Yellowstone Standoff (13 page)

23

C
huck turned his back on the glowing spots and strode after the others as fast as he dared. He fought the urge to run, knowing if he did, he might well trigger the attack response in whatever was behind him—assuming, that is, anything actually was behind him.

He lengthened his strides, moving steadily through the trees. Only the sound of his footfalls broke the silence of the forest. He slowed when he caught up with the group, still weaving through the trees.

Had he truly just been threatened by a grizzly and wolf—
the
grizzly and wolf that had shown up at camp? No, he told himself. Impossible. This had to have been the product of his overwrought imagination. No other explanation fit.

Chance and Keith entered the next opening, this one broad and undulating. Behind, the others broke from the trees and formed a loose circle in the last of the evening light. They pulled headlamps from their packs and jacket pockets and centered them on their foreheads. Kaifong and Randall scurried off, returning after a moment with the drone. Chuck stood at the edge of the circle, his heart pounding.

“Lucked out,” Kaifong reported, the drone in her hands. “Its momentum carried it into the open after it hit the tree, and it's all in one piece. Just a couple of snapped rotors.”

“Good,” Chuck said. His words came in a rush. “Then we can head back.”

Lex eyed him. “You sound spooked.”

Chuck looked back at the trees. No growls. No eyes glowing
from the shadows. “I'd just like to get back to camp. Janelle's waiting.”

“Of course. Your husbandly duties.” Lex turned to Keith. “Think the scent will still be strong enough for Chance to follow in the morning?”

“If we start out first thing.”

“Sunup, then.” Lex indicated the direction to the cabin with an open hand. “Shall we?”

Kaifong strapped the drone into its frame on Randall's back and everyone set off, retracing their route through the forest.

Chuck took a place in the middle of the line and directed his headlamp at the ground as he walked.

If the grizzly and wolf had circled back to stalk the group from behind, Chance surely would have sniffed them out.

Maybe, just maybe, Keith and his dog were overrated. Much more likely, though, was that the growls Chuck thought he'd heard had simply been trees rubbing together as the evening breeze swept through the forest. And the yellow spots that had looked like glowing eyes actually had been the play of light from his headlamp refracting off the pool and mixing with particles of mist hanging above the water.

He popped his tongue off the roof of his mouth in frustration. What a fool he was.

But at least he was headed back to Janelle and the girls. And today had been incredible, he reminded himself—his first glimpse, with his family at his side, of the reed baskets melting out of the remnant ice of Trident One Glacier, and the added discovery of the butchered sliver of bone, too.

After a late dinner, Chuck sat with Kaifong and Randall before a laptop computer at one of the long tables in the mess tent,
viewing the few minutes of aerial footage captured by the drone during its short flight over the head of the canyon.

Rosie stood at Chuck's shoulder. “I saw a whole lot of neat rocks when I was searching,” she said as she watched the streaming video. “But
Mamá
wouldn't let me pick them up.”

Kaifong turned to Rosie from her seat in front of the computer. “It doesn't look like we found much more with our camera than you did.”

Chuck watched as the footage streamed on the computer screen. Despite the bright midday sunlight, the definition on the surface of the snowfield above the ice wall was clearly discernible. When the drone passed over the lines of baskets, the baskets' loamy contents were dark as pitch.

“Ewww!” Rosie exclaimed. “They used to eat that stuff?”

“A long time ago,” Carmelita, standing next to Rosie, explained, “when it was real food.”

Chuck said to the girls, “We'll gather samples of it later this week, to find out for sure what it was. The butchered bone we found is making me think, more and more, that it might have been meat—which would really be something.”

“How come?” Rosie asked.

He pointed at the contents of the baskets on the computer screen as the drone tracked slowly above. “See how everything in the baskets is the same color? That indicates the baskets were filled with the same thing. If they were filled with meat for winter storage, that would indicate a significant level of hunting on the Absaroka divide—far higher, even, than any of the more recent hunting by the predecessors to the Shoshone who came here over the last few hundred years. Yet these baskets are from thousands of years ago. If they were filled with hunted meat, then the people who filled them were incredibly talented hunters for such a long time ago, maybe the best hunters in ancient human history.”

