Free Grizzly by Will Collins

strong soap they'd used for bathing left a fatty, animal-like odor on their bodies.
    But this one exuded a scent of something like the glacier flowers he had nibbled in the spring and summer. The slight odor excited the beast, and he followed carefully, stalking without sound and without hurry.
    The waterfall was bigger than it had seemed from the air. It cascaded down almost twenty feet, dancing and shimmering like a liquid curtain. The pool beneath was deep and crystal clear. In its depths, Gail could see one Dolly Varden trout that must have weighed almost twenty pounds. These "bull trout," as the old timers called them, made good eating and better sport in catching. It was too bad fishing wasn't allowed in the park. She would have liked to cast a lure down toward the bottom and watch the trout to see if it appealed to him.
    She checked the safety on her rifle, and leaned it against a boulder. The waterfall, just feet away, whispered an invitation to her.
    She resisted it. She would just slip off her boots and soak her feet for a moment.
    The water was cold, but exhilarating. Funny. A cold shower was a turn-off, good only for waking up in the morning, or damping down too-horny boy friends who wanted everything, all at once and too fast.
    But the thought of a cold shower under a mountain waterfall . . . that sent a little tingle up her back.
    Of course, she couldn't. Tom would be coming back any moment.
    She splashed her feet in the water, and the big trout gave her a cool look, speculating on whether or not those white things dangling into his pool might be good to eat.
    They splashed again, and he moved closer. So close that his sleek side brushed against Gail's toes, and she gave a little shriek and leaped back.
    Behind her, in the bushes, she heard a sound that was a mixture between a sigh and a low snort.
    Tom! As in Peeping! He hadn't gone up to Powder Ridge after all.
    She felt a warm glow spreading across her lower body.
    Why not? It had been coming for a long time. What better place than here, in the beauty of this secret glade, with its dancing waterfall? It would be a far better memory than the sweaty sheets of a furtive motel.
    She slipped out of her clothing quickly, making an obvious point of ignoring the bushes behind her. She was proud of her body. Once, a photographer who claimed he was from Playboy offered her two hundred dollars for a nude session. Being photographed that way gave her a tiny thrill of excitement, but it vanished when he put down his camera and grabbed for her with both hands. She had wrapped a robe around her, grabbed her clothing, and fled down the hall of the oflfce building to a toilet where she'd changed, left the robe, and slipped out without her model's fee. A call to the magazine revealed the man was an imposter, an all-too-common happening, the nice lady on the magazine's staff sighed. By the time she'd decided to report the "photographer" to the police, he had vanished from the "studio" which turned out to be rented by the week to anyone with thirty dollars.
    But she still liked to be looked at, and it pleased her to think of Tom watching, her now. She hoped it would thrill him too. Maybe he would join her under the waterfall.
    The sun caught the highlights in her tawny blonde hair, giving it a golden, almost honey-like color. She lowered her jeans without embarrassment; she was a natural blonde, all the way, and for some odd reason this was almost as exciting to those few men she had known as the fact of her nakedness.
    She piled her clothing on the boulder, near the rifle. She could sense eyes upon her. She smiled, and stepped into the rushing water, feeling gingerly along the bottom to avoid the sharp rocks that waited there.
    The cold water struck her shoulders and back with a chilling impact that made her cry out in delicious near-pain. She found, to her surprise, that there was a kind of cavern behind the cascading water, and she slipped back into it while she got her