Free The Bearwalker's Daughter by Beth Trissel Page B

the bed and squatted beside him on bruised knees. Bending over, she poked her head under the mattress and stared at the wall. The circular hole was just discernible in the logs, and the knot he’d loosened lay on the floor beside it. With a rush of anticipation and just as much trepidation, she crawled under the bed. Squirming closer, she blew a dusty web from her nose.
    How a woman swollen with child had managed this was beyond Karin. Maybe in her determination not to be robbed of the treasure, Mary McNeal had found a way. Hoping not to encounter nesting mice inside, or worse, Karin pushed her hand into the black space. Unbelievably, she closed her fingers around a smooth object, prickly in places, and ice cold.
    Gulping, she glanced back at Jack. “I’ve found something.”
    He lay on his stomach, peering after her. “Good girl! Take it out.”
    All these years it had been here, as if waiting for her. With near reverence, she drew the find from its hiding place. The weight felt strangely heavy in her hand. A tingling sensation prickled through her palm and she gaped at the dangling necklace.
    Jack gave a soft whistle. Karin scarcely heard him. She’d never seen, let alone imagined, anything like this. Clutching her treasure, she wormed out from under the bed and sat up. A pearl-white gemstone the size of a quail’s egg and cast with a bluish tinge hung at the necklace’s center. The iridescent play of light over its opaque surface fascinated her and she sidled nearer the fire to better see.
    Jack crouched beside her as she tilted it one way, then the other, intrigued by the ever-changing shimmer. Hammered metal, tarnished dull gray, encircled the fabulous stone and held it in place.
    “Silver?” she asked.
    “Yes. Polished, it would be splendid.”
    Rather than a chain made from links of the same metal, the magnificent stone was suspended from a narrow leather band. Stranger still, were the ten large claws attached to the cord. She glanced up at him wonderingly. “These are bear claws.”
    His eyes held a peculiar expression. “Not just any bear. A grizzly’s.”
    “I’ve heard grizzlies are frightfully fierce. My father must have been a great hunter.”
    “Who’s to say he isn’t still?”
    Jack’s question struck her, as did his odd demeanor. “You’re right. He may be much alive.” And it seemed as if the secreted necklace called to her, binding her to an unseen being. “What stone is this?”
    Fingering the quartz at his neck, Jack said, “I can tell you what it’s not. This is my pawawka token, taken from the bottom of the river after I proved myself with a hundred dives. The stone in that necklace is cut by a jeweler to reveal every facet and mounted in finely crafted silver.”
    She tried to fathom her find. “Yet it’s not hung from an expensive chain, but a leather cord like yours. And what can these claws mean?”
    “Bears are mystical creatures with much power.”
    “They’re blood-thirsty killers,” she corrected him. “What manner of man entwines a lovely gem with such primitiveness? A frontiersman?”
    “An unusual one.”
    Instinctively, she reached out to trace the glowing stone, warmer now. A blue-green light radiated from it at her touch. She sucked in her breath. Tearing her eyes from the phenomenal gem, she looked at Jack. “Did you see that?”
    Giving a nod, he slowly lowered his fingers to the iridescent surface—pulling back as if repelled. “It doesn’t want me to handle it.”
    “What do you mean, it doesn’t want? ’Tis a necklace, for God’s sake,” she said, using stronger language than usual at the nameless fear that sprang up inside her.
    She looked back down and cautiously extended her hand to the pool of light encompassing the gem. A shape flickered across it in the form of something—an animal. She jerked. “What was that?”
    “A bear.” He spoke with the tenor of one trying to conceal his own disbelief. “We must’ve imagined it.”
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