Читать книгу Yellowstone Standoff - Scott Graham - Страница 17

9

Carmelita looked up from her shoes.

Rosie grabbed her sister’s hand. “No,” she said breathily to the pilot.

From behind Carmelita and Rosie, Chuck directed a look of warning at the woman. Who did she think she was, playing the part of drama queen in front of the girls?

“You’ll be entirely safe today, of course,” she told them, hurrying on. “Our boats are specially designed to take on the roughest weather Yellowstone has to offer.” She licked her lips, avoiding Chuck’s gaze. “But that wasn’t always the case.”

“It wasn’t?” Rosie croaked.

“Anyone who tried to cross the lake before the invention of PFDs—personal flotation devices—took their lives into their hands,” the pilot said. “At 7,775 feet above sea level this far north of the equator, Yellowstone Lake is one of the coldest navigable bodies of water on Earth, if not the coldest. The lake is covered with ice most of the year, and for the few summer weeks when the ice melts, the water temperature is barely above freezing.” She lifted her eyebrows until they nearly reached the brim of her cap. “Yellowstone Lake is big, deep, and cold. In the old days, before PFDs, anyone who fell into the water was paralyzed within seconds and sank to the bottom of the lake like a stone, their bodies never to be recovered.” The pilot’s tone lightened. “But you can rest assured that Bessie here—” she tapped the rear deck of the boat with the toe of her black work boot “—couldn’t flip in the worst Yellowstone storm if she wanted to. Even so, PFDs are mandatory.”

She beckoned the scientists into the back of the boat.

Chuck rolled his shoulders, loosening the muscles at the back of his neck. It probably wasn’t such a bad idea for the pilot to emphasize the danger of the lake to the girls.

Inward-facing bench seats lined both sides of the long, narrow stern. The pilot lifted each of the hinged seats in turn, pulling PFDs from the storage compartments beneath and passing them out before donning one herself.

The researchers slung their PFDs loosely over their shoulders and took their seats on either side of the stern, facing one another, their backs to the gunwales.

The Canine Team researcher, Keith, climbed into the boat and lowered his dog, Chance, to the rear deck. The dog, a shepherd with brown and black fur and a long, black snout, stood thigh-high next to Keith as he accepted his PFD.

Chuck sifted among the PFDs until he found a pair small enough to fit the girls. He fastened his own life jacket tight around his chest, then strapped the smaller flotation devices snug around Carmelita and Rosie.

“The temperature of the lake reminds me of the water in the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon,” he remarked as he worked, squatting in front of them. “The river there is freezing cold, too.”

“But that’s in the desert,” Carmelita said. “It should be warm.”

“The water in the Colorado comes out of the bottom of Glen Canyon Dam, upstream from the canyon, so it’s ice cold.”

“Just like here,” Rosie said, eyeing the bay water lapping against the boat. “Can I feel it?”

Without waiting for an answer, she set off for the center of the boat’s stern, where a break in the railing allowed for easy loading and unloading of gear and passengers. Chuck chased her down before she could plunge her hand into the water that showed in the gap between the dock and the rear of the rocking boat.

“Maybe when we get to the other side,” he told her. “There’s sure to be some sort of a beach there.”

He sat her beside him on one of the bench seats while the pilot entered the wheelhouse and started the engine. Janelle and Carmelita settled next to Rosie. Keith sat a few seats away, Chance tucked between his legs.

Chuck rested his elbows on the gunwale behind him as Clarence took a seat on the opposite side of the boat, still in an animated exchange with Kaifong. The second Drone Team member, Randall, sat with them. He joined their conversation, throwing his head back in a full-throated guffaw at something Clarence said.

Martha freed the ropes securing the boat to the dock and tossed them into the stern. The pilot engaged the throttle and the boat accelerated across the smooth water of the bay, the noisy cough of the engine forcing the researchers around Chuck to speak directly into one another’s ears to continue their conversations.

Clarence rested a hand on Kaifong’s knee and said something to her with an accompanying grin. Clarence’s comment brought a smile to Kaifong’s lips. She turned to Randall and, still smiling, spoke into his ear, obviously repeating what Clarence had said. Randall leaned around Kaifong and bumped Clarence’s fist with his own.

