Blind Dog Canyon by Brett Cogburn

Author:Brett Cogburn [Cogburn, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2023-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The old grizzly was still hungry, and little else drove his fevered mind and emaciated body. Food and pain. He came back to the camp the evening after Zuri left, hoping to kill another of the sheep as he had before. But the sheep were gone, and the cold made his bad shoulder ache so horribly that, even if there had been sheep, he couldn’t have run one of them down in the deep snow.

He rummaged through the camp again, sniffing and making strange grunts and groans, but he found nothing to stave off his hunger. He thought of the lamb he had only partially eaten and left in the thicket, and he lumbered up the ridge to that spot only to find that scavengers had finished what he had left there. Not even the bones of the little lamb were to be found, only bits of wool and bloodstained ground remained beneath the snow.

Frustrated and restless, he made his way back to the camp. It was purely by accident that he passed close to the sheepherder’s grave. It was only another mound of snow, and there was nothing there to indicate it should hold any interest to him, but the bear’s keen sense of smell caught a faint scent of dead flesh.

He went to the mound and dug into it. The rocks he found beneath, those that Zuri had stacked over her father’s body, were no obstacle. He hooked the claws of his good front leg under them and flipped them out of his way as if they were nothing. Then he feasted again. The sheepherder, the first man he had killed, also became the first man he ate.

He lay at the grave until nightfall, then on through the night, alternating eating and sleeping. Even the driving snow and blizzard winds did not make him leave the sheepherder’s remains. It was not usual bear behavior, but the old, crippled boar was not the usual grizzly. Especially not now, not after he had partaken of man flesh.

The blizzard blew itself out by the next morning, and the bear went to the fallen tent and lay on top of it and licked his infected shoulder wound and slept some more. The sun finally came out and warmed him, and that was perfect for more napping. By evening, he was already hungry again and went back to the sheepherder’s grave, but there was nothing left of the man thing’s carcass worth taking.

The bear moved on, going down the mountain less by instinct or some knowledge of the terrain that he had gained during his lifetime in those mountains and more by chance. Though he didn’t know it, the course he took led on the same track Zuri had taken. Because of that, he found where she had dug her snow shelter and spent the night. He tore into the snow cave, but found nothing other than a frying pan. The pan smelled delicious, like old grease and fat—fat that he needed more than anything.

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