The Burning Horizon by Erin Hunter Page A

Lusa’s paws breaking through the undergrowth, and sniffed to pick up a trace of her scent. But there was nothing.
    â€œLusa!” he called. “We’re over here!”
    There was no reply.
    â€œMaybe she ended up farther down the trail,” Kallik said. Her voice was confident, but Toklo could hear the concern underneath it. “She’ll need time to get back.”
    Toklo tried to distract himself by cleaning his matted pelt, breaking off now and then to listen for Lusa. But the small black bear still didn’t appear. She should have found us by now, he thought.
    Kallik rose to her paws and called out Lusa’s name again, but there was no response.
    â€œShe’s not coming,” Yakone said at last.
    Now real fear bit into Toklo like a coyote’s jaws. “Stay where you are,” he ordered the others, and headed back the way they had come. “Lusa! Lusa!” he called again as loud as he dared, not wanting to attract the attention of the flat-face with the firestick.
    Kallik and Yakone hadn’t obeyed his order, catching up with him at the edge of the trail. By this time the mules and flat-faces had gone, leaving behind them trampled undergrowth and scraps of broken vines.
    â€œLet’s spread out, and then meet back here, beside this juniper bush,” Kallik said. “Surely Lusa crossed the trail . . . she can’t be far away. Maybe she got stuck in some brambles.”
    â€œOkay, we’ll meet when the sun gets to the top of those trees,” Toklo agreed, pointing with his paw.
    Kallik and Yakone took off along the trail in different directions, while Toklo headed farther into the trees. He expected to find Lusa battling her way through the undergrowth, looking for him and the others. But though he searched under bushes and in thickets of bramble, calling Lusa’s name, he found no trace of her, not even her scent.
    Deeper anxiety still welled up inside him when he reached the meeting point to discover that no one else had been able to track down the little black bear.
    Kallik voiced Toklo’s own fear. “What if she was badlyhurt? Too badly to travel on her own?” The white bear was ignoring her own eye injury.
    â€œYou might be right,” Toklo admitted grimly. “We’ll have to search harder, and look for places she might try to hide if she was injured.”
    â€œAnd we should look for scraps of fur or traces of blood,” Kallik added, looking sick.
    â€œOkay, but let’s stay together this time,” Yakone suggested. “We don’t want to lose each other as well.”
    Together the bears headed away from the trail this time, deeper into the forest. Toklo began peering up trees, in case Lusa had tried to climb away from danger.
    Their hopes rose when they came upon a steep ravine, its sides covered with rocks and thick bushes. But though they searched carefully on both sides, from the top to the bottom, peering under every bush and behind every boulder, there was no sign of Lusa.
    â€œMaybe she didn’t cross the trail,” Kallik said as they headed wearily back to their starting point. “Maybe we should be looking on the other side.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make sense,” Toklo objected. “Lusa knew what the plan was.”
    â€œDo you have any better ideas?” Kallik challenged him.
    Toklo’s shoulders sagged. “No,” he admitted.
    They went back to the path and Kallik and Yakone exchanged a glance, then headed along the trail in the direction the mules had been traveling. Toklo watched them for a moment as they sniffed carefully at the stones and thevegetation beside the path. Then he crossed the trail, making for the thorn thicket where they had hidden from the mules and the flat-faces.
    Maybe I can follow Lusa’s scent from there, he thought.
    But before Toklo reached the thicket, he halted at the sound of Kallik calling his name.
    â€œHey, we’ve