The three settled back in their seats as the boat left the bay and headed out onto the open water of the lake. The boat pitched and rolled, rising and falling with the windswept swells. The pilot spun the spoked wheel, setting course across the broad body of water toward the lake’s distant southeast shoreline.

The pilot leaned out of the open back of the vessel’s tiny wheelhouse, her hand on the boat’s wheel behind her, and faced her passengers. She pointed at a black spot making its way across the sky, trailing the boat. “Osprey,” she called out, yelling to make herself heard above the engine noise and rhythmic slaps of spray arcing from the sides of the hull as the boat cut through the swells. “It’s tracking us, waiting to see what we send its way.”

The osprey tucked its wings and plummeted toward the water behind the boat. Just before the bird rocketed into the lake, it spread its wings, slowing itself. It skimmed along the boat’s wake for an instant before plunging its clawed feet into the water. With powerful flaps of its wings, the bird rose from the surface grasping a shiny, silver fish in its talons. The fish struggled, flinging water from its tail, as the osprey flew back toward shore.

“Never fails,” the pilot hollered to her passengers. “Bessie gets the fish moving, and the osprey take advantage. We’re doing our part to help the park service get rid of the non-native lake trout so the native cutthroat can return.” She smiled and turned back to the wheel.

As the marina receded into the distance, Chuck and Janelle wrapped their arms around the girls, who bent forward to avoid the brisk breeze curling past the wheelhouse.

Ahead, the Absarokas drew nearer. To the southeast, the snow-covered summit of Trident Peak reared highest above the lake’s shoreline. After twenty minutes of plowing through the waves, the pilot again adjusted course, aiming the boat toward the opening into the lake’s southeast arm, a two-mile-long, finger-shaped bay extending south from the lake’s most remote reach. The upper Yellowstone River emptied into the head of the narrow bay, where the trail to Turret Cabin and on into the heart of the Thorofare region began.

Ahead, the gear boat exited the southeast arm on its return trip to Bridge Bay. The pilots exchanged waves as the boats passed one another. The stern of the gear boat was empty, the teams’ duffles and cases waiting at the trailhead landing.

Opposite Chuck, Randall spun and knelt on his seat. Facing the open water of the lake, he trailed his fingers in the bursts of spray flying from the boat’s hull. He lifted his hand from the water and shook it, then turned to Kaifong and Clarence and gritted his teeth. The pair twisted and knelt on their seats beside him, taking turns diving their hands into the spray.

Rosie turned to reach for the spray on her side of the boat. Chuck pressed her back into place. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said in her ear.

“But they get to,” she shouted over the roar of the engine.

“Sorry,” Chuck told her. “They’re bigger than you.”

She crossed her arms over her PFD and thrust out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout.

Randall stood up. Grinning and beckoning Kaifong and Clarence to follow, he crossed the boat’s white, fiberglass deck. “Come on,” he encouraged them, his voice carrying above the engine noise. “We’ll really be able to tell how cold the water is.”

He hammed it up as he walked to the back railing, staggering like a drunk across the rising and falling deck. “Whoa!” he cried out, waving his arms for balance, as Kaifong and Clarence approached behind him.

He bent at the opening in the railing and stuck his hand into the lake water. He straightened as Kaifong and Clarence reached him at the back of the boat. “Ow, ow, ow,” he cried, laughing and shaking his hand, his red halo of hair pressed back from his forehead by the wind. “That’s what I call freezin’!”

He shook his hand once more and stepped aside, allowing Kaifong to take his place at the back of the boat. He gave a playful clap to her life jacket, slung over one of her shoulders, as she passed him. At the same instant his hand met her PFD, the bow of the boat climbed through a wave while the stern remained low in the wave’s trough, causing the deck of the vessel to cant sharply upward. Randall’s clap and the sudden upward pitch of the boat threw Kaifong off balance. She tripped over the coils of rope on the stern’s floor and teetered, windmilling her arms.

Randall’s eyes widened as he shot out his hand, reaching for her. Clarence grabbed for her, too. Their fingers closed on air. Kaifong’s unfastened PFD swung free from her shoulder as she tumbled, screaming, into the lake.