Part 3
Eli did not waste the breath to curse.
The bear lowered onto all fours, its huge head swaying. Snow clung to the scar over its blind eye. The good eye tracked them with terrible patience, as though the chase had only sharpened whatever hunger had dragged it from its den. The wolf stood several feet in front of Eli, shoulders bunched, but his injured leg trembled beneath him.
There would be no fighting that animal off. Not with an old rifle, not with a tire iron, not with one frightened puppy and a half-frozen brother tucked against Eli’s chest. Eli knew the difference between courage and stupidity, and he had already spent enough of his life mistaking one for the other.
He looked over the cliff.
For a second the wind cleared the blowing snow. Below the lip, not far down, a narrow ledge cut across the face of the rock. It was half buried in drift, maybe wide enough for a man if he landed right and did not slide. Farther down, the gorge vanished into storm.
The bear took one step forward.
Eli measured the drop with a tracker’s eye and an old man’s knees. A younger version of him might have made it cleanly. The man he was now might break a hip, crack ribs, or simply tumble over the ledge and never stop falling. The injured puppy stirred inside his coat, a small pulse of life against his shirt.
Eli wrapped his arm tighter around him.
“Down,” he told the brave pup. “We’re going down.”
The puppy did not understand the words, but he saw Eli turn toward the edge. He backed away, ears flat.
The bear charged.
Eli jumped.
The fall lasted less than a second and long enough for him to think of June’s face in morning light. Then the ledge hit him hard. Pain flashed through his knees and up his spine. He landed sideways, rolled once, and drove his elbow into the snow to keep from sliding. The breath left him in a grunt that the storm tore away.
He curled over the puppy under his coat.
The little body squeaked, but the sound was alive.
Above him, the brave shepherd pup appeared at the edge, barking in terror. Before Eli could call to him, the pup launched himself after the man. He landed in a soft drift, vanished up to his ears, then popped out sneezing and scrambling. Eli grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him close.
A heavy thud shook the ledge.
The wolf had jumped.
He did not make it cleanly. His wounded leg failed at the edge, throwing his body off balance. He struck the lip of the ledge with his front half and slid, claws shrieking over ice-coated stone. Snow broke loose around him. His hindquarters dropped into empty air.
Eli moved before fear could advise him.
He shoved the brave puppy behind him, let the rifle slip from his shoulder, and lunged flat on his stomach. The rifle clattered beside him, slid across rock, and disappeared over the edge without a sound he could hear. Eli reached both hands into the wolf’s thick ruff just as the animal began to go.
The weight nearly pulled Eli after him.
His shoulders burned. His ribs pressed into stone. The wolf hung against the cliff face, heavier than anything Eli had strength left to hold. For one horrible moment the animal’s eyes met his, amber and wild and resigned.
“No,” Eli growled through clenched teeth. “You don’t get to quit either.”
The wolf stopped thrashing.
That saved them. Eli hooked the toes of his boots into a crack beneath the snow and pulled. There was nothing graceful in it. He hauled an inch, lost half of it, hauled again. Muscles in his arms and back screamed. The injured pup under his coat wriggled, and the brave puppy planted his front paws against Eli’s sleeve as if his tiny strength could matter.
Maybe it did.
The wolf found purchase with one forepaw. Then the other. Eli gave one last pull from somewhere below thought, and the gray animal slid onto the ledge in a heap beside him.
For several breaths, none of them moved.
Above, the grizzly’s momentum carried it to the cliff edge. Its front paws slammed into the overhanging rock. The sound was not a roar at first but a deep crack, sharp as a gunshot. Eli lifted his head.
A black line split through the snowy lip above them.
The bear tried to back away. Its claws scraped stone. The ledge overhead gave another cracking groan, deeper this time, and the whole section of cliff where the bear stood lurched outward. For a heartbeat the huge animal hung against the white sky, not raging now but startled, a creature caught by the same merciless physics that caught mice, men, and mountains.
Then the rock broke.
The grizzly and half the cliffside vanished.
Eli pressed himself over the puppies as stone, ice, and snow thundered past the lower ledge. The world became noise. Powder blasted over them. Pebbles struck Eli’s coat and hat. The wolf flattened beside him, his body a gray wall against the storm of debris.
The roar fell away into the gorge.
Afterward came a silence so complete that Eli heard the injured puppy breathing against his chest.
He stayed still until the drifting powder settled. When he finally looked up, the cliff above was torn open. The place where they had stood moments earlier was gone, replaced by raw stone and a ragged shelf of snow. Below, the gorge held its secrets under a rising cloud of white dust.
The bear was gone.
The brave puppy crawled into Eli’s lap, shaking with cold and shock. Eli touched the little dog’s head, then turned toward the wolf. The animal had risen unsteadily. His side still bled through the fur. His bad leg trembled. But his attention had moved away from Eli, away from the gorge, toward the back of the ledge.
Eli followed his gaze.
The lower shelf was not a dead end after all. It widened beneath a rock overhang and curved into shadow, forming a shallow cave protected from the wind. Snow had drifted against its mouth. Fresh earth and broken roots lay scattered there, as if the collapse above had shaken loose part of the hillside.
From inside the shadow came a sound so faint Eli almost mistook it for wind. A small, trapped cry. The wolf turned his head toward Eli, and the wildness fell away from his eyes again. Whatever bargain had brought them together was not finished…
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