Will crossed now, moving around one side of the pit trap. There in the dirt at his feet was the imprint of the mother’s paw. Close by, almost erasing that of its mother, the cub’s prints could be seen where it had moved back and forth along the edge of the pit, calling for its mother and waking Will from his sleep.
By the size of the paw print he could see the cub was no more than a few months old and that, as he followed one print after another, it had moved up and away from the field. The path moving in a somewhat direct line toward the roadway above.
He took several steps this way and then turned back to the trap. Two beavers still hung by the wire. He reached and undid one end of the wire and brought the two carcasses down. With the beavers in hand he went back to the small paw prints he’d found and went up the hill in a careful study of the surrounding landscape, watching for movement, listening for sound.
His movements were slow and deliberate. His watchfulness had less to do with startling the cub and more to do with what that cub might have already drawn from the forest. For Will knew it was not just him that was hunting this cub, but likely the larger, boar grizzly.
When he came to the road he could see where the small cub had run across the gravel and Will marked the front paws and then looked for the broad back paws of each foot and the way they had pushed and swept at the gravel. He crossed, looking at each paw print then went down into the forest at the other side of the road and continued, following the prints, sometimes losing them, sometimes taking his direction from a broken twig or a tuft of hair found caught on the rough bark of a pine.
He was two hours in his tracking and by the time he came to the thicket of elderberry the sun had risen high in the sky and the forest had begun to steam from the heat. Will stopped. He had carried the rifle in his hand for the entirety of his search. Now he set it aside and knelt, looking down at the fresh paw print the cub had left in the mud. The whole of the thicket seeming to follow the low depression of a waterway Will could not yet see.
As he stood up, he was almost certain something had moved within the thicket. Without taking up the rifle, he inched forward. He could see now the dark muddied front paws of the cub, and farther up, just where they disappeared within the bush, he saw the brown, almost blond fur of its summer coat.
Not wanting to take his eyes from the spot, he reached and felt for one of the beavers and then once he had the carcass in his hand, he threw it forward. Will waited and watched. The snout emerged, black and pasted with mud, as the bear cub reached with its teeth, first testing the meat, then pulling it back within the thicket, placing one paw atop the carcass to hold it in place as it began to tear at the flesh. All the while keeping an eye on Will where he squatted.
When the cub had chewed the beaver to the white bone, Will reached again and found the second beaver. This time using his knife to quarter it, he threw one piece close to the bear, then a second a little more than a foot from the thicket. When the bear cub had finished the first quarter of it Will watched it come forward, moving low to the ground to gather the second quarter of meat and then lay eating it, still watching Will.
“You were hungry,” Will said, his voice no more than a whisper. The bear turned toward him with its ears cupped and focused in his direction.
He held out another quarter and waited, not putting the beaver meat down on the ground, but instead holding it outward in his hand, the way one might try to steady the nerves of a long-lost dog that had found its way to the wild. When the bear cub came forward and nipped at the meat Will did not let go, forcing the bear to inch closer. The cub a good hundred pounds and possibly more, already showing much of the muscle of an adult grizzly, and the claws that curved and dug up the earth almost like teeth. By the time it had worked up enough confidence to grab the meat from Will’s hand, Will had already begun to wonder how far the cub would be willing to follow him.
THERE WAS LITTLE BUT ASH AND A FEW BLACKENED PIECES OF wood remaining in the place of the fire. Will looked to the river then back down to where the slight breeze off the water turned the ash over and over again, running it now in a dusting across the land. He walked to the river’s edge and saw in the river mud where the worshippers had stood. Scanning across the water, he tried to find the place on the high rock face where he had stood watching, but there were many places and many shadows. He turned away from the river and went up again along the wash to where the fire had burned. The bear cub was there, pawing at a half-burnt piece of wood.
When he approached the bear cub shied away, then came back little by little. A couple hours had passed and Will often lost the cub, but waiting, soon would see the small bear loping through fields, or weaving between the trunks of the pine forest at a distance no less than a hundred feet away.
At the height of his climb up out of the depression where the church had held their bonfire he found he was disappointed not to see the bear climbing up behind him. But when he walked back a hundred feet he could see the bear running at the side of the river, playing in the shallow water, pausing to drink, and then running again. He called to the bear and soon the bear had come up out of the river.
Two hours later when he came up the rise toward his cabin, the bear was no more than twenty feet behind him. As he came into the small clearing before his place, the bear hesitated, standing there like it had come up against a very real, but very invisible wall that surrounded the clearing and the cabin within. The animal paced back and forth and then called out to him, making that low barking sound. Will walked back to it and held out his hand, watching as the bear pushed its nose forward now, smelling his skin then pushing at his hand until Will raised it ever so and began to scratch away at the side of the bear’s face like they had done this intimate appraisal of each other a thousand times before.
WHEN HE WOKE THE NEXT DAY, WILL FED THE BEAR CUB AND then, as was his custom, he set out with his snares and pack, carrying his rifle while his hat shaded his eyes against the rising sun. He walked down the rise and out along the field, the cub following, loping behind, often pausing to bite at the tender tips of grass. When Will passed on into the belt of trees that lined the stream beyond, the bear came crashing after him. The two of them now came to the edge of the stream to drink and to dip paws and hands within the moving water.
Many of the snares had been slipped, and Will went one by one looking each over and then resetting them. Twice, in the place he had set a snare there was only the blood and hair of a rabbit left to find. The bear cub sniffing at the ground, running its nose toward the higher field.
“Coyote is my guess,” Will said. His eyes up as he searched for clues as to where he might find his snare. Then moving in concentric circles, he widened his search until he found the place the rabbit had been carried and then eaten. The remains no more than a collection of bones and tufts of hair, but the wire snare not far off.
By the time he had circled and reset his snares it was midafternoon and he walked back across the Junegrass field with the bear trailing, running then pausing, just as it had before.
When he came to the rise that led toward his cabin the bear cub was still at play there in the field. The sun now ahead of him as Will walked, his shadow behind, stretching away from him down toward the field like his own dark reflection pulled long and thin across the grass.