The spent shell rolled across the porch and stopped against Gordon Mercer’s boot. He’d fired over the grizzly’s head, high enough to clear the trees. Out beside the fir, the animal folded his front legs and lowered himself into the snow.
Gordon kept the shotgun raised. In thirty-two years at the forestry outpost, he’d never had to persuade this particular bear to keep his distance.
A low concussion came from the upper basin. Gordon felt it in the porch boards before the sound reached him. The grizzly lurched upright and backed toward the cabin, his head still turned toward the mountain.
Ten minutes earlier, Gordon had been asleep.
What woke him was the absence of the ordinary racket outside his window. Buck usually had an opinion about whatever passed through the clearing after dark. Minnow, the big black dog, would answer from beneath the lean-to. Between them, there was generally a chain dragging, a paw scratching boards, some small reminder that they were on duty.
Now Gordon could hear a knot of pitch burning in the stove.
He lay still until one chain clicked against a kennel. There was no sound after it.
“Buck?”
Neither dog stirred.
The clock’s hands stood a little past half past two. Gordon swung his feet down, found his insulated boots by touch, and took the padded coat from behind the door. Before he lifted the shotgun, his thumb settled into the fine split along its stock.
Fourteen winters earlier, it had struck the iron runner of a supply sled. He’d been promising himself a new stock ever since.
Cold air spilled across the floor when he opened the door. The lantern over the porch threw more shadow than light, but he could make out Buck lying flat beside his kennel. Minnow had pushed so far under the lean-to that only his muzzle and front feet showed.
Both dogs faced the fir at the edge of the clearing.
Nathan had named the black one eleven years before, when the puppy was all length and appetite and could scarcely be kept out of Gordon’s fish pail. Minnow had grown into a dog capable of carrying the pail away, but the name had survived.
Gordon followed their gaze. A dark shape stood beyond the lantern’s reach. Then an ear moved.
The great rise of shoulder above the low-held head told him which bear it was.
He’d called the grizzly Highback for years. Not aloud in the animal’s presence, and never with any notion that a name made him familiar. In that isolated stretch of northwestern Wyoming, Gordon recognized individual animals the way he recognized places where the trail washed out. There was a cow moose with a torn ear, a fox that hunted the same meadow every autumn, and this old male whose shoulder hump was unusually high even for a grizzly.
Their closest encounter had been beside the creek during an early thaw. Highback had risen to sample the air, and Gordon had stayed exactly where he was. After a while, the bear had dropped to all fours and moved off.
Gordon had kept out of the upper basin when he had no work there. Highback had kept away from the outpost.
Until this night.
The warning shot should have restored that arrangement. Instead, Gordon had found himself facing an animal that would rather endure a man with a gun than return uphill.
After the concussion, he eased backward into the cabin and pulled the door almost shut. Through the narrow gap, he watched the grizzly stop short of the steps.
“Plenty of country,” he muttered. “Go use some.”
Highback gave no sign that he’d heard.
Gordon had seen bears searching desperately for food after failing to settle into a den. He’d seen injured animals take dangerous chances. Nothing in the clearing resembled either. The grizzly wasn’t nosing toward the dog food or testing the shed. He stood with his ears low, taking air from the direction of the basin.
Gordon spent the remaining darkness in the chair beside the window. He added wood to the stove without letting it flare too brightly. Sometime after four, Highback moved beyond the lantern’s reach and vanished.
Daylight showed a broad depression beside the fir. Tracks came down from the basin, stopped near the cabin, then continued away through the trees.
Gordon crouched at the edge of one print. Snow had packed hard beneath the animal’s foot. His thumb worked along the gunstock without his noticing.
A memory came with it: his mother standing at the kitchen counter, turning from a bowl of bread dough.
He’d been eight, sent to bring wood from the shed. Something had crossed the snow beside the stacked rounds, leaving tracks he didn’t recognize. He’d gone back to the house with empty arms, expecting trouble.
His mother had wiped flour from her fingers and looked through the window.
“Leave room between yourself and what you can’t explain.”
Gordon stood slowly, his knees complaining, and went inside to try the radio.
It took most of the morning to get a usable signal through the old forestry set. At noon he finally reached Nathan. His nephew’s voice came and went beneath a harsh wash of static.
“Say that again. At the cabin?”
“Beside it. Close enough for the lantern.”
“Could be one that never settled down for winter.”
“He came toward the building, Nate.”
A burst of interference swallowed the reply.
Gordon waited, then pressed the microphone. “I fired a warning. He stayed.”
“Okay. I’ll come up.”
“I’m reporting a bear, not asking for a nurse.”
“You could’ve told the ranger. You called me.”
Gordon studied the wire leading from the radio to the wall. He’d meant to replace that, too.
“You’ll be traveling in the dark.”
“Then I’ll start early.”
“Nathan—”
The signal disappeared.
He held the microphone a little longer before setting it down.
Winter visitors upset the cabin’s order. They put damp mittens on the wrong hook and left the kerosene funnel where a man couldn’t find it. They fed the dogs early, moved his shovel, and used kindling for a fire that didn’t need starting.
