Page 5 of Three-Inch Teeth

Halfway across the wide field toward the river, Joe saw two sets of tire tracks pressed into the dried grass. One set was narrow, the other wide. He used the tracks to lead him across the field toward the high wall of river cottonwoods that tangled the banks. A steep rocky slope rose and dominated the view to the east on the other side of the river. He could catch glimpses of the water through the trunks of the trees.

Two vehicles were parked on the edge of the field next to a barbed-wire fence that kept cattle from trampling the river itself. One was Clay’s Ford F-350 pickup with the Double D logo painted on the front doors. The other was an open two-seat Polaris Ranger ATV mounted with a fly rod carrier to its roll cage. Twenty feet from the vehicles was an open wire gate that led to the river through the brush on the other side of the fence.

Joe pulled in behind the F-350 and shut off the engine.

“Stay here,” he told Daisy as he drew his shotgun out from behind the seat and loaded it with alternating slug and buckshot rounds.

He closed the door and took a long breath of air that was tinged with cut hay and freestone river. A slight breeze rattled through the drying leaves of the trees and provided a soundtrack like ghostly distant hand percussion shakers.

Joe touched the grip of his .40 Glock as well as the handle and nozzle of the bear spray canister on his belt to make sure they were there. He closed his eyes and visualized drawing the spray, arming the canister, and firing it.

He debated what he would do if he had a close encounter with a bear. Would he deploy his bear spray or start blasting with his shotgun?

Then he called out, “Clay? It’s Joe Pickett.”

*

THERE WAS NO response. Joe hoped that the reason for Clay’s not answering was because the breeze and the sound from the river had drowned out his query.

He touched the plastic hood of the Ranger as he passed it. Cold. He touched the hood of Clay’s F-350. Warm.

Joe racked a slug into the receiver of the shotgun and approached the open gate. It was a three-strand barbed-wire gate and it had been flung to the side. Joe stepped through the opening with his senses on high.

The brush near the river was thick, and the only way to push through it was to use a series of game trails that wound through the eight-foot-tall willows. As he did, the brush closed around him and he felt slightly claustrophobic. He could see nothing beyond a few feet, and he knew that a predator could be tucked away in the tangle and he wouldn’t see it until it was too late.

Joe used his left hand to push branches away as he approached the river. He held his shotgun tight to his body with his right so the barrel wouldn’t catch on the brush and be jerked aside.

When he cleared the willows and the river opened up before him, Joe stopped and surveyed the scene carefully. There was so much color in the trees and the sun’s dappled reflection off the water that, for a moment, it was hard to concentrate. The impressionistic tableau in front of him was like a pulsating, neon Monet painting.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw Clay sitting on a rock on the bank of the river with his back to him. Clay was hunched over, his head in his hands, his cowboy hat upside down near his boots. A large-caliber handgun was poised on a flat rock next to him, near the bottom half of a human leg, still wearing a fishing boot and Gore-Tex waders slashed jaggedly at the knee.

“Clay?”

This time, the man heard him. Clay looked over his shoulder. His face was swollen and his eyes were haunted.

Clay was a big man with ginger hair, dark blue eyes, and a square-cut jaw that gave him a look of authority. That jaw trembled when he said, “He’s gone, Joe. Torn apart. A bear must have got him.”

As he said it, he gestured upstream with a wave of his hand, indicating that Joe should follow.

“Is the bear still around?”

Clay shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. But Clay Junior is over there, or what’s left of him.”

Joe couldn’t yet see the body, but he nodded and picked his way over the jumble of smooth river rocks upstream. Twenty yards away from where Clay sat, Joe paused before a finger of dark mud that sat exposed between the rocks. The bear track was massive—at least nine inches long and over five inches wide. There was a large kidney-shaped impression from the pad of its foot, five toe impressions each the size of a quarter, and five claw marks in front of the toes that looked narrow and deep, like repeated stabs of a knife. All of the impressions had filled with water from their proximity to the river.

There was no doubt to Joe that it had been a grizzly, not a black bear. A black bear track was roughly half this size and was distinguishable by the curved inside digit nearest the body of the animal. Grizzly tracks went straight from the pad of the foot.

The track was aimed at a loose mound of dirt filled with debris—small broken branches, mulch, rotting scabs of bark, and short lengths of pale tree roots that looked like entrails. The mound was about seven feet long and two feet high. It looked like a hastily dug grave and was set against the trunks of the cottonwood trees. Unnatural glimpses of color showed in the soft dirt.

As Joe approached the pile, the wind shifted slightly and he caught a whiff of a musky, rotten odor. It made the hair on the back of his neck and forearms prick.

He scanned the row of trees ahead of him and followed them up- and downstream. If the bear was still there it was hunkered down. Was it watching him?

There were more tracks near the pile. The bear had been heavy enough that it pressed several river rocks into the loose dirt around it. Joe noticed that when he stepped on the same rocks with his boot, they didn’t sink farther.

He saw where Clay had dug at the mound earlier, revealing Clay Junior’s mutilated face and head. The skin was pure white and mottled gray, his eyes wide open. There was a row of large round punctures across his forehead and beneath his chin, and more gaping holes on the sides of his head around the temples. There was no doubt he was dead.

Joe reached down and touched the collar of Clay Junior’s shirt. It was soaked.

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