Читать книгу Yellowstone Standoff - Scott Graham - Страница 15

7

I promised my boy we’d see a grizzly bear,” the man called over his shoulder as he walked away from the road. “That’s why we drove all this way.”

Chuck gathered Carmelita and Rosie to him, his hands on their shoulders. “Idiot,” he muttered in Janelle’s ear.

“Shouldn’t somebody stop him?” she asked.

The man was fifty feet from the road now, nearing the willows.

“Too late. Besides, it’ll just run away, like he wants.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Despite Justin’s declaration last night that grizzlies were unpredictable creatures, Chuck knew Yellowstone’s famed predators to be precisely the opposite. As Lex had noted over breakfast, when presented the opportunity to attack or flee, grizzlies almost always fled, even sows protecting their cubs. On the rare occasions they did go on the offensive, they were usually startled, and were prone to attack only those traveling alone or in pairs.

Given the absence of surprise and the two dozen onlookers at his back, the man faced virtually no risk from the hidden grizzly. Even so, Chuck held his breath as the man neared the thicket. He slowed, shortening his stride, then stopped before the wall of willows. The bushes stood fifteen feet high and grew so close together it was impossible to see more than a few feet into their depths.

“Hey!” the man hollered.

Seconds passed. Nothing.

“Hey,” he repeated with less certainty.

The woman with the boy stepped forward. “Russell,” she barked. “Get back here this instant.”

Russell responded by straightening to full height and stepping forward, parting the pliant stalks in front of him with his hands. He disappeared into the willows, the tops of the spindly shoots waving as he wormed his way deeper into them. The willows stopped moving ten feet into the dense stand of brush. “Hey,” he said again, his voice faltering.

In silent answer, a three-foot section of willows quivered with movement near the far end of the thicket.

A collective gasp rose from those gathered at the side of the road. The gray-haired woman next to Chuck stepped backward, her hand covering her mouth.

The heads of the displaced willows bent forward and returned to their upright position in a shimmering wave that advanced through the center of the willow patch, headed straight for the place where the man had come to a stop.

A snarl broke from the thicket, identical to the recorded growls of the grizzly that had come from Justin’s phone the night before. Chuck tightened his grip on the girls’ shoulders, his fingers digging into their fleece jackets.

“Aaahhh!” the man cried, his voice squeaky with terror.

Chuck clamped his lips together. Carmelita and Rosie slipped behind him, their heads poking around his sides. The tourists drew back as one.

The tops of the willows twitched as the father thrashed his way back the way he’d come, racing toward the front of the thicket. The wave from the rear of the patch rolled toward the man, marking the bear’s continued advance. The bear surged through the willows, moving twice as fast as the man. The wave almost reached him before he stumbled into the open and sprinted for the roadside.

The wave came to a stop just shy of the front of the thicket. The bear, unseen, snarled once more, low and threatening. Then the motion of the willows reversed as the bear changed course, its movement back through the willow patch slow and leisurely.

The bear emerged from the far end of the patch and strode westward, away from the road, across the open ground beside the stream. It was a grizzly all right, medium-sized at about three hundred pounds, its broad shoulders tapering only slightly to its haunches, its fur the light brown color of coarse sand, the distinctive hump between its shoulders blond in the mid-morning sun.

Fifty feet from the thicket, the grizzly turned and rose on its hind legs, forelegs dangling in front of its chest. Standing taller than a human, it looked over the top of the willow patch at the tourists.

As cameras clicked around him, Chuck shivered at the memory of the grizzly staring at the Territory Team’s remote camera after its attack. He leaned forward, squinting at the bear. Its ears swiveled one way, then the other, its right earflap smooth and undamaged.

The bear dropped to all fours and padded away through the knee-high grass until it disappeared into a stand of pines a quarter-mile downstream.

The man stood, quaking, at the side of the road, his hand on his son’s shoulder as if for support, gawking at the place where the grizzly had vanished in the trees. The two spotters remained at their scopes. Tourists headed for their cars, chattering excitedly with one another about what they’d just seen. Chuck took the girls’ hands and led them back along the roadside with Janelle.

“That was scary,” Rosie announced.

“Will there be bears like that where we’re going?” Carmelita asked, her eyes wide.

Chuck drew a quick breath. Last night, the video of the Territory Team attack. Earlier this morning, Lex’s wild suppositions about the killer grizzly. And now, the idiot father.

In three hours, Janelle and the girls were scheduled to board a boat with him that would take them across Yellowstone Lake to the Thorofare region in Yellowstone National Park’s isolated southeast corner, by many accounts the single most remote region in the lower forty-eight states, an area as populated with grizzlies as anyplace in North America, and where help was a long way off.

He pressed his hands to his stomach, containing a full-body shudder. No one had told him about the fears for Carmelita and Rosie he’d be subject to the instant he became a stepfather—worries of their being bullied at school, irrational concerns for their health, anxiety about the hits their self-esteem might take when they reached middle school.

What had possessed him to bring the girls here?

He lowered his hands, flexing his fingers. “Bears live everywhere in the park,” he said, offering reassurance to himself as much as to the girls and Janelle. “This is their home. We’re headed higher in the mountains on the south side of the central plateau where there’ll be less for them to eat until later on in the summer and fall. They’ll still be passing through, though, mostly going over the Absarokas from one side of the mountains to the other.”

