Free A Father's Love by Lorhainne Eckhart Page A

hard lump burning his throat. What he did do, was walk faster still. Let her run.

    “David, slow down, you’re going too fast. David, aren’t you going to answer me?”
    David whipped around so fast Rose bumped into him. “No Rose! Stop it. I’m not going to fight with you. All I want is to find the geese, shoot one and go home. That’s it, and if you’re going to keep talking, you’re gonna scare them away, so be quiet.” He didn’t wait for a response. David hurried through the brush staying on the same familiar trail winding its way down to the lake. To Rose’s credit, she didn’t argue. She let out a huff, closed her mouth and dogged David’s heels again.
    They strode lower into the valley. The air was damper, heavier with mist. He knew they were close to the lake. A thick mix of fir, cedar and alder trees surrounded them, forming an umbrella overhead. The overgrown path, which had most likely been created by antelope and deer, led down to their water source. David patted the twin fir. This was the lower part of the trail right before the open grove, not far from the lake.

    A glimmer of black flashed from the corner of his eye. He sucked a breath, and then another, before it registered in his head what it was. But by then, his heart had already slammed his throat shut, choking off any reasonable sound while his back broke out in a cold prickly sweat. “Get up a tree!” David somehow managed to croak out the panicked words in a low scratchy voice, sounding nothing like his, even to his own ears.
    David swiveled his head between a bundled up Rose, standing frozen as a mouse, and the curious bear cub. Her mouth gaped, her big eyes filling with fear, a poison which raised the hair on the back of David’s neck.
    “Back away move slowly toward the tree, hurry, Rose.” She didn’t move. David backed away from the cub and stepped on Rose’s foot. Her breath wheezed, maybe that’s what knocked some sense into her. She grabbed his arm with a shaky hand and moved.

    A second cub wandered from behind an old cedar. Rose stumbled. “Get up, Rose.” And she did, just as David somehow boosted her up, so she could grab the first branch. She’d just scampered onto the branch when a low growl split the icy air and crashed through the underbrush. David didn’t know how he did it, but somehow he leaped six feet up onto the first thick branch. Planting his hand on Rose’s butt, he shoved hard. “Faster, go, Rose go! She’s right behind us!”
    Reach, pull, step. One foot after the other, he climbed each thick branch of this Douglas Fir. Rose was quick and appeared to fly up the tree as she grabbed a branch, pushed off, grabbed the next, higher and higher, until they climbed more than halfway up that old growth tree. And when David glanced down his blood turned to ice as he stared at the steel shotgun in the dirt, right where Mama Bear circled in fury. She growled and pawed at the base of the tree, while her cubs wandered behind her.
    “David, is it a black bear?”
    “Yes, dang it. And she’s not happy.”
    Rose dangled on the branch above him. She was breathing heavily, like she’d raced up a mountain. David held onto the branch above him and glanced up. Her large, innocent eyes pleaded for him to do something. They had to be about a hundred feet up, high enough to be safe unless mama decided to come after them.
    “What are a black bear and her cubs doing out this time of year? Aren’t they supposed to be hibernating?”
    The bear continued to charge, crazed, her wispy snarl short and rough, as she dug and clawed at the ground, circling the tree.
    “David, is she going to climb up here? What are we going to do?” Rose perched on the branch above him.
    “I don’t know.” David was abrupt.
    Rose began to whimper . David couldn’t console her; he had enough to do holding himself together. Tears burned his eyes, and his throat throbbed with something thick and gooey. How long would it be before their