To start from the beginning? Go here: Doh – Rey – Me [Chapter 1]
– one of the fiction books written by Michael K. Hurder © [2025]
Read along as I create fiction. You might recognize at least one character. In the realm of make-believe, I’ve explored various themes and characters. This one is dearer to me than all the rest of my writing.
It most resembles my fantasy life just as I envision it.
As this story’s fiction unfolds, it reveals the struggles and triumphs of its characters, inviting readers to reflect on their own lives. A great way to self-analyze using fiction as the screen. We find ourselves wondering how our life differs from the fiction. How is it the same compared to the fiction? Only in the dreamworld can we create any life we want…and live it vicariously.
The thing about fiction is that we may not always like it. This is okay with fiction. None of it is mandatory reading. That’s what makes fiction so much fun, to read and to write.
Begin
[Chapter 2] — Found
…the urge was too great. He had to howl. The brave cub threw his head back and let go. His sisters joined him at the den’s mouth and added their voices.
The old man was on the big cat’s trail, and it looked as though it had made a recent kill. There was a blood trail. It must have taken something big because there was a lot of blood. He questioned whether he should go on. It was getting late, and it got dark early in February. It got cold, too, once the sun went down. He could pick it up again tomorrow. Besides, he was hungry. He had spaghetti and meatballs left from the night before if the damn bears didn’t tear the RV open.
He marked a tree with a yellow strip of cloth so he could pick the trail up. Then he headed back to the snowmobile. It was less than a mile back to it. He didn’t have to worry about people this time of year on the Tuolumne Meadows, Just Bears, big cats, elk, coyotes, and what he thought was a bigger K9. He’d found scat and tracks the week before. Too big for a Coyote, but surely a K9, A wild dog, maybe? There were no known wolves in this part of the Sierras. Not yet.
If he got this cat in his viewfinder, he’d get a bonus. The Bigwigs wanted big cats in a big way, Perry had told him. So, big cats, they would have, and soon. He was close after tracking this cat for three days. He’d found those prints in the snow about one hundred yards from the RV. They were huge. It was a large cat. The tracks indicated that it came down from the heights stopped in site of Shorty’s camp and redirected its wandering back up the rise.
Tracking with the snowmobile cut the time down, but he could only go so far before he had to climb a rocky incline or cross a wooded area where the vehicle couldn’t go. He also had to beware of getting too close. He carried only a Buck knife. Killing one of these priceless gifts of the Maker was out of the question.
So far, he’d been lucky. There might be a couple of cranky old black bears in warmer times who were his biggest troublemakers, and they wanted easy food. Shorty had to be very disciplined about how he cleaned up after meals, and he reinforced the one door into the RV’s living space. He had an air horn he used if they got too close. That was sufficient so far.
With the permission of the Park Service, it was nice to have that West Geo sticker in the window; he set up his base camp station in a snow park lot at the base of route 120, where it began its slow meandering climb up to the Tuolumne Meadows area. Not far from the Crane Flat Gas Station. The RV would never maneuver in the snow that fell up there.
The road was closed to vehicles soon after the first snowfall. West Geo sprung for the snowmobile and a trailer. They also rigged the RV with a sophisticated communications package to get his product back to Perry in San Francisco. The satellite comms worked well until a storm rolled in. Then it was spotty at best.
Once he got a bead on where his target went after leaving his snowmobile behind, he would come back to his ride, return to his base camp, and plan another route into the same area via the snowmobile to get there and scout around to find the trail again. Then he’d go on. Sometimes this method took days to work out, and he’d lose his target in the end. This time it took just three days to get close.
Was that a howl?
“Maybe these coyotes are just warning me to get away.” Speaking to the trees to bolster his resolve, he plowed back up into the woods.
The snow was shedding some depth as he rose higher towards the rocky peaks of the mount he was climbing. So, traversing the area was more manageable, and he could be a little quieter without all the huffing and puffing of exertion. He could hear the trickle of water, so there must have been a creek up here. Cold it may be, but the snow at the base of these drifts still melted and formed small brooks that ran down the mount towards one of Yosemite’s majestic falls.
The howling had stopped. They were on to him. He moved more slowly but wasn’t sure of his direction. Then he heard a low growl, but in a small voice like that of a playful puppy tugging on a chew toy.
Shorty looked around until he spotted a patch of gray in the green of some low-hanging pine branches. He advanced more slowly, and the cubs ran back towards a dugout under an old fallen tree.
Then he smelled it. The rotten smell of carrion was oppressive. He was suddenly on alert for the hunter who must have brought this feast back to its den. The color of the dead animal’s coat caused him to take a closer look. By God, it was a wolf, and by the looks of it, she had a knockdown tear up battle with the Big Cat and lost. Shorty thought of all the blood on the trail. He figured the cat had taken one of the cubs. The cat could be hurt too.
“Damn! I’m gonna regret this.”
end chapter 2
To start from the beginning? Go here: Doh – Rey – Me [Chapter 1]
[next Chapter – 3] Rescued
Bonus Fiction Feature:
If you read any of the fiction I create here to the end, you will be able to download a free copy when It’s complete. If I get a referral from you, I’ll throw in the fiction – Burtt.