In a sudden flash of inspiration, Nicole decided to circle wide and head back up the hill. The bear was moving downriver, and she wanted to be where it had already been, not where it was going.

By the time she had moved in a wide circle around the bear, her hopes were soaring and she moved a little more quickly. She was concentrating so hard on watching the brown mass in the river that she didn’t see the cubs until she nearly stumbled onto them behind a mountain birch tree. They had their backs to her and were trying earnestly to pull open a rotting log half buried in the forest soil. They gave one startled bawl, leaped straight up in the air, raced across the ground, and shot up the nearest pine tree like two simultaneously ignited brown rockets.

With a roar that split the mountain stillness, the mother grizzly swung around and exploded into a lumbering run of incredible swiftness. Bare feet forgotten, Nicole leaped into motion, her legs a blur. She covered the tiny clearing in three great leaps, then darted back to her right when the thick trees cut her off. The mother bear didn’t even slow down to check on her cubs—she had the threat to her offspring in sight and was bearing down on it like a missile.

Nicole screamed and changed directions, cutting back down the hill toward the river to get greater speed. But the brown mass of fury instantly corrected her own charge to head her off, closing now at three times Nicole’s speed. Intent only on escape, Nicole did not see the sharp stone protruding out of the soil, and her bare foot slammed down on it with full force. She gave a sharp cry of pain and sprawled headlong, like a baseball player in a desperate slide toward home base. Too close to brake its lumbering attack, the bear overshot her and hit the river in a great spray of water. The momentum carried it completely across the stream, and chunks of turf flew as the animal clawed at the ground, trying to halt her charge and change direction.

Comprehending only that she had been given another few seconds of life, Nicole scrambled to her hands and knees just as a white streak flashed past her, snapping and snarling as it hit the river to meet the onrushing bear head on. Nicole stared for a moment, then cried out with a sob of relief, “Cricket!”

The German shepherd, though outweighed by nearly a thousand pounds, was a flashing fury of its own, darting in to nip at the grizzly’s flanks, then barely jumping clear of a swipe that would have taken her head off had it connected.

“Nicole! Run!”