Free Cold Heart by Chandler McGrew Page B

ordered. Howard despised old age almost as much as he hated sympathy or pity. He had accepted all of both he cared to when his wife Elizabeth died in ’65. He'd been alone ever since her death and had given no one any excuse to feel sorry for him.
    The shots had come from near the Glorianus place.
    Howard was cleaning up around the outside of his tiny cabin, the smallest in town, even tinier than Marty Kiley's one-bedroom shack. Howard didn't need much room for frills. He'd spent most of his life living out of a pup tent in remote locations, working for Alaska Fish and Game. Hewas a silent, self-contained man and had been lucky early in life to meet a woman who didn't expect a man to be around every day. They'd had a wonderful marriage, although the Lord hadn't blessed them with children and Howard liked children.
    He liked Dawn Glorianus and had since she and her mother moved in, six years before. But he felt a little sorry for the girl.
    Not everyone was cut out for bush life.
    When the first two shots rang out, Howard was lifting a black-plastic bag of garbage that had mysteriously ended up beside the back stoop and not in the bin where it belonged. The bag had gotten buried under the winter snow and now shrews had gotten into it. He was shoveling it into another bag so that he could dispose of it by burning the entire thing in his fifty-gallon barrel incinerator when he got around to his spring fire.
    The shots were muffled, as though they were in very deep woods or the gun was covered somehow. He wondered if Terry had spotted a bear. But then it occurred to him that Terry didn't own a gun, wouldn't have one near the house. Howard understood why.
    Everyone in McRay knew about Dawn's father. And everyone in town sort of looked out for the mother and daughter. The pair were like a couple of orphaned cubs that couldn't take care of themselves no matter how much they figured they could. Howard had been glad when they took the cabin vacated by Harry Townsend, since it gave him someone new to wave to on his daily walks and it placed them in a central location so that there was someone living pretty much all around them.
    Of course their nearest neighbor was El Hoskins.
    Howard didn't like the man. But at least he was a man. Howard was of the firm opinion that women alone didn't have any business living out in the bush. But lately it seemed the town was filling up with them.
    He set the shovel down and moseyed around to face the bridge that led to Terry and Dawn's cabin. The sun was in his eyes but he wasn't really looking.
    He was listening.
    After a couple of minutes, when no more shots were firedand no one came screaming down the path, he decided that it was El, shooting at a hare, and went in the house to get a cup of coffee.
    He had no sooner poured one and sat down when the third shot rang out.
    That didn't sound like anyone rabbit hunting.
    For one thing this shot was too near. He knew that Terry wouldn't put up with anyone shooting around her house like that. Not unless it was an emergency. And if someone was having that much trouble with a grizzly, then Howard needed to get over there. No one in town had half as much experience as he did with the big bears and if it was El using that damned hogleg he carried on his hip, then the fool was probably getting ready to wound the animal and get himself and maybe someone else killed too.
    Howard set his coffee on the table and pulled himself painfully to his feet. He reached behind the door and grabbed a short-barreled Mossberg shotgun. The tubular magazine was loaded with alternating rounds of double-aught buckshot and solid lead slugs. It was a bear killer. Unlike his hunting guns, this was strictly a survival weapon, only good for short distances, the range at which bears attacked. It had enough power, in the right hands, to stop one of the nasty fellows dead in his tracks.
    He hurried down the trail to the bridge, not bothering to close the door behind him, feeling his old