“Shit!”
Dennis and the buck looked up. There was the sound of breaking branches as the eight-point buck’s flag went up and the white underside of his tail disappeared into cover. Dennis watched, both amazed and perturbed, as a swatch of colors, lines, and ropes came crashing down into the opening. At the center of the ball of color and cloth was a helmeted man rolling in agony.
“Aw, fer christsake!” was all Dennis said as he replaced the arrow in his quiver. He then unstrapped his safety belt from the trunk of the tree and climbed down from the stand that required an hour of positioning. He approached the man on the ground and saw that he was rapidly losing blood from his upper leg. Dennis quickly opened his own belt, yanked it through the loops of his camouflage pants, and dropped to his knees. He used the shaft of an arrow as the turnbuckle of a makeshift belt-tourniquet. The man on the ground was going into shock and shuddering. The twisting of the tourniquet stemmed the flow of blood. Dennis determined that this daredevil had lost quite a bit of blood, but not as much as he had seen other men, including himself, lose and still survive.
“You’re going to be okay. You’re bleeding a lot and you might have a concussion. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.” He removed his Gerber Skinner knife from its sheath and slit the man’s parachute. Was it a para-sail or para-glide? He couldn’t remember what the hot dogs who jumped off of cliffs called these things. Making a blanket of the multicolored fabric, he covered the crumpled body, deciding to leave the man’s helmet on but loosening the neck strap a bit. Dennis figured if he could at least keep him warm, the guy might not go into total shock. Dennis reached into his pocket to retrieve his cell phone. There was no signal. That’s when the man’s eyes met his.
“I’m going to a campsite about a mile back to get help.” As he walked away, the man grunted and tried to talk. Dennis came back and leaned down to listen.
“My … poc … ket.”
Dennis felt all the man’s pockets and found a cell phone in his right front. “I already tried but there is no sig …” Dennis was surprised to see a full signal until he read the name of the phone. It was a Comsat 310. “No shit, a satellite phone. Well, buddy, this is the best three grand you ever spent.”
Dennis was lucky to have drawn a tag from the Montana lottery and called the park rangers with the number printed on his out-of-state hunting license. He then reached in his pocket and retrieved his own personal Radio Shack GPS system. A gift from his wife, Cynthia, with a note that said “So you can always find your way back to me.” In the past, the only thing that got in the way of his coming home to her every night was the ritual at the watering hole, three blocks from the precinct that was his office for twenty-five years.
“My name is Dennis Mallory. I have a wounded man here, at 45 degrees, 37 minutes, 4.36 seconds, north, 110 degrees, 33 minutes, 35.82 seconds. Need air-evac, he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Hold on.” The ranger didn’t put his phone down and Dennis could hear him calling to the chopper whose scratchy response was followed by a repeat of Dennis’s coordinates. The ranger got back on the line. “Is the victim conscious?”
“He’s going in and out.”
“Are you by a clearing or place for the helicopter to land?”
“We’re about 300 yards west of a nice clear patch. I’ll mark it with a part of this guy’s parachute.”
“Parachute?”
“Yeah, a little present from heaven dropped down here with a thud … cut up his leg on a broken branch as he was coming in, probably busted a couple of bones to boot.”
“That’s a first!”
“For me, too, buddy. For me, too!”
The chopper was four minutes out, and Dennis was packing up his gear when he heard a sound that freezes all hunters dead in their tracks. He turned and saw a giant chestnut-brown grizzly three yards from the downed man. Instinctively, Dennis started shouting, trying to distract the mammoth beast from the smell of blood. He knew that, at sixty yards, the .38 strapped to his ankle would do little more than piss off the thing.
The bear turned around as it got wind of yet another predator in his domain.
“Now what do I do?” Dennis said to the trees as he quickly unzipped the bag into which he had just stowed his bow. He cut himself on the razor-tipped edge of a Carbon Express, three-veined arrow as he snagged it out from the quiver. The bear started toward him. Then, as if the animal had calculated the distance between them, it turned to go back to the raw meat writhing on the ground only a few feet away. Like an Indian brave, with his bow out in front of him, Dennis began running toward the bear as he nocked the arrow to the string. To get the bear’s attention he started screaming again … to no avail. It hovered over the bleeding fellow for a second, sniffing at the brightly colored blanket.
While running, Dennis observed the bear’s hesitation, the nylon chute momentarily confusing the bear. The scent of fresh blood, however, overcame the grizzly’s visual disorientation and it began to prod and poke the bright fabric covering the newly butchered prey it was so fortunate to stumble upon. Then the grizzly got a handle on something that looked edible. With a snap of his head, the bear chomped down on the man’s arm.
Dennis stopped momentarily, just long enough to take a shot, then continued running. As soon as the arrow left his bow, he feared that he might hit the man he was trying to save. The bear swung the man out of harm’s way just as the arrow punctured the animal right above its left shoulder. The pain pulling the beast sideways created the image of the man being dragged like a rag doll.
This time, Dennis got down on one knee as he nocked the next arrow. Taking a deep breath, he retracted the bow and aimed. On exhale, he loosed the arrow. The animal cried out, dropping the man’s arm. Having been hit right in the chest it rolled backwards, snapping off both arrows that lodged deep in its body. The 1,200-pound grizzly roared as he beat the ground with massive paws and tried to shake away the pain that stung him like giant bees. Dennis approached the man and saw he was still breathing. Although his arm was gnawed, it was still intact.
Dennis fit the string into the notch of one more arrow. Cautiously, he advanced toward the wounded animal. It lay helpless, its breathing rapid and short, its thick fur rippling with spasms. Its eyes wide, the bear was choking on its own blood, the arrow having punctured the right lung. Dennis, a hunter all his life, of men, as well as animals, felt a genuine sadness for this great creature’s agonizing confusion.
“Sorry, pal, but this is for your own good,” he said as he let go of an arrow that went right into the beast’s heart. The giant bear stopped moving as if a switch was thrown off. Dennis gazed upon the grizzly for a moment. How sad that such a glorious animal had to be wasted like that. He had to put his daughter’s dog, Patches, to sleep when it contracted a tumor in its old age. She grew up with the dog and even though she was sixteen, he still had to explain to her that it was for Patches’ own good that he be put to sleep. His daughter didn’t buy it. It took a year before their relationship normalized again. Normal only for a brief second because then she was seventeen and discovered a completely new set of ways to test him.