The Hunts

By Harry B. Dodge III

"There!" Andy whispered sharply, pointing to the area where the bear was thought to be sleeping. "Look at the brush."
Indeed, Tom could see the movement of alders, an insistent swaying, as if an unseen hand had grasped a branch and was trying to shake something out of the tree.
The bear heaved forward and stepped into the clearing. Tom held his breath as he watched the bear finally detach itself from the brush, revealing its true enormity.

Four men embark on a bear hunt on Kodiak Island's remote south end. Old Ivory, an elusive and colossal bear, is their ultimate goal. Each hunter has a unique perception of the undertaking: a chance for redemption, a test of manhood, realization of a lifelong aspiration, or a spiritual quest for cultural preservation. Kodiak's rugged terrain, harsh weather, and the canniness of the animal they pursue test their stamina and resolve and ultimately compel them to examine their individual values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456721305

Harry B. Dodge III

            Harry Dodge has lived on Kodiak Island since 1975. He has worked as a fishery biologist, commercial fisherman, registered guide, trapper, journalist, wildlife viewing guide, and educator. He and his wife, Brigid, own and operate Kodiak Treks from their lodge on Aleut Island in Kodiak’s Uyak Bay. From June through September, they offer bear viewing and backpacking trips and enjoy welcoming nature enthusiasts from around the world. Harry’s first book, Kodiak Island and its Bears: A History of Bear/Human Interaction on Alaska’s Kodiak Archipelago, was published in 2004 by Great Northwest Publishing and is currently in its second printing.

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© 2011 Harry B. Dodge III. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 02/03/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-2133-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-2132-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-2130-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011901551

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

I

Helga Bay

II

Cannery Lake

III

Preparations

IV

The Hunters

V

To Camp

VI

The First Day

VII

Weathered In

VIII

Cal’s Bear

IX

Cal Ships Out

X

Weathered in Again

XI

Slow Hunting

XII

The Narrows

XII

Day Thirteen

XIII

A Day of Respite

XIV

The Last Day

For Morris Talifson and Bill Pinnell,

with affection and gratitude.

Their wisdom and generosity impacted the lives of many,

mine in particular.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without significant assistance. I would like to thank:

Rob Holt, whose awesome painting graces the cover;

Gretchen Patterson, for her expertise and creativity in designing the layout for the cover and title page;

Kelley Meeusen for his pen and ink drawing that appears on the title page;

Sarah Schulman, for her tutorship;

And my wife Brigid, for the tremendous amount of work she invested in editing the manuscript.

The Hunts

By H. Dodge

Prologue

In the darkest hours of night Old Ivory hectors Andy’s sleep. Andy’s dreams often inhabit that first encounter, many years past. He re-lives that one hunt—that one moment—that infected him with doubts, leaving him to question the very foundation of his beliefs. That, and leaving him bent on revenge, or on some form of redemption.

Andy, with Walter and the hunter beside him, is watching the bear that has just emerged from the alders. It stands in the clearing across the valley from them, its head up, nose to the wind. The bear is coal-black; gigantic. After twelve days of hard, fruitless hunting, sweat running down their faces from the forced march to the far reaches of the upper the valley, the hunters contemplate their next move.

They cross the valley, gliding silently along the worn trail, drawing closer to the looming bear. They ford the creek, but as they clamber onto the opposite bank, the bear casually walks into the obscurity of the heavy brush and out of view. They wait one hour—two—without seeing any sign of the bear. Andy is confident that it couldn’t have left the patch of brush unobserved. The bear has bedded down, he decides.

An open bench above the brush-patch offers a perfect outlook. As they make the ascent, Andy’s thoughts are on the bear. He is animated by a surge of energy coursing through him. A state of ecstasy makes the climb seem effortless.

They reach the bench and peer over the edge, down into the alders below. They carefully examine the brush’s every dark niche, but fail to locate the bear. They wait, vigilant, as the afternoon wanes. Shadows stretch from the sun that hangs low over the mountains to the west, and a deep silence descends over the valley.

At this point, Andy’s dream takes one of two separate paths. In one scenario Andy’s actions differ slightly from the script of history: He opts to wait. His shot is true.

