Greater exposure to the elements was the price paid for taking the high ground. On this grim night, the price was daunting—the wind a whip, the rain a stinging swarm. Without rain gear, they were soaked. Colson’s sodden clothes were heavy on him, and his wet socks bunched and twisted in hiking boots that could not remain waterproof in this deluge. If it had been colder, he and Ophelia would have been in serious trouble. Later hours of the night would bring lower temperatures; after all, this was Montana. But with luck they would reach help and safety before a chill sapped their strength.
He was coping better than he’d expected. None of what his dad had taught him was lost on Colson. He was surprised that the farther they moved into the wilderness, the more competent he felt, the more sure of what to do as the terrain offered each new challenge. He thought his father would be proud of him, and that inspired him to tough out whatever might lie ahead.
In spite of bad weather and its discomforts, they were making good time. After crossing a forest-service road, they arrived at the transitional crest leading to the western ridge that paralleled the eastern one they’d just traveled. The canyon-head wall, here at the north end of the box, was less steep than the slopes that fell away from the east and west ridges. Once they transited the head wall, they would turn south along the western ridge for less than a mile before the trail descended toward foothills and ranch land.
Slashing in from the northwest, the storm had been battering them from the left, but now they were hiking directly into it. The great volume of rain, with the punishing wind behind it, blurred Colson’s vision when he didn’t keep his head down. Hunched forward, he had to focus on the immediate ground before him.
When the way narrowed for about fifty yards, Ophelia moved from his side and fell in close behind him, as lightning stilted across the sky on bright spider legs. Perhaps because he blocked her from the rain, allowing her to raise her head, she saw the threat when he did not. She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and cried out, but the wind and thunder robbed her words of meaning.
He halted and turned. As he pivoted, the direct beam of the Tac Light revealed what she had seen by the grace of the lightning. On the brow of the slope to the left, among the trees, at most twenty feet away, the immense creature was standing on its hind legs, eight feet tall, maybe taller. Grizzlies were called “grizzly” because the hairs of their thick brown fur were tipped with gray. In the intense beam of the Tac Light, the wet bear looked more silver than brown. Its eyes were as yellow as egg yolks, radiant with animal eyeshine.
Although Asher Optime hadn’t intimidated Ophelia enough to break her spirit, the giant bear brought her instantly to the brink of blind terror. “Oh God, God, oh God.”
The beast looked clumsy and slow. Not so. It could move faster than they could, be on them in seconds, and claw them to the ground.
Yeah, all right, maybe so, but these bears fed on plants, roots, fruit, insects, small mammals, fish. They didn’t go after deer, the way cougars did, and they didn’t regularly kill people. Of course, if they were startled or challenged, they became aggressive, in which case they could take you apart quicker than you could say Hannibal Lecter.
Startled or challenged or maybe sick.
This monster should have taken shelter from the storm. That’s what bears did. The fact that it was here might mean something was wrong with it, a disease or a brain tumor or a condition that made it more dangerous than usual.
The storm shook the night and the bear watched them as if they, in their stillness amid chaos, were the only points of interest.
From a jacket pocket, Colson drew a small pressurized can, the Attwood signal horn he carried on expeditions with his father.
“No,” Ophelia said, and he knew she feared that the noise would anger the grizzly.
In the past, a painfully loud blast from this Klaxon had chased off coyotes and bobcats and once a smaller brown bear. But he and his dad never encountered a grizzly or a mountain lion, which might not be as easily spooked into flight. For a worst-case scenario, his father carried the shotgun loaded with slugs—which was now in Optime’s possession.
Lacking a weapon, Colson hesitated to use the air horn. He held it ready, his thumb on the discharge button, the wet can slippery in his grip, but he took Ophelia’s hand to keep her close. “Shout if it starts toward us.” He turned his attention to the trail once more, moving with her in tow, slowed by the misery of the storm as well as by the need both to avoid placing a foot wrong as they moved toward the western ridge and to be alert for an attack from behind.