back wall of the cavern. Transferring a handful of coals, I started a secondary fire making it burn hot and fast so that there was a large bed of coals. Laying the meat on the lattice neatly, I made sure no piece touched another or overlapped as I filled the entire surface of the smoking rack.
“The trick is to keep the fire going and the smoke constant. Don’t let it go out or the flames get too high,” I said. “I’ll bring back more firewood but it’ll take me awhile. I can’t cut it all from the same place nor pick up all the dead wood.”
“Eat first,” Anson urged. “You’ve got to be hungry. Exhausted.”
I nodded slowly. “I am but not a good idea. Too full, I’ll be sleepy and less cautious. Besides, one of us needs to be on guard.” I eyed the cooking steaks and took a small piece. It was hot but waving it cooled it off enough to eat and I chewed slowly.
Venison wasn’t fatty, it was a lean meat and this one had come off a deer just out of winter but it was rich and meaty. Juices flooded my mouth. I wanted to sit down and eat the whole thing but my instincts warned me not to do so.
Sighing, I licked my fingers, picked up my bow and crawled back out into the forest.