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The bear came on, his powerful legs moving over the broken ground with liquid grace. Roaring was done. He was intent only on A
"Not ru
A scream cut through to her. Not her own. A sharp cry that made the bear flinch.
"Drop the pepper spray. God. Please."
A
A blow that nearly uncurled her pounded into her shoulder and she felt herself knocked down the backside of the rock like a hockey puck off broken ice. Her kneecap struck stone. A
Pressure. The bear was on her. She could feel the weight of his chest against her side. Fur, amazingly soft, pressed down on her bare legs. She felt the squash of the great arms as the bear tried to crush her or roll her over. Her face was buried in its pelt. Heat and smell and fur surrounded, suffocated. The bear was absorbing her, smashing her into its very being. Heavy hot breath smelling of huckleberries and things less pleasant washed over her face. Like a child, A
Crack.
The weight lifted. The animal growled, low and questioning, then roared and another blow fell. This one did unwrap A
A
It wasn't that A
Form came next, form in the darkness, shades of night. She lay on her side in a patch of stone exposed by an old avalanche twenty feet or more from the rock where she, Rory and Joan had sat watch. Night had come. If the moon had risen it was weak and distant. Only the faint light of stars separated the earth from the sky.
Confusion engendered by a bash on the head and waking in the dark was as brief as it was intense. Time, place and circumstances reinstated themselves. The bear had left her for dead. Possibly the fact she'd banged her head on a rock and gone unconscious had saved her life. A black bear, a bear who attacked not to intimidate and frighten off, but to procure di
One battered piece. Without moving much, lest the bear had not gone away, A
Why hadn't the bear clawed or bitten her? It was in the nature of beasts to use claws and teeth, to worry and strike and bite. The last she remembered before the bear had bowled her down the hill like a hedgehog had been the furry overpowering sensation that the creature was trying to embrace her.
Hedgehog… what had the report written in lavender ink said? Bear activity: juggling a hedgehog. Observer activity: standing amazed.
A
Alive and well and standing amazed, A
Because her head hurt and she'd been left in the dirt by a giant bear, A
The story wouldn't wash. Not only would it be out of character for Joan as a good woman to leave another to die, it would be out of character for Joan as a good researcher to leave a fantastically out-of-place golden Alaskan grizzly without photos, scat samples and much in the way of scientific contemplation.
Joan was around. If she hadn't come back it was because she couldn't come back. A
Feeling unarmed and fragile, she sat again on her rock. The cold was deepening. She didn't have a jacket with her for the same reason she was without a flashlight. The Boy Scout motto came to mind. A lesson to be learned. Again. The hard way.
Without light she couldn't search for Joan. Without a radio, she couldn't call for help. The one thing she could do was move from this exposed place. Pushing to her feet, she limped slowly toward the thickening screen of alder that heralded the pine forest proper. Chances of encountering a bear or thebear were greater in the coverts, but like any hurt and frightened animal, A
Moving slowly, favoring her bad knee, she picked her way over the rock-embedded land past the miniature lake. Till the moon rose, her eyes were of questionable use and she stopped every few steps to listen. Partly she listened for Joan and Rory; mostly she listened for any sign that the bear was still in the neighborhood. The only sounds she heard were those of her own making.
Beneath the alders darkness was absolute. A