“Neat-o,” Rosie said. Then she shrugged. “I guess.”

Eight hours later, Chuck huddled with Janelle in their camp chairs in the early morning chill, the girls still asleep in the tent behind them. They sipped Jorge's strong coffee, carried up the hill from the mess tent, while awaiting the appearance of the sun over Turret Peak.

Janelle unscrewed the lid from her mug and blew across the steaming liquid, her hands wrapped around the cup. Her smooth face glowed in the morning light, her high cheekbones accentuated by spots of red from the cold.

She leaned toward Chuck, her voice low. “You're going out with Lex again this morning?”

Chuck kept his voice low, too. “He wants me to keep helping him out, as long as I'm here.”

“I'm sure he can manage on his own.”

“I'm sure he can, too.”

“What about the baskets?”

“The follow-up search this morning shouldn't take long. Besides, as excited as I am to get back to the Trident site, I will say this whole thing with the bear and wolf is pretty incredible. The sighting of them together, not to mention their traveling with each other so far from camp, has never been observed before. It's even more fascinating when you take into account what Lex told me at breakfast the other day—that some of the park's scientists are wondering if wolves might be challenging brown bears at the top of the Yellowstone food chain.”

“What's that mean, exactly?”

“If I understand it correctly, it means things may finally be getting back to normal in the park. In the past, grizzlies and wolves shared the spot at the top of the food chain on
the Yellowstone plateau. Then, after government exterminators wiped out the wolves, grizzlies took over the top spot by themselves. That was fine for the bears, but it turned out to be terrible for the park, resulting in what's called a trophic cascade. With wolves gone, the elk population exploded. All the hungry elk wiped out the beavers' primary source of food, riverside willows. The beaver population plummeted, their dams disintegrated, and severe erosion followed. Basically, the park's natural ecosystem went into a death spiral, all because of the elimination of a single species, the gray wolf.”

“So they brought the wolf back.”

“Yes, finally, in 1995, and the results for the park ecosystem have been nothing short of miraculous. The reintroduced wolves controlled the elk population, putting an end to overgrazing. Plant life came back, the beavers rebounded, and erosion slowed, all thanks to the hundred-plus gray wolves now roaming the park.”

“But a wolf and a grizzly bear hanging around together...that would seem to be taking the idea of balance between the two species to a whole new level.”

“Which is what makes this so fascinating.”

“But not as fascinating as your baskets.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, her back to Sarah's tent on the next platform over. “Based on what Sarah pulled the other night in the meeting room, I take it balance isn't a big thing with the scientists.”

Chuck leaned close to Janelle. “Lex says the researchers actually get along great with each other. It's just that, in Sarah's case, there's other stuff going on.” Keeping his voice low, he told her about Sarah's broken relationship with Toby.

“So Clarence is her rebound.” Janelle nodded to herself. “That makes sense. I've been wondering about them.”

“Hope Clarence doesn't get hurt,” Chuck said with a grin.

Janelle smiled back. “Fat chance.” She hesitated. “Although, the way he's been looking at her...”

The sun climbed above Turret Peak, bathing the tent platform in a warm glow. The smell of frying bacon rolled up the slope from the mess tent, still enveloped in mist and shadow at the foot of the hill.

Chuck sat back in his camp chair. A mosquito buzzed at his ear, the first to find him in the Thorofare. He waved it away. Millions of the bloodthirsty insects would rise from the standing waters around camp in the weeks ahead. Fortunately, he and his family would be long gone by then.

Voices and the rustle of sleeping bags came from Sarah's tent. The zipper opened and Clarence crawled out. He stood on the wooden platform in his bare feet, his jeans low on his hips, his flannel shirt unbuttoned. He faced the morning sun with closed eyes. “Mmm,” he murmured.

Chuck raised his voice. “Get any sleep?”

Sarah answered from inside the tent. “Very funny, Chuck.”

He smiled, then turned to Janelle. “This should only take a couple of hours. We'll find the kill site—which everyone figures is what brought the bear and wolf together in the first place—and come right back. We'll head up to the baskets after that.”

