Prey

Chad gave her a disbelieving look. “I thought bear were shy, and ran away unless you just stumble onto one.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Ray said. “Bears are predators. Now, I wouldn’t want to startle a grizzly, especially a sow with a cub, but if you ever look back and see a black bear trailing you, you’d better pray you have a rifle and that you’re a good shot, because it’s coming after you and two things are certain: It can run faster, and climb better, than you can. If you don’t get it, it’s going to get you.”

That was pretty much bears in a nutshell, so Angie didn’t add to it right then. When they reached the camp she’d institute the camp safety rules, but all of that was better done when they could see the actual layout of the camp.

They were wasting daylight, time in which they might actually do some hunting and, please God, bag a bear right away, so she said, “Let’s ride.”

Chapter Eight

Mitchell Davis dismounted, looked around the camp she’d leased, and surveyed the portable toilet set off to the side. He turned and looked at her, an incredulous expression in his cold eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said in a tone so sarcastic that Chad flinched and turned red yet again; on the ride up, he’d been the target over and over again of Davis’s serrated tongue, which chewed up and shredded rather than destroyed with a fast, clean slice. Davis had something to say, none of it good, about how Chad rode, the brand of rifle he owned, the cheapness of his scope, even the newness of his boots.

During the ride Angie had thought several times that if she’d been Chad, she’d have dug in her heels, told Davis to kiss her ass, and gone back to the truck. Now, with that hostility turned on her, she bit her tongue and silently apologized to Chad, because he’d no doubt kept his silence for the same reason she was keeping hers: She needed the money. This was her payback for feeling superior, when she wasn’t at all; she was in the same boat Chad was in, paddling for all she was worth.

“Maybe I’ll take up meditation,” she mused aloud, earning a covert chuckle from Chad that he quickly turned into a cough.

She didn’t know what the big deal was about the camp. Exactly what had Davis been expecting? A lodge, maybe? She had no idea what Chad had told him, how he’d described the accommodations to Davis, but she’d been completely honest with Chad about the camp when she had leased it. It wasn’t the best she’d ever been at, but neither was it the worst. At least they weren’t sleeping on the ground, and she’d done that more times than she cared to remember.

The campsite was in a picturesque spot, on a fairly level section of the mountainside, surrounded by lodgepole pine and tamarack. Below, a crystal clear creek wound its way along the valley floor, bracketed by stands of spruce and black cottonwood. Taller peaks, white-capped with snow, loomed over and around them. Huge boulders and thick tangles of chokeberry bushes dotted the landscape. The presence of the creek and the chokeberry bushes upped their chances of finding bear, which was the reason for being here in the first place. She could have taken them to a place with more luxurious accommodations, but the odds of Davis shooting a bear went down.

There were six wooden platforms, but only three of them were set up with tents. Angie deeply appreciated the platforms; when the rain began, that meant water wouldn’t be running through their tents. The tents were heavy-duty canvas, each with a sort of offset wing in front of the entrance, for extra privacy. She knew for a fact that silhouettes couldn’t be seen through the canvas, which was a big plus for her. The tents weren’t huge, about seven and a half feet by five feet, but that was plenty big enough for a cot and their belongings. They each had an inflatable mattress to go on the cot, and a sleeping bag. The portable toilet took care of calls of nature, and she’d brought enough wet wipes for them to stay reasonably clean and unstinky for a week—longer than that, if need be.

A lot of their food was prepackaged, but a food-prep area had been set up a couple of hundred yards away. There was a camp stove for making coffee, which was as much of a necessity as clothing, in her opinion. There were battery-operated LED lamps in the tents, flashlights, extra batteries. She had Swedish steel for making fires, and if by chance the weather turned bitterly cold, which it wasn’t supposed to do, each tent was stocked with a small oil heater.

Best of all, the rough corral had a section with a roof over the feed troughs, so the horses had a bit of shelter. If the wind got up, she’d cut some pine branches to brace against the corral as a wind break. She believed in taking care of her horses, because their lives could well depend on the animals.

As far as she was concerned, this camp pretty much had everything except television and cell phone service. If Davis was as experienced as he’d said he was, wouldn’t he have known what to expect, or at least had a general idea?

“Which tent is mine?” he demanded, his voice tight.

Without hesitation, Angie pointed to the one on the far left. She’d take the one farthest to the right; she wanted to put as much distance between them as possible. Granted, it wasn’t much, because the tents were separated by only about ten feet, but every little bit counted.

Davis left his horse standing and disappeared into the tent.

She stared after him, her mouth falling open at the absolute boorishness of the man.

“I’m so sorry,” Chad whispered, actually wringing his hands.

She shook herself, and squared her shoulders. “His manners aren’t your fault,” she said, reaching for the reins of the dark bay before he could take it into his head to wander off.