But inevitably, Andy must yet, again, re-live the true events. The wind, brisk and steady all day, is beginning to die off. Andy knows it will soon begin to downdraft. He’s beginning to wonder if the bear is still there. He decides on a plan of action. Walter will circle around to the lower end of the brush to a spot upwind of the bear. That might push the bear out of cover and into range.

Walter watches Andy and nods. Andy can tell that Walter, too, is excited. Walter’s eyes sparkle, and the thin wisp of a mustache he’s trying to cultivate stretches into a smile. He starts downhill, leaving Andy and the hunter expectant.

Walter soon reaches his assigned position below. Yet, there is no stirring from within the brush. Perhaps the bear hasn’t picked up Walter’s scent. Andy signals for Walter to walk along the bottom of the brush. Still no reaction from the silent alders. Andy finally signals for Walter to enter the brush and drive the bear out.

Walter disappears into the lower edge of the brush. Andy can hear the occasional snap of a broken branch and the thud of a rock thrown by Walter in the attempt to arouse the bear. Andy and the hunter kneel, their rifles trained across carefully arranged rests. As the quiet minutes pass, excitement begins to dissipate into resignation that the bear has somehow eluded them.

Hey! Walter’s shout is one of surprise and maybe fear. The sudden cry strikes Andy with a shudder of dread. He strains to see any movement in the now still brush. He begins to think Walter was just trying to wake the bear from its sleep, when the silence is shattered by a loud scream.

Andy grasps his rifle, his mind spinning. He can see brush moving, branches swaying, jarred by the passing of a heavy body. The bear is moving uphill through the brush, coming toward them. Get ready! he tells the hunter.

The bear emerges from the brush and, as it enters the clearing, begins to run uphill at a gallop. Andy is watching the bear, yet he keeps thinking about Walter’s voice. Naah! he’d cried—a negation of something horrible that had suddenly been cut short.

The dry grass crackles like a brush-fire in the bear’s wake as it lunges up the steep hillside. Andy can hear the bear’s raspy breaths. Wait until he tops out on the bench, he tells the hunter.

The bear climbs onto the bench, less than fifty yards across from them. It stops for an instant to look back downhill, offering a perfect broadside shot.

Now! Let him have it! Andy hisses. Andy is watching the bear, his rifle at the ready but not yet up. He waits for the hunter’s shot as the bear swings its enormous head around and regards them with a baleful look. Turning away from them, the bear bolts. Andy is wondering, "Where the hell is the shot," when the hunter’s rifle goes off— a loud concussion that makes Andy wince.

The bear, gathering momentum, shows no ill effects from the shot. But Andy isn’t considering the possibility that the hunter had missed. At this range a hit is a certainty. Where the bear is hit and how hard are the questions Andy tries to assess as he raises his rifle to his shoulder. He finds the bear in his scope. The bear has turned again and is now running straight uphill. A hip-shot to knock it down and let the hunter finish it off, or a heart-shot to put it down for good? Unable to detect where the bear is hit, Andy decides to go for the heart and the sure thing. The rifle rests easy in his hands, and the cross-hairs are locked onto the bear’s chest.

Now is where Andy’s dream becomes foggy and confusing. Does the bear slow down, almost stop, to assume a straight-legged swagger? Does it glare down at Andy and let out a loud hiss of disapproval? Does Andy almost lower his rifle? In a flash, or so it seems in Andy’s milky thoughts, the bear turns and is running. By sheer will, he swings the scope back onto the fleeing bear. The concussion of the shot rocks Andy back.

Andy has almost convinced himself that the bear turned just as he shot. How else to explain why he’d hit the bear in the foot, of all places? He had been hunting game his whole life. As a boy he’d trapped and hunted deer to help support and feed his family back in Montana. He had made a few bad shots in his time, but none like this. Yet the result is unmistakable.

The bear jumps at the sting of the bullet, shakes its paw, and bounds into the brush. As it reappears, higher and angling up the mountain, the bear has assumed a slight limp.

They rush down the slope to regain sight of the lower brush. Andy calls to Walter repeatedly but there is no response. Andy instructs the hunter to stay put, and he starts down into the brush. He follows the bear’s trail, huge pug-marks pressed into the loamy soil, through the leaning maze of alders.

Andy is almost upon Walter before he sees him. Oh, Walter! The blood is everywhere. Damn! What has he done to you? It is a garish scene that repeats itself over and over as an indictment.

