.45-Caliber Firebrand (23 page)

At first, he thought Renegade had been bit by a rattlesnake, as the horse, screaming, leapt nearly straight up in the air so that all four hooves left the ground at the same time. When the paint hit the ground again, he skitter-hopped sideways and, turning his head with white-ringed eyes toward Cuno, gave another drum-rattling whinny.

Cuno's eyes dropped to look around for a snake, forgetting for a half second that snakes wouldn't be up this high nor out this late in the season. Then he whipped around again as Renegade lifted another bugling cry and, following the horse's terrified gaze across the rocky streambed beyond Camilla, saw the grizzly moving down the far slope in a shamble-footed gait, its haunches rippling, its shaggy cinnamon coat blowing in the wind.

The bear was a big male with powerful shoulders and hips and with paws the size of dinner plates. Moving swiftly down through the sunlight-dappled slope, meandering around trees and boulders and dislodging sliderock around him, he swung his head from side to side and loosed an enraged bellow that joined Renegade's terrified screams in an otherworldly din that echoed off the ridges like a warlock's cry.

Adding to the din was Camilla's scream. She wheeled toward Cuno, tripped in the rocks, and fell.

Hearing Renegade's hooves thudding away behind him, Cuno bolted through the trees and over the rocks to the girl. She was just gaining her feet when he reached her, and, on the other side of the streambed, the roaring, rambling bruin was just making the base of the hill.

Cuno grabbed Camilla's mittened hand. “Come on!”

He pulled her back across the rocks and through the branches, hoping like hell that Renegade hadn't run far. As they approached the edge of the trees, just beyond the fire, he shouted, “Renegade . . .
goddamnit
!”

The horse galloped up canyon, sixty yards away and growing smaller as the reins bounced along the ground behind him and the saddle hung down his side—not only the saddle, but the saddle sheath with the Winchester '73, as well.

Cuno cursed again. There was no point calling for the horse. Horses had an instinctual, primordial terror of bears and bobcats, and the paint wasn't coming back till the bruin was gone.

Cuno swung back around to see the bear lumbering at an angle across the streambed, heading toward him and Camilla. His thoughts raced, and he looked around wildly. They couldn't climb any of the surrounding trees, because the lowest branches were too high, and the bear would merely shake them out of the pines like ripe apples.

Peering north across the canyon, he saw a clay-colored shelf of sandstone jutting out of the bank and surrounded by shrubs and stunt confiers. It looked like a giant, sun-dried cow pie. There were several slot caves between the layers—a good hundred yards away, but one of those caves was their only hope of escape.

If the slots were deep enough.

“Run!” Cuno said, pushing Camilla toward the humping sandstone. “Head for those rocks yonder. I'm right behind you!”

Camilla stood, bald terror in her eyes. The bear was mewling and kicking stones as he crossed the stream. “Why don't you shoot him?”

“Only got my forty-five. It'll just rile him.” Cuno grabbed his saddlebags and shouted without turning around.
“Run!”

He draped his saddlebags over his shoulder and grabbed his blanket roll. As he headed back away from the smoking fire, he glanced over his shoulder.

The bruin had stopped in the middle of the streambed to stand on his hind legs, lift his snout, and beat his chest like an enraged ape as he loosed a tooth-splintering roar. Cuno stopped and turned back toward the stream, palming his .45. The bullets would only nip the bear like annoying blackflies, but the reports might scare him off.

Cuno hammered two rounds into a tree at the edge of the streambed, blowing out gouts of bark and pine slivers.

The bear lifted his snout again and roared even louder. Then he dropped down to all fours and bolted off his back feet, driving forward like a large, furry locomotive on a downhill run, making a beeline for Cuno.

“Bad idea,” the freighter muttered, wheeling, holstering his .45, and snapping the keeper thong over the hammer as he broke into a sprint across the canyon.

Behind him, the bear's running footsteps thudded loudly as the bear bolted through the trees, breaking branches and mewling like a Brahma bull in a cholla patch.

“Oh, Christ,” Cuno muttered, breath raking in and out of his lungs. “If it ain't one damn thing, it's another!”

