Mama Bear

By Foy W. Minson

If you take Baby Bear, Mama Bear will come after you — and she's gonna be mad.

In the remote, forested mountains of the Northern California coast, a pair of miscreants dig out fourteen-year-old Sammi but leave her Angela, her mother, still buried in the wreckage of an earthquake-collapsed house with her father and uncle, both severely injured.  But the horrible words of the abductors before they depart, alluding to the hellish life they plan for the girl as their new baby-maker, galvanize Angela to free herself and pursue them into the wilderness.  But she is a city girl who has always been adamantly opposed to violence.  So, what, now, will she do — what won't she do — to save her daughter?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Foy W. Minson
• Release date: Jan 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985599213

Foy W. Minson

Foy W. Minson joined the U. S. Air Force in the summer after high school graduation, became an aircraft mechanic, and served eight years, half of it in Europe.  After that, he was a police officer for almost eighteen years before taking a disability retirement, after which he was a private investigator, a commercial property manager, a security guard, and a courthouse weapons screener.  He currently lives and writes in Santa Rosa, California.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – Fang and Claw

HE HUNGERED.  HE RAISED his snout and sniffed the air.  Something was there, on the wind and beckoning.  Not sweet like the berries or the acorns he had stuffed himself with before his long sleep, but savory.  Musky.  Not so different from the squirrel he had caught earlier.  Maybe it would be bigger.  The fawn two days ago was bigger, but fawns were getting harder to catch.  They were growing fast and gaining strength, and they were moving faster, out-scrambling him unless he could grab them before they bolted.  He turned until the breeze brushed his face with its luscious lure.  With a grunt, he lumbered toward it. 

In his fourth year, the bruin, a California black bear, was yet to reach his full growth.  He pushed two hundred and fifty pounds just two months out of hibernation, but he still had lots of lost body mass to make up.  In another year at this time, he would go better than three hundred.  

Even now, though, he was a force to be reckoned with.  There were other, bigger bears about, but he had encountered only one, and that was last year when it chased him away from a female he’d been drawn to.  

Other than that, he had yet to meet anything in the forest that could intimidate him.  Even that cougar to whom he ceded the doe carcass a week ago hadn’t really scared him that much.  It was just that he had already eaten his fill, besides, he was thirsty and about ready to head for a stream.

The scent on the breeze drew him on.  But he diverted rather than shoulder his way through fern thickets, rhododendrons, and copses of saplings filling in much of the space where sunlight reached the ground beneath a blend of towering pines, cedars and redwoods.  In places, the conifer forest gave way to oak woodlands covering entire valleys and hillsides.  In others, groves of ancient redwood giants dominated.  Occasionally, he would have to divert around the long corpse of a fallen giant too massive to climb over where it slumbered in the century-long process of reverting back into loamy soil.  But the breeze with its alluring aroma always brought him back on track.  

When he topped a rise, the ground sloped down before him to a fern-filled dell with a gurgling brook in which a dark shape loitered mid-stream.  When the creature briefly raised its head and looked back for a moment, he saw it was another bear.  Possibly what he had sensed on the wind.  After a short pause, it returned to whatever it was doing, probably fishing.

He grunted and descended the slope.  Maybe he’d catch some fish, too.  It wasn’t likely that the other bear, identified now as female by her scent as he got closer, would or could deny him access.  She was close to a hundred pounds lighter than him.  If there weren’t enough fish, he’d just chase her away.

But as he got closer to the stream, coming to it at the rear of the female, he spotted something even better than hard-to-catch fish.  Right there on the stream bank between him and the female was her cub.  It was probably two or three months old and not able to run away from him more than a few feet before he could catch it.  The female seemed well distracted, and the cub promised an easy meal.

He lumbered forward, keeping watch on where both the cub and its mama were facing.  He remembered mamas had gotten protective of their cubs when he got near them in the past, so he didn’t want her to see him approaching it and call it to her or he’d have her to contend with before he could eat.  As he drew closer, his pace increased.

Something crawling in the mud near the water’s edge had captured the cub’s attention, so mama was confident from her glance back at him that Baby was safe.  She returned to stalking a fat rainbow trout facing an upstream rill, unaware that for every step she took toward her meal, death took two toward his.

