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.