took a better hold of the butt, keeping her finger away from the trigger. “I just…I cock it?”
Clint rose, taking the shooter from her. “This is the hammer,” he said, pulling it back with his thumb. “Now it’s cocked. If you pull the trigger, and believe me, it doesn’t take much pressure, the gun will go off.” He grasped the hammer again and carefully let it back to its original position. “When it’s not cocked, pulling the trigger isn’t easy, so you’re pretty darn safe carrying it this way. Just remember that if you need it, you have to pull back that hammer. Okay?”
She studied the gun as he handed it back. “Okay, I guess.” She clasped the gun carefully with both hands and carried it back to the campsite, thinking how it would be next to impossible to really shoot it if the need arose. And if it was so difficult to think about killing an animal, how on earth could someone kill a human being?
She set the gun on the stump of a freshly cut tree and tended to the fire, building it up as Clint had instructed. She set the skillet on the coals to heat the pan, realizing only then that the sun had set and it was darker than she had realized. When the fire got bigger, it became difficult to see Clint in the distance.
The horses whinnied then, shuffling around as though nervous about something. Should she yell out to Clint? She left the fire and picked up the six-gun, sitting down on the stump and listening. An odd, low growl came from behind her to the right, and her blood ran cold. Everything tingled from head to foot as fear engulfed her when the growl came again, a kind of low snort actually.
The horses whinnied louder, and Elizabeth felt light-headed as it seemed as though all her blood was pouring into her feet and leaving the rest of her body. She sat frozen, not even able to scream to Clint. Perhaps a scream would make things worse. Maybe moving to turn with the gun would bring on an attack from whatever it was that lurked in the shadows.
But the horses! Clint had made it clear over and over how necessary they were to their surviving this trip. And they were Clint’s horses. God knew she had an obligation to watch out for them.
More growls. Now the horses were beginning to rear. They could break loose and run off! That would be a catastrophe! She said a quick prayer for courage, then rose and turned. Red eyes stared back at her, from a height of a good ten feet! What on earth! Coming from the darkness, whatever approached seemed like a giant, demonic beast!
Instead of a scream, all she could muster was a whimper from somewhere deep inside as instinct made her nervously search for the hammer of the six-gun. It was harder to pull back than she’d thought it would be. It took both thumbs to do it. The beast came closer. She fired, but the six-gun was not powerful enough to stop it. She finally screamed Clint’s name and managed to fire again, but the beast came even closer. Then, from somewhere behind her she heard two louder shots.
Clint’s rifle! The beast was nearly on top of her. It fell, and she screamed as it took her with it, both of them tumbling dangerously close to the fire. Instantly something grabbed her away and tore the six-gun from her hand. She heard four more shots. The growling stopped.
“Clint!” she screamed.
In almost the same instant she was in his arms. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“It was a grizzly! He’s dead, I hope. Stay here a minute. I’ve got to calm the horses so they don’t run off. The smell of that bear isn’t helping!”
He left her near their tent and ran over to calm the horses, retying them. He returned then to where she sat, pulling her around to the other side of the fire from where the bear lay so he could see her better. He ran his hands over her face, looking deeply concerned.
“Did he take a swipe at you?” he asked. “Hurt you in any way?”
“I don’t think so. It all happened so fast,” she answered, shaking. “I shot at it, just like you told me to do, but it didn’t help!”
“No six-gun will stop a grizzly. And here I was worried about wolves, which we