Part 3
I let Wade reach the trees before I shut the door. Then I picked up the radio and called Hank, trying to speak slowly enough that he wouldn’t have to ask me twice.
He reached Beth and dispatch. The deputy coming out from town would have to get through the station first; the wildlife officers couldn’t be there immediately. Hank said he was starting the snowmobile. I was to stay inside with the cub until he reached me.
While I packed the carrier, flashlights appeared between the pines.
There were three of them. Wade had brought two men, and they were coming straight toward the porch. The cub caught his claws in the blanket when I picked him up, as if he’d decided he was staying exactly where he was.
I told Hank they were here, left the carrier, and went out the back with the cub wrapped against me. The path behind the woodshed joined the trail to the station. I knew every stump along it, but I couldn’t keep from looking back.
“Behind the house,” somebody called. A beam swept across the snow at my feet.
I tried to move faster without jolting the injured leg. The men spread out around the shed, and I heard Wade say my name. He sounded almost conversational, which frightened me more than the shouting.
“Put it down, Jack. Walk away from it.”
A branch caught my collar. I pulled free and turned sideways through the narrow gap between two firs. Ahead, something moved on the path.
The mother bear rose from the shadows.
For an instant her body hid the pale space between the trunks. I stopped so abruptly that the cub shifted inside the blanket. She came down on all fours and faced the men following me.
Wade brought his rifle up. One of the others yelled something I couldn’t make out, and the bear gave a low, forceful sound that I felt through the bundle against my chest.
“You want something to shoot at, Wade? Look at me!”
He turned his head. She moved before he turned it back.
I saw her shoulder, the sweep of a foreleg, and Wade falling hard into the snow. His rifle landed beyond him. She stopped between us, swinging her head toward the two men who had already begun backing away.
One of them ran. The other followed, his flashlight whipping through the branches.
Wade scrambled to his knees and reached for the rifle. The bear moved toward him again, and he snatched it up as he stumbled backward. He shouted that he would make me pay, but he kept moving after the others.
I didn’t follow. My legs wouldn’t have carried me anywhere just then.
The mother stood on the trail until their lights were gone. Then she came toward the sound of the cub, who had begun wriggling against the blanket. She smelled his face and touched him with her tongue.
Her muzzle brushed my wrist. I had no words for what she might have understood about the men or about me. I knew where she had put herself, and I knew I was still holding a living cub.
“Thank you,” I said, barely loud enough to hear.
She turned toward the creek. I waited until she had moved off the trail, then went on, keeping the bundle close and calling Hank with a thumb that wouldn’t stay still on the radio.
His headlight met us before the crossing. He took one look at me and stopped asking questions. At the station, once the cub was warm and Hank had relayed the men’s direction to dispatch, I tried to describe what had happened.
I got as far as Wade raising the rifle. Hank put a hand against my shoulder, and I sat down, still holding the blanket though there was nothing in it anymore.
The next morning, Beth came with two wildlife officers. Tom Voss introduced himself first; Evan Cole stood beside him, listening while Hank filled in the beginning. Beth was already checking the cub before anyone finished telling her about the night.
The officers went back with us to the cabin. They photographed the disturbed snow and the tracks around the shed, then took my statement. I told them exactly what I’d seen, including Wade coming back for his rifle; where I didn’t know something, Tom made me stop guessing.
Inside, the cub retreated beneath the cot when Evan moved toward him. Tom crouched a few feet away without reaching under it.
“That’s a useful response,” he said. “We want him wary of people.”
“Except me,” I said.
“For now.”
Beth explained the treatment she’d given him. Tom asked about the mother’s visits, the sack, and where I’d first seen her. When I told him she’d brought the cub to my door, he wrote down the dragging I had actually watched.
“You think she knew I’d help?” I asked.
He paused with his pen above the page. “She may have watched you long before you saw her. But I can’t tell you why she chose that porch.”
Evan went back outside to walk the approach with Hank. Tom stayed at the table and explained that a mother with a cub wasn’t a legal target. Wade’s threats and the armed pursuit were also being passed to the sheriff; I wouldn’t have to deal with him alone.
Tom described the temporary closure and access-road patrols the officers would arrange around the treatment area. Beth would keep in touch with their wildlife staff. He also explained that a rehabilitation facility could take the cub if the mother disappeared or a safe return wasn’t possible.
I understood the need for that. I also understood how much easier it would be to say yes and let somebody drive him away, so I would no longer have to hear him moving around my cabin.
“She’s still here,” I said. “He ought to have her.”
Tom nodded. He wasn’t arguing with that part.
The cub finally emerged, made his uneven way across the floor, and sat beside my boot. I felt his nose against the leather while Tom looked over Beth’s notes.
He closed the folder. “When she clears that leg, we try the mother first. Are you willing to let him go then?”
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