Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Literary Fiction
ISBN-10: 143844404
Type: Fiction
Pages: 73
Copyright: 2008
ISBN-13: 978143484408
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
A unique combination of fiction and poetry, this anthology touches on the joys, adventures, and fears we overcome in life. From poems of love and life to adventures in Alaska in short fiction, this anthology will touch your heart.
Excerpt
Where are you? Dan thought. He scanned the surrounding mountain slopes with his binoculars. Somewhere up this valley was the small black bear.
"I know you're there -- but where," Dan muttered. "You won't get away from me this time."
He eased the binoculars into the case hanging from his neck and carefully latched the lid. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and continued climbing up the canyon.
For three years Dan had made the trip to the canyon below Skookum Glacier during hunting season. The first year, he and Mike, his long time flying and hunting partner, had shot a mountain goat on a rock outcrop above a cave.
The picture of Mike kneeling beside the animal as he began to dress it flashed through his mind.
He didn't have a chance. Never saw it coming, Dan thought,, as he remembered the bear charging across the rocks and hitting Mike with its full weight. He thought about the quick trip down the side of the canyon, rolling over and over, losing his backpack and smashing his rifle in the process. The stock of his rifle split, his provisions were scattered all down the mountainside. and Mike was lying a few feet away bruised and bloody. He didn't wake up for 10 days and still couldn't fly.
Two summers had passed since then, "This time," Dan panted, as he trudged up the trail, "I won't lose him!"
The early April day was cloudy with a brisk wind blowing from the east, over the glacier and down the canyon.
The wind's in the right direction, he thought, as he turned to feel the breeze. Nothing up there will be able to smell me now.
The snow had melted from the open patches below the tree line, but the higher Dan moved, the more snow he encountered. Patches of snow in areas open to the sky and the ever-warming Alaska sun crunched under his feet.
"Damn, I'm glad I wore these rubber boots," he muttered. With their hiking treads they protected his feet when his foot broke through the crust of snow. His light-weight down-filled jacket protected his body. He was wearing his "go to hell" hat, a leather version of a European bicyclist's hat, covering his salt and pepper hair.
Dan came to a sudden stop, his right foot creating a crunching sound as it stepped into a small mound of snow. Ahead of him, nosing through the short underbrush, was the creature he sought.
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