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.It had been rolling logs over along the side of the creek, looking for grubs.‘‘Woof !’’ It made a sound exactly like a dog’s bark would be written.A clean woof, and stood up.It was a ticklish moment.Brian knew that bear rarely attacked.But he also knew it wasn’t particularly good when they stood up and didn’t run away, and this bear was standing not ten feet from him.Brian had left his bow on top of the pack with an arrow nocked to the string but it was a field point, not a broadhead, and a field point would do almost no damage to a bear, probably just make it angry.By the time he got a broadhead out of the quiver and got a shot the bear would be on him.He looked down and to the side to avoid eye contact (which sometimes angered them) and—still holding the rope to the canoe so that it angled roughly between them—he slowly backed away.The bear dropped to all fours and lunged toward him.Brian jumped off to the left.The bear stopped, watched, then lunged to its right, Brian’s left, heading off Brian’s movement in that direction.Brian moved back to his right, trying to get back across the stream.The bear lunged out into the water, this time to its left, forcing Brian back the other way.It’s pushing me, Brian thought.It’s making me go back on the bank.It wants me.The bear feinted again to the right, pushing Brian back, left, then right, the area getting smaller all the time; Brian kept moving back, pulling the canoe, keeping the canoe between them, zigging and zagging, always back, across the shallow stream and close to the bank on the far side.The bear was teasing him, playing with him, maybe the way a cat plays with a mouse, back and forth, cutting him off, tightening down on him.Brian felt it rise in him then; he had been afraid, the way the bear was working him, like prey, and that changed to full-blown anger.‘‘No!’’His voice almost made Brian jump.The bear stopped dead, startled, and stood up again.‘‘Not with me.’’ Brian took the half beat to reach into the canoe and grab his bow, another half second to get a broadhead out of the quiver, nock it to the string, raise the bow and stand.They weren’t twenty feet apart and now there was eye contact.The bear was close to the same height as Brian and there was no fear in its eyes and there was no fear in Brian’s.Just two sets of eyes looking at each other across the top of a razor-sharp MA-3 broadhead.‘‘Go away.’’ Brian said it quietly but as he spoke he looked down from the bear’s eyes to the center of the bear’s chest, looked where the heart was beating, looked, and the point of the arrow dropped to where his eyes were looking and he drew the bow halfway back, then full, tucked the arrow under his chin and said again, softly, ‘‘Go away now.’’There was nothing else for Brian then but the arrow and the bowstring trembling slightly in his fingers and the broadhead that he would send into the bear’s heart and the bear standing there, looking at him—no birds singing, no ripple of water past the canoe, no other thing in the world but one man and one bear in a moment perhaps older than time, a bear, a man and quiet death.Had the bear moved toward him again, or snarled, or lunged—any wrong start or any wrong motion—Brian would have released the arrow.Instead the bear hovered for a time—it seemed forever—and then came to a decision, let air gently from its nose in a long sigh, lowered slowly to all fours, turned and ambled away down the creek bed the way Brian had come, shuffling along through the shallow water without looking back.Brian tracked it with the arrow and when it was obvious the bear was going to keep going he let the string go slowly forward—his arms were shaking from holding it back so long—and took a breath.‘‘Good,’’ he said quietly, almost whispering.‘‘It’s good.my medicine is strong.’’And he was half surprised to find that he was thinking the way Billy had spoken, almost in a song, and that as he had thought he had moved his right hand—the left still holding the bow with the arrow nocked—with his words, waving the medicine down from the sky and waving the bear away.Good medicine.Chapter EIGHTEENDear Caleb: I am where I belong and I belong where I am.If there had still been something of his old life left in him—and there may have been just a faint part of it—it left with the bear, left when he looked over the broadhead at the bear’s heart and knew that he was not afraid because he was as good as the bear, as quick, as ready to do what he had to do.Because he knew he could kill the bear, knew he would kill the bear, he didn’t have to kill.He was even with the bear.Even with the woods.Even with his life.He did not put the tent up that night but made a fire and had plain rice with salt—he didn’t even take fish—and then propped the end of his canoe upside down a couple of feet up on a limb, spread his bag beneath it and went to sleep.The mosquitos came for a short time; then the night cooled so that they left and he slept soundly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]