By Isaiah Sasser

Weathers followed the faint trail through the undergrowth. A broad bear print impressed softly upon the loam caught his eye; a left paw, pointing north. Four claw marks scored the earth. The claw second from the left was missing. Weathers nodded to himself. His breath quickened and his pace increased.

The lever-action rifle strapped around his shoulder jostled with the forceful, deliberate motion of his legs. It was slung opposite his small deerskin bag that held some pemmican wrapped in wax paper, extra shells, a spent casing, a bounty paper, and other miscellaneous items needed to service his guns. The trail vanished. Weathers’ brow furrowed. He reached into his shirt pocket to pull out a plug of cheap chewing tobacco, tar-black and ugly as sin. He tore off a chew with his teeth and stuffed it below his tongue.

Squatting on his haunches, he stared into the vastness of the untamed forest. The grandeur of the sprawling ferns and beards of vibrant moss dangling from toppled trees jarred Weathers from his singular focus on the trail. His mean brown eyes widened and glazed over as he was—for an instant—utterly overtaken by the landscape that he and his kind intended to subjugate. The bitter tobacco on his tongue broke his reverie. He shook his head and spit a stream, baptizing the fronds of a yearling fern. Through the imperious, well-needled limbs of the Sitka spruce copse that enveloped him, he could make out the sun sinking behind the mountains.

Weathers drew a short hatchet from a sheath on his belt and hacked a crude symbol into a tree facing the direction he’d come. He then trudged back along the meticulous trail he had made, following the path of symbols hacked out of living wood until he reached a clearing where his horse grazed on the undergrowth, tied to a hemlock tree.

A burbling stream ran along the clearing’s edge. The water was clear and ice-cold, and as Weathers approached he saw the dark shapes of trout flit away to safety beneath a fallen and half-submerged tree. He mopped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his coarse linen shirt and stooped to drink the pure spring water. A refreshing chill coursed through his body. He thought he understood now what was meant by living water.

He walked over to the small canvas tent, pitched toward the center of the clearing, near a small, hastily built fire ring replete with ashes and charred remnants of last night’s firewood. A rough pile of small logs and kindling lay next to the tent. Weathers sat down on an old stump and grabbed a handful of slender kindling. He drew a knife with a worn antler handle and began shaving curls of wood into the kindling. From his deerskin bag, he grabbed out a dented tinderbox and removed from it some charred cloth, a sharp flint, and a steel striker. He struck the flint and steel together to spark the charred cloth, which he placed in a ball of dried moss and pine needles he had laying in his firewood pile.

Soon, his fire was blazing, and he piled wood until sweat began to drip down his neck from the intense heat. Weathers grabbed a tin pot from his camp, placed it over the fire, and added some beans and water. As the beans boiled, he grabbed salt pork from his saddlebag, adding it to the mixture. He ate, chewing slowly through the sparse flavor of his meal. When he had finished eating, not a single morsel remained. He awoke to the sounds of crows in low branches squawking and flying to loftier sanctums. Away from the foreign creature with its uncanny brazenness. The sun had buried itself well behind the mountains, and all the stars in the universe were on full display. Weathers shucked off his muddy boots, set them by the fire to dry, and crawled into his cramped tent. He had just enough space to lay his belongings to his side. Covering himself with a scratchy woolen blanket, he slept in the dying and feeble light of the last coals.

Covering himself with a scratchy woolen blanket, he slept in the dying and feeble light of the last coals.

Rising at first light, he gathered his things and put on his mostly-dried boots, soddened only slightly by the morning dew. He strapped on his belt around his deerskin jacket, with his hatchet, knife, and revolver attached. He broke off a chunk of pemmican from his belt pouch and ate it slowly as he walked back along the trail he had blazed the day before. He came back to the spruce copse where he lost the trail, his mind dominated by focus and intent. With fresh eyes, he noticed a trampled and broken frond on a large fern. A fresh pawprint, pointing north, caught his eye. He followed the rediscovered trail out of the copse, where he noticed heavy, fresh claw marks on a lone spruce thirty yards away. The tree’s lifeblood oozed out of the gaping wound.

