Страница 51 из 72
Chapter 17
Breathing in slowly, A
A
She breathed again and felt, to her surprise, the fear that gripped her loosening its hold. These were real, honest-to-God bears, bears in broad daylight doing the things bears were supposed to do. Far less terrifying than the half-mad half-man, half-beast imaginings she'd allowed herself earlier. Less terrifying than the bestial slashings that came in the night.
She looked away from the trio to her escape route, the trail she'd been following toward the western side of the cirque. She was nearly there, maybe a hundred feet, then an easy scramble up a rocky escarpment eight or ten feet high. Beyond that was fifty yards of scree and then the begi
A
When she reached the low escarpment and was as yet undevoured, she chanced another peek. The two cubs were cavorting in the talus. In the strong evening light she could see the startling pink of their tongues as they licked moths from the bottoms of rocks their mother had turned over for them. Momma Bear wasn't digging but paced back and forth between her cubs and A
A bargain seemed to have been struck. If A
Once safe out of sight, reaction set in and A
Niceties observed, she turned her mind back to more earthly pursuits. Time had abandoned its petty pace somewhere between her first notice of man-tracks and the last farewell to the family of grizzlies. Two hours had slipped by like the shadows of westward flying birds. In thirty minutes the sun would be down. Already the light had faded to the point where tracking was becoming more difficult.
It was time to stop, to find a camp for the night, but A
Below Cathedral Peak the mountain flared, enough earth collected to sustain plant life and provide a walking surface for animals and people. The individual A
On this surface, despite the failing light, tracking grew suddenly easy. Everywhere the person stepped on the sharply angled ground a mark had been left. A
Keeping to the curve of the mountain, she followed the prints into the stunted forest of pine. Shadows merged and light diffused but the trail remained clear. A
At a small stone abutment, rust-faced with lichen and darkened with a brow of trees so dwarfed and twisted by the weight of winter snows that they more resembled mutant shrubs than stately pines, the trail ended abruptly.
For a moment A
An alien noise penetrated these thoughts. It was the merest whisper of sounds, needles sliding over one another or the shush of fabric against bark, but it shrieked against A
The sun was long gone. The light that remained was of the clear gray quality that reminds one that the sky is not a blanket of blue benevolently spread over the earth but only the begi
Dread of being trapped in an external frame pack heavy with drinking water and a sleeping bag galvanized A
A skittering watery sound of pebbles moving brought her head up an instant before afine rain of rocks fell from the top of the incline she'd taken refuge against. With it came a huffing grunt and the heavy grind of moving stone.