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She pumped up the cuff and he looked away, suddenly squeamish, as if she were sticking a needle in his vein. "What did you hear?" she asked again.
"Animals, I think. You know, maybe just little ones, though they could have been something else. Maybe mice or rabbits or coyotes or something. I know you're supposed to make a lot of noise when you go out into the woods like that, to scare the bears off. Joan told me that. It wasn't that I forgot, but you guys being asleep and all-"
"That's okay," A
"Anyway, I don't think that stuff I first heard was the bear. Maybe it was but I don't think so. Then I heard what sounded like footsteps. It scared me pretty bad. I was, uh, done then…"
A
"Maybe I should have shouted," he said. "Maybe it would have scared him away."
Maybe it would have. Before A
"Footsteps?" A
"No, it soundedlike footsteps," Rory amended. "At first. But then it broke something, a stick or something, and I heard it growl. I've been to zoos and all and I saw that movie The Bear,but I thought they'd mixed things to get that noise-lions or trains or whatever, like they mixed noises to get Tarzan's yodel to come out big enough. That's why little kids can't do it right."
A
"I guess they didn't have to fake anything," he concluded. "That roar was about the most awful sound. That bear was immense. I could hear it ripping into the tents. That's when I figured I'd better get help."
The scene played out in A
"You're in fairly good shape for a man who's been without food or shelter for thirty-six hours," she told him.
"The hikers gave me fruit and granola bars," he said. "They'd've let me eat everything in their packs-and I could have-but it didn't seem polite."
"We'll see about replenishing their stores," A
The Chinese cloth slippers had held up remarkably well. Though they had been pulled and squashed and pounded till they resembled third base after an eleven i
"You sure got your four-ninety-five's worth out of these things," she remarked as she unbuckled the Mary Jane strap on the right shoe and slipped it off. His feet were coal-black from his dusty tramp through the burn. Until he had washed, there was no telling what was bruising and what was dirt. She found one cut on his heel that lined up with a tear in the slipper's sole, and no blisters.
Gently she palpated the right foot, then the left. "What happened after you went for help?" she asked. "You still owe me thirty-five hours' worth of story."
"Not much," he said vaguely. A
"Did you take any falls? Hit your head or anything?"
"No. Like I said, I'm fine."
Head trauma, then, did not account for this sudden fog. Evasive, A
The faceless face of the dead woman flashed behind A
She snorted abruptly, an aborted laugh gone up her nose. Rory had run off in his slippers and pj's, pursued, at least in his own mind, by a bear. Then he meets a stranger by accident, kills her for no reason, stashes her pack, finds an edged weapon, drags her into the undergrowth and cuts her face off, all without getting a drop of blood on his person. Even for A
"You go barefoot a lot?" she asked. The calluses on the bottoms of Rory's feet were thick and hard. He'd suffered less from his overland ordeal than most would.
"A fair amount," he replied. "Lots of times I run cross-country bare-footed. It drives Coach out of his mind. I only do it in practice. Never at a meet."
A
"I lost my sweatshirt," he said, sounding as if he was telling a lie.
A
"I guess I must have dropped it or left it behind or something."
Vague again. Lying again?Maybe not. Maybe he didn't know how he'd lost his shirt and that lapse was scaring him. Maybe.
"It happens," she said neutrally.
"I guess."
The chief ranger came over to their outdoor clinic. "So. He going to live?"
"For a while," A
"We need to figure out the best way down," Ruick said when she'd finished. "No packaging's called for. I can send the backboard down on the helicopter. We can either get him to the nearest good landing site for airlift or have Gary or Vic bring the pack horses over and ride on down the south side. From a medical standpoint, do you think it matters a whole hill of beans?"
"Half of one, six dozen of the other," A
Rory sat on his stump looking back and forth at them, apparently accustomed to being discussed in the third person when he was in the room. He came to life when Harry said, "We'll airlift you out, Rory. We've got the helicopter till sundown. May as well use it."