She saw her chance when the fish nosed up to a bit of floating debris and paused.  She lunged and drove her head beneath the water, jaws agape and snapping closed before the fish could dart away.  Only when she drew her head back into the air did she hear the scream cut short from behind her.  She spun and dropped the catch as her mouth flew wide in a thunderous roar.

Where her baby had amused himself on the bank now stood a large male, his jaws working to wolf down his catch.  His gaze drifted to her in curiosity, and he considered trying his luck at fishing.

Before the dropped fish hit the water, she launched at him.  Bellowing her rage, she covered the distance between them in short heartbeats, and she was on him like a badger gone berserk.  With fang and claw, she tore into him as nothing ever had before.  She overwhelmed any attempts at defense with a storm of slashing and snapping that ripped through his tough hide in a dozen painful places.  Offense on his part was out of the question.  Although he was much bigger, he was no match for her fury.  

Finally, exerting a mighty shove that rocked her backwards, he gained enough room to spin and flee.  But he didn’t go alone.  Driven by an unstoppable fury, she pursued the source of her rage. 

Chapter 2 – Family Road Trip

ANGELA’S GAZE WANDERED from the green wall of foliage sweeping past on their right.  She turned her head and paused briefly to take in Ethan’s profile, and then moved on out the driver’s window to the road’s far edge, tracing its course ahead along steep, coastal cliffs.  When the gently undulating road curved to the left, she could see all the way to the bottom where foaming surf crashed against rocks jutting from the water a hundred feet and more below road level.

Suddenly thrown forward when Ethan slammed on the brakes, only her locking shoulder harness saved her from smashing against the dashboard.  Still, her hands gripped the dashboard as her head rocking forward.

Sammi screamed in the back seat as her harness dug into her, her hands thumping hard against the back of Ethan’s seat.

The car slewed and skidded sideways as a bear that had burst from the dense, roadside growth bore straight at Angela’s window, before it veered and tore past behind the car.  Fearful desperation showed plainly in its wide eyes and mouth gaping for more oxygen to fuel its flight.  

A second bear, noticeably smaller, charged into the roadway, veered around the car, and continued its hot pursuit of the first one back into the forest behind the car.  The look on its face was pure, seething rage.

Everyone sat in silence for long seconds, the idling engine and three slow exhalations the only sounds.  Then, they all started at once.

What the hell —?

Daddy, why was —?

Ethan, where did —?

I don’t think they even noticed us, Ethan said.  That little one must be one hell of a mean bear for the big one to run from it like that.

Sammi had flopped back in her seat.  They sure didn’t look like they were playing.

Angela peered back out in the directions the bears had taken.  Do you think they may come back?  Could they get into the car?

Ethan checked all three mirrors while confirming his door was locked before responding with, No, and hell no, in that order.  From the looks of ‘em, I’d say they’re probably going over the next mountain by now.  And, even if they did come back, I sure wouldn’t sit here blithely watching while they tore the doors off.  He moved his foot from the brake pedal to the gas and straightened the car on the road as it started rolling again.

But what was it all about?  Angela’s voice still had a definite quaver.

Who knows?  Maybe Uncle Liam will have some idea.  He probably knows all the bears by first name, living up here by himself since Louisa died.  What’s it been now...three years?

As they drove past the wall of trees, Angela glanced over at the spot where the bears had burst out as though expecting more before answering.  Well, she went just after Memorial Day, so, yes, it’s been just about three years.  Seems like just weeks when I think about it.  Uncle Liam says he likes the solitude, now that he’s gotten used to being alone, and that the bi-weekly trips into town are enough to keep him civil to the few people he might meet in between.

Ethan let out a short laugh.  Yeah, he told me a while back that he’s got a couple of neighbors he’d be just as happy to see only once every decade or so, if that.  But, with the nearest one well over a mile away, and that one being tolerable enough, others that aren’t so easy to get along with are scattered far and wide. 

Angela said, He was fortunate to be married to a woman that liked the outdoors as much as he does.  It’s a shame we never got up here more to see Louisa in a place she loved so much.

