Donald Hofstetter

If the cave doesn't kill them, the bear that chased her in there is bound to.

The long shadow that filled the doorway was all she needed, to know that the bear was still behind her. Bruised and dazed she ran for her life into the total darkness of the cave. The dull thud of the bear hitting the ground in the entry let her know he was not giving up.

Aggie Stonewell was not supposed to be there. She was a good girl from a good family and it was such a harmless little lie. Where it took her was beyond belief. Into miles of interlocking caves with a man she had only seen from a distance. Feeling their way in the total absence of light, through stone structures and sulfur springs of the deep, dark, dampness of a massive cave whose only sound was the sound of the constant wind and the occasional moan of the bear that had nowhere else to be.

In the other world, the one outside, the ground echoed with the sound of horses' hooves, scouring every inch of forest for miles, desperate to find a young woman lost someplace in the Sawtooth. A land that rarely gives up its dead.

Staged around the turn of the century, in a small town in the depths of the Sawtooth Mountains, a young woman is lost in a cave with a young Sioux Indian brave she hardly knows. If the cave doesn't kill them, the bear that chased her in there is bound to. The only light they have is a small flashlight with a weak battery, that they dare not use. The cave appears to be endless and is filled with strange surprises. Interlocking tunnels, where anything could be expected, leave them wandering in the total absence of light, feeling their way along, searching for a way out while they try to stay just one step ahead of the bear. The bear that Talon knows he will be forced to meet face to face if he can't find a way out.

In the outside world, her father and friends search every crevice in the mountains for even the tiniest clue that might lead them to the lost girl.