Blood lure

"I don't need to go down," Rory said, sounding alarmed at the prospect.

Ruick looked at him, cleared the irritation off his face and changed gears from logistics to public relations. Hunkering on his heels so he wouldn't be talking down, he explained, "You've been out a long time, Rory. Thirty-six hours up here is nothing to sneeze at. Your feet are battered, you've gone without food, bad sunburn, dehydrated-"

"I had water," Rory said defensively. Picking up the high-tech water bottle with the filtering system built in, the one A

"You still need to get checked out," Ruick said reasonably. "Your feet-"

"I only got that one cut and A

Irritation revisited Ruick's face. He was not used to being thwarted. Probably he had no children. A

"You have to go down, son," Ruick said, striving for fatherly kindness and almost making it.

"No I don't," Rory returned. A

She doesn't take shit off anybody. A

What would make a boy so afraid of taking shit-A

Ruick sighed, stood up and gazed around for a moment. His eyes lit on A

A

Rory took a few seconds to downgrade from obstinate to sullen. "I'm not hurt," he said. "There's nothing the matter with me. I'm here to do that bear thing. We got more traps to set, don't we? I don't see why I've got to go down and be messed with because I got lost. He just wants to cover his ass in case I decide I got some big injury and sue, which I'm not going to do, and make like him calling out the troops and the helicopter and everything was a good idea. Why should I be punished because I accidentally got lost?"

Punished. A kid's word. Still, A

"That bear tore up our tents," she tried. "Shredded them like confetti."

"They were government issue. Don't tell me they don't have more tents."

A

"I'll sleep on the ground if I have to," Rory said.

His hands were clasped together in his lap, gripped so tightly the knuckles showed white. Rory'd been terrified of bears. Then a particularly aggressive member of that club had ratified his fears. If he was willing to face another night in the open despite that, more power to him. Maybe that was it, maybe he had to prove to himself he wasn't a coward.

"Okay," A

Harry was not pleased but he was practical. Legally he could not force Rory to accept medical transport, since the boy was neither mentally incompetent nor unconscious. Technically he was underage, but since his parents were close at hand and he clearly had no life-threatening emergencies, it would be inexcusably heavy-handed to play the minor card. Ruick also struck A

"You're going to have to walk back to Fifty Mountain in those things," Harry warned, pointing to Van Slyke's disreputable footwear.

"I can do that, sir," Rory said, all good ma

"You got a shirt or something you can put on over that sunburn?"

"A

The "sirs" were put to good effect. Ruick was sufficiently mollified to lose interest. "Lets go, then," he said. "I expect your parents at least will be glad to see you."

At Harry's suggestion the hikers who'd found Rory had gone on ahead. Ruick led, setting a pace that was geared to Van Slyke's sore feet, though he wouldn't have admitted it. Rory was in the middle and A

As she walked behind them it occurred to her that Rory had not asked if his parents were worried. Harry had told him up front that somebody had been sent to tell them he'd been found. Even so, it seemed peculiar. Had A

Fifty Mountain Camp was on the northernmost edge of the old burn scar. Trees were charred snags and tents were pitched on black soil. Forty yards further on, the fire had finally exhausted itself. Beyond were green rolling hills, meadows painted with wildflowers. Rich as velvet, the meadows lay between stones the size of houses and cars that had tumbled down from the ridge; a strange Stonehenge rolling away seemingly to the edge of the world.

Fifty Mountain had five sites, all of them full. Orange, blue and green bubbles of tents poked up between the coal black spires like poisonous toadstools. Backpacks leaned against stumps, and the inevitable laundry of backpackers, socks and old towels, hung limply from spindly branches.

As part of its bear management plan, Glacier's campgrounds were laid out differently from those in other national parks. A single area was set away from the tents and designated for cooking and consuming food. It served two purposes: to confine the excessive foot traffic food areas invariably suffered and to keep this most bear-attractive of activities separate from where the campers slept.

At Fifty Mountain the cooking area was between a creek winding a life of green and silver through the burn and the developed tent sites further up a gentle slope toward the edge of the fire scar.

Hiking up from the creek, A