From the back seat came, Uncle Liam told me it was Aunt Louisa’s idea to move up here when he retired.  He said she liked the light up here better for her painting.  I can’t tell it’s any different from back at home, but I guess she could.

Angela’s smile was again soft and relaxed with the bear-scare fast receding behind them.  Sammi was actually taking part in the conversation.  Maybe she was over the dark mood that had overshadowed most of the miles they had traveled since leaving their driveway in Santa Rosa.  She had spoken little other than those few excited remarks when she claimed she had spotted two whales offshore just south of Fort Ross.  It was a great view down there with the highway so high above the water, so it could have happened, she supposed.  The gray whales were on their way back north with their new calves after birthing off Baja.  Angela hadn’t seen them, but Sammi insisted that she had. 

It wasn’t far, now, but had it really been only three hours since they had left home?  Seemed longer.  Their occasional road trips didn’t normally drag like this, but they were seldom this long.  And, of course, they normally didn’t begin with the tension level already so high.  Angela lowered the make-up mirror on her visor to check her look and spotted Sammi in the back seat making eye contact with Ethan in the rear-view mirror.  The smile Sammi squeezed out didn’t quite make it to her normally warm, hazel eyes, which then swung away to catch the passing ocean scenery out her window.  A strand of her dark brown hair clung to her cheek until she brushed it away.  With just a slight turn of her head, Angela could see Ethan’s focus return to negotiating the winding Coastal Highway.

It pleased Angela that Sammi had such a good rapport with her dad.  What Angela shared with her daughter was good, too, always had been, anyway...mostly.  It would be again when the tension from this latest crisis of value differences passed — finished passing, she corrected.  Already on the mend, it just needed a bit more time and a place to spend that time together as a family without distractions.  She silently pledged to herself and to her daughter that during this time she would see that all the doors and pathways to communication were unblocked and welcoming to whoever might be ready to take the steps.

And she was always willing to be the first to take a step.  Oh, Sammi, wouldn’t you just love to live back there in Mendocino?  All those quaint, old houses and stores?  It’s like something you’d see in New England.

There sure wasn’t a shortage of tourists, Sammi answered after only a brief pause.  They were everywhere.  I guess that’s what we were, though.

Angela looked but could pick up no sign of sarcasm.  She’d take it as a step. 

Ethan jumped in.  "Well, you know, they used shots of the place to create Cabot Cove in that old TV show, Murder She Wrote.  Although, I can’t say it looked much like it did on the screen.  Where was the calm harbor at the end of the road lined with cottages and picket fences?  Or maybe we just didn’t drive down the right street.  I s’pose that quick loop we made through the place probably missed a lot.  I wonder how many people know it was actually a village on the northern California coast that they had on their screen.  But I think they still added a few things and changed a few, too, probably moved a store or house here and there, maybe eliminated a whole coastline of foaming breakers crashing over rocks."

Angela concealed her smile at her husband.  He tended to ramble on once he got started after an extended period of silence, but this was probably a good time for rambling.  Certainly better than the awkward silence.

And, so, Ethan rambled on.  Apparently, you can do just about anything with an image once you digitize it.  Hey, I wonder what we could do with our place back home.  I’d like to see a nice big tree in the back yard, maybe a huge, heritage oak or a big, old, gnarly pepper tree.  Or how about a pennant-flying turret on top of a three-story tower above the roof, with a moat around the whole thing — with alligators?

Angela gave her husband another smile, but this one was bright and for public consumption.  He was really trying to keep things light.  She just hoped things would stay that way.  If only her stubborn daughter would see her side.  Without Sammi being aware of where her side had come from, though, she supposed it might be a lot to expect.  Still, she was Sammi’s mother, and at fourteen, the girl would simply have to respect her wishes.  Even though Ethan sided with Sammi, she was still Sammi’s mother, and it was her right, her responsibility, really, to demand certain behavior.  And if she chose not to explain why she believed the way she did, she was within her rights to still insist on compliance.  In all the years with Ethan, she hadn’t even revealed it to him.  She was just glad that he had never pushed it.  He seldom even commented on it any more.

Why don’t we come up here more often?  Sammi asked no one in particular.  It’s so beautiful.

