Read Online Brian's Hunt by Gary Paulsen - Free Book Online

wouldn’t rip the gear up, and the bear’s tracks went at first back to the kennel and three dogs lay dead there, mauled only slightly. A fourth chain was there with a ripped nylon collar on the end and he looked back at the dog, which was still following him. “That was you? And you ran? But why not stay if Anne and Susan were here. Or the kids?”
    Unless, he thought, unless they were dead. Please no, just please no, not any more, not now. . . .
    But to the left of the kennel there were bear tracks heading off into the brush and alongside the tracks there was a skid mark as if the bear had been dragging something heavy.
    No. Please no . . .
    It was not hard to follow the tracks and they didn’t go very far. Forty yards back in the brush he found the second body, partially eaten, the buttocks and thighs gone, lying on its face, the head hidden by black hair, the rest of the body covered with leaves and dirt as if buried to save for later.
    Please no . . .
    He was sick but this time did not throw up and instead squatted by the head of the body and moved the hair away and saw that it was Susan’s mother, Anne. Her face was not torn but there was a strange angle to her head as though she had been struck very hard and it had broken her neck.
    He fell back, weakened suddenly, and sat in the grass next to the body. Then he stood and left the body as it was—time for what had to be done later, when he’d found out about Susan and the other children—and moved back to the cabin area.
    Trying not to think about the bodies—and this was nearly impossible—he forced his mind into a hunting-tracking mode and looked for sign. The water between the island and the main shore was very shallow, never over a couple of feet, and he quickly found where the bear had waded across and come onto the island’s shore. Huge tracks in wet mud, then muddy tracks in the grass, moving through low hazel brush up toward the dogs and the kennel, where the bear must have smelled the dog food, fish and beaver meat—the odor would carry with good wind for miles.
    Everything in him wanted to hurry, to run, to scream her name and run, but Brian forced himself to be slow, to be careful.
    The bear’s tracks were even, just walking, never hurrying until the last moment when he cleared the hazel and the dogs saw him and probably started barking.
    There, by the kennel, he saw the tracks of two people, one large and one slightly smaller, David and Anne, and there was a dented bucket. They were probably feeding the dogs. The distance from the line of hazel brush to where they were standing wasn’t ten yards, thirty feet, three bounds for the bear and he was on them.
    Two seconds’ warning, at the most, and he was there, on top of them, dogs screaming, one blow for Anne, and Brian could see where her body hit, then David running for the only hope he had, the rifle in the cabin, the bear’s prints wheeling and digging as he went after David and the rest in the cabin. . . .
    Then bear tracks back to the kennel, where he must have killed the dogs. All but one, the one with Brian, and then more tracks, bear tracks, around where Anne’s body had fallen and then the skid marks where the bear had dragged Anne away into the brush to feed.
    No other new tracks. No small children’s tracks by the kennel or from kennel to house. No tracks of Susan. No newer tracks at all.
    Maybe she was gone, gone to town, visiting friends or relatives back in the world, gone with the children.
    He started a circle search, around the center of activity, the attack site and cabin, looping through the brush, close in at first, moving out four feet with each loop, looking intently, studying carefully each stick, each blade of grass, and on the tenth loop he found it and then felt stupid for not having seen it at once.
    On the trail up from the lake, just to the side, two scuff marks as if somebody walking, somebody smaller than Brian, smaller than David, had suddenly stopped and then