Yellowstone Standoff. Scott Graham
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