21

CUNO BOUNDED FORWARD, running hard, the saddlebags flapping down his chest and back, as he clutched his blanket roll in his right hand. He'd instinctively grabbed the gear, knowing he and Camilla would need it if they survived the bear.

Ahead, Camilla was running through another streambed branching off from the one behind, lifting her skirts above her ankles and snatching terrified looks over her shoulder.

Cuno shouted, “Keep going!”

The girl hissed something in Spanish, and Cuno wasn't sure if she was berating him or the bear.

The water of this intersecting stream wasn't as deep as the first—probably just a feeder creek—but it splashed up above Cuno's knees as he lunged forward, nearly slipping on the ice-rimed stones. As Camilla approached the stream's opposite side, she slipped on one of the icy rocks and fell to a knee but pushed herself back up quickly and scrambled, half crawling, up the grassy bank beyond.

As Cuno made the stream's opposite side, he turned to look behind. The bear was running full out, charging like a bull buffalo with his head down, razor-edge fangs bared. As the bruin plunged into the shallow stream, Cuno lunged up the bank.

“Hurry!” He slipped the bedroll into his left hand and reached down to grab Camilla's arm with his right, then hoisted her up the slope behind him. In the corner of his vision, the bear was gaining on them, the harsh sunlight reflecting off the beast's thick, silvery-cinnamon coat and off the water droplets flying up around him.

“Santa Maria!”
Camilla screamed as Cuno pulled her up off her right knee and she glanced behind to see the bear barreling across the rocky streambed. “I won't make it!”

Cuno gave her arm another tug and she screamed as he pulled her onto both feet, half dragging the girl along behind him. The largest slot cave was now fifty yards away, the gap widening with agonizing slowness, the bear trudging up the hill behind them, so close that Cuno could hear the bruin's ragged breaths.

There were several gaps between layers of the crenellated sandstone. Cuno headed for the largest one, about as long as he was tall and about two feet high. Impossible to tell how deep it was, but they were about to find out.

Cuno glanced behind once more. The bear was so close he could see the whites in the animal's eyes. There were several hairless patches along his neck and shoulders—likely old battle scars—and his smell was nearly as eye-watering strong as a skunk's.

Cuno pushed Camilla down in front of him with more force than he'd intended. “Go on!”

The girl gave a yowl as she hit the ground, then scrambled on hands and knees into the gap, gravel flying out around her. Cuno dropped to his knees as the shadow of the charging bear passed over him and brushed across the face of the scarp. He threw down the saddlebags, blanket roll, and himself when the bear was about ten feet behind him. Diving into the gap, he felt a sharp scrape across his boot as the bear swept a claw-tined paw at him, bellowing raucously.

“Hurry!” Camilla shrieked as, grabbing Cuno's right shoulder, she pulled him back into the dark, musty gap.

Cuno lunged back toward the long, narrow opening, grabbing a saddlebag pouch with one hand and pulling it in behind him. He did the same with the blanket roll. Then, as the bear swatted at the opening with both paws, slashing with those sickle-like, razor-edged claws and mewling and bellowing so loudly that Cuno thought his eardrums would shatter, the young freighter kicked himself as far into the cave as he could.

He was glad to find that he could slide back a good ten feet before the back of his head and his shoulder smacked a solid stone wall. The bear's shadow slid this way and that across the gap and across a small, cup-sized hole a couple of feet above it, and in that hole Cuno saw a flash of white, snarling teeth and blazing red eyes.

A shudder racked him.

“Go 'way!” Camilla cried, heeling sand and gravel toward the gap.

One of the bear's flailing paws almost caught her right moccasin, and Cuno grabbed her arm and pulled her taut against him, his voice nearly drowned by the bear's bellowing tirade as he yelled, “Keep your legs in, girl, or he'll rip 'em off!”

“Son of a bitch!” the girl cried again, closing her hands over her ears. “
El oso loco
, go away!”