Weathers walked toward the tree and tripped over a protruding root which was obscured by ferns. The rudimentary hasp on his deerskin bag came loose, and he cursed as his belongings tumbled onto the forest floor. He scrabbled to pick them up while still sprawled along the ground. Standing up, he tried to brush the streaks of moist dirt off his clothes and again began walking toward the tree. As he walked, a sharp twinge of pain shot through his left ankle, which had caught on the root. He winced and trudged on, limping slightly as the pain faded to a dull roar. Upon close observation, Weathers judged that the claw marks on the tree couldn’t have been more than a few hours old. He noted the missing claw in the pattern of the left paw, and a terse, satisfied smile formed on his lips. Something rustled in the growth nearby. Something heavy. Adrenaline pumped through Weathers’ body. He unslung his rifle and held it ready, pushing the lever slightly forward and checking the gate to ensure that a round was chambered. A great, dark shape crashed through the undergrowth, kiting around the tree by which Weathers stood. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Weathers aimed down the notched iron sights of the rifle towards the lurching form.

The bear crashed through a stand of hemlock saplings, rearing on its hind legs to observe the invader, perturbed by the invasion of its territory but unafraid of the tiny pale creature that aimed to usurp it. It roared, bearing sharp, piercing teeth set in powerful jaws. It was a massive grizzly, dwarfing the man quivering before it. A monolithic creature, a Goliath to the tremorous rifle-wielding David that stood before it. Its paws were the size of snowshoes, tipped with claws that exuded an air of disembowelment. One claw was missing on its left paw.

A monolithic creature, a Goliath to the tremorous rifle-wielding David that stood before it.

Weathers quaked, paralyzed in awe by the majesty of the creature that he had set out to kill. Something much grander than himself. Alien, yet it knew him in his entirety.

Weathers quaked, paralyzed in awe by the majesty of the creature that he had set out to kill. Something much grander than himself. Alien, yet it knew him in his entirety.

The bear’s nostrils widened at the sharp scent of fear. It dropped onto all fours and began to advance.

Roused by the lumbering motion, Weathers’ survival instinct and panic kicked in. He fired off a round wildly, scoring a superficial wound in the bear’s right shoulder. The bear roared, a primal announcement that shook the saplings and ferns to their roots. The powerful round tore a deep channel along its path, causing dark blood to well from the wound and slick the surrounding fur.

Enraged, the bear charged Weathers with astonishing speed. Weathers fired off two more shots that buried themselves in the bear’s center mass. One ripped its stomach and lodged itself in its spine, while the other pierced one of its lungs. The bear roared again and jerked furiously as it lurched toward Weathers like a drunk. Weathers tried to back away, but his sprained left ankle faltered. He sprawled backwards, losing his grip on his rifle. The wounded bear collapsed on Weathers, clamping his left upper arm in viselike jaws. Weathers screamed shrilly and scrabbled for his revolver in his belt. He wrenched it out of its holster and fired into the furred, blood-soaked mass on top of his lower body. The bear released his arm, shredded to the stark white bone, beyond recognition, flowing with endless blood. Weathers’ vision blurred, his hearing broken by the noise of pain. The bear sliced into his torso with brutal claws. Weathers howled soundlessly as his viscera folded. Overcome by its many injuries, the bear finally keeled over, its heavy boulder of a head thumping unceremoniously upon Weathers’ ravaged torso. He could manage only a small, rasping whimper.
Blood soaked through his deerskin bag, ruining the paper bounty advertisement for one hundred and fifty dollars. Hopelessly trapped under the awesome weight of the creature, Weathers let his head fall back onto the leaf litter.

He looked into the fathomless brown eyes of the dead bear. On first appraisal, a sly stare. They looked serene in their inactivity, and seemed like they held some unknowable wisdom immune to time. As if in on some cosmic joke from which man was barred. Lying among the carnage he caused in the ethereal forest glen, Weathers thought about how new plants would spring from the enrichment of their bodies. His mind was numb from a pain so voracious that it engulfed itself in its ravening. He looked at the face of the bear, unmarred for all of the ruin visited upon its body.

A cherubic look, he amended. You, my mirror and greatest foe. We died together. Each at the other’s hand. Now the treeroots will drink of our blood. The worms will eat of our flesh. And the crows will pick clean our bones.

With clouding gaze, he concluded—with a pang of regret—that the bear’s eyes were rather beautiful.

Isaiah Sasser is a freshman intending to major in English.