Chapter Two: Dave's Cowboy Hat

It is summer 1980, probably late June or early July. I sit at the door of our tepee fiddling with an old bone, some string and a few carefully chosen rocks, fashioning a crude weapon. I will be seven in a few months. My father is still alive but only for a couple more weeks.

I can hear my brother David, three years younger, splashing in the small creek below our campsite. He is washing his dirty white felt cowboy hat and singing to himself, something by Waylon Jennings perhaps, he used to love that song, "Mammas don't let your baby's grow up." The adults are away, re-staking the horses to new feeding ground, they do this twice a day. They have taken my youngest brother (at the time) Andy with them; he is almost a year old and beginning to walk.

The air is very still, barely a breeze; a few small birds peck around the two-week-old campsite for bits of food. I look down the gentle slope to the creek where my brother sits, perhaps twenty yards away and my heart stops. The creek is perhaps six or eight feet wide at most and shallow. Barely a toddler even Dave could cross it safely. And across from him sits a young bear. A brown bear, probably young enough that it's mother is close. And I might be six but I know it's the mother that's dangerous.

I rise slowly and say nothing. Dave doesn't see the bear, he continues to sing blissfully and wash his cowboy hat. It doesn't look any cleaner. I walk very slowly towards him, eyes never leaving the bear that just sits on its haunches, regarding my young brother with what looks to me like curiosity.

My heart is pounding faster now. I can smell it. Musky and a hint of berries. I am halfway there. It hasn't moved an inch and Dave hasn't seen it yet. I look around. No sign of a mother, but that means nothing.

And I'm there. Eight feet from this young bear with my brother between us. Holding my breath and wondering how Dave didn't smell it too I reach down and take his hand. He jumps a bit, I surprised him and he turns to me with his large brown eyes and rosy cheeks like a cherub in a renaissance painting. Holding his hand tightly now I raise a finger to my lips but make no sound. Shh

And I pull him back up the low grade of the hill. The bear still hasn't moved, still looks curious and David still clutches his cowboy hat. We walk backwards all the way up and a few feet from the mouth of our tepee the bear turns slowly and ambles off, casual as can be and disappears into the thick brush beyond the creek.

Was that a bear? Dave asks in his lisping cherub voice. Yeah, be quiet I say and pull him into the tepee.

Half an hour later when the adults come back they don't believe us. Maybe it was a fox. No? Maybe a wolverine then? No.

I was only six but I knew it was a bear.