“Like on a road?” Rosie asked.

“Yep. Except there aren’t any roads where we’re going. Just trails up and over passes to the headwaters of the Snake River and on south to the Tetons.”

They reached the truck. He took a map from the front seat, unfolded it, and pressed it against the side of the pickup with one hand.

“See?” he said to the girls, pointing at the small, green square with a peaked roof that marked the location of Turret Cabin at the foot of Turret Peak. “Here’s where we’ll be camped.”

He slid his finger south, where two trails Y’ed, heading up matching, broad valleys above the junction of Thorofare Creek and the upper Yellowstone River. He tracked the Thorofare Creek drainage with his finger to where 10,971-foot Trident Peak climbed high above tree line near the head of the valley, the map thick with topo lines rising to the mountain’s summit just inside the park’s southern boundary. He tapped the map at the base of the peak, where three ridges fell away to the west in parallel lines. “This is where the mystery is.”

“Oooo,” Rosie murmured.

“You and Uncle Clarence are going to figure it out, aren’t you?” Carmelita asked Chuck.

“That’s what we’ve been hired to do.”

He drew a circle with his finger around the area between the peak and cabin, taking in the Thorofare Creek and upper Yellowstone River drainages. “These are big valleys with lots of forests and meadows that climb all the way to high passes over the Absaroka Mountains. When the summer grasses get tall and thick there later on, big herds of elk will come to graze on them, and the bears will follow. Things won’t really get crowded with bears until the end of the summer, though, when the whitebark pine nuts drop from the trees.”

“I thought grizzly bears ate meat,” Carmelita said.

“They like meat and plants both. They’re omnivorous, the same as us. They eat almost anything.”

“Including people?” Rosie asked, her eyes wide.

“Mostly they avoid people, like what happened back there. They just want to be left alone.”

“They’ll leave us alone where we’re going?”

“Yes.”

Rosie nodded. “If they don’t, we’ll spray them with our cans, won’t we?”

“That’s why we practiced. But we’ll always be in a group, so they’ll stay away from us.”

Carmelita and Rosie climbed into the rear seat of the truck. Chuck closed the door and turned to Janelle. “I’m having second thoughts,” he admitted.

Janelle looked at him, giving him time.

He cleared his throat. “You could drop me off at the dock and go back to Canyon Village with the girls. It’s only five nights. Clarence and I can go on in and do the survey on our own. We might even be able to finish up and come out early. We’d be back in no time.”

“You’ve been building up this discovery to the girls for the last six months.”

“It is a big discovery.”

“Which is what you’ve been telling them, over and over—that it’s such a cool mystery, that they’ll get to help solve it. You know how disappointed they’ll be if you take that away from them.”

“It’s a site survey, Janelle. That’s all the contract calls for. A simple, straightforward site survey. Stake it out, do the measurements, report back.”

“Try telling the girls that, after what you’ve led them to believe. To them, it’s the biggest thing ever.”

Chuck’s face flushed. “Yes, it’s a site survey. But it’s a survey of what might prove to be a truly significant discovery.”

“Then stick to your guns. You just told Carm and Rosie we’ll be fine out there as long as we stay in a group. That’s exactly what we’ve planned to do all along.”

“Yes, but...” Chuck looked at the patch of willows.

Janelle waited until he turned back to her before she spoke. “Were you telling them the truth?”

“Yes, I was.” He took a deep breath. “But I have to tell you about something else, something I saw last night.”

He described the video of the Territory Team attack, leaving nothing out. “Lex thinks the grizzly might actually have been hunting the team,” he concluded.

“There were two team members?” Janelle asked.

“Yes.”

“Grizzlies don’t attack large groups, right? Just ones or twos. And we’re going out there with forty or so people, verdad?”

“Sí.”

Janelle looked Chuck in the eye. “All of this might give me second thoughts if we were going camping on our own. But we’re heading out there with an army.” She stuck out her chin. “The girls and I are going with you. I want them to experience the world, your world, and I want to experience it, too.”

Chuck hid the start of a smile. “Did I know you were this stubborn when I married you?”

“You didn’t know the first thing about me when we got married.”

“I thought the learning curve would be over by now.”

“You thought wrong.” She hesitated, searching his face. “We will be safe out there, won’t we?”

He looked at the ground. The cold ache of responsibility gripped him with icy fingers. He’d promised his family the adventure of a lifetime. All this was his doing.

He’d been ecstatic two years ago when Janelle had agreed to marry him. Like Lex, he’d never been happier than the last twenty-four months, as a family man.

He settled himself on the soles of his feet. He was in Yellowstone with his family by choice, and he was heading into the backcountry with them today by the same choice. No need for mental histrionics.

He raised his eyes to Janelle. “Any bears in the vicinity of Turret Cabin will want nothing to do with our busy camp. That’s why Lex is requiring everyone to base out of the same place this summer. As long as we’re in camp or in a group, we’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“You’re sure about that?”

He took her in his arms. “Absolutely.”

His eyes strayed to the place where the grizzly had risen on its hind legs to observe the tourists gathered at the side of the road. Though only medium-sized, the grizzly had been tall and striking, and it had shown no hint of fear.