The Burning Horizon Read Online Free PDF

it,” Kallik replied.
    â€œNo chance!” Toklo snorted, halting to tear away a trailing vine from around his neck.
    They had gone only a few bearlengths when once again they heard the sound of flat-face voices, along with a clattering noise they hadn’t heard before. Peering around a juniper bush, Kallik saw another stony trail stretching across their path. The clattering sound was made by hooves: a long string of horses, with flat-faces on their backs.
    â€œFlat-faces are so lazy,” Kallik muttered.
    There was a large group of riders, and some of the horses had another animal tied to them with a long tendril. The second kind was smaller than the horses, but looked similar, though those animals had much longer ears and a long face.
    â€œAre those horses, too?” Kallik asked.
    No bear replied, though Kallik noticed that Toklo seemed to be thinking hard, with a distant look in his eyes.
    â€œI saw animals like them once when Oka and I raided a flat-face den for corn,” he murmured. “What did she call them?” He relapsed into deep thought for a moment; then his face lit up and he exclaimed, “Mules! They’re mules!”
    All four bears peered through the bushes as the horses and their flat-faces filed past. The mules had lumpy packages fastened to their backs, wrapped in pelts bare of fur. The creatures had small eyes, their expressions cross and stubborn.
    â€œI don’t think I’d like to get mixed up with one of them ,” Lusa declared.
    As she spoke, one of the mules started to skitter sideways, dragging on the tendril that tied it to the horse ahead of it.
    â€œUh-oh! I think it’s picked up our scent,” Toklo muttered.
    The flat-face on the horse leading the mule turned around to bark at it, and the mule fell into line once more. As the flat-face turned, Kallik spotted a long firestick slung over his shoulder, and her fur prickled.
    â€œWhat do you think they’re doing?” Yakone whispered.
    â€œWho knows what flat-faces do?” Toklo responded irritably. “Who cares? All we have to do is stay away from them.”
    â€œThen they should stay away from us,” Kallik said. “The woods are for us, not them!”
    When the line of horses had disappeared into the trees, the bears hurried across the stony trail. Kallik bristled again at the strange scents that filled the air, but Toklo and Yakone both started sniffing appreciatively.
    â€œI wonder what horse tastes like,” Toklo said.
    â€œOr mule,” Yakone added. “There’s a lot of meat on one of those.”
    â€œThe flat-faces wouldn’t like it if you started hunting their animals,” Lusa warned them.
    Toklo and Yakone glanced at each other, then shrugged. “They’re only flat-faces,” Toklo said.
    â€œThey have firesticks!” Kallik exclaimed, stepping forward to block the two males’ path. “Have you two got cloudfluff between your ears, or what?”
    Yakone sighed. “I guess you’re right.”
    Kallik headed off with determined pawsteps, glad to hear that the others were following her. The ground in front of them fell away into a steep slope, and farther down she spotted the walls of a flat-face den. As she veered away, dogs started barking, sounding uncomfortably close. All the bears picked up the pace; Kallik’s heart started to thump harder as she waited for the crack of a firestick.
    But no flat-faces appeared, and as Kallik and her friends plunged into deeper undergrowth once again, the sound of barking faded into the distance.
    By this time, they were getting used to traveling throughthe dense forest. Yakone and Toklo would hold vines and brambles out of the way so that Lusa could wriggle through and begin making a path. Then Kallik would stamp down the surrounding branches.
    â€œWe’ve come a long way like this,” Kallik commented at last, “but any creature passing this way would be