Ocean Falls

The men halted, and with nothing louder than a harsh whisper, spoke and pointed. The sweet, acrid odor of blood carried on a wind that topped the point and rushed down the slopes of the hillside. In silence, they crept up the trail and came to a rise that overlooked a small clearing surrounded by a thick break.

Their weak senses tried to discern the source of the fresh blood they smelled. Looking down into the naturally protected shelter, they froze when they saw the huge mound of mangled flesh and hair that, less than an hour earlier, had been the most feared predator on the North American continent. The men's eyes strained to peer through the thick tangles of foliage for signs of any remaining threat. There were no sounds other than the hiss of dried leaves and grass shaken by the wind.

Cold chills raked Kirk's spine as he wondered what could have brought down such a powerful animal. He racked a round into the chamber of his rifle, and stood absolutely still, his eyes scanning the thicket. The group hesitantly edged closer to the stilled giant, impressive even in death. Huge paws, almost a foot across, rested in indentations grooved into the hard earth by the final throes of her agony. Her lips curled as shriveling muscles pulled and tightened. Pieces of flesh ripped from her face exposed three-inch canines that rested over the remains of a torn tongue. Huge rips in her hindquarters and shoulders exposed the skeleton.

Paxton stepped close to Kirk. "Have you ever seen this before?"

"No.” Kirk pondered his answer. “Maybe a male tried to get to the cub, and the female was killed trying to defend it. A male will kill a cub to bring the female into season sooner. The female is usually able to fend off the attack, but sometimes she gets killed or mauled in the attempt. Perhaps, the male was starving and decided to eat her."

"Lions do the same," Paxton said, returning his attention to the bear. "I wonder if the cub survived."

Rusty stayed near the bear and Paxton followed Kirk as he moved about the edges of the thicket. A blood-stained patch of grass ten yards from the fallen mother marked the spot. "This could be it," Kirk pointed. "Completely devoured. The cub probably tasted better."

Dobbs dropped to his knees and brushed the grass aside. "Look at all of these hoofprints. I dare to question the male bear theory. There’s too much flesh missing and we heard a different animal. Let's photograph the entire scene." One of the students stepped forward and removed the lens cover of a camera. "Get some closeups of these bites taken from the bear. We also need hair and saliva samples." He directed his subtle commands to the students. The outfitters moved aside and watched the woods.

"Do you really think it could be a bear that did all this?" Rusty glanced sideways at his boss.

"I’m starting to doubt it. I've never seen anything like this before. Let's look around a little more."

The men moved in a wide circle with their heads down, pushing boughs of the surrounding brush aside as they went. "Hey, Kirk, come here." Rusty pulled a patch of fur from a branch a little past the point where the cub had been killed. "This doesn't look much like the hair of that bear over there. This is something else."

Kirk stared at the hair Rusty held between his thumb and finger. "I was just thinking, that was an awful lot of meat missing from that bear. And, if you add the cub . . . . I'll get one of the professors."

Both professors returned with Kirk and fingered the newest find. Dobbs removed the photo of the creature in the tides and compared the color and seeming texture. "I don't know for sure, but this could possibly be a match. It's hard to tell."

Paxton pulled the small recorder from his breast pocket and began to talk softly into it as he noted the similarities of the hair to that in the photo. His eyes passed, repeatedly, from the bear to the bit of fur Professor Dobbs rolled in his fingers.

The temperature dropped rapidly as growing shadows crawled from the surrounding cliffs. Kirk went to Leo, who stood at the edge of the fjord.

“Kirk, I don’t like this at all,” Leo said. “I was here all day and didn’t see any animals, not even birds. Look out there.” He pointed to the far shore and the water between. “No fish. Nothing prowling the water’s edge. But there’s something out there that can take down a full-grown grizzly.”

“We only have three more days. When we get back, we’ll go to the Red Barn, and I’ll buy you all the beer you want. This will seem like a bad dream. All these guys want to do is look under a few rocks and take pictures. Speaking of which, let me go see what they figured out.”

The men had been going over the finds of the day trying to draw conclusions. The students and professors pored over the fur and the faint plaster casts in the warmth of the mess tent.

"These prints aren’t from any known carnivore," Dobbs finally determined. "The hair defiantly isn’t from a bear. The large amounts of missing flesh and the crushed bones suggest a pack of extremely powerful creatures. I believe without a doubt we’ve found what we’re looking for.”