This is a very harrowing scene. It's not a big spoiler to say that Roamer survives his encounter with the bear, but then things get even worse. While he's still in bad shape from that battle, he's robbed and left a-foot by a couple of drifting outlaws. Despite everything that's happened to him, Roamer is stubborn and a survivor, and those qualities allow him to make it to the town of Tall Pine .
Where, you guessed it, things continue to get even worse.
In the great tradition of noirish Westerns by authors such as Lewis B. Patten and H.A. DeRosso, the town of Tall Pine is full of dark secrets, and Roamer finds himself being blamed for a murder he didn't commit. With nobody he can trust and with a truly despicable villain manipulating things, it's all he can do to stay alive and try to untangle the deadly web being woven around him.