Bear Adventure (9 page)

Frazer and Amazon, standing astride their bikes, were close together. But the cougar had only one target in mind. It was going for the smaller and weaker of the two animals.

Like other feline hunters, the cougar has two main killing techniques: the suffocating throat hold and the crunching bite through the spinal column. The former would be used to kill the bigger prey: white-tailed deer and elk, and even the odd moose. It could take many minutes to kill an animal like that, and it could be dangerous for the hunter. A struggling elk could easily kill a cougar with the point of an antler. The latter – the single savage bite slicing through the backbone – would be used for smaller prey. The cat regarded Amazon Hunt as small enough to be dispatched with a single bite.

She never even saw the leap. The cougar had tracked them along the side of the path, silent and invisible.

She did not see it, but she did feel it. Felt the lunging, shadowy doom of it.

And so she ducked. No, it wasn't anything as conscious as ducking. It was a flinch.

It was not sufficient to make the cat miss its victim, but it did miss its precise target. Rather than the nape of the neck, the iron jaws and five-centimetre canines closed round the head.

The hard, shiny, hairless head.

Which promptly fell off.

Had Amazon not snapped open the chinstrap on her helmet, the cougar would have taken her down with it. The cat, clinging with tooth and claw to the helmet, flew over her, and crashed down the slope, rolling and tumbling until it reached the turbulent waters below.

The two Trackers did not wait to see what became of it. Propelled now by a new lease of terror-pumped adrenalin, they cycled. They could hardly have gone more quickly had rocket engines been attached to their bikes. They reached the top of the long, low hill they'd been hauling themselves up, and then zoomed down the long slope on the far side of it. As they cycled, they grew sure that this time they'd left the horror behind them.

Amazon and Frazer climbed off their bikes and sat on the trunk of a fallen pine. The bear cub was still fast asleep in the rucksack. Amazon took the pack carefully from Frazer's back, and cuddled it and the bear on her knee. It looked more like a toy than a real, flesh-and-blood animal.

The forest around them was dark and almost silent. It was growing much cooler, and the sweat from the hard ride felt cold on their backs. Spiders' webs as big as cartwheels glimmered and shivered in the failing light. A few insects buzzed around, but it was too late in the season for the clouds of mosquitoes or blackfly or the other biting pests that can make life hell in the Canadian forests in summer.

‘How you doing, Zonnie?' Frazer asked, looking at his cousin with some concern. Her face was blotched with red from the effort, but beneath it she was white and trembling. And her eyes brimmed with tears that she would not let fall.

Frazer assumed that she was thinking about her brush with the cougar.

‘That was some lucky escape,' he said, smiling. ‘If you hadn't undone your helmet strap … well, maybe we could have beaten the cat off, but it wouldn't have been easy. I read an account of a cougar attack on a family –'

‘I don't care about the cougar,' said Amazon tragically. ‘I've just killed a mother bear. I've made an orphan of this little one.' Finally, now, the tears began to flow. ‘What can we do with it?' she sobbed.

In the relatively short time they'd been hanging out together Frazer had never seen Amazon cry before. In fact, if anyone had asked him, he'd have said that nothing could make Amazon Hunt cry. Well, perhaps he should have known that nothing could make Amazon cry for
herself
. She was sobbing not for her own misfortunes, but for the little creature in their care, and for the harm – albeit accidental – she, or rather they, had caused.

Frazer put his arm round her.

‘Zonnie, maybe you haven't noticed it, but you work for one of the best-resourced animal welfare organizations on the planet. We have links to every responsible zoo and wildlife park in the world. And back on the farm in New England we have plenty of room for a bear. So don't worry about Goldilocks here. We'll find the right home for her.'

Amazon couldn't help but smile through her tears.

‘Goldilocks?'

‘Well, yeah, I know Goldilocks wasn't technically a bear, but she hung out with bears. And, well, this little girl does have mighty pretty blonde hair.'

Amazon's smile grew, and then faded again.

‘All you mentioned were zoos … Is there no way we could give Goldilocks to another mother bear, so she could grow up in the wild?'

Frazer shook his head.

‘I don't think so. An adult bear that wasn't this one's biological mother would probably kill it. The best we could do is to give her a safe home, and maybe let her take part in a captive breeding programme – you heard my dad say how rare these spirit bears are.'

Amazon's head slumped, but then she sat up straight again.

‘Fine. I can't bring back the mother from the dead, but we can bring this little bear back to safety. Now which way is the camp?'

A shadow crossed Frazer's face. ‘Ah,' he said, ‘that might be a bit of a problem.'

‘Don't tell me … your pack … the stuff I emptied out …'

‘Exactly. I didn't have time to chew it over. But the map and my compass were in there.'