Andy’s dreams crystallize on that one moment when he had Old Ivory in his sights. By day, Andy has adopted the more rational explanation. But doubts and mystery rule his nights.

I

Helga Bay

The Helga Bay cannery, a huddle of buildings tucked in Cannery Cove, had endured winter’s siege just as it had the many years past. The dogged slough-slap of waves echoed among the pilings under the fertilizer plant, and the old warehouses replied with creaks and murmurs of resignation. Situated at the south end of the massive island, the furthest point from the town of Kodiak, Helga Bay was now but a remote outpost of civilization. Roy and Andy had been watchmen there for more than forty years, ever since the cannery had closed down during the Great Depression. Over the intervening decades, routine had become ritual, and the outside world remained something invisible, existing far over the horizon. Though Roy and Andy participated vicariously in the events of the world through the hunters that came and went and through Roy’s endless correspondence, it remained an alien world, deemed unworthy of great concern. The passage of time was marked only by the slow deterioration of the buildings and the inevitable aging of the two old-timers.

Where had the time gone? Roy would ask. It’s just lucky we don’t know what’s ahead of us, guys. No kiddin’.

April had come to Kodiak but the snow lingered, extending all the way down to saltwater. Inland, away from the mitigating influence of the ocean, ice lay thick and firm on the lakes, and without the merest variance, the winter’s long reign prevailed.

It’s not a normal year. Roy had voiced his judgement with increasing regularity as the winter wore on.

Spring was late—Roy and Andy could agree on that much. Roy said it was the coldest spring he’d ever seen, but then he said that every spring (unless it happened to be the warmest spring he’d ever seen).

The night was clear and cold, a night like many to which the cannery’s few inhabitants had submitted during the long dark months of trapping. Yet, there was a sense of impending deviation from the ritual of their existence grown stale. A seasonal change, though not readily observable, was inevitable fact. The pile of traps in the warehouse grew as Kyle and Tom hauled them back in from the lines. Meanwhile, the hunts, with their promise of relief from the long winter of seclusion, had become the main topic of discussion.

A faint glow of light from one of the smaller structures was the only sign of human occupation. A fox emerged from the elderberry bushes that formed a natural hedge of encroachment behind the cannery buildings. The animal stepped into the wan, yellow shaft of light from the window and watched the faint shadows of movement within. The acrid smell of wood-smoke drifted through the crisp air.

There was a muffled bang and the door opened. The sudden noise made the fox give a little jump of surprise. Tom and Kyle emerged through the spill of light, walked rapidly along the boardwalk, halted, and began urinating in wide arcs. They stood in silence, listening to the sound of liquid penetrating the crusted snow. Cold tendrils of night-wind that scurried through the cavern stillness of the warehouses provoked occasional clattering slaps from loose sheets of rusted and weather-beaten corrugated tin.

Tom looked up at the thin slice of moon, low in the sky. It sent a shaft of light across the frigid waters of the bay, illuminating the snow-covered mountains and countryside. Orion loomed overhead, an inhabitant of the night sky grown familiar like an old friend. Tom had eagerly sought the constellation on those many lonely nights of trapping at Pelly Lake, taking solace in the certainty and boldness with which it stalked the firmament. Whoee, it’s cold! he finally shivered.

Colder’n a brass monkey, Kyle agreed in his cowboy drawl.

The shrill yapping of a fox, faint with distance, floated in the night air. The two men standing braced against the cold were but younger versions of Roy and Andy, neophytes who had come to learn the ways of the wilderness and take up the life of the hunter.

There’s Rusty. Kyle pointed to the fox that looked up at them from the shadows.

Hi Rusty! Tom held his hand out and moved it enticingly, as if to offer up a morsel of food.

The fox approached a few steps into the light, then sat on its haunches and calmly licked its paw.

I bet you’re hungry.

We’ll see what we can find, Tom promised as he tugged at his zipper. The two men crunched hastily back to the house and bustled inside the door.

Tom passed through the entryway, where coats and hats hung from a row of hooks. A gun rack, obscured in the corner’s shadows, held an array of rifles and shotguns. Tom’s glasses blurred with fog upon hitting the warmth of the kitchen, and he removed them hastily as though tugging at a blindfold. The room was brightly lit, and its two occupants, Andy and Roy, looked up as the two younger men entered. It’s a cold one out there tonight, Tom told them.

