Gary Paulsen - Brian's Hunt

God, he was playing with Susan. She was working the canoe along the shore, trying to get away from the bear and get back to camp from the other side, and the bear was playing with her, teasing her, jumping toward her whenever she came too close to shore.

All around the island, and then off, as she must have hand-paddled toward the main shore and when Brian waded across the shallow water he saw where the bear had followed her down the main shoreline as well. But then, after a hundred yards or so, the bear had tired of the game and stopped and moved back in the direction of the island but up into the trees and harder ground and tight grass and Brian lost his trail there.

All right, then why didn’t she come back to the island? Or a better question was why did the bear stop following her along the shore?

Brian came up with two reasons. First, she had moved away from shore, out into the lake, and with only her hands to paddle she could not move the canoe well. If a wind came up, even a small wind, it would blow her where it wanted and if she was lucky it would blow her out into the lake, away from the bear. If she had been unlucky and the wind blew the canoe into shore. .

He shook the thought off. The second reason she might have stayed away from the island was that it became dark. Paddling by hand, splashing and clawing, trying to move possibly against the wind and making all the noise in the world, there was no way she could bring herself to approach the island in the dark with the bear possibly, probably, waiting for her. No way.

So she worked her way into the deep part of the lake, or more probably the wind took her, the prevailing north wind, and blew her all night to the south end of the lake, into the large marsh and willows and swamps Brian had come through.

He might have passed not too far from her on his way north. Or she might have blown to shore on the east side.

And there she might be. Without a paddle she could never get the canoe back north and it would be suicide to try to work by foot along the bank with no weapon.

He stopped, looking at the shoreline and the dog. Her whimpering had stopped and her hair was down. The bear was nowhere near.

He would have to go back, get his canoe, find Susan. She had to be somewhere south on the lake, trying to work north, trying to get back.

He started jogging back, the dog keeping close to his side. Evening was coming and part of him knew that he should bury Anne and David but he knew it would have to wait.

They had to find Susan.

Find out what happened to the children.

Before the bear.

• • •

They found her just before dark.

He and the dog had been walking the shoreline, scanning the edge of the water and peering out toward the center of the lake as they kept a wary eye on the edge of the woods.

She was four miles down the lake, on the east shore, dragging the canoe along the shallows on the lake edge so she could jump in and push out if she saw the bear.

He saw Susan long before she saw him because he was watching the dog and saw when she lifted her nose, catching the scent of something, someone, familiar and loved. Susan was intent on watching the thick foliage on the shoreline. When she was just a hundred yards away he called.

“Susan!”

And it startled her so that she jumped into her canoe as if to hide and when he got closer he saw that she was half crazed with fear and exhaustion. And he understood. He had felt the fear himself and she probably hadn’t slept in two or three days and nights.

“It’s me, Brian. . You don’t know me but I spent some time with your family. . ”

He pulled up alongside her canoe and held the two together.

“Bear. .,” she said. Her hair was matted and there were scratches on her face and arms. She had been in the water so long she couldn’t speak without her teeth chattering. “Bear. .”

“I know. I know. Here, wrap in this and go to sleep. I’ll pull you back.” Brian took his sleeping bag and reached across into her canoe and wrapped her in it and forced her to lie in the bottom while he tied a line to her bow, fed it back and started paddling, pulling her canoe behind him. The dog jumped into the first canoe, settling near Susan, who didn’t notice her presence through the crushing exhaustion that overtook her as soon as she sat down.

It was into dark by this time and there was a stout evening north wind and a chop. It would take five or six hours to pull the two canoes against the wind back to the island. Good. She needed the rest. She did not know about her parents yet, or had only guessed, and when she found out it would be terrible for her.

Any rest she could get now would be a godsend.

The world came to them.

Not at first. At first there was a time Brian did not like to think about or remember but knew he would have in his mind for the rest of his life.

She had been virtually unconscious when they arrived, back at the island, just at dawn. He had left her sleeping and the dog leading — always in front now — her hair down, no sign of the bear, Brian had taken the time to wrap the bodies in blankets and ponchos and pull Anne back to the cabin and use a shovel to make a shallow grave in a clear spot by the east wall and bury them next to each other.

Then he had tried to clean the cabin a bit and had buried the dead dogs in another shallow grave and then gone back down to the canoe and washed in the lake repeatedly before waking her up and holding her and telling her that her parents were both dead.

She had guessed that something terrible had happened because they had not come looking for her but even so the shock was profound. She had sobbed for hours while he sat there, on the bank of the lake, his bow next to him and the dog sitting a little away, holding her while she cried, feeling as helpless and awkward as he had when the badly wounded dog showed up. Between sobs, he was relieved to learn that the other two children, Paul and Laura, were visiting relatives in Winnipeg.

Then she had gone to the new graves and put crosses made from boards on each and then gone into the cabin. Brian had tried to straighten some of it, and used lake water to wash where her father had lain. In part of the wreckage that he had not uncovered, she found a shortwave radio with a transmitter. It had been knocked sideways but she put it back on a shelf and hooked it to a storage battery and the radio still worked. She called the authorities and Brian was amazed at how fast things happened. Not three hours after she called, a plane landed on the lake and three men got out, the pilot and a Canadian Mountie and a Natural Resources ranger. They talked to Brian separately from Susan and asked him details he was glad she didn’t hear and when it was done they stood by the cabin.

“You have relatives to stay with?” the Mountie asked Susan. She nodded. “An aunt and uncle in Winnipeg. .”

“We’ll fly you there,” he said. “If you want we’ll gather your stuff for you.”

“No. I’ll get it.” She moved to the cabin and the Mountie turned to Brian.

“I’ve heard of you. You’re that boy who survived after the plane crash.”

Brian nodded.

“Do you want to fly out?”

Brian shook his head. “I’ll stay.”

The Mountie studied him for a moment, then nodded. “As you wish.” He turned to the Natural Resources ranger. “And you, are you going to kill this bear?”

The ranger shook his head. “There are many bears here, perhaps scores, within ten or fifteen miles. We wouldn’t know which one to kill.”

Brian stared at him, started to say that they had tracks, they knew the bear by his sign, they could find him, but he held his tongue. It wasn’t the same for everybody, the bush. They had planes and guns and radios and GPS but in some ways they had no knowledge because they had all the gadgets; they missed the small things because they saw too big.