Now, that was a definite step.  Angela hoped Sammi was getting back to her normal, sweet self, and that her question and remark really were spontaneous reactions to the breath-taking vistas sweeping past on both sides of the car, emerging from out beyond the windshield and dwindling out the rear window like a travelogue.

Gee, honey, that’s a good question, Ethan answered.  He made a quick glance over at Angela.  How about it, hon?  We haven’t been up here since the funeral, and that was so short and depressing, it could hardly count as a real visit.  The only time before that, Sammi was so young she probably doesn’t remember much about it.  Just a phone-call every two or three months, or even monthly, hardly cuts it, especially now that he’s alone.  We don’t want Liam to become a real hermit.  Face to face can make a big difference.  Once or twice a year wouldn’t be all that tough.  It is a long drive, but it’d probably be quicker to go up 101 to Willets and cut over from there.  Although, I do kinda like the drive up the coast. 

Angela laid her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes with a contented smile on her face.  Yes.  I’d like that.

After they made the turn inland at the south edge of Fort Bragg, and the new course threaded its way through forests growing thick on steep mountain-sides, it was easy to imagine the beautiful, rugged coastline they had been following was a thousand miles away.  A few miles on the well-maintained, state highway and they turned off onto a less well maintained, county road, and then onto one lesser yet.  Private roads and driveways, frequently unpaved, that branched from it to disappear into the shadows beyond curtains of roadside greenery could easily be mis-identified as fire roads or even game trails, and vice versa.

Honey, do you remember what it was that Liam said about finding that last turn-off?  I can’t remember it now from the other time.  Ethan slowed down to creeping speed and glanced at the letter-sized computer print-out.  Something about a tree?  This map he sent us will get us only so far.  There’s no rhyme or reason to the lay-out of things up here.  Unless you’re a bear, I suppose.  They probably know their way around.  But for us human-types, it’d be awfully easy to get lost.  There’s no signs or addresses or anything.

Well, I suppose the folks that live up here know where everything is.  Uncle Liam and the others are probably just as happy not to have sight-seers and solicitors dropping by.

I guess.  What are there, four other houses that share his road?  Is this a private road, do you know?

I think Aunt Louisa told me once they have five others that share the road, and it’s a county road, not private. 

With a snort, Ethan said, There were probably road-name signs at one time, but after they got knocked down or shot up, I guess no one was in a rush to replace ‘em.

When a reluctant doe and two prancing fawns ambled onto the blacktop a hundred feet ahead, Ethan stopped to give them ample space to disappear into the brush beneath the trees at the opposite road edge.  Those in the car just sat and watched nature’s parade.  No one spoke other than a hushed aw from Sammi until the roadside ferns and tree saplings swallowed the last flicked tail.

Where’s their father, do you suppose? Sammi wondered.

Oh, bucks don’t stick around after breeding, Ethan explained.  Hunters like ‘em too much.

That’s awful!  So, he just leaves mom to raise the kids on her own and goes off with his buddies?  Just like a man, I guess.

Hey, now, Ethan responded.  Take it easy on the old guy.  He just does like all the others.  That way he’s still around and breathing when he’s needed the following year.

I think she was kidding, dear.

When Ethan slipped Angela a wink before responding to Sammi’s judgment, she suppressed a smile.

After catching Sammi’s attention in the mirror, he said with wide eyes, Is that right, honey?  Did my little girl really catch on to how the world really works?

With a snicker and a hand thumped against the back of his seat, she answered, Yes, Dad, I really do know how things work, even in the jungle.

When Ethan started the car moving again, Angela said, I think Uncle Liam said there’s a strange looking tree a little bit before the turn, an old-growth redwood about a thousand feet tall that lightning has hit so many times, there’s hardly a limb left on it.  He said it looks like the Washington Monument covered with bark.

A thousand feet, huh?

His words, so I suppose it could be an exaggeration.  I think I remember it.  It’s just tall enough and different enough from the jillions of other trees around here to stand out.