Gordon didn’t dislike company so much as the work of finding everything after company left.
He put a second mug on the shelf within easy reach.
Highback returned the following night.
This time Gordon heard the dogs before they fell silent. Buck gave two low growls. Minnow made a sound deep in his chest, then retreated beneath the lean-to.
Gordon turned the lantern wick higher and watched from behind the window.
The grizzly came past the fir, close enough for the light to show a fresh strip of disturbed fur along his shoulder and flank. The scrape looked shallow, but it was new. Something had caught him hard enough to part that dense coat.
Highback stopped with one forepaw planted ahead of the other. He turned toward the upper basin.
Gordon listened until he could hear his own breathing against the glass. Nothing came from the mountain.
After several minutes, the bear moved downhill beside the creek. He did not take the route back into the basin.
Gordon lowered the wick.
Nathan’s snowmobile reached the clearing well into the next afternoon, towing a small utility sled. Gordon heard it laboring through the last turn long before he saw his nephew stand on the running boards and wave.
Nathan was thirty-five, broad through the shoulders, and seldom still unless he was asleep. He shut off the machine, pulled off one mitten, and immediately began drawing his left cuff farther down his wrist.
“Morning took you a while,” Gordon said.
“Snow had a different schedule.” Nathan glanced toward the fir. “Where’s your houseguest?”
“Go stand in his place. See how funny it feels.”
Nathan grinned, but he went to inspect the prints.
Gordon let him follow the trail beyond the clearing. When his nephew came back, he wasn’t smiling.
“You weren’t exaggerating.”
“Didn’t know I was in the habit.”
Nathan crouched beside the depression in the snow. “Tell me about the scrape.”
Gordon drew a mittened finger from his own shoulder toward his ribs.
“Another bear, maybe.”
“In January?”
“They don’t all go to bed on command.”
Gordon leaned on the shovel handle and waited.
Nathan had always disliked leaving an empty place in an explanation. As a boy, he’d supplied wind for a broken branch and a squirrel for a noise in the roof before anyone had looked. He was often right. Being right quickly pleased him more than being uncertain carefully.
Gordon had liked quick answers once, too.
Nathan stood. “We could go up and see what disturbed him.”
“No.”
“Just take a look.”
“You’ve seen enough to know he doesn’t want to be there. That’ll do for today.”
Nathan opened his mouth, considered Gordon’s face, and brushed snow from his knees instead.
They were splitting rounds near the woodshed when Buck abandoned a piece of fish. Minnow rose a moment later. Both dogs faced the slope.
Gordon straightened. Nathan already had the ax above his shoulder.
“Wait.”
The ax stayed there for a breath, then Nathan lowered it.
A faint movement passed beneath their boots. The rounds beside Gordon’s foot trembled against one another. Then a deep report came from somewhere above the trees.
Snow dropped in scattered sheets from the branches high in the basin. A flock of birds lifted out of the timber and wheeled away.
Nathan set the ax against the chopping block.
“Rockfall?”
“Possibly.”
“You don’t know?”
Gordon looked at him. “I’m down here with you.”
Nathan gave a short laugh. “Well, that makes me want to go up there.”
Gordon picked up another round and rolled it onto the block.
By lamplight, he unfolded a map that had worn white along its creases. Nathan sat across from him, mending a loose buckle on his pack and pretending not to watch.
The upper basin held little ink: the creek, the contours, an abandoned clearing. A pencil mark climbed toward the north face and ended where the paper had been rubbed thin.
Gordon held it closer to the lamp. His own hand, probably. He couldn’t remember making it.
“That a trail?” Nathan asked.
“Used to be.”
“Where did it go?”
“Workings up north. Nothing anyone uses now.”
Gordon folded the map before Nathan could lean farther across the table.
“We’ll look at the road tomorrow. If it’s open, you can head down.”
“You coming?”
“I live here.”
Nathan glanced toward the dark window. “So does something the size of your woodshed, apparently.”
“Hasn’t taken my chair yet.”
“That’s the test?”
“At my age, I get to set it.”
Nathan shook his head, smiling, and went back to the buckle.
Later, Minnow’s whining woke them both.
Nathan sat up on the spare bunk as Gordon reached for his boots. By the time his nephew found the flashlight, Gordon had opened the door.
Highback stood beyond the woodshed, nearer than on either previous visit. His body faced the cabin. His head did not.
Gordon stepped onto the porch, leaving room to retreat. Nathan stood behind him, the flashlight trembling slightly in his bare hand.
A sharp cracking sound came from the north, followed by a concussion much louder than the others.
The bear recoiled. Nathan ducked inside, certain for an instant that the huge animal was coming at the house.
Highback backed up instead. One step, then another, his nose still lifted toward the basin. He stopped scarcely clear of the porch corner.
Nathan pressed his shoulder against the doorjamb.
“He’s supposed to be afraid of us.”
Gordon watched the grizzly’s ears flatten.
“Not tonight.”
“Then what?”
Gordon raised his eyes beyond the bear.
“Whatever’s up there…”
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