‘But we still have these,' said Amazon, holding up her GPS watch.

‘Yep, we do, and that'll tell us our position, but it
won't mean much without a map. But you're right, there's a compass function, and I think I know roughly what direction we need to head in. Trouble is, though …'

‘Yeah?'

‘Well, it's getting late. It took us three hours to reach the mountain. Then we've come quite a distance further on. Not sure how far, but we were cycling at top speed for an hour. And the trails through these forests are pretty good as long as you're travelling in daylight and can see where you're going …'

The startling reality of the situation dawned on Amazon.

‘Are you saying it's too late to get back tonight?'

‘Afraid so, Zonnie. The best thing we can do is to find a campsite, build a fire and hunker down till morning.'

Amazon Hunt thought about the cougar, then about the little bear. And then, as the first howl echoed over the wide forest, she thought about the wolves.

Amazon had always loved the idea of wolves, but that howl, even though it sounded very far away, made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. And of course there was Hal Hunt's harrowing story about his and her father's encounter, all those years before.

However, before she had the chance to put her fear into words, Goldilocks woke up. Woke up and realized that she was not happy. She began to struggle wildly within the tight confines of Frazer's backpack, emitting a stream of grumbles, yelps, wails, moans and growls.

Strangely, this was exactly what Amazon needed. She had an almost magical way with animals, a sort of natural empathy that meant that dogs and cats would come to her unbidden, birds would lie quietly in her hands while she put a splint on a broken leg or wing, and that made foxes and badgers play happily with their young, even though she was only a couple of metres away.

And she put that special ability to work now. She spoke soft, soothing words to the little bear. She let it chew on her hand – its teeth bit sharply to begin with, but then it settled down to a contented sucking on her thumb.

‘Guess she's hungry,' said Frazer, marvelling at the way that Amazon had soothed the tiny cub.

‘Duh!' replied Amazon. ‘You're missing your mother's milk, aren't you, little girl?'

And the thought of that almost brought on another bout of silent weeping.

‘Try some trail mix on her,' suggested Frazer. ‘She's old enough to be eating solid food as well as drinking milk.'

Amazon sprinkled the seeds and nuts on her hand and presented them to the inquisitive nose. Goldilocks snuffled the mix of dried fruit and nuts, and then gobbled it up greedily. Two more handfuls went the same way.

‘Well,' said Frazer, looking on, ‘I guess that
we
can eat worms and bark tonight. But we should find a better place to camp before it's dark.'

Goldilocks, calm and contented now, was stashed back in Amazon's rucksack, and they climbed back on the bikes.

‘What exactly are we looking for?' asked Amazon. She hadn't done much camping, so she had to rely on Frazer's expert knowledge.

‘Water, that's the main thing. Of course we need
shelter as well, but I can easily improvise something from branches. I've brought a little friend with me from the South Seas to help out.'

‘What, a coconut?'

‘Ha ha.'

Then Frazer reached into a side pocket on his backpack and pulled out a long, straight-bladed machete. It gleamed evilly in the fading light. And, as ever when he pulled out his machete, he couldn't stop himself from making a
shwiiiiiinnnng
noise, as though he were a knight or a samurai warrior in a movie. And, as usual, Amazon laughed at him for it.

But she was also mightily relieved to see the formidable blade.

‘How do we find water? I don't fancy going back and sharing it with that cougar …'

‘Zonnie, we're in Canada, not the Gobi Desert. If we carry on, the water will find us.'

And sure enough, after another fifteen minutes of cycling, they came to a stream that crossed their trail.

‘Will this do?' asked Amazon. ‘I mean, it's getting late …'

She was right – the afternoon was fading fast into evening. And it was getting colder.

Frazer looked around at the dense wall of trees and tangled undergrowth.

‘Well, it's water, but there's nowhere to camp here. Let's see if we can follow the stream. In Canada water likes company.'

‘You mean leave the trail? Is that wise?' asked Amazon. ‘What if we get lost …? At least here we know roughly how to retrace our steps.'

‘Hey, relax, if this doesn't work out, we can just backtrack along the stream.'

They had to dismount to follow the stream on foot, pushing their bikes along with them. The going was tough and they were constantly snagged by overhead branches and patches of briars and brambles. But soon the stream was joined by another flowing down from the high ground around them.

‘Here?' asked Amazon hopefully. The bear on her back was getting heavier by the second, and she was desperate to lay down her burden.

Frazer looked round, shook his head and forged on, using the mountain bike as a battering ram to force his way through the undergrowth.

And then, after twenty minutes of hard slog, they saw the forest open up before them.

‘Exactly what I was hoping for,' said Frazer.