Raising her knees to her chest, she pressed the side of her face against Cuno's shoulder, clutching his left arm with both her hands, digging her fingers painfully into his bicep as she drew him taut against her. Cuno kept his own knees raised and angled toward the girl, and he laid a shielding hand across her head, feeling her starts and shudders beneath it. He gritted his teeth against the din, against the smell of the bear pushing through the gap and the sand he was throwing up into their faces.

He planted his right hand over his .45's ivory grips, and he considered taking another shot as he watched the bear scoop sand out away from the gap now and occasionally lower his head to peer with those blazing eyes into the cave. The bear sniffed loudly, then opened his mouth, unfolding that broad, pink tongue and revealing those long, savage fangs.

Camilla pushed even harder against Cuno, driving her knees up against his side and cowering against his shoulder as she yelled incoherently amidst the bear's mad roar. The griz closed his mouth, pulled back slightly, and for a moment hope welled in Cuno like an elixir.

Had the beast given up?

But then the broad shadow closed like a savage fetid night of hell over the gap once more, and the broad, shaggy paws with those horrific claws appeared, swiping at the orange sand and gravel at the bottom of the opening.

“He's trying to work his way in,” Cuno muttered, hearing the awe in his own voice as the bear grunted and snorted and made snicking and scratching sounds as he dug a hole at the bottom of the gap.

Cuno flicked the keeper thong from over his .45's hammer with his index finger and pulled the iron from its holster. He held the six-shooter out halfheartedly, staring at the gap in which the paws worked and the broad snout with contracting and expanding nostrils appeared fleetingly from time to time.

If Cuno could shoot the bear through one of its eyes, he might kill it.

Cuno waited.

The bear dug, grunting and groaning with savage eagerness, no doubt anticipating the taste of the human flesh on his tongue.

Camilla sobbed and pulled at Cuno's arm. He could feel the wetness of her tears through the sleeve of his buckskin tunic.

He rocked the Colt's hammer back. At almost the same time, the bear loosed another bellowing, echoing roar as he lay flat on his side and threw one front paw deep into the hole. The claw slashed the sand only a few feet in front of Cuno's boots. One eye at the bottom of the gap flashed.

Cuno aimed the Colt at the bear's eye and began taking the slack from his trigger finger. Suddenly, the bear lifted his head, and the eye was gone. The paw snaked back out of the hole. Cuno muttered a curse and let the Colt sag in his hand. The bear went to work wildly again on the hole at the bottom of the gap's entrance, roaring and raging, sand flying in all directions.

Then he stopped. Dust sifted. The bear grunted, and Cuno could hear him out there, crunching sand and kicking gravel, breathing hard and sort of groaning as though with defeat. The bulky shadow slid back away from the gap, and the grunts and groans and the crunch of sand and gravel and grass dwindled gradually.

The silence inside the cave was like a heavy physical presence. It was so quiet that Cuno thought he could hear the quiet ticking of the dust settling back down on the floor. Camilla sniffed and turned her head quickly, startled by the sudden silence.

They both listened for a time, saying nothing.

Camilla turned to Cuno and whispered, “He is gone?”

The bear was still grunting and groaning angrily, but the sounds seemed to emanate from the bottom of the canyon. There was the distant snap of a twig under a heavy foot.

Cuno drew his legs under him and crawled over to the cave's opening and, crouching, peered out. The bear was on the canyon floor, ambling slowly back across the stream, his heavy shoulders and haunches rippling with each step, his big head swinging under the large hump between his shoulders.

Cuno glanced back at Camilla still hunched up against the cave's rear wall, her hair mussed, her brown eyes glistening in the light from the entrance. “Stay put.”

He crawled out and knelt in front of the opening, hands on his thighs, staring down the slope toward where the bear was now ambling across the rocks on the far side of the stream. He was heading back toward the trees between this lesser stream and the main one snaking along the base of the opposite canyon wall.

Cuno started to rise but stopped when the bear wheeled suddenly. He dropped back down to his knees and lowered his head as the massive bruin rose up on his rear legs and, throwing his head back on his shoulders and clawing at the air with his raised front paws, loosed another bellow that echoed around the canyon like near thunder.

He kept the bellow up a good, long time, shambling back toward Cuno and the cave.

Cuno turned and crawled back into the notch cave.