The plan was for three men to hunt a bear, but a cat and a dog joined them as they left.
Coca-Cola insisted on coming along, and as his sidekick, Prince naturally tagged along behind.
It wouldn't have been right to bring one and not the other, so Feng Shan simply stuffed both little critters into his fur coat. He even fashioned a makeshift pouch on his chest to carry them comfortably.
Feng Shan shouldered his rifle and pulled the sled, trudging with difficulty through the snow, each step sinking deep.
"Hey, man, wait up," Frank suddenly called out.
Feng Shan turned to look back at the two men, who hadn't moved from their spot in front of the bus. "Don't tell me you two are planning on riding the sled and having me pull you!"
"You're just going to walk like that?" Frank looked astonished.
Feng Shan was completely baffled. "Yeah. Is there a problem?"
"Dude, don't you have any snowshoes?" Tom slapped his forehead, looking exasperated. "It'll take us forever to get anywhere at this rate."
'Snowshoes?'
'What snowshoes?'
Feng Shan was even more bewildered.
Seeing his expression, Frank sighed silently, walked into the tool shed at the back of the bus, and came out holding what looked like a few tennis rackets.
"Man, these are snowshoes. An essential tool for walking in the Far North Tundra during snow season. Come back and put them on."
As he spoke, Frank squatted down and strapped the two "tennis rackets" to his feet. Then, he stepped into the deep snow, walking steadily across its surface, unlike Feng Shan, who had been sinking with every step.
'So *that's* a snowshoe!'
Feng Shan had seen them in the tool shed before and thought they were rackets his grand-uncle used to play ball for exercise.
He returned to the bus to put on the snowshoes. They were simple enough to wear; he just had to bind his feet to them with leather straps.
With the snowshoes on, he now only sank slightly into the snow as he walked, unlike before when every step plunged him deep inside.
'They really work.'
Feng Shan was delighted to have unlocked a new piece of gear, and his steps grew lighter as he pulled the sled.
The three men left camp boisterously, only to stop and stand in the middle of the vast snowfield, gazing out at the endless white tundra.
After a full night of wind and snow, the brown bear's tracks had long since vanished. Forget about fur; they couldn't even find a single pile of bear dung.
The three men looked at each other.
"Which way?" Feng Shan spoke first. After all, he was a novice; his wilderness experience was surely no match for that of two Indigenous People.
"Hey, don't look at me," Tom said, a matter-of-fact expression on his pimple-ridden face. "I'm a pilot. And while I'm keen on 'shooting,' it's limited to the bedroom."
"What about you, Frank?" Feng Shan's gaze fell on him. "You're an Inuit, you must know how to hunt!"
Tom immediately pointed at Frank and burst out laughing.
"Frank's an Inuit? My God, how did I never know? Feng, what part of him looks Inuit? His ass?"
"Fuck you, my maternal grandmother was Inuit, so of course I have Inuit blood," Frank explained indignantly, giving Tom an annoyed kick.
A topic like that, involving race and family, could easily lead to a lawsuit if taken seriously—especially since Frank was a legitimate lawyer.
Fortunately, the two were on good terms, so they moved past the topic with some boisterous bickering.
Feng Shan realized it was hopeless to rely on these two. 'If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.'
He dropped the sled's tow rope and pulled a thin, grassy cord from an inner pocket of his fur coat. In the current weather of the Far North Tundra, with its alternating gusts of wind, snow, and hail, it wasn't easy to collect stalks suitable for making rope. The cord in his hand was from his reserves, made a few days prior.
"Hey, man, what are you doing?" Frank, who had been bickering with Tom, noticed Feng Shan's strange actions and asked curiously.
"I'm using an ancient Divination Technique to find that brown bear," Feng Shan said, kneeling in the snow with a profound, inscrutable expression.
A Divination Technique?
"Feng, are you a believer in animism and Shamanism?" Tom chimed in. The vast lands of Alaska are home to many Indigenous minorities, like the Indians, Inuit, and Aleut People.
Most of them live north of the Far North Tundra, isolated from the rest of the world, and possess their own cultures and beliefs. The majority practice animism and Shamanism, though a small number may follow Protestantism or Catholicism.
The belief system of the Inuit is founded on animism, the idea that all things possess a soul or spirit, just as humans do.
When the spirits of deceased animals or humans are liberated by death, they are free to seek revenge. Since the Inuit believe their diet is composed entirely of such souls, this presents a tremendous danger. Therefore, they perform various customs and rituals to appease the departed spirits and avoid breaking taboos.
"No, this is a belief from ancient Huaxia," Feng Shan replied mysteriously, cupping the grassy cord in both hands and gently tying a knot in it.
Beside him, Frank and Tom watched, not daring to breathe. They found Feng Shan to be exceptionally mysterious at that moment.
"Southwest."
After studying the knot for a moment, Feng Shan stood up from the snow, took hold of the sled's tow rope once more, and started walking in the direction he had sensed.
"Have you ever seen a ritual like this? You think it can actually find the brown bear?" Tom whispered, tugging on Frank's sleeve.
"We'll find out if we follow him!"
Frank shook his head. Fairbanks had performances for tourists where they'd hire some Indians to put on masks and dance with fierce expressions, but he'd never seen anyone use a grass rope to find prey before.
'The Far North Tundra had mountains and vast, open plains. After a whole night had passed, could someone really find a brown bear's trail with just a single grassy cord?'
'Yeah, right.'
Feng Shan led the two of them to the edge of the Moonlight Forest, where his gaze was drawn to a thick fir tree. Claw marks crisscrossed its trunk, clearly visible.
'Without a doubt, they were left by that brown bear.'
"Found it! It's a big one." Feng Shan reached out and gently touched the claw marks. From the deep gouges, he felt as if he could sense the brown bear's strength.
Frank and Tom's eyes filled with shock and amazement.
'He actually found it. It couldn't have been a lucky guess, could it?'
"Let's leave the sled here for now. We're going in."
Feng Shan grabbed his rifle, worked the bolt to check the chamber, and made sure it was in working order. It would be a disaster if it malfunctioned when they found the bear.
As the three ventured deeper into the snow-covered Moonlight Forest, the surrounding silence grew more profound.
A few Thunderbirds rested obliviously in a snowdrift. Feng Shan had no time to bother with them; the fish-stealing brown bear was the main event today.
Following the guidance of his divination, Feng Shan led the two men to a dead fir tree.
Its thick trunk rested on a massive boulder, forming a triangular hollow between the trunk, the stone, and the ground. The den's entrance was about a meter in diameter, and the surrounding snow had been packed down hard by the brown bear.
'It was a big one!!'
Feng Shan crouched by the entrance to the den and tried to peer inside, but it was too dark to see a thing. However, in the muddy slush at the opening, he found the tail of a half-eaten smoked fish.
Smelling the brown bear, Prince leaped out of the chest pouch with a WHOOSH and made to dive straight into the den.
Luckily, Feng Shan was quick and managed to grab Prince by the scruff of his neck.
"In a hurry to deliver a meal, are we?!"
...