The Strength of the Pines

by Edison Marshall

"A moment ago an idea came to me—it came so straight and sure it was as if a voice told me," she explained hurriedly. She didn't look at him again. She kept her eyes intent upon the great footprints in the snow. To miss them for a second meant, in that world of whirling snow, to lose them forever. "It was after the bear had killed Simon and had gone away. He acted exactly as if he thought of something and went out to do it—exactly as if he had a destination in view. Didn't you see—his anger seemed to die in him and he started off in the face of the storm. I've watched the ways of animals too long not to know that he had something in view. It wasn't food; he would have attacked the body of the horse, or even Simon's body. If he had just been running away or wandering, he would have gone with the wind, not against it. He was weakened from the fight, perhaps dying—and I think—"

He finished the sentence for her, breathlessly. "That he's going toward shelter."

"Yes. You know, Bruce—the bears hibernate every year. They always seem to have places all chosen—usually caverns in the hillsides or under uprooted trees—and when the winter cuts off their supplies of food they go straight toward them. That's my one hope now—that the Killer has gone to some cave he knows about to hibernate until this storm is over. I think from the way he started off, so sure and so straight, that it's near. It would be dry and out of the storm, and if we could take it away from him we could make a fire that the snow wouldn't put out. It would mean life—and we could go on when the storm is over."

"You remember—we have only one cartridge."

"Yes, I know—I heard you fire. And it's only a thirty-thirty at that. It's a risk—as terrible a risk as we've yet run. But it's a chance."

They talked no more. Instead, they walked as fast as they could into the face of the storm. It was a moment of respite. This new hope returned some measure of their strength to them. They walked much more swiftly than the bear, and they could tell by the appearance of the tracks that they were but a few yards behind him.

"He won't smell us, the wind blowing as it does," Linda encouraged. "And he won't hear us either."

Now the tracks were practically unspotted with the flakes. They strained into the flurries. Now they walked almost in silence, their footfall muffled in the snow.

They soon became aware that they were mounting a low ridge. They left the underbrush and emerged into the open timber. And all at once Bruce, who now walked in front, paused with lifted hand, and pointed. Dim through the flurries they made out the outline of the bear. And Linda's inspiration had come true.

There was a ledge of rocks just in front—a place such as the rattlesnakes had loved in the blasting sun of summer—and a black hole yawned in its side. The aperture had been almost covered with the snow, and they saw that the great creature was scooping away the remainder of the white drift with his paw. As they waited, the opening grew steadily wider, revealing the mouth of a little cavern in the face of the rock.