Ethan kept his speed to thirty or less, frequently much less in the tighter curves, and thankful there were no other cars to hang on his rear bumper like out on the highway.  In fact, since they had taken the turn-off from the highway ten miles or so back, they hadn’t encountered half a dozen other vehicles, coming or going, and none since the last turn-off onto their current road at least two miles back.  But there were few camp grounds and no lakes up that way, and deer hunting season was many weeks away, so unless they were locals, visiting locals, or lost, there was no reason for anyone else to be on these isolated roads.

He took occasional glances off to the sides when he wasn’t negotiating a sharp turn or preparing for the next one.  When they were passing through a grove of giant redwoods, he couldn’t hold it in.  Wow! Just look at that!  Without a bunch of bushes beneath the trees, there’s a hell of a view back in there.  It’s like something out of the Jurassic Period.  Some of those trees look about that old.  And just look at the matt of dead needles and stuff.  Some places it looks like a couple of feet deep.  I sure wouldn’t want to try walking through that for very long.  And there’s not a lot of level ground, either.  If I wasn’t climbing up the side of a mountain, I’d be trying to make my way down one without sliding on my ass.  Bet it’d be easy to get turned around in there, too.  You might be able to keep straight from the sun in mornings or afternoons, but you probably wouldn’t be able to see it or even tell what direction it was a lot of the time, even if it wasn’t clouded over.  Think we can go a whole week without getting lost, Sammi?

Probably not.  But I’ll stay out of the woods if you will.  We’ll let Mom and Uncle Liam do any trekking that needs to be trekked.

Deal! Ethan caught Angela’s eye and winked at her surprised smile.  It was good to have the old Sammi back.

Oh, yeah, Angela responded with a laugh.  The great outdoors-woman, that’s me.  I’d get lost in my own rose garden if I didn’t have stepping stones to follow.

The road was wide enough for two cars to pass, but not with a lot of room to spare.  Although clearly not freshly surfaced, the pavement showed little wear and tear.  But that was due more to the lack of traffic than the quality of materials and application.  The edge of the pavement frequently abutted a steep bank or ended at the lip of a drop that ranged anywhere from a foot to forty feet or more.  Safety railings and barriers were non-existent.  

Chapter 3 – Crises of Values

THERE IT IS!  SAMMI thrust her hand toward the windshield.  There’s the tree!

Ethan lifted his foot from the pedal and allowed the down-slope of the road to take them past the tree before softly braking.  The lightning-branded tree nearly ten feet across at the ground showed burn scars on the top half where stubs of limbs jutted from the lifeless trunk.

"Wow, it is the tallest thing around!  Sammi craned her neck to gaze at it out the side, then the back window.  I bet it gets hit by lightning a lot."

And here’s the turn.  Ethan swung onto the dirt track that began a long ascent up the side of the canyon that branched off the larger one they had been following.  It was just wide enough for one car, and it disappeared after fifty feet curving behind more trees.  This is the last fork, isn’t it? Uncle Liam’s driveway?

Angela nodded and looked at him with a smile tinged with hope more than doubt.  Pretty sure.   I think it looks familiar.  But she glanced at the piece of paper in her hand before adding, This is number five, right?  That’s what he told me.  Five forks after leaving the highway: a left, a right, two more lefts that were both dirt, and now this one to the right, also dirt.  I’m pretty sure there are no others off this one.

And then what’d he say, half a mile?  I seem to remember it seemed longer than that when we were here before.

Uh huh, or there-about.  Again, his words, so that could translate to somewhere between zero-point-five and five-point-zero.

At close to a mile, the rift carved by a fast stream opened out to a heavily wooded saddle nestled between rocky peaks.  As the mountainsides curved away, the forest thinned, and images of what lay beyond began to find their way through until they could make out the shape of a house silhouetted against open sky beyond.  The car swung around a final redwood grove sharing sunlight with cedars towering above swirls of ferns, and Uncle Liam’s retreat stood before them.

Like a ski lodge overlooking Lake Tahoe, it was an assemblage of heavy timbers, stacked logs, supporting beams, and many-paned windows.  A wide, wooden porch with lengths of de-branched saplings for handrails swept to the left from the front door, across half of the house front, and around the north side toward the back.  It was roofed over as far as the corner of the house, and then the rest lay open to the sky.  A wide, second floor balcony that appeared to have doors