Excerpt of Strawberry Hill by Catherine Anderson

But as he trained his gaze on the spot, his stomach felt as
if it dropped to the ground and bounced back up into his
throat. A blond bear cub. Just as Slade realized what it
was, it flipped head over heels in the air, slammed back to
the earth, and shrieked again. He also heard the rattling
of metal chain.

“Damn it! Down, Pistol! Down!”

Whining and trembling with eagerness, Pistol lowered his
rump to the dirt. Slade dismounted, tied Bogey to a small
tree, and then pushed through the brush to get closer. The
cub was a blur of golden fur, frantically trying to free
its right front foot from the jaws of a coyote trap.
Slade’s blood boiled. What kind of idiot set a trap so
close to a trail? It was a wonder that Pistol hadn’t
stepped in it as they came up the mountain. If the steel
jaws of a leghold trap snapped closed at just the right
angle, bones could be fractured or crushed. The last thing
Slade needed was a crippled dog.

As he drew closer, the baby panicked. Not wanting to make
the cub hurt itself any worse, Slade retreated to a less
threatening distance. He scanned the area, looking for the
tracks of a sow or other cubs. His trained eye saw nothing.
He also sniffed the air, hoping not to catch a whiff of an
adult bear in the vicinity.

He finally concluded that the cub was alone. Otherwise the
mother would be facing off with him to protect her trapped
offspring, a turn of events that Slade preferred to avoid.
Now the question he had to ask himself was, where was the
mother? Sows wandered away from their cubs sometimes, and
vice versa, but normally a mother and her babies stayed
within earshot of each other. This cub was making enough
noise to wake drunks on Sunday morning.