bear fight

  Dusk now, he thought, dark in an hour, if it takes an hour. I passed here, what, three hours ago, and if he’s moving on my trail, how fast? Faster than me, certainly, he could be close, very close. In that split second he happened to be looking at the dog, saw the dog’s head turn to the left, and he dropped and turned at the same instant, heard brush crashing as he fell, brought the bow up, tried to pull the broadhead but too late, all too late.
  The bear was on him, rolling him, cuffing him. The bow was knocked out of his hands, flying ahead, arrows spewing out of his quiver, the bear strangely silent, pushing, pounding him as he first rolled in a ball and knew that wouldn’t work, not now, not with this bear. This bear had come to kill him and he was going to kill him and there wasn’t a thing Brian could do about it. He tried for his knife but the bear knocked it out of his hands, knocked his arms sideways, grabbed his left arm in his jaws and flung Brian back and forth the way he would worry a small animal.
  I’m not going to make this, Brian had time to think. He’s going to win again, he’s going to kill me, and then he heard the ripping growl of the dog and it landed on the bear’s back and grabbed and the bear turned to hit the dog, knocked it sideways twenty feet where it lay, stunned, and then the bear turned back to Brian.
  But there had been that second, two seconds, and Brian was lying on the ground well away from his bow but the arrows that had flown out of his quiver were all around him and he grabbed a broadhead with his right hand — his left hung useless — and dove, following the arrow, into the center of the chest of the bear.
  He was amazed at how easily it slid in and he saw only six inches of arrow showing and thought, There, that’s it then. .
  But it wasn’t. The bear snapped at his chest, at the arrow, broke it off, and Brian tried to get away in that instant but the bear wasn’t done and grabbed him by a leg, pulled him back, and as he slid over the ground he came across another arrow and he grabbed it and turned and jammed it up into the middle of the bear and it still wasn’t enough and the bear cuffed him, slammed him alongside the head, and he went down and the last thing he saw was an enormous wall of fur coming over him and he thought, All right, this is how it ends.
  This is how it all ends.
  And everything tunneled down to nothing but a point of light and then that went dark and there was nothing left.
  • • •
  Sounds, soft whimpering sounds. For a second, he thought, That’s me. Everything was still dark, he was being crushed under some great darkness and then he smelled the bear, on him, around him.
  And heard the sound again. It was the dog, licking his face, pulling at his shirt. The bear was on top of him, lying still, dead where  it had fallen. The second arrow had, finally, brought death.
  Brian pushed, pulled at the ground and the bear and finally got free. It was dark, though not pitchblack, and in the early light, limping and holding his left arm in, he found wood and got a fire going.
  With the light he looked first to the dog. The original stitches had held, unbelievably. But she had a new wound about four inches long across the top of her head. There didn’t seem to be any other obvious injuries and with the dog settled Brian turned to himself.
  Bites in the arm, on his leg, but not great tearing wounds. His left shoulder seemed to be dislocated and as he tried to raise his arm he heard a pop and it snapped back into place with a burst of pain that put him on his knees and brought splashes of color to his vision.
  “Oh man. .”
  But no other serious damage. He didn’t quite believe it. Not at first. The bear had seemed to be all over him, hitting and biting, and he’d thought the wounds would be much more serious. .