“I guess I deserved that,” he half grunted, removing a heavy knife from the sheath at his side and a candle from his pack.
“Shouldn’t you take the rifle?” she asked, aghast.
“Rifles are useless in close combat. How about a kiss before I enter?”
“I’m to reward you for putting us in the middle of nowhere in front of a bear’s den? Maybe there’s a whole family of bears in there and we’ll both die.”
His eyes twinkled. “If I could but die with your kiss on my lips…”
“Go on! Get it over with.”
Wesley’s face turned serious as he disappeared into the cave. “It’s bigger than I thought,” he said, his voice sounding hollow. “There’re some Indian paintings on the walls and some signs of camp fires.”
She could hear him moving in the cave and when he spoke again his voice sounded farther away.
“Doesn’t look like there are any signs of bears. A few bones. Looks like lots of people have camped here.”
For a few minutes he said nothing else and Leah began to relax from her rigid stance and took a step closer to the cave opening. She could hear Wesley walking about and now and then see the flicker of his candle flame.
“Is it safe?” she called.
“Sure,” he yelled back. “Clean as a whistle.”
In the next few seconds everything happened at once.
Wesley said, “Uh oh,” then bellowed, “run, Leah! Hide!”
Instantly, Leah froze right where she was, smack in the middle of the wide cave opening.
In a lightning flash of buckskin fringe, Wesley came tearing out of the cave, and inches behind him was a big old black bear, its fat rippling as it lumbered after Wesley.
The bear brushed past Leah so closely that her nostrils flared at the smell of it. But she could no more move than the rock behind her could.
The bear didn’t seem to notice her at all in its pursuit of Wes.
Only her eyes able to move, Leah watched Wes tear down the hillside.
“Climb a tree, Leah,” he yelled back at her.
Tree, Leah thought. What is a tree? What does it look like?
She was still wondering this when she heard a loud splash to her left.
“Move, Leah,” she commanded herself. But nothing happened. “Move!”
When she did move, it was quickly. She ignored Wes’s order to climb a tree and took off, running toward the sound of the splash. She stopped, chest heaving, by a little pool of water that was surrounded by rock. Everything was perfectly quiet. There was no sign of Wesley or the bear. Just the birds singing, the late afternoon sunshine, the smell of grasses.
The next thing she knew her ankle had been grabbed and she was being dragged downward. Instinctively she began to struggle.
“Stop kicking!” Wes’s voice hissed—his voice alone, because Leah still saw no one.
When she paused in her struggles, Wes jerked her into the water.
“What—?” She gasped just as Wes put his hand on the top of her head and pushed her underwater.
Her breath held, furious, she saw him submerge and she glared at him through the clear water.
He pointed and she looked. There above them, sniffing the air, was the bear. Wes motioned for her to follow him underwater and she did.