“Ain’t right,” Somcoc said. He told her where their camp was. “How long you be? We expected down home next week.”
“Sir, do you want this taken care of or not?”
“I surely do.”
“We’ll get Winston back to your camp as soon as we finish with him.”
“We be leavin’ Thursday.”
“Okay, your licenses are good. Why don’t you and your friends head for your camp.”
Service and McCants watched the trucks drive away.
Linsenman came forward. “You want coffee?” Service asked.
“Works for me. Man, that was some dicey shit. That bunch looked like they’d creep out the squeal-like-a-pig crowd,” Linsenman said.
McCants said. “We need to go find their blind, pick up cans.”
Service nodded.
“Thanks for coming,” McCants told Linsenman as he poured coffee from her thermos into his travel mug.
As soon as Linsenman left, the two COs got a plastic trash bag, hiked back to the swamp, found the hunters’ blind, and recovered twenty-three empty cans. The overarching canopy kept most of the rain from penetrating, but Service said, “If it turns into a downpour, we could lose the blood trail.”
They got back to his truck at 10:30 p.m., and McCants grabbed her poncho and her rifle case.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Rain. We need to track that bear.”
He looked at her. “I’ve been thinking. If he keeps going it could take us hours to find him, and if we lose the blood trail, he’s gone. Better to wait for daylight. There’s nobody around for him to blunder into.”
He saw skepticism in her eyes. “Grady Service using discretion,” she said. “Meet you here at sunrise?”
“Okay,” he said.
When she was gone, he got his rifle out of its case and walked down into the cedars and began tracking alone, his natural state, nobody to worry about but himself.
It was raining steadily in small cool droplets, but the canopy captured most of it and would keep doing so until the foliage was completely saturated. Only then would the rain penetrate, and it would be like standing under a waterfall. For now the ground was damp but not soaked, and the blood trail still reflected black under the beam of his light.
The trail remained obvious all the way to the river. As wounded deer often fled to water, so too did bears, and this one had come south in a straight line, never veering. Thunder rattled like snare drums in the northwest, rolling steadily. Not close, he told himself. Even the lightning had little effect, creating muted pale green flashes through the gaps in the canopy.
As he tracked he tried to stay focused, but he was tired and his mind was jumping around. They needed the animal to recover the bullet, assuming it was still in it. If he didn’t find the bear tonight, the coyotes or wolves would tear it apart. It had to be tonight, he kept telling himself, and suddenly he was at the river’s edge, his head down. He had to lean back to keep from walking into the shallows and cobble bottom. Break, he told himself. He poured a couple of fingers of coffee in his thermos top, swallowed it, and felt the plume of warmth bottom out. He put the thermos back in his pack and stood up, aiming his light across the river, trying to pick up blood on the other side—but the rain had soaked the rocks along the river and it was impossible to determine blood without fording across.
He wanted a smoke, but a cigarette here would quickly disintegrate. Focus, he said over and over. Retrace your steps, shit-for-brains. He had come to the river. No . . . he had suddenly arrived at the river. En route, he had reached a spot where if he stayed directly on the trail he would have to crawl over a blowdown, or scramble over upturned roots and relocate the trail. The bear had not once deviated from its course, so he had veered right by two or three steps, then cut back and found himself at the river’s edge, too tired to think, cold and wet. His teeth began to chatter and he willed them to stop, but knew in time the cold would have its own way.
He left the river and went back to find the obstacle he had skirted, stood there, aimed his light two or three feet out, and turned slowly like a radar beacon, totally focused on the beam against the littered ground. On his second revolution, he extended the light beam to five feet, but there was nothing. The animal had come straight to the river and ten feet from the shore had disappeared.
A coyote barked to his west and was answered by another, their voices trailing off into whines that suggested their noses had something. If the bear was dead they would eventually tear it apart. Maybe not tonight, but soon. He was tempted to cross the river, to keep moving, but when you tracked you didn’t move on until you had sign that told you where the animal had moved. He pulled the light into two feet, narrowed the beam and started again.