Free Wild Man Island by Will Hobbs Page A

and I were holed up next to each other in a soft pocket among the trunks of giant spruce trees, and I was drifting off to sleep. There’s only one way to explain it, I thought: It never happened.Maybe I was still paralyzed, still back at the beach. Maybe everything since was dreams, too.
    My hand went to the dog at my side. I stroked the long black fur. The dog lifted his broad head and licked my hand.
    I felt like I was conscious. Right now, it didn’t feel like dreaming. But was I actually here, under this forest, with this dog?
    Before I found any answers, I was asleep. I was so exhausted, and so confused.

13
    M ORNING BROUGHT RAIN, cold, hunger, and reality. I hurt too much for all of this not to be real.
    Deeper and deeper into the wilderness, the dog led me on. We climbed out of the forests and onto mountain meadows where it was higher and colder and there was no shelter from the rain.
    The Newfoundland led me higher yet onto the short-grass tundra, alongside an ominous bear highway of deep, alternating footwells filling with water. Rain clouds were hanging on the snowfields and peaks above. My feet hurt a lot; my sandals were only two notches more comfortable than torture devices. I was getting slammed by a tidal wave of doubts. Maybe I’d chosen dead wrong to follow the dog. Going inland was looking like the last thing I should have done.
    I had lost all my markers. There was a spear in my hand and I was following a huge black dog through the clouds. Everything familiar was gone: home, my mother, my grandparents, my friends, Orchard Mesa, Grand Junction, the heat, the Colorado River…all gone, replaced by the numbing immensity of this dreamlike island.
    The Newfoundland had been pausing to sniff the wind and for some reason, was quickening his pace. Through the drizzle, near the foot of a massive landslide scar, a red mass of some kind was heaped on the tundra barely above the tree line. I was so cold I couldn’t begin to guess what it was.
    The dog suddenly halted, perked up his ears, listened intently. Then he tilted his head and began to bark, each bark coming slower than the previous one and the last trailing into a sort of howl.
    A little closer and I could make out large black birds on and around the red object. Ravens. Then I made out the glint of bone. The ravens were on some sort of carcass. A bear, of course—nothing else was that big. But why no fur?
    The dog approached cautiously, and so did I. The drizzle wasn’t strong enough to mask the droning of flies or the smell of all that meat gone rancid. I was shocked by how much the skinned-out animal resembled a human being.
    In the soft spots around the carcass I made out the imprints of boot lugs, three different patterns. Three hunters had stood here, I thought dully. I’d missed them, missed the chance to get off the island with them. I was a couple days late, but close didn’t count. It might as well have been a year since they’d been here.
    The bear’s skull was missing. Why was that? Two gaping wounds marked the exits of high-powered slugs from the chest cavity. The birds had opened up the belly and dragged the guts out onto the ground. The rednessof it all, the rawness, was even more shocking up close. There wasn’t a trace of the hide; the paws and claws were missing. All four feet had been sawed off.
    What kind of hunters would do such a thing? Poachers? Maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t come across them. A witness to the crime, that’s what I would have been, and who knows what they would have done with me.
    I backed away. The Newfoundland was tearing away meat along the backbone, growling all the while at the ravens hopping close to the carcass. An eagle was watching regally, biding its time from a spruce at the edge of the forest. I noticed dog tracks even bigger than the Newfoundland’s. No, they were wolf tracks. The wolves had been here, but judging from the carcass, they