Free The Deserter by O.C. Paul Almond Page A

so now he would try to finish that with his fried fish. Amazing how little one needed now to survive. Had his stomach shrunk? He was actually getting to accept this Spartan fare.
    He left his axe leaning against the notched logs and walked the hundred feet down a trail he’d made leading indirectly to the brook, still being cautious about discovery. As he walked, Magwéssprang into his mind. Her image had been keeping him company recently, especially when the “Oh Happiness” bird called. Its song brought him back to the Micmac maiden with fierce eyes and sleek black hair.
    A dark mound at the edge of the stream caught his attention. He stopped to look more closely. It had not been there before. Or had it? Round and black — it moved! He caught his breath The mound backed out of the brook. Not ten feet away — a bear cub, about two feet high, with his twig of trout hanging from its mouth.
    The cub took one look at him and let out a loud whimper. From upstream, Thomas heard a roar. The water thrashed as a large mother bear charged up and leapt over the lip of the brook as effortlessly as a buck leaping a fence on the Durham estate. She stopped short, seeing Thomas. The cub was between them. For a frozen second mother and man stared.
    The mother bear. And a cub! All the things he had been warned about. Fast and powerful, bears could crack a leg in their jaws, climb trees, knock over a horse with a blow, and they were always ravenous in spring. For a flash, he chastised himself for being careless again, messing up as usual.
    Pistol! his mind cried. Back at the cabin. He whirled and tore for home.
    With a roar, the mother bear charged after him. The axe, his brain screamed. He dodged this way and that, yelling aloud to scare her off, yanking his knife from its sheath.
    In seconds she was on him. Her claws raked his back, knocking him flat.
    Winded, he spun, saw above him this monster out of all nightmares reared on her hind legs. He shouted to frighten her, spun like lightning on the ground to make himself a moving target.
    She leapt sideways after him, then pounced. Holding his knife ramrod straight with both arms, Thomas aimed at her heart.
    The knife went in. With another roar, she lifted her snout in rage and rose up again to fall on him and tear him to pieces. Her open mouth dripped saliva, her white teeth gleamed.
    The end. He saw it clear as day. Nothing could stop her. A juggernaut, a gigantic nightmare from Bedlam, a finish to all his dreams. Wounded, he still whirled over and over, then leapt up and tore for the bushes. But why had she not followed? From behind a tree, he turned. The animal was circling in a devilish dance, trying to get at something sticking out of her side. The cub pranced, whimpering, beside her.
    Then he saw it. An arrow! She’d been hit.
    Suddenly faint, he gripped the tree trunk. His back stung with pain. At his feet a pool of blood was forming. Those claws had torn his neck and back open.
    The she-bear bellowed and ran northward into the woods, cub following. Who had arrived, he wondered, who had saved him? Not Fury, he hoped. Across the brook splashed a familiar form.
    “Burn! Burn!” he gasped and then, losing consciousness, slid to the ground.
    ***
    Burn stayed with Thomas for almost two weeks. He first boiled a kind of tea out of cedar leaves and poplar bark to help lessen the pain from the claw strikes. Then he took off after the bear, predicting she would not get far. He tracked her a good deal farther than he had first thought, and finished the wounded animal off with his spear. He had butchered the carcass, and stashed it in a tree, for them to retrieve just as soon as Thomas was better.
    Burn returned with some meat for their immediate needs, one reason Thomas had recovered his strength so quickly. He used a tendon to sew up the flap of skin while Thomas bit hard on leather soaked in an herb soporific. Definitely the worst time Thomas had gone through, though in one sense the