Because her head hurt and she'd been left in the dirt by a giant bear, Anna attempted to entertain the idea that Joan had abandoned her, run all the way back to West Flattop Trail intent on saving her own skin.
The story wouldn't wash. Not only would it be out of character for Joan as a good woman to leave another to die, it would be out of character for Joan as a good researcher to leave a fantastically out-of-place golden Alaskan grizzly without photos, scat samples and much in the way of scientific contemplation.
Joan was around. If she hadn't come back it was because she couldn't come back. Anna felt the sickening boil of fear as she wondered if Joan had come back too soon. If the bear had left Anna to pursue more lively Prey. She opened her mouth to call out, thought better of it and closed it again. No time to go off half-cocked. A few minutes limping and fumbling located her day pack. She took inventory. A little food. Plenty of water. Pliers, hammer, staples, small hard-sided case with the last skunk love-scent canister inside and a well-used topographical map. Since she'd fully intended to be back in camp before sundown, she'd not brought a flashlight. Joan had the radio and, search as she might, the can of bear spray she'd dropped was not to be found.
Feeling unarmed and fragile, she sat again on her rock. The cold was deepening. She didn't have a jacket with her for the same reason she was without a flashlight. The Boy Scout motto came to mind. A lesson to be learned. Again. The hard way.
Without light she couldn't search for Joan. Without a radio, she couldn't call for help. The one thing she could do was move from this exposed place. Pushing to her feet, she limped slowly toward the thickening screen of alder that heralded the pine forest proper. Chances of encountering a bear or thebear were greater in the coverts, but like any hurt and frightened animal, Anna felt the need to hide.
Moving slowly, favoring her bad knee, she picked her way over the rock-embedded land past the miniature lake. Till the moon rose, her eyes were of questionable use and she stopped every few steps to listen. Partly she listened for Joan and Rory; mostly she listened for any sign that the bear was still in the neighborhood. The only sounds she heard were those of her own making.
Beneath the alders darkness was absolute. Anna lost all sense of direction and, knowing what she did was illogical and dangerous, she pushed on. Nowhere seemed safe. Nowhere seemed a good place to stop. The small clearing was too exposed, too near the water source where bears would come to drink. The thicket was too closed in, too dark. Her knee was swelling, her head had left its dull ache to throb, but still she could not bring herself to stop.
Because the patron saint of lost souls-or fools-guided her footsteps she came not to the edge of a cliff or ravine but out of the thicket and into the more open land beneath the pines.
The moon had yet to rise, but there was a hint of ambient light from the sky. After feeling her way blindly through the brush, Anna felt relief as her eyes came alive once more. The need to keep moving abated somewhat. That and the pain in her knee finally convinced her it was wiser to stop.
Back against a pine, she straightened her leg, drank water and listened. From a ways away-a mile, a yard, she couldn't tell-came the shush of a body passing through brush. The water froze in Anna's throat. Forcing herself to swallow it, she flinched at the audible gulping sound she made.
More listening. Faint, very faint, a hissing roar like that of distant water rushing down a narrow gorge. No rivers this high, no streams of that magnitude; Anna wondered if she was suffering an auditory hallucination brought on by a bang on the head. Far away, disturbingly hard to get a sense of, the hissing continued. Then, just as faint, just as clear in the still, crystal air, a clink. Metal, the key to the aural conundrum.
The hiss was the familiar obnoxious noise of a Coleman stove, the clink a pan or lid. Someone was making dinner. Anna pushed herself up, started toward the sound in too much of a hurry. The knee gave out and she fell. When the pain ebbed, she sent a tiny prayer of gratitude into a heaven she believed to be deaf and dumb.
Joan would not leave her knocked out in a rocky field while she calmly prepared dinner less than a mile away. Joan didn't have a stove or camp gear. Anna, in her rush to be right, had dragged her and Rory into this mess as unprepared as she herself was.
For a time she remained sprawled on the soft carpet of needles, unsure whether it was better to go see who was camping in her woods or to run away.
The rumble from the Coleman stopped. An angry voice, just one, the words unclear but the savage tone unmistakable, made the decision for her. Setting her mind beyond the pain in her leg, Anna moved toward the source of the noise with infinite care, one step, one tree at a time. Twice she was stopped. Twice she thought she heard the stealthy padding of oversized paws on the pine needles in the darkness behind her.
The steps stopped when she stopped. Maybe it was only the crush of her own booted feet placed with such care. Maybe she imagined it. Whatever the source, Anna no longer wanted to run away. The terror behind her was as insistent as that which lay ahead.
The ranting voice, though more unsettling, was easier to track through the dark than the amorphous hiss of the stove had been. A person venting with such energy also made enough of a racket to cover the unavoidable sounds of her progress; she covered ground quickly.
Speed acted against her in a peculiar way. The faster she moved, the more she believed she was being pursued, the better she could imagine the glowing eyes and bared teeth inches from the nape of her neck. It took effort and a damaged knee to keep her from giving in to childlike panic and running toward the sound of a human voice.
A misstep. The knee twisted and Anna was forced to a halt. Her breathing was ragged. She'd broken a sweat that would soon turn to chill. Out of control,she warned herself, and Breathe.
Not making noise in body by movement or in mind by fear of the dark and the monsters that dwelt therein, Anna began to hear distinct words: "Out. Not a fucking game. By Christ I will."
Sobered, she moved again. Closing out the vision of the bear, she returned to the calming slowness that had marked her progress in the beginning, careful to make no sound, barge into no solid objects in the dark.
Another minute and she stopped abruptly. Perhaps fifteen feet in front of her was a dark form. A man, she guessed. He held a flashlight that he was pointing into the woods in the opposite direction from where she stood. By its backwash she could see he was tall and under his right arm he held a long-barreled rifle. In the pale spill of the flash she saw Joan and Rory.
Joan's face was colorless but for black around one corner of her mouth that could be blood or dirt. Her wrists and ankles were tied together so she had to sit hunched over, elbows around her knees. Rory was beside her. His ankles had been lashed together but his hands were free. He held them palm up in front of his face as if he felt for raindrops. At his feet the Coleman stove lay on its side, a pan tipped over nearby.
Rory'd been put to cooking, Anna guessed. In a rage the man with the flashlight had kicked over the stove, burning Rory's hands in the process.
"Goddamn it," the man bellowed. The light swung like a sword, piercing the darkness several feet to Anna's left. Staring right at her, Bill McCaskil screamed, "Come out now or I'll blow their fucking heads off!"