Part 4
I opened the cutters slowly. The hinge gave a small metallic squeak. Huck’s head came up at once, and the skin along his muzzle tightened. I set the tool on the ground between us and moved my hand away.
“All right,” I said. “You get to decide.”
He sniffed the handles, then the blades. The scent of human hands and cut cable was probably all over them. When I reached again, his teeth showed for half a second—not a charge, not even a full threat, but a boundary drawn clearly enough that I stopped breathing.
I waited.
The forest had gone almost dark. My beacon blinked beside the torn rope. Somewhere downhill, Dean’s truck worked its way toward the county road, carrying my radio, my belt, and two men who would be deciding how much farther they were willing to go. I had no idea whether they had split up, called anyone, or turned around again.
Huck lowered his head.
I picked up the cutters.
The broken cable loop sat high above his right hind paw. To reach it, I had to crawl beside the leg and place one hand against his fur. Heat came off him despite the cold. The muscle beneath my palm tightened, and a vibration moved through his body before I heard the warning in his chest.
“I know,” I whispered.
The first bite of the cutters slipped. Huck jerked, and his head swung toward me so fast that I saw nothing but muzzle and teeth. I fell backward, the tool still in my hand. For a moment we stared at each other from less than an arm’s length away.
Then he turned his face toward the trees. I tried again.
This time I braced the cable against the ground and closed the handles with both hands. My wrists screamed. The steel held, then gave with a soft snap. The loop sprang open.
Huck lurched upright and kicked once, flinging the cut cable into the needles. He moved six feet away, favoring the leg, and stood with his back to me. I stayed where I was. If relief made him leave, that was the best outcome I could ask for.
He did not leave.
After testing the paw twice, he turned in a slow circle and settled near the edge of the clearing. The open wound was ugly but no longer constricted.
I poured part of my water over a folded pad, laid it on the ground within his reach, and let him smell it before I moved closer. He tolerated a brief rinse and pressure from the gauze. When he warned me again, I stopped.
There are kinds of help that become harm when the helper refuses to recognize the limit. I had learned that from Mara, from injured animals, and from people who had survived being managed by someone who called control a kindness.
I left the wound uncovered. The bleeding had slowed. Huck could put more weight on the leg, though each step remained careful.
My own first aid was less dramatic. I cleaned the cut behind my ear, wrapped both wrists, and drank what remained of the water in measured swallows. My ribs hurt on the left side when I breathed deeply, but nothing shifted.
A concussion was possible. So was a cracked rib. Neither diagnosis changed the night in front of me.
I pulled the emergency blanket around my shoulders and sat with my back against a different tree. Huck lay ten feet away.
He did not curl beside me or offer the sentimental warmth people would later want to imagine. He faced downhill, alert to the road, and kept enough space between us to remain what he was. Even so, the clearing felt less empty because he had chosen not to vanish.
The temperature fell after full dark. Moisture gathered on the needles and silvered the torn rope. My hands began to shake in hard, regular bursts. I counted beacon flashes to keep myself awake and listened to Huck breathe.
Once, wolves called from a ridge far to the east. Huck lifted his head but did not rise. The voices moved away across the drainage, thin and wild, interested in their own lives. I was grateful the night did not need another villain.
An hour may have passed. It may have been twenty minutes.
Pain distorted time, but training kept returning me to small tasks: check the beacon, flex my fingers, listen for vehicles, watch Huck’s breathing, and stay awake.
I tore a page from my field notebook and wrote Dean’s and Luke’s names, the location, and what I remembered of the assault. The letters wandered downhill across the paper.
Huck stood suddenly.
I gripped the cutters, then hated myself for it. He was looking above me, not at me.
A faint red glow appeared on the trunk of a fir at the north edge of the clearing. It vanished, then returned when Huck took another step.
At first I thought it was a reflection from the beacon. Then I saw the black rectangular housing strapped twelve feet above the ground, angled toward the torn earth where the snare cable had been anchored.
A trail camera.
Dean had mounted it to monitor the illegal set. He and Luke had been so focused on my gear, and then so frightened by Huck, that neither of them had taken it down.
The red light blinked again as I moved. The camera had watched the bear fight the snare. It had watched me enter the clearing. If its batteries had held, it had watched Dean strike me, Luke stand by, and both men tie me to the pine. I looked at the lens above us, small and indifferent in the dark. They had left a witness in the tree…
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