Great Bear Lake by Erin Hunter Page B

But she couldn’t leave without finding something for her friends to eat. She tipped the silver can over, not caring this time whether it made a noise or not.
    The door of the flat-face den flew open. A long-legged flat-face stood there shouting; a small white dog shot out from behind him, yapping.
    Over the noise, Lusa heard Toklo barking, “Get out of there! Now!”
    Panicking, she clawed at the skin inside the second can. A chicken carcass rolled out; she grabbed it up and raced across the grass toward the gap in the wall. With the dog snarling at her paws, she flung herself over the wooden bars and found Toklo and Ujurak pressed against the wall outside, their eyes huge with alarm.
    â€œCome on!” Toklo huffed. His claws scraped on the stone path as he turned and led them back the way they had come. Lusa glanced behind her; to her relief, the dog was standing in the gap as if an invisible wall stopped it from stepping onto the stone path. Its ears were flattened and it was still yapping furiously. There was no sign of the flat-face, though Lusa heard a clattering sound as if the silver can was being picked up.
    â€œKeep up!” barked Ujurak, and Lusa realized she had fallen behind the others. She put on an extra burst of speed and caught up to them at the edge of the stone path. There was no time to check for firebeasts; they raced across, and Lusawinced as her paws sank into sticky mud where the sun had melted the black stone. She hopped on three paws, trying to pull the mud off with her teeth, but the stench made her eyes water and her muzzle ended up as sticky as her paw.
    â€œCome on!” Toklo called. He had pushed his back half into a bush with shiny dark leaves; Lusa could only see his shoulders and his face. She dived in beside him, almost squashing Ujurak, who crouched among the branches close to the trunk.
    â€œHere.” Lusa dropped the chicken carcass and tried not to gasp for breath too obviously. “I told you I’d find some food.”
    â€œYou told us it was easy to get food from flat-faces,” Toklo pointed out. His fur was sticking up in all directions, and one of his claws was bleeding. “You nearly got us killed!”
    â€œNo, I didn’t!” Lusa protested. “It was just bad luck that the flat-face came out. That dog was too small to hurt us. And anyway, I did get us something to eat.”
    Toklo nosed the chicken suspiciously. “I’m not eating that,” he grunted. “It stinks of flat-faces.”
    â€œWhat?” Lusa’s pelt grew hot with anger. “So it’s okay to eat food you catch, but not to eat what I find?”
    â€œSee? I catch food, you just find it. Or steal it from flat-faces. That shows how squirrel-brained you are,” the big grizzly cub growled. “That’s no way for a bear to hunt.”
    â€œWell, it’s the way I hunt,” Lusa retorted. “At least I got something. Do you want us all to starve to death?”
    â€œYou don’t understand. You’re not a proper bear.” Toklo turned and pushed his way out of the bush, paddingfarther off into the woods.
    Lusa met Ujurak’s doubtful gaze. “You’ll have some, won’t you?” she pleaded. Her belly was still grumbling; the potato sticks hadn’t been enough to satisfy her, but what she really wanted was to see her friends eating food she had provided.
    To her dismay, Ujurak shook his head. “It’s not natural to eat flat-face stuff,” he said. “Besides, it smells yucky!”
    â€œFine!” Lusa huffed. “I’ll eat it myself.”
    She gulped down the mouthfuls of chicken, crunching the bones, but it felt like chewing on wood. Toklo was right; she wasn’t a proper bear. Her paws were meant for climbing trees, not for opening flat-face cans and stealing their food.
    The chicken felt heavy in her belly as she and Ujurak followed Toklo into the trees and left the