Part 4
My pack lay ten feet away under a tangle of fern.
Wade and Travis must have kicked it aside after taking everything they understood as useful. My radio. My phone. The belt. They had left the old canvas field pack because it looked like what it was: patched, faded, and not worth stealing.
I crawled to it on my elbows.
Every inch hurt. My wrists had swollen around the rope burns. My ribs stabbed each time I dragged in air. The cut behind my ear had started bleeding again, warm against the cold already on my neck. Scout followed one limping step at a time, close enough that his shadow covered me, far enough that I could move.
The zipper fought my fingers before it gave.
Inside were a crushed granola bar, a coil of flagging tape, my field notebook, a bottle of water, and the first-aid roll I had carried for years because old habits save lives more often than courage does. Beneath it, clipped inside a pocket Wade had missed, was a small emergency locator beacon.
I stared at it for half a second longer than I should have.
Then I thumbed the cover open and pressed the button.
The little red light began to blink.
No siren answered. No helicopter broke through the clouds. That is not how rescue works. A signal had to reach a satellite, then dispatch, then people who still had to drive and hike into rough country after dark. But somewhere beyond that hollow, a chain had begun. It was more than I had a minute earlier.
Scout sank heavily onto his chest beside me.
That frightened me more than the wolves had.
“Hey,” I said, too sharply. “No. Stay with me.”
His head lifted, annoyed. The expression was pure bear, and under any other circumstance I might have laughed. Instead, I tore open the first-aid roll with my teeth and pulled out gauze, antiseptic wash, and the flexible wrap I used more often on dogs, horses, and careless hunters than on myself.
I cleaned my hands first. They shook badly. Blood and dirt ran into the lines of my palms. I drank half the water, forced myself to stop, and poured the rest over a clean pad. Scout watched every movement.
“I know,” I murmured. “This part isn’t going to feel good.”
He gave me a low sound that meant nothing gentle.
“I don’t blame you.”
The wound was high on his hind leg, deep enough to need more care than I could give in the dark but not so deep that hope left me. The old wolf had torn him, not opened an artery. I had seen enough injured wildlife to know the difference, and enough lost animals to know the difference did not guarantee anything.
I moved slowly. I let him smell the gauze. I spoke because silence made my hands worse.
“You remember Linda?” I said. “She told me not to name you. She was right about most things.”
Scout’s ears flicked.
“She also said I’d get myself killed one day trying to prove a point.” I pressed the wet pad to the wound, and his head whipped toward me with his lips peeled back. I froze. “Fair. That’s fair.”
For three heartbeats, we were only a man and a grizzly, and the truth between us was simple. He could end me faster than pain could warn me. Then his mouth closed. His head lowered. He let me keep my hand where it was.
I worked as gently as I could.
The antiseptic made him jerk once, hard enough that I fell back on my hip. He rumbled, not quite a growl, while I apologized in a voice too hoarse to sound like mine. After that, he held still. I packed the wound, wrapped it tight enough to slow the bleeding, and secured the end with hands that had started to go numb again from cold.
When I finished, the white bandage looked absurd against all that dark fur.
Scout sniffed it. Then he sniffed my sleeve, my wrist, and the bloody rope burns there. He made a small, dissatisfied huff, as if my medical work on him had only reminded him that I had not addressed my own damage.
“I’ll live,” I told him.
He did not seem convinced.
We sat there while the light drained out of the timber. My back rested against the pine that had held me. Scout lay close enough that I could feel heat coming off his body. He was not peaceful. Wild animals do not become peaceful because a person needs comfort. His ears kept moving, and his nose kept testing the air. But he stayed.
A long time passed before my breathing stopped shaking.
I took inventory because training demanded it. Head wound, not good but manageable. Ribs bruised, maybe cracked. Wrists torn. Legs numb but waking in fire. No food worth mentioning. No way to walk far before help arrived.
Then I looked at the torn ropes scattered around the tree.
Wade had tied them with hands I knew. I remembered those hands holding a fishing rod when we were twelve. I remembered him teaching my little brother how to cast under the county bridge. I remembered Travis crying at his mother’s funeral and Wade standing behind him, gripping both his shoulders.
It is strange what betrayal does in the body. Fear comes fast and hot. Anger follows. But grief waits until the danger gives it room.
My beacon blinked in the dirt beside me.
Scout lifted his head.
At first, I thought he had heard the wolves again. His ears pointed downhill, toward the old logging road. His nostrils widened. A low sound moved through him, so quiet I felt it more than heard it.
Then I heard it too.
An engine.
Not rescue. Too soon. Too low on the road. The sound climbed through the timber in short, familiar surges, tires grinding over rock and frozen ruts.
Scout pushed himself up with a pained grunt and put his body between me and the dark line of trees.
A moment later, headlights cut through the woods.