There Will Be Bears (13 page)

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Gene and this is Tyson.”

“Marjorie told me all about you two. Said you’re looking to fill your tags. Well, Sunday is the last day of the season, so you better get to it.”

“How have the elk been?” Gene asks.

“Saw a pretty decent herd going up Hackamore yesterday.”

Would everyone please stop saying that name?

Mike gets the combination for the lock and swings the gate open. “Make yourself at home. Me and my girl just got breakfast made. You guys like elk sausage?”

“Tyson loves it,” Gene replies. And on any other day, he would be right. But for the first time in forever, I’ve completely lost my appetite. Just the idea of food is enough to make my stomach clench.

“Nancy will saddle you up some horses.” He points out into the pasture. “That painted horse over there, that’s Ellie. Real big, but she’s a sweetheart. You can ride her, Gene. And Tyson, I got a good one picked out for you.”

“Is mine going to be a sweetheart, too?”

With an unsettling grin he says, “I’ll put you on Crazy Eyes.”

Oh, man, that time I rode on horseback during our fifth-grade camping trip, I had no idea what I was doing. The other kids were laughing as my horse wandered away from the rest of the group. Our guide was yelling at me to steer her back, and then I did something wrong, because she started galloping and I fell off.

There’s no way I’ll be able to control a crazy horse.

Mike shows us to the cookshack, which is a big log cabin with a fully working kitchen powered by a generator and a water pump. It also has two small beds right next to the dining table. I just want to stay in here, make a fire, sit back with a full stomach, and maybe read some more of my bear book. But there’s no time — Mike’s girlfriend, Nancy, is already saddling our horses.

After Gene finishes his breakfast and I force down a sausage link and half a glass of OJ, I hear the clomping of horses. Through the window, there’s a large brown horse and a horse with black and white spots like a dairy cow.

Me and Gene put on our orange safety vests and head outside.

Nancy, a pretty woman maybe ten years younger than Mike, gets off my horse. And now I understand why my horse is called Crazy Eyes. Her eyes are shockingly blue and wide, with the whites showing, like she’s spooked and about to do something unpredictable.

“Gene, you want to trade?” I say.

“Huh?”

“I was just thinking, you know, that you got a little more experience with horses.”

“Let your grandfather ride Ellie,” Nancy says. “You don’t want him falling off and breaking a hip, do you?”

“No.”

She smiles. “Why don’t you hop on? Let’s see if she likes you.”

So with one foot in a stirrup, I grab the horn and hoist myself over the saddle. Crazy Eyes doesn’t make any sudden movements. She’s just hanging out.

“Hey there, cowboy,” Gene says. “You look like a natural.”

Yeah. People ride horses all the time. I can do this.

“What did you expect?” I say, and even if they can see right through me, no one says a thing.

Nancy ties the lead rope to the horn and hands me the leather reins. “You know the commands?”

“Uh . . .”

“Pull back to slow down — but don’t pull back too hard. Give her a kick in the belly when you want her to go. Take these reins, and left goes left and right goes right.”

“Got your rifles in the scabbards,” Mike says. “You’ve shot a gun before, Tyson?”

“Oh, yeah. We used to go to the shooting range all the time.”

“Well, all right, then. Gene, you know the country pretty well?”

After three tries, Gene mounts his horse. He looks weak and dizzy, blinking a bunch as he grabs the reins. He says, “Yes, sir. I’ve been hunting out of the ranch at Cottonwood the last sixteen seasons. When I worked with Henry Feed and Tractor, Martin and I hunted right out of here.”

“Any word on that bear?” I say to Mike.

“Sandy?” He shakes his head. “Haven’t found her yet. TV stations were all over here a couple’a days ago.”

Nancy says, “You two keep your eyes peeled, won’t you?”

“We’ll be fine,” Gene says.

“She’s an old bear,” Mike says. “Nasty, too. But it’ll be a sad day when the Forest Service finally tracks her down. She’s just as much of the park as anything else.”

I say, “So she’s just that way for no apparent reason?”

Nancy and Mike look at each other, thinking about the question. Finally Mike goes, “There was an incident where one of her cubs got shot.”

“Really?”

“We’ll chitchat later,” Gene says, annoyed, and he starts down the trail toward the wooden fence. A large orange sign reads:
You are now entering the national park. No motorized vehicles. Trail open to horse and foot travel only
.

I squeeze Crazy Eyes’s belly with my foot, and she gets her head right behind Ellie’s butt.

Don’t be nervous. Horses can sense fear, and they act on it.

I say to Gene, “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“I’m top-notch. You’re not chickening out, are you?”

“No, no. I mean, what are we going to do if something goes wrong and we’re like three miles from the ranch?”

“I’ve been hunting every season since I was your age, and I know this country better than you know your video games. Let’s have Tyson worry about Tyson and Gene worry about Gene. Sound good?”

An uncomfortable silence fills the gap between us as we take a trail through the snow-dusted sagebrush. There’s a hill to our left and a drop-off to our right. The path tightens, and at this point, I don’t have to worry about my horse wanting to go nuts and take off, because there’s no room. There are, however, quite a few more things for me to worry about. What if my horse loses her footing? What if —?

Okay. I need to calm down. If something does happen, I can’t be freaking out.

Gene veers to the right and goes down the drop-off, his horse taking slower, more cautious steps toward a creek that babbles and winds past a hill.

My horse follows.

I grab the horn tight and I’m leaning my body backward, trying to balance myself with my horse. “Where are we going?”

Gene points between two very big hills in the distance. “You see that valley?”

“Is that Hackamore?”

“Hackamore is three valleys past that.”

How am I going to ride for that long? My legs are already aching and my back hurts. “Oh.”