“
Bueno
,” she said.

As Chuck placed his daypack beside his gear duffle, he looked up and down tent row. Clarence was busy pulling on his socks and boots. No other scientists stood outside their tents.

He unzipped his rubberized, waterproof duffle. He'd convinced himself by now that whatever he'd heard behind him in the woods last night had not been growls, and whatever he'd seen hadn't been glowing eyes. But it had taken a lot of convincing.

He dug inside his duffle until his hand closed around a chunk of cold steel—the .357 magnum he'd brought into the
Yellowstone backcountry with Janelle's grudging okay, but against all research team regulations.

Crouching, he transferred the heavy, stainless-steel pistol to the bottom of his daypack. He shouldered his pack and side-hilled down the slope to Turret Cabin.

24

A
fter breakfast, Chuck joined the same group as the previous evening in front of the cabin. Keith reeled in Chance's leash until his dog stood at his side. Randall turned his back to Kaifong, who tightened the straps securing the drone in its frame. Toby adjusted the shoulder straps of his daypack, the tripod for his spotting scope lashed to its side. Lex tipped his head, shading his face, his straw park-service hat glowing luminously white in the morning sun.

Sarah hurried out of the mess tent to join the others, throwing her pack over her shoulder, a foil-wrapped breakfast burrito in hand. Lex set off, taking the lead, showing no signs of stiffness from the miles he'd logged the day before. He re-traced yesterday's route north and west away from camp, bypassing the blowdown. Rays of bright morning sun knifed through the trees, illuminating the last of the mist rising from the damp forest floor and banishing all hints of the shadowed disquiet to which Chuck had fallen prey last night.

Lex's raised hand brought everyone to a halt where the drone had plunged to the ground at the edge of the broad meadow. In the light of day, Chuck saw that the rolling meadow sloped downward to a thick grove of trees lining the edge of the river.

Chance pulled at the retracted leash in Keith's hand, snuffling at the grass.

“How's the scent?” Lex asked.

“Still strong,” Keith said. “Lucky for us, it didn't rain last night.”

“You're sure the bear and wolf were still together here?”

“One hundred percent.”

“I still can't believe it.” Lex whistled. “I know of only one other observed instance of grizzlies and wolves hanging around together, and that was between cubs and pups, which at least has some logic to it. That time, a sow with a pair of cubs approached the carcass of an elk killed by a wolf pack. The wolves backed off while the sow fed on the elk. The cubs yipped at the pack's pups like dogs wanting to play, and the youngsters from the two species got into a free-for-all, nipping at each other's legs and tumbling all over one another. After a few minutes, the sow woofed and the cubs ran back to her. Just like that—” Lex snapped his fingers “—the play date was over.” He reached down and scratched Chance's ears. “But that was young ones not knowing any better. Quite a different story yesterday.”

Kaifong spoke up. “Maybe the two of them staying together for so long is human-caused. What strikes me is that it occurred here in the park, where there's often human interaction with wolves and grizzlies—darting, placing tracking collars, ongoing observation.”

Chuck waited for Lex to agree with Kaifong and mention the theory he'd shared over breakfast: that the changing behavior of other mammals in Yellowstone—including, possibly, Notch—might be the result of the park's ever increasing number of human visitors. Instead, Lex answered her with a question of his own.

“You think scientific work in the park might somehow be making bedfellows out of Yellowstone's wolves and bears?”

“I have no idea what might have driven this particular wolf and this particular grizzly to stay together over such a long distance, but I do know the extermination of a single species—the gray wolf—upended the entire park ecosystem.”

“Still, what you're proposing is quite a stretch.”

“I wouldn't disagree.”

Lex looked around the group. “Any and all speculation aside, it's time to find out how much longer our predator buddies stayed together. Keith, will Chance really be able to tell us where they went their separate ways?”

“That's what he's trained to do.” Chance panted at Keith's side. “When they split up,
if
they split up, he'll let us know.”

“He's that good?”

“The Mammalian Neurological Alliance wouldn't have given me a five-year, half-million-dollar grant if he wasn't. They see Chance's tracking ability as a perfect example of what mammals can do for humans if used to their full potential.”

