Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) by Bill Yenne Page B

is curious to contemplate the sorts of things that go through a man’s mind when he is about to die. They say that your whole life flashes before you, but what do “they” know?
    Bladen Cole thought about that Sunday in the Congregational Church in Bowling Green when he was about twelve, when he had thought about the effectiveness of prayer for the first time. The preacher’s remarks had lost him in the bobbing sea of his own daydreams, and he had wondered whether prayers went answered. He guessed that most did not, but he wanted to believe that some
did
.
    In that split second before the moment in which he expected his own violent and painful death, Bladen Cole prayed.
    He also squeezed the trigger again, and saw the lead tear into the cheek of an angry bear whose rapid progress toward him was not slackened.
    He could smell the disgusting stench of the grizzly’s breath as he fired the
last shot possible
before ten angry, raging claws reached him and ripped him apart as they had the elk.
    The slug impacted the bear’s left eye, cleaving straight into his brain.
    The inside surface of the back of the bear’s skull, being too thick to be penetrated by the bullet, caused it to ricochet, then ricochet again. Each time that the bullet zigged or zagged in the soft tissue of the brain, it tore a separate path and ripped away another swath of the bear’s consciousness.
    Cole rolled to the side as the bear reached him.
    He felt the pain of the bear’s leg falling on his, but he barely avoided having the full weight of the animal’s thousand pounds crush him.
    He imagined that he was being mauled, and he struggled to get away, but the frightening gyrations were merely the bear’s death throes. By the time that he had at last gotten out from beneath the enormous mass, the grizzly had twitched its last.
    Cole gasped to catch breath, inhaling the rankness of the sweaty monster, but was overjoyed just to be breathing at all.

Chapter 7

    C OLE CAMPED THAT NIGHT AMONG THE ASPEN, WASHING himself off and watering his roan in the trickle of a stream that ran there.
    He awoke suddenly to the hot breath of an animal on his face, immediately imagining it to be another grizzly, but it was merely his horse. He now realized how his subconscious mind had shifted into wilderness mode. Would he have mistaken his horse for a grizzly two nights earlier when he went to sleep with the lights of Diamond City twinkling in the distance? He had not and probably would not have before the experience of the day just passed.
    Waiting for his coffee to boil, he watched the stars wink out in the lightening sky of dawn. He thought of what he had read of seafaring people using the stars as navigational tools, and of how he had always used the North Star as a reference point in unfamiliar territory.
    As he rode north with the gathering dawn and turned westward in the direction of the Rocky Mountains, he saw a small group of pronghorns at a great distance, but aside from that, the only sign of life was the usual companionship of the meadowlarks and a hawk circling in the distance.
    Shortly after his lunch, which consisted of a scrap of hardtack eaten in the saddle as he rode, he saw them. Two riders had materialized out of nowhere, or so it seemed. One minute, the hill about a quarter mile ahead and to the right had been deserted, and now there were two men there. He could make out the golden hue of their buckskin shirts and the long black hair that framed their heads. The fact that he had seen them at all signified that they wanted to be seen.
    Cole raised his hand to signify that he saw them and meant no hostility. The men returned the gesture and waited for him to reach them.
    â€œGood morning, fellows,” he said in English, more to establish that his intention was to greet them than in the belief that they could understand his words. “My name’s Bladen Cole.”
    They responded with a gesture to the