Teaser
"That thing has to be a monster, Adam." Hoss said, staring at the biggest bear print he'd seen in his life. He put a boot down next to the print and shook his head. "Any creature with a print bigger'n mine…"
Adam leaned down on the pommel of his saddle, studying the prints in the snow. Barely a foot had fallen on the mountain, but he knew there was two months-worth of snow pack 200 feet above them that had fallen in the past two weeks. More snow was due that night, but their visit to the line shack that morning had necessitated this trip up the mountain.
"I thought I knew all the bulls on this range. Look at the way the nails curl under. He's gotta be ten-years-old, maybe older." Adam said, shaking his head. "That makes him smart, big and deadly."
"And hungry.." Hoss added, scanning the stone walls that lined the trail. "Look at that…" He pointed above his head to claw marks that he could barely touch while standing on his tip toes. "He's gotta be near ten-foot-tall, standing up."
Adam shifted his horse closer to the wall and reached up to run his fingers over the grooves. Solid rock, and the animal had managed to cut into it, just to sharpen a few nails. Adam was equal parts terrified that they would run into the creature, and eager to see it for himself. The only thing keeping him from running down the mountain that moment was that his horse was relatively calm. He trusted the animals to warn them if the bear got close enough to smell.
"Jimmy and Billy Carnes were up here in the fall. Said they thought they'd heard something snuffling around, and they followed tracks a ways, but nothing this big."
"Jimmy and Billy are almost bigger'n me, maybe the prints looked normal to them." Hoss said, mounting.
Adam glanced behind them before looking to the incline ahead. "We know it's here, and we know it went up the mountain. There's plenty of caves up that way that would make for a nice den. Do we need to go up that hill?"
"We gonna set the traps?"
Adam shook his head slowly. "Traps would make it angry, and hold it for maybe an hour. No point in traps."
"We ain't got a gun big enough to take down a bear that size." Hoss pointed out.
"Seems the wise thing to do would be to go back to the line cabin." Adam said.
"I always look to you to make the wise decisions, brother Adam." Hoss said, already turning his horse.
Adam turned his horse a minute later, checking over his shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that he had a big target in the center of his coat that looked like a plump deer or a bush of ripe berries.
They traveled carefully down the narrow mountain trail, cut over time by wind, water and tree roots, and reached the cabin just as Ben Cartwright stepped out of it. In the time that they had been gone, Ben had started a fire in the cabin, heating up what had been an ice box. Joe was moving pile after pile of wood into the cabin to stock it before the next round of snow. The bodies they had found that morning lay covered in blankets by the wheels.
"You find it?" Ben asked.
"Found tracks. That thing is huge. Gotta be a thousand pounds at least."
"Hoss found claw marks over ten foot up. It's big, Pa." Adam confirmed.
Joe stopped midway from the wagon to the cabin, a load of wood in his hands. "That explains the damage to the inside of the cabin. And to Isaacs and Lowe."
Each of them sent a glance to the two bodies under the blankets. They had been covered both out of respect, and out of necessity. The damage the animal had done to Ben's cowhands was grotesque.
"We'll have to go after it in the morning. After we see what this storm brings us. We can get the Carnes boys to join us. And Charlie Black. Haze it out of the hills and take it down in the open." Ben said. His boys could see the regret on his face. Taking down a bull, especially one that old, and that powerful, would leave a void. In the words of Aristotle, "Nature detests a vacuum." A creature of that size would leave a great vacuum that the biome of the mountainside would struggle to fill.
Joe left the cabin heading for the wagon. "In the meantime there's still a cord and a half here and...only one of me."
"Yes but you got two hands…" Hoss said.
"And two legs." Adam added.
"So I can leave four bruises on both your heads if you make me do this alone." Joe said.
Ben looked between his children then shook his head and went to the back of the wagon. He stepped up into the bed and began tossing wood out the back toward where the rest of it would be stacked under a lean to. Hoss and Adam stepped down from their horses, tied the reins to the hitching post and bent to the growing pile to stack the wood.
Adam remembered hearing the horses start to whinny while he was turning with arms full of wood. He remembered watching a piece of wood shimmy, shudder then tumble from the old stack. As if someone had attached a fishing line to it, then started moving it around like a puppet. What followed was the ground jolting straight up, and everything attached to it creaking, cracking and quaking. Adam dropped the wood he was holding and ran to free the horses. Hoss had gone to the wagon and was struggling to free the mules from their traces, even as the wagon shuddered and shimmied sideways. Joe watched Ben fall out of the wagon bed and went running from the cabin, feeling like he was fighting the pitching deck of a ship, trying to check on his father.
The shaking began to lessen, and for a moment it seemed it was over. But the rumble was still there, fading, then building, then trembling through the ground and up into their bellies. Ben shouted the word, "Avalanche!" and pushed Joe toward the cabin. Adam ran to Hoss and dragged the man toward the only structure that could save them from a crush of falling snow.
They dove into the single room as the sheet of snow, ice and water came crashing down the mountainside. It drummed against the walls of the cabin, shattered the windows and poured through the gaps left by the broken glass. It slithered down the chimney, and piled on the roof making the rafters bow and creak. The rear wall of the cabin began to cave inward, pushing Ben and his boys toward the front wall, and still the snow came.
The cabin was completely buried, all sunlight blocked by the weight of the snow and debris by the time the rumbling stopped. In minutes the fire had been snuffed out, and the cabin was as frigid as it had been when the Cartwrights arrived.
Ben got slowly to his feet, staring around the gloom. "You boys, ok?"
"Yeah, Pa." Hoss said.
"We're fine, Pa." Joe said.
Adam went to the door and carefully opened it to find a wall of hard packed snow pressed against it from the threshold to the arch. He dug his gloved fingers into the snow, pulling away a handful and spilling it on the floor. He dug upward, joined by Hoss a moment later.
Joe grabbed one of the chairs from the small table in the corner and moved it to the door, standing on the seat to dig at the snow closest to the top of the door. They dug until Joe punched through and sunlight spilled down into the cabin again, then widened the gap until Hoss and Adam could boost Joe out of the cabin and onto the surface of the snow.
The whole mountainside had changed. Trees were gone, the wagon was gone, the animals were gone. Above the cabin was only snow, and below it only snow, rocks and the detritus of trees for a mile at least.
"Joe, give me a hand." Adam called, and Joe pulled his brother out of the cabin and into the dim light of day. They both helped Hoss next, then Ben, who sat on the snow, staring spellbound at the changes that had occurred in only moments.
"Any sign of the horses?" Ben finally asked.
"They're either buried or...run off, Pa." Joe said.
Ben turned in the snow and looked up the mountain side. "Looks like the whole face came down. We'll be digging out for months."
"In the meantime, we're afoot and there's a storm on the way." Adam pointed out.
"Yeah." Ben said, nodding. He looked back to the cabin, then towards where the trail had once been. "We're closer to the house than any of the other line cabins. It'll be a long cold walk but...safer than trying to spend the night here."
As if to confirm his point the rafters began to creak and strain under the weight of the snow.
"I'll get the rest of the blankets, grab some grub." Ben said, before turning to slide back down into the cabin.
Hoss got unsteadily to his feet and began punching the heels of his boots into the uneven piles of snow, creating a path toward solid ground.
Adam bent down to grab the blankets that Ben handed up, then he and Joe helped their father back out of the cabin.
They were all on their feet and following the path Hoss was making when the roof of the cabin gave one final groan and collapsed. Snow, boulders and tree limbs poured into the building until it looked no different than anything else on the mountain.
The four Cartwrights exchanged looks before they turned to the long walk ahead, starting across the snow in a single file.