Chuck gawked at Keith and Chance. Half a million bucks? A dog worth that kind of funding never would have missed the trail of the grizzly and wolf if the two predators had backtracked and come up behind him. No way had the noises and gleams been the two predators.

“It's taken years to get him to this point,” Keith continued, his hand on Chance's head. “No canine on the planet is better at tracking non-human mammals than this fella right here.”

Keith and Chance set out west, toward the river, on the trail of the wolf and grizzly. Lex and Chuck fell in line behind the others.

“Five hundred thousand dollars for a tracking-dog study,” Lex said. “What are people thinking?”

“Keith must know a lot of people at that neuro alliance,” Chuck responded. “That's what I'm thinking.”

“Well, I don't need a half-million-dollar pooch to tell me what we're about to find. The wolf and griz are going to have split up somewhere just about there.” Lex pointed ahead, where
the valley floor broadened as the side ridges fell back two miles upriver from the southeast arm of the lake. “I can find it in my head to believe the wolf and grizzly happened upon one another near camp, and the scent of the piece of meat lured the two of them into the open at the same time. I'm even okay with the idea that a kill by one or the other of them brought them together in the first place.” Lex shook his head. “But if the kill site is somewhere way out here, that's awfully far from camp for the two of them to have appeared there together. I'm convinced they'll have gone their separate ways up ahead, where the valley opens up and it makes sense for them to have done so.”

“What if it turns out they stayed together even farther?”

“If that's what Chance determines, then either the dog doesn't know what it's doing…or Kaifong's idea may have more truth to it than I care to admit.”

“‘Changing behavioral patterns,' remember?” said Chuck, recalling their cafeteria discussion.

“Yes, I remember,” Lex said flatly. “In fact, that's just about all I've been thinking about.” He strode ahead.

Chance led everyone to the point across the meadow where the two distant, moving forms had been captured by the drone's camera before the copter's crash. The dog kept its nose to the ground and entered the grove of trees on the far side of the clearing, veering west, toward the upper Yellowstone.

Rather than stopping upon reaching the river, Chance strode straight into the current. The tracking dog halted only when the water reached his belly, his nose in the air, sniffing.

Keith called Chance back to shore. They walked up and down the riverbank, the dog nosing the ground. After working the bank of the river in both directions, they returned to where the dog first had entered the water. Chance faced the other
shore, fifty feet away. Keith turned to the group lined along the bank above him. “They went into the water together, that much I'm sure of.”

“Together?” Lex threw up his hands. “This whole thing is nuts.”

“Chance never hesitated. No telling if they swam all the way across and continued on as a pair, though. Not from this side, anyway.”

Lex studied the opposite shore, then turned to Kaifong and Randall. “Are you two up for another flight?”

“I'm not sure that would be worthwhile,” Kaifong said. “It's been more than twelve hours at this point.”

“Understood. But what if they're still together, just across the river?”

Chuck added, “You can fly a quick grid pattern on the far side, the same as you did over the baskets.”

“The odds that we'll see anything...”

“...are not good,” Chuck finished for Kaifong, nodding. “Try looking at this like an archaeologist. All we do is play long odds. The vast majority of the time, we come up with nothing. Only rarely do we find ancient baskets all lined up and waiting to be studied.”

“Or a piece of bone sticking out of a wall of ice.”

“Or that. In this case, at least, the trail you're following is just a few hours old rather than hundreds or thousands of years. And if you happen to get some footage of the two of them hanging around together, you'll be world famous.”

“We'll all be world famous,” said Sarah.

“But,” Lex noted, “if you wreck your copter again, it'll be on the far side of the river.”

“No worries with that, dude,” Randall said. “I'll swim over there to get it if I have to.”

“Brrr.” Kaifong shook herself. “Not me. I know how cold the water is.”

Toby pointed above the tops of the trees across the river. “Actually,” he said, “it looks like something else may already have found what we're looking for.”

Chuck lifted his gaze, following Toby's pointed finger. Less than half a mile to the west, a dozen turkey vultures rode the morning thermals, rotating in a tight circle, their broad wings fixed.