“Hold on a sec.” He squints over, still assessing. Also lining up the shot.
I have my gun in hand, but I haven’t lifted it. A voice in my head says we
haven’t reached that level of threat. Which is ridiculous. This isn’t a human, who might be provoked by me raising my weapon. So I do, but I feel guilty about it. I know, better than anyone, never to raise my weapon unless I am prepared to fire, and I really don’t want to fire. I am between an animal and her young, with no way of telling her I don’t pose a threat.
I do not want to kill her for protecting her baby. But I still raise my gun. I must.
“Take one step directly to your right,” Dalton says. “Away from the baby and the mother.”
The sow growls as soon as I lift my right foot, and Dalton quickly tells me to stop.
“You’re gonna have to shoot her, kitten,” Cypher says. “No way around this.”
“Casey?” Dalton says. “I have my gun trained on her, but you know it’s my bad hand. Jacob has an arrow nocked. Neither one of us has a sight line to the best shot.”
“But I do.”
“Yeah.” A pause. “Sorry. We’ll try something else, but I need you to be absolutely ready to fire if she charges. She’ll drop to all fours. Aim downward at her head. Empty your weapon. Do not hesitate.”
“I know.”
The sow growls and bares her teeth. She’s getting impatient.
“Walk backward,” Dalton says. “It’s clear ground behind you. Don’t hurry, or you’ll trip. Keep your gun ready. If she drops—”
The sow drops to all fours.
“Casey?”
“Got it.”
She’s going to charge. Her muscles bunch. Her eyes fix on me. She will charge, and I can empty my gun, but I’m still not certain it will save me.
The cold thud of that hits me square in the gut. This is a black bear. Up until now, I’ve paid them only healthy respect. It’s the grizzlies I worry about.
This bear can kill me, though. She has fangs and she has claws and she’s twice my weight, and I’m between her and her baby.
She can kill me.
And I’m not sure anyone can stop her.
I wheel and run. Dalton shouts. The bear snorts in rage. A gun fires and an arrow thwangs … and I race straight for the cub. I scoop it up in my arms. As it bleats in alarm, I throw it, a low and easy pitch that sends the cub smacking into its charging mother. The sow skids to a halt, and then I do run—toward Jacob’s shouts of “Over here!”
Nine months ago, I’d never have led an enraged bear toward anyone I cared about. If I made a mistake, I’d pay the price alone. But Jacob is correct. I need to run to where three people stand ready to help me.
When I reach the others, I wheel to see the bear prodding her cub, making sure it’s all right. She glowers and snarls our way, but there are four of us, a tight-knit mass of large predators. She has her baby. That’s all she wanted. She picks him up by the scruff of the neck and marches into the forest.
“That was…” Cypher begins. “I am torn between ‘awesome’ and ‘the fucking craziest thing I’ve ever seen.’”
“I’ll go with the latter,” Dalton mutters.
“Nope,” Cypher says. “I think we gotta admit to both. Awesome and crazy. She threw a cub. At a charging bear.”
Jacob snickers. “It was kind of—”
“No, no it was not,” Dalton says. “You know what you’re supposed to fire at a charging bear, Casey? Bullets.”
“I know.”