Roy and Andy, seated next to each other, offered a contrast in every respect. Roy was short and squat, round-faced with bushy, animated eyebrows. He was energetic, careless, a lover of battles. Laughter and pranks had crinkled his face, transforming him into a gargoyle of mischief. Andy, on the other hand, was a handsome man with prominent cheekbones and chin. He was methodical, sincere, more bark than bite, a trait that Roy exploited regularly. Worry and concern had formed the lines and wrinkles on Andy’s face through years of battling with Roy and wrangling the damn kids, the collective that blended into one sly force and attempted to thwart his every project.

"I’ll bet it’s cold out there. What’s our temperature?" Roy asked from his customary station, a huge rocking chair beside the stove. His lips moved slightly in anticipation of the reply.

Roy’s head, at once sharp-featured and blunt, and thrust forward at the end of a wrinkled neck, reminded Tom of a turtle. Rusty’s outside, Tom told him.

He is? Roy leaned further forward yet. His bushy eyebrows stood in tufted crests, forming an exclamation mark above each eye. I’ll bet he’s hungry. You look in the pantry. There’s some Spam left over from lunch you can give him.

The wind’s gone down, hasn’t it? Andy hunkered over his stool and fed a fresh charge of tobacco into his pipe. His gray hair was mussed, giving him a casual rakishness that contrasted with the frank set of his eyes. The stern lines running from the corners of his mouth drew his lips into a slight frown.

Yeah, there’s just a light breeze. Tom pulled the light-cord in the pantry and began rummaging through the accumulation of jars, boxes, and platters of leftovers.

Yep, these clear nights are going to be bad for hunting, Andy reflected. He was a good-looking man in a rigid, Old World way that contrasted with the comical sidekick visage of Roy. But appearance didn’t at all mirror reality, one soon learned. For although Roy was comical, he was no sidekick. And Andy’s timidity when confronted by strangers forestalled any role of leading actor.

What’s our temperature? Roy persisted, a note of urgency in his voice.

Windy days and calm nights. That’s not going to be good. Andy exhaled a stream of smoke and watched it coil and rise.

Somebody look and see what our temperature is. Roy’s eyes goggled behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

Oh, go look for yourself if you’re so damn curious, Andy replied, spilling tobacco and ashes in his lap. Tom just checked it fifteen minutes ago.

Andy and Roy wore similar checkered cotton shirts, both patched at the elbows, part of the collection Andy ordered annually from the Sears catalog. The only differentiation to their wardrobe was the A that Andy had marked on the tags of his shirts and the R he’d applied to Roy’s.

I’ll look. Kyle rose from his seat and walked across the kitchen to the sink. The leather cowboy boots, the pearl-buttoned shirt, and especially the black bandanna around his neck comprised the uniform he had adopted with a faithful adherence. Although he’d lived in Alaska for almost ten years, the Montana cowboy had never left him. He commonly reminisced fondly on his days of wrangling and the personalities of various horses he’d confronted. Grabbing a flashlight from the counter, he sidled around Andy and opened the door to the narrow back room that ran the length of the kitchen.

Within the depths of the back room was a toilet that worked when the water was running—another three weeks or whenever the spring thaw would allow Andy to re-connect the pipes. In the winter months they hauled water in five-gallon buckets from the creek behind the house, filling the plastic trash can that sat in the kitchen, wedged between Roy and Andy. Along the back wall, a thermometer was affixed to the window’s outside surface.

Fifteen degrees, Kyle announced with the flourish of a scientist when he reappeared, backing through the door and closing it against the cold air.

What? Roy shifted in his chair, finding a position from which to receive the reading.

Fifteen degrees. Kyle replaced the flashlight and returned to his seat.

Fifteen, you say? asked Andy, shifting around so that he could see Kyle’s lips because he was a little hard of hearing. Roy, on the other hand, though often feigning impairment, exhibited a highly attuned sense of hearing. Tom perceived this as a ruse of cunning bent to eavesdropping and cadging attention.

