Darwin Expedition Read Online Free Page B

sheep, lunging with its front paws to bring the sheep down, and then tearing into the sheep with its teeth. It didn’t take long for that sheep to die. I say, “Your uncle shot the bear, and then he yelled at your dad for sitting there with his camera instead of doing something to save his sheep.”
    Tej says, “That’s right. You think you could have run faster than that bear?”
    I think about how fast that yearling bear closed the distance between it and us, how it drove with its front legs, how its shoulders rolled with each long stride.
    I say, “The bear got the slowest sheep. I don’t have to outrun the bear. It’s like Darwin said about survival of the fastest. I just have to be faster than you.”
    â€œHa ha. Darwin’s theory is survival of the fittest, by the way, and mental fitness counts. Human beings didn’t get to thetop of the food chain by being big and dumb.”
    I wish that sounded more like a joke. “By big and dumb, you’re talking about the bear, right?”
    He either ignores me or doesn’t hear me. Probably he’s ignoring me. Tej pauses on the trail. “Look,” he says, “you can see where a bear has been eating.”
    The meadow grass has been cropped into jagged swaths. “Bears eat grass?”
    Tej nods. “In the spring they do, when the grass is high in protein.”
    I pull a stalk of grass and chew it. It tastes like, well, grass. “Just grass?”
    â€œPretty much, until the berries ripen.” Tej starts walking. “They’ll hunt if it’s easy, like a young or wounded elk.”
    â€œOr a nice fat sheep in a pasture.”
    â€œThat was unusual, apparently.”
    â€œMaybe the bear took the elk calf we saw yesterday.”
    â€œIf it didn’t, it probably ate it anyway. Anything dead is food for a bear.”
    I look over my shoulder for the hundredthtime, just in case that yearling brings its mama to kick some human butt. Nice fresh human butt. I step up closer to Tej. “I sure nailed it with that rock.”
    Tej laughs. “I’ve heard of bears running away with bullets in their skull. I don’t think your rock did much damage.”
    I say, “Well, I guess I scared it away, which is more than you did.”
    â€œThe bear was just bluffing. It wouldn’t have attacked us.”
    â€œOh, and you weren’t scared at all.”
    He turns to look at me. “You’re scared of bears because you don’t understand them. Like you don’t understand most things.”
    I know where this is going. “If this is about me leaving Tremblay with you, I understand enough.”
    He shakes his head. “You don’t. You only understand what you know, and all you know is Tremblay. It’s a big, wide world out there, Liam.” He sneers. “The only thing big and wide in Tremblay is Jordan Campbell’s ass.” He laughs.
    I feel my face go red. “Is that supposed to be a joke, Tej?”
    He shakes his head. “Of course it’s a joke. You have no sense of humor.” He sniggers. “Maybe Jordan has sucked it out of you.”
    â€œMaybe you should shut up about Jordan.”
    â€œShe’s holding you back, my friend.”
    I move in close to his face. “I’d rather be in Tremblay with Jordan than go live in some crap-hole college apartment with a bunch of guys who smoke and talk about girls because they never get a girl and never will because they’re so friggin’ conceited.”
    Tej looks a bit like the bear right now. His eyes have the same maniac gleam. He says, “There’s nothing wrong with being an intellectual.”
    â€œThere is if you’re also an asshole.”
    He flips me the bird. “Fine. Rot in Tremblay. Work in the mill for as long as it stays open. Or pump gas. Any idiot can pump gas. Marry Jordan and have six kids.She’ll already have a couple of her own