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In Bear Country
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In Bear Country
by Kiernan Kelly
Torquere Press
Copyright ©2006 by Kiernan Kelly
First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2007
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In Bear Country
by Kiernan Kelly
Chapter One
Ain't that always the way.
Seems like as soon as a man got his feet up under him,
the earth would start to shaking and knock him right back
down on his ass again.
Just once, Pride would have liked to see the sun come up
with a dollar in his pocket and a roof of his own over his head.
Hell, right now he'd settle for two bits and a broad-brimmed
hat. 'Course, it never worked out that way. Every damn time
he'd managed to pull his ass from the fire, God had seen fit to
hold a lit match to his britches. This time was no different.
Truth was, Pride didn't hold much with God and figured
that the feeling was mutual.
Pa would've had a jaw-full to say about that, Pride
reckoned, but Pa was ten years in the ground and no doubt
looking over God's shoulder, helping Him light the match.
Although if Pride had his way, Pa would be roasting on a slow
turning spit over the hottest fire in Hell instead.
Just fourteen when his father had died, his back sporting
the scars of his old man's attempts to save his sorry soul,
Pride had been scooped up, dressed in gray, handed a rifle,
and pointed toward the North. Nobody asked him if he
believed in the Cause. Hell, Pride was so wet behind the ears
that he hadn't even figured out what the Cause was until the
War was nearly over. Green and scared, he was lucky he
hadn't shot his own damn foot off that first year.
He'd seen sights during the four years he'd fought in the
War that no youngster should ever see, sights that still
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In Bear Country
by Kiernan Kelly
haunted his dreams from time to time. Men, or what used to
be men before the cannonballs had ripped through them,
lying on green fields soaked with crimson, crying out for their
mothers. Blue or gray, black or white, it made no difference
in Pride's eyes. Both sides had bled the same red. Women
and children starving, walking with rags tied to their feet,
burned out of their homes, their hollowed eyes cried dry.
Entire families on the move, carrying their sick and dying with
them, forced out by hunger or by stronger neighbors with
bigger guns. The dead buried in shallow graves, or simply
tossed to the side of the road, left to rot in the sun.
Pride had somehow managed to come through the War
with his hide, if not his soul, intact—dented and dinged but
still covering his bones, only to get rounded up after the
Surrender with the rest of his division and sent to the Rock
Island prison camp for two years. Those two years were
worse than any he'd ever lived before or since, including the
four spent crawling on his belly in the mud, blood, and shit
during the War.
What little food they'd been thrown was half-spoiled, the
water fouled by livestock and men alike. Filth-covered, their
uniforms worn until they were shredded and tattered into
gray rags. Most had no shoes, their feet turning black with
frostbite. Pride watched more men die when the cold came
that first winter than he had in any skirmish he'd fought in.
For a while it looked like Pride might join them, suffering as
he had with a fever that hadn't cooled for days. The bullets
and sabers had missed killing him, but the damned prison
camp had near done him in.
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In Bear Country
by Kiernan Kelly
When he'd been released from Rock Island with nothing
but empty pockets and an emptier stomach, he'd wandered
southwest. Living off the land as best he could, he'd snare a
squirrel or a possum here and there, or a rabbit now and
then. Got lucky once or twice noodling fish out of the water
with his bare hands, but he went hungry more often as not.
His bones poked up through his skin feeling sharper than a
porcupine's quills. Still, he'd survived.
Eventually, Pride had found work riding fence for a rancher
in Texas, working long and hard until both his fingers and his
ass had sprouted blood blisters. Saved every nickel he could,
buying nothing that he could do without—hadn't chawed
tobacco or tasted nothing more refined than 'shine in years
except at Christmas, and wore his pants and shirt until they
weren't much more than holes strung together with thread.
His coat had been worn through at the elbows, ragged at the
bottom, and had only one button left. His hat had been
beaten to hell and back, and wasn't much more than a
misshapen lump atop his head. He did with what he had, and
if he didn't have it, he did without. But after four years of
pinching pennies, he'd managed to save enough in the grimy,
rolled up sock he kept shoved inside his boot to buy a half-
dead horse and a beat-up saddle, a rifle, a coat, a new hat,
and hopefully, a better life.
Now this.
Pride turned his head and spat. Lord knew he didn't expect
riches. Didn't expect nothing handed to him on a gleaming
silver platter. Was willing to work hard and settle for a dry
place to hang his hat. But just once , couldn't he manage to
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