As if in response to Kyle’s pronouncement, Roy grabbed one of the bricks that was warming on the corner of the stove, wrapped it in a grimy towel, and placed the poultice on his knees. See what you guys got to look forward to? he asked the general audience, his eyes cast to that point where lecturers and orators aim, somewhere above the heads of their listeners. He worked one knee in display and protest of the arthritic condition that had befallen him.

Well, if you’d quit wearing them damn hip-boots all the time, maybe your knees wouldn’t bother you so much. Andy jabbed the stem of his pipe at the torn, melted relics that Roy insisted on wearing.

My knees get cold.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Andy shook his head in disbelief.

Ok, Professor. Roy looked up at the ceiling with a calculated air of disdain. Thank you for your theory.

Well, dammit! Andy thrust an accusing hand towards Roy. No wonder you have arthritis, wearing those damn hip-boots all the time! He turned to Kyle and Tom. It’s no wonder his knees give him problems.

The discourse was a familiar one, repeated countless times throughout the winter, and Tom merely nodded his head. The frequent skirmishes between Roy and Andy— brief, hot exchanges, often cultivated by Roy in his quest for chaotic activity—were so ingrained with life at the cannery that they had become barely noticeable to the others over time. Indeed, after a winter of trapping and isolation, familiarity had bred a general combative undertone. Each of the cannery’s occupants was likely to seize on a simple statement or inconsequential habit, and a disagreement would erupt—a release of pent-up hostilities that each seemed to secretly enjoy. Thus, each watched and listened with a predatory alertness, ready to correct, embellish, or dispute.

Rusty’ll like that, Roy said to Tom, who stood holding the platter of Spam. Roy patted his knee and looked away from Andy.

Tom carried the platter outside. Rusty was waiting just beyond the door. There you are, Rusty. You want something to eat? He held a piece of meat out and the fox advanced. A gentle tug of acceptance and the meat left his hand. A little thrill of contact, the physicality of the untamed, passed through Tom. He set the platter on the ground and returned to the kitchen.

Did Rusty want any? Roy asked.

Yep. He’s eating it.

Old Rusty. Roy rocked the chair and adjusted the brick on his knee. He’s Roy’s friend. Although fox trapping had been the winter’s chief occupation, there was a rule forbidding setting a trap within a mile of the cannery. This eliminated the chance of catching Rusty or any of the other pet foxes that came to them from time to time to receive an offering of food.

Tom resumed his seat at the head of the kitchen table. His chair, one of a half-dozen that were arrayed around the room, had recently emerged from Andy’s shop, where the legs had been joined and stiffened with baling wire. The act of cobbled restoration was mirrored throughout the aging cannery. Tom eased the chair back against the heavy cabinets that ran the width of the room to the sink. Above him towered Roy’s mail box. The structure, a conglomeration of wooden Blazo boxes stacked on end with shelves fashioned at every possible interval, created a tangled depository for all conceivable forms of paperwork. Roy’s typewriter lay at the foot of the mailbox amid a strewn litter of pens, scotch tape, liquid eraser, staples, paper-clips, hunting pamphlets, eye glasses, bundles of unanswered letters bound by rubber-bands, and a stack of paper that was either destined for a berth in the mail box or had recently emerged from it.

To Tom’s right was the gaping doorway to Roy’s bedroom, a black hole of litter dominated by the big sagging bed he shared with Elizabeth, their decrepit and aged canine. The bedroom, wedged between the kitchen and radio room, was more an alcove, and served as the hub of Roy’s ritualized existence. The years had narrowed the scope of his considerable energies so that his daily routine now revolved around this locus. Roy’s waking hours were invested in one or another of his customary posts: the rocker by the stove, which was his podium for discourse with whatever audience might be in attendance; the front room, where he talked on the radio with town or with one of the other rural outposts scattered around the island; or the kitchen table, where he typed letters to prospective hunters and young adventurers who wanted to come to Alaska and work as packers.

If Tom dug deep enough into the mail box, he could probably find the letter he had written three years earlier, asking Roy for a job. During his final year of college studies, he’d seen their advertisement in a hunting magazine: Roy Pelly and Andy Tanner, Registered Guides, Kodiak, Alaska. It was a harkening that struck an instant allure. He had been rather surprised to receive Roy’s prompt reply, and after further exchanges of letters, Roy agreed to hire him as a packer for the following fall season.