The horses clomp and splash on the river rocks. And then Crazy Eyes hoists herself onto dry land. Her body brushes up against the willow bushes. Branches are snapping, and this most definitely is not a path.

Gene goes, “In these parts, you learn your way around by the creeks. This one is called Fish Creek. The one up in that valley ahead, that’s North Fork. Then you got Purdy. And after that it’ll be another half mile to Hackamore. If you get lost, follow the flow of the water and it’ll lead you back to the ranch.”

“Gene?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Hackamore is dark timber, right?”

“Oh, would you quit worrying about bears? Your horse will know if one’s around.”

“What will she do?”

“You’d better hold on to her neck tight, because she’s gonna haul ass.”

“I want to go home,” I mutter. My words vanish into the sounds of the creek, the clomp of the horses’ hooves, and the screeching of a hawk over our heads.

We move forward.

“Yeah, it’s getting to be about that time of year. Grizzes are trying to get real nice and fat before they go into hibernation.” He points up at the hawk. “And when you see birds like that, you can bet the house there’s a dead animal somewhere around.”

I remember what he told me:
Grizzly bears like their meat rotten
.

Gene lifts his head up, sniffing the air. “You smell that?”

“What?”

“The musk.”

“I don’t smell anything.”

“That’s elk. They must have gone through here.” He points to tracks in a patch of snow to his left and all excited, he says, “You see that? Elk tracks.”

“So maybe we won’t have to go all the way to Hackamore?”

“They don’t come out to feed in the brush until sunrise and sunset. We want to get to Hackamore by six. That will be our best bet to snag our bull.”

Out here, Gene seems more himself, more alert. He knows everything about this country, and that’s one of the things that’s making me not have a full-fledged panic attack.

Actually, it’s the only thing.

We find our way back onto a trail and head toward the valley. The trail disappears into a thicket of trees.

“We’re going in there?” I say.

He turns his head and glances at me from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t say a word.

I go, “If we run into Sandy, we can shoot her, right? Like, if she’s coming to attack us?”

“Last I checked, killing a grizzly bear is a federal offense.”

“But that’s for sport. What if our lives are in danger?”

“Tell it to the courts. They’re on the endangered-species list. If you kill a grizzly, you can get a year in prison and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. You gotta leave the killing to the Forest Service.”

“Well, I’m shooting anyway. I’d rather be in prison for a year than in a bear’s stomach.”

“They have a saying out here — if you’re going to shoot a grizzly, make sure you have six bullets in your gun. Five for the bear, and one for yourself.”

The dark timber swallows us whole.

Every sound in these woods is a bear. A twig snaps beneath the horses’ hooves — that’s a bear. Gene coughs — another bear. That mockingbird chirping in the trees? Nope, that’s a grizzly bear chirping in the trees.

We reach another clearing, a creek to our right, and just beyond that is a mountainside with burned and fallen trees and some small trees emerging from the thin layer of snow.

“What happened there?” I say.

“That’s Burnt Ridge. A forest fire burned down the mountainside.”

Our horses stop and cock their heads. With Crazy Eyes looking the way she does, I can’t tell whether or not she’s nervous.

“Did you hear that?” Gene says.

“No.”

“You didn’t hear that roar? Oh, man. There’s a bear just on the other side of the ridge.” He kicks his horse. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

Is he toying with me? No, Gene wouldn’t do that. Besides, the horses heard it, too. My ears must not be tuned right. But if there really is a bear, how can Gene be so calm? I mean, there are a million places where one could hide.

Somewhere in this sagebrush, a couple from Ohio was asleep when Sandy tore down their tent. We could be riding over the very place where they died.

I look for bear tracks.

We cross another creek. The horses seem to know the shallowest path, but they’re still up to their bellies and splashing water onto my boots.

“This is Purdy, right, Gene?”

“You’re catching on.”

“So what else is out here besides bear and elk?”

“Oh, lots of stuff. There’s moose and deer and even a wolf pack that runs around in these parts. There used to be hundreds, then they got hunted to nothing. The Park Service reintroduced them in ninety-five.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Nah, they don’t like humans. Consider yourself fortunate if you ever run into a wolf. They’re very hard to come by. One thing you need to be afraid of more than the bears are moose.”

“Really?”

“They’ll pummel you into the ground until there’s nothing left.” And then he responds to my silence with “They don’t call this the wilderness for nothing.”

Something meaty, funky, and awful is in the air.

“You smell that?” I say.

Gene turns to me and puts his index finger to his mouth.

Oh, man. He smells it, too.

My pulse thuds in my ears. Can a thirteen-year-old have a heart attack?

Gene gets off his horse and throws a pack over his shoulder. He points to the top of the bare hill to our left.

“What is it?” I whisper.

He comes over to me. “Grab your rifle. We’re going on foot from here.”

“But what’s that smell?”

“Elk musk. There must be a whole herd.”

Gene doesn’t want to spook the elk if they’re on the other side of the hill, so we tie our horses to the nearest trees and go on foot. I hope they’ll still have their heads when we return.

I’m exhausted just looking at the hill — it must be a quarter mile to the top. I sling my rifle over my shoulder and follow Gene’s lead.

He goes, “At least we didn’t have to go all the way out to Hackamore, huh?”

The more we climb, the bigger the hill gets. The air is thin, and it doesn’t take long until I’m heaving and panting through my teeth. My thighs are burning, like I’m in gym class doing wall-sits. My chest aches, my calves are trembling, my stomach muscles burn, and for some random reason, even my shoulders hurt.

I take another look up to see how far we’ve come. We’re not even halfway to the top.

I can’t wuss out now. Gene just got all the blood pumped out of his body yesterday. What excuse do I have?

Out here, I
have
to be like Gene, because cereal-eating and video-game-playing Tyson won’t cut it.

I know it’s a bad idea, but I have to look again.