Pursuit Of The Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2001-04-01T07:00:00+00:00

Smoke rode west. He put a few miles behind him, knowing that by the time von Hausen and party rounded up their horses, buried their dead, and tended to the wounded, it would be dark. There would be no further pursuit this day.

He stopped long enough to fix his supper and boil his coffee, then moved on another couple of miles before finding a good spot to spend the night. He was up and moving before dawn, pushing west. He was not all that familiar with this region. Years back, he and Preacher had cut north at the stone trees and headed up into Montana. Preacher had told him about the western part of this region, but Smoke had not personally seen it.

He cut southwest, heading for the Gallatin Range. As he rode, he added up how many people-approximately-von Hausen had left. As close as he could figure it, he still had about twenty-five people after him, including the women, and he damn sure wasn’t going to discount them.

His horses began acting skittish, eyes all walled around and ears pricked up. Smoke reined up and listened. And he didn’t like what he heard. This was grizzly country and it was spring, with the mother grizzlies out of the den with cubs. A big grizzly can be as much as seven feet tall and weigh close to a thousand pounds. Smoke heard the huffing sound of a grizzly, and the whining of cubs, and the sounds were close. And he also smelled fresh blood. That probably meant that the grizzly had killed a fresh dropped elk calf and would be awfully irritated at anything that interrupted her meal.

Smoke left the trail and moved east for about a mile, getting away from the grizzly and her cubs-if any-and her meal. Smoke had enough to worry about without the added danger of a grizzly bear.

When his horses had calmed down, he cut west and once more picked up the trail. Although a bear steak would taste nice, there was no way Smoke would kill a mother with cubs. Preacher had instilled in Smoke a deep love and respect for the land and the animals that lived there. Should he kill a bear, there was no way he could come close to using the meat, and no one around to give it to. Smoke had never killed any type of animal for the so-called sport of killing, and never would. He had nothing but contempt for those who killed without need.

There was another reason that humans should be extremely careful in grizzly country: a grizzly can run up to thirty miles an hour; no way a human being could out-race one. But grizzlies, because of their bulk and long straight claws, seldom climb, even as cubs.

Ol’ Preacher had told Smoke that there was only two kinds of trees in grizzly country: them that he could climb and them that he couldn’t.

Smoke hoped that von Hausen and his party didn’t run into a grizzly. Those stupid people would make no effort to avoid contact.

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