Tom packed for Andy on the succeeding hunts and learned about bear hunting and guiding under his tutelage. Since that time he had earned his Assistant Guide License and was eager to make his mark, to become a proficient bear hunter and guide. He listened to Andy’s stories of the huge bears he’d taken over the years with a certain longing. He interjected himself into those scenes where Andy would crest over a rise to spy the bear—huge and unwitting, make the slow, silent stalk, and whisper to the hunter, Now, take him! Tom longed to experience that moment.

What time does the plane get here tomorrow? Kyle asked, as he rolled a cigarette with nonchalant deliberation. After shaving his winter’s beard in an optimistic rite of spring, his cheeks were red and shiny and he looked both younger and leaner. But he had retained the heavy, drooping mustache that reminded Tom of gunslingers. There was a cultured leisure to his movements; a suggestion that he was ready to make his draw—to pull iron—at any moment.

They said they’d be here sometime in the early afternoon. I’ll talk to ‘em in the morning. Roy shifted and re-situated the brick between his knees. The distinct odor of burnt rubber was beginning to permeate the room.

I hope the wind doesn’t pick up too much, said Tom, already worrying about a delay to the infusion of activity that the hunts would bring.

I hope I ordered enough salt, said Andy.

Oh, we’ll make out, Roy said. I don’t get anything but cubs anyways. You’re the one that gets the fourteen footers.

We might not need much salt this spring, the way things look, said Andy, ignoring Roy’s feigned modesty.

"You never know. Things could change. Someone could get a big one," Kyle added, giving Tom a wink as he exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Maybe we’ll even catch a glimpse of Old Ivory. Tom reciprocated Kyle’s expression of significance. You never know.

His luck’s bound to run out one of these days. Kyle expressed it almost as a vow.

He probably died of old age, Andy grumbled. We didn’t see him last year at all. Last time I seen him was two falls ago.

Walter thinks he’s still around, Kyle said.

Hah, Andy snapped. It’s not just that. He doesn’t even think it’s a bear! He’s spooked more than one hunter with his talk of the Long-tailed Bear. He’s mighty superstitious. Most of the Natives are like that.

Old Mr. White-claws, Roy said. I guess I’ve only tried for him but one time. Andy’s the one he looks up most the time. It’s Andy he likes.

Hmm-hmm, Andy mumbled as he puffed savagely on his pipe. That Old Ivory could elude him year after year clearly rankled him. Seems like every time I see him, something goes haywire. That bear’s just plain bad luck!

Like the bear you missed a couple falls ago, Roy said.

That was different, Andy replied. You was with me, weren’t you, Tom?

Yeah, it was up at the lake. Tom remembered his first season as a packer.

We had that nut from California. Andy shook his head.

He was different, all right. Tom laughed, picturing the hunter in question.

The bear was on the creek, fishing. I took one look and told the guys to pack up. The bear was working up the creek, and I knew we’d have to hurry to catch him. The hunter was just sitting there, looking at the bear, so I asked him what’s the matter. He tells me that the bear looks rubbed!

The others laughed, even though they had heard the story before. It was partly how excited Andy became that made him entertaining. If a stranger was listening, however, he was never as animated. When a new group of hunters would arrive, he’d become aloof and preoccupied and surrender the limelight to Roy.

"I told him that it wasn’t rubbed, that it had a perfect hide. We packed up and were ready to go, and the hunter’s still sitting there. I asked him what’s wrong, and he says that the bear looks too small to him! I told him that it’s a big bear and to get the lead out of his ass!"

Geez. Roy chuckled, like he always did when Andy got worked up.

So we finally started down the hill. I was going pretty fast, because I could see that the bear wasn’t catching any fish. The silvers were late that fall, and there weren’t many in the creek yet. The bear was just walking along the bank, stopping now and then, looking for fish. Every time I looked back to make sure the hunter was with me, he wasn’t there! He was farting around back there in the brush. So I’d wait for him to catch up and tell him to stay with me, but I wouldn’t get far and the same thing would happen. I think he was scared of that bear!

The others listened to Andy with rapt attention like primeval tribesmen gathered around a fire, honoring the oral traditions of the hunt, their heads bent forward, inward, toward the center of an invisible circle.

As Tom listened, he wondered what stories might evolve from the hunts soon to begin—stories that would be added to the cannery archives and