Gary Paulsen: Brian's Hunt

Brian had never seen the animal but knew the bear intimately, how it moved, how it turned, how it thought. They could be looking right at it and all they would see would be weight and girth and hair color and genetic codes and biospeak and would never really know the bear.

He said nothing. But he understood that they were wrong. He knew the bear. He would find the bear.

Susan came out of the cabin with a canvas bag full of her things and they hugged and she saw what he was thinking, what he had to do, because she whispered in his ear, “You must be careful. He is not like other bears. He is a devil muckwa, a devil bear. Be careful. . ”

Brian at first said nothing, still holding her, then said what was most in his mind: “I need to see you again, when this is done. There are things that need to be said.”

She nodded. “I understand. I left a letter for you, in the cabin. My address and phone numbers are there. I’ll wait. Find me when you come out. . ”

Then Susan and the men climbed onto the floats of the plane and into it and the pilot spun around and took off and in moments Brian was alone with the dog, even the sound gone.

Just the lake and the island and the woods. . and the bear.

The bear was still out there and it was not right, not now. The bear had been wrong, had gone too far.

Brian would find him.

And he would kill him.

It was personal.

He left the canoe but he took the dog, his knife, the bow and his quiver, light moccasins, a plain dark T-shirt and a lightweight, dark green pullover.

He took matches and one small aluminum pan. He did not know how long this would take, only that he would not stop until it was done, but he wanted to travel as light as possible.

When he waded the shallows and went to the main shoreline he stopped and used dark mud to streak his face and neck, then slid into the foliage following the bear’s tracks. He would lose them later, he knew — they were very old tracks anyway — but in the meantime they would help him to further understand and know the bear and he would hold them as long as he could.

Initially the bear moved along the shore, working in the soft mud, following the canoe with Susan until the wind blew it away from him; then he turned and went up, away from the lake.

Here the tracks were muddled in the soft pine needles and harder to follow, although the dog seemed to have been paying attention to Brian and moved ahead with her nose down. At first Brian was dubious — he still did not know dogs that well — but again and again when he lost the tracks and followed the dog he would come upon the tracks once more and after an hour of on-again off-again tracking he began to trust the dog completely.

It was like having another sense, not to mention a kind of early-warning radar. The smell was old and the bear long gone, Brian could tell that by the relaxed attitude of the tracking dog. They moved well together, and Brian learned more about the bear.

He was lazy. He did not climb hills but worked around the base of them instead, turning logs, ripping stumps, and he had distinctive paw marks. One claw was gone on his left front paw and one broken in half on his right. In mud or soft dirt it was easy to read him, know him, and just before dark Brian came on a place where he had lain to rest or sleep.

In some deep grass the bear had matted down an area to make a bed. Brian felt the ground, not sure what he was looking for, a touch, a feel of the bear, but there was nothing. The grass was cool, and had dew forming on it and the dog was still not nervous so Brian moved off to the side and made a small fire and heated water and chewed on a piece of jerky he’d found in the cabin.

Then he drank, put the fire out, moved back into the brush and settled in to rest. He did not think of sleeping, not yet, but halfway through the night even the mosquitoes weren’t enough to stop him and he trusted in the dog’s warning ability and dozed enough for his mind and body to rest.

Before light he was moving again, still following the dog when he couldn’t cut open sign, but by midday he decided that following the meandering track of the bear would not be fruitful. He figured he was perhaps four or five miles from the lake where the attack had happened and the bear was clearly not moving in any pattern, was just wandering, looking for food.

He would stay in the area and Brian could accomplish more by getting to what high ground the terrain afforded and hunting downward, trying to get ahead of him, knowing the bear hated to climb hills, and he left the scent trail and climbed a nearby low ridge.

For a moment the dog hesitated, standing on the scent trail, whining softly; then she seemed to shrug and follow Brian up the ridge, dropping into position just in front of him, ears perked forward, nostrils flared to take in the most scent.

And they worked that way most of the day, hanging to the tops of ridges, moving slowly. Brian would take a few steps, stop, listen, watch the dog’s back hair and ears — how had he lived so long without a dog, he wondered again and again — and they saw bear.

Three times he saw bear, one small female, two even smaller yearling cubs, but they all moved away from him and the dog when they saw him and when he moved to where they had left tracks he knew they weren’t the bear involved in the attack.

He knew the attacking bear’s tracks, how his right front paw toed in slightly, along with the missing claw and broken other claw, like a signature.

And no new sign all that day. Not until evening.

They had moved across a ridge that led up a small hill and somehow, hunting along the ridges, he had come back to a hill he’d moved across before.

He did not know it at first, not until he crossed the top, the dog moving just ahead of him, and he saw a place where they had stopped to listen and rest. He recognized a scrub oak tree he had leaned against because it had a twisted, bent fork about four feet off the ground.

“Well,” he whispered, his voice sounding strange to him, “we’ve come around. . ” He stopped because the dog had changed. She had been smelling the ground and her back hair suddenly stood on end and she growled.

“What. .” Brian moved to where the dog stood, looked at the ground, but it was thick with humus and grass. He could read nothing. He held his breath, as the dog did, and they listened together but he heard nothing and he looked back to the ground and did not see anything until he had gone three yards farther along his own old track and there, where the grass had been worn by a white-tailed deer scraping, there was soft dirt and smack in the middle of the dirt there was a perfect print.

Large, huge, missing claw, perfect sign and very, very fresh.

It was the bear.

The Bear.

And it was following him, tracking him.

Hunting him.

Hunting him.

And for just that second, that long, long second, Brian went from predator to prey, felt a coldness on his neck, felt as a deer must feel when the wolves pick up its scent, as a rabbit must feel when the fox starts its run. . cold, no breath, everything stopped. No thinking. Just that long second of something even more than fear, something very old, very primitive.

The bear was hunting him.

Then it was gone. The coldness, the fear were gone and replaced by something even more pure, more primitive, as he thought of what was coming, what the bear’s tracks actually meant.

He did not have to hunt the bear any longer. It was hunting him, it would come to him, and it would be soon, soon.

Dusk now, he thought, dark in an hour, if it takes an hour. I passed here, what, three hours ago, and if he’s moving on my trail, how fast? Faster than me, certainly, he could be close, very close. In that split second he happened to be looking at the dog, saw the dog’s head turn to the left, and he dropped and turned at the same instant, heard brush crashing as he fell, brought the bow up, tried to pull the broadhead but too late, all too late.