Yellowstone Standoff (15 page)

27

C
huck lowered his binoculars long enough to note that Sarah, Toby, and Lex were focused on a spot two-thirds of the way across the clearing. He aimed his binoculars but saw only the new grass blanketing the meadow. Panning the binoculars, he spotted two stripes of black sticking up from the grass in the distance.

He stilled his breathing and tweaked the focus knob, zeroing in on a pair of turkey vultures perched close to one another on a gray hump several hundred yards away. His fingertips pressed hard at the green, plastic housing of the binoculars. The vultures' heads were tiny, red specks, while the gray hump on which the birds stood was furry—a wolf, lying on its side, dead.

A vulture plucked at the carcass, coming up with a clump of meat clutched in its beak.

“Uncollared,” Toby said, his eye to his mono-scope, his voice shaking. “The only thing that possibly could have killed it…”

“Not a grizzly,” Sarah said. “Couldn't be. They've never been known to kill wolves.”

Toby took his eye from his scope. “Wolves and grizzlies never have been known to hang out together, either.” He gripped the legs of his tripod with both hands, his knuckles white. “What else could it have been?”

She took a deep breath. “I don't know.”

“I hope I'm wrong.” He looked her in the eye. “I liked the idea of the two of them as friends.”

“I did, too,” Sarah said.

“There's an entire pack here,” Lex said. “Could it have been wolf vs. wolf?”

“Wolves don't kill each other very often,” Toby said. “Only in the case of territory disputes, which wouldn't be happening here, far from any dens. Juveniles fight to the death sometimes, but that's when they're on their own, testing themselves. Inside the pack, wolves are family.”

Lex gestured across the meadow at the dead wolf and perched vultures. The rest of the winged scavengers still circled above, silhouetted against the clouds building over the ridge to the west. “We'll go in quick,” he said. “I want to get back to camp and the sat phone.” His eyes rested on Janelle and the girls. “We can't all go, but I want to determine cause of death before we pull back.”

Toby nodded. “That's critical.”

“We'll take a four-person team,” Lex said. “Big enough to be safe but small enough to move fast. Toby and Sarah, you'll come with me.” His eyes flitted from Kaifong to Randall, then to Keith and Chance. “No need for a drone, and no dog.”

He turned to Chuck, who glanced at Janelle and the girls and shook his head. “Sorry. I'm staying here.”

“Clarence, then,” Lex said.

Clarence nodded.

“The four of us will be more than enough to cause a bear to hold off—if this is, in fact, a grizzly kill,” Lex said.

He left the shelter of the trees and headed across the meadow with Toby, Sarah, and Clarence behind him.

The breeze picked up, blowing hard and cold down the face of the ridge and across the meadow. The sun gleamed in the blue sky directly overhead while, to the west, the clouds gathered in bursts of white and gray. Chuck sat with his back to the trunk of a tree. He rested his elbows on his knees, steadying his binoculars as he peered through them, tracking the lead team's progress. Carmelita and Rosie knelt on either side of him.

“What do you see?” Rosie demanded. “Something's dead, isn't it? I can smell it. It's yucky.”

“You can't smell anything,” Carmelita chided.

“Can too,” Rosie shot back.

“Can
not
.”

“Can
too
.”

“Carm,” Janelle scolded. “Rosie. Hush.”

“Can we look?” Rosie asked Chuck.

“Yeah, yeah. Can we?” said Carmelita.

“Of course.” Chuck unstrapped his lightweight backpacking tripod from the side of his pack and extended it to the height of the girls' eyes. He screwed the binoculars into place atop the tripod and focused the view on the pair of perched vultures. He pinched the barrels close together for Carmelita's narrow face. She put her eyes to the lenses. He guided her hand to the focus knob, moving her finger back and forth to make the ring spin.

“See how it goes in and out of focus?” He placed her other hand on the plastic housing of the binoculars. “You can move them around all you want.”

“Got it,” she said.

“What do you see, Carm?” Rosie demanded. “What, what, what?”

“I just started,” Carmelita replied. “Sheesh.”

From behind Toby's scope, Randall said, “It's a wolf, all right. Was. You can see the wind ruffling its fur.”

Chuck looked at the distant gray lump in the grass. The birds, reacting to the lead team's approach, hopped off the carcass, took a few running steps away from the team, and rose into the air with heavy wing flaps. They ascended to their fellows and circled, riding the breeze.

“Have you got them spotted?” Chuck asked Carmelita.

“I see Uncle Clarence,” she reported. “He's walking.”

The team was a hundred feet from the dead wolf, Lex in the lead. The other three members of the party spread out to either side of him as they neared the carcass.

Rosie pulled at Carmelita's shoulder. “My turn,” she insisted. “
My turn
.”

“I'm afraid she's right,” Chuck said.

Carmelita relinquished the binoculars to Rosie, who nearly knocked the tripod over when her forehead struck the lenses. Chuck grabbed the legs of the tripod to steady it.

Kaifong took a quick breath, her eye to Sarah's scope. “Oh, my God.”

Chuck's heart thudded. “What do you see?”

To his unaided eyes, Lex, Sarah, Toby, and Clarence were distant stick figures. The gray hump of the dead wolf showed just above the grass.

“Bear,” Kaifong said, her eye still pressed to Sarah's spotting scope. “Grizzly.”

Janelle drew Carmelita and Rosie to her. “Clarence,” she said, her voice pinched.

Chuck lifted the tripod and put the binoculars to his eyes. He widened the barrels and scanned the edge of the forest at the base of the west ridge. Movement—something chocolate brown, the size of a refrigerator, a bulge at its top.

Kaifong was right: grizzly.

The bear stepped from the shadows of the trees into the meadow. Its fur shimmered in the sunlight. Its broad shoulders cascaded to stocky forelegs, and a hump rose between its shoulder blades, tall and rounded and light tan.

Chuck's breath caught in his throat as the grizzly proceeded toward the dead wolf and the four members of the lead team. On all fours, the bear placed one massive paw in front of another, its pace deliberate. Halfway between the trees and the carcass, the
creature halted in mid-stride, one foreleg raised. Clarence and the others faced the grizzly in a straight line, twenty feet shy of the dead wolf.

At Keith's feet, Chance whined. Keith, watching, said, “The grizzly is just asserting its rights, protecting the carcass. It won't attack; there're too many of them.”

“But that would mean the griz killed the wolf,” Randall responded, his eye to Toby's scope, “which doesn't make any sense.” He straightened and looked across the meadow at the distant scene: the lead party, the unmoving grizzly, the carcass between.

Chuck's breathing calmed as the grizzly held its ground, its leg raised and its snout thrust out, apparently taking in the scent of the lead team. He adjusted the focus knob, bringing the view into sharp relief as the team members stepped toward the wolf carcass in unison, clearly choosing to assert their dominance and back the grizzly down rather than risk inciting it into charging at them if they were to retreat.

The bear yawned. It settled forward on its forelegs and stretched its hind legs out behind until it rested on its stomach, like an enormous dog. It watched, pink tongue lolling from its mouth, as the four team members edged toward the dead wolf.

“Aside from other wolves, no other predator in the park is capable of killing an adult wolf except a bear,” said Keith. “I bet the griz got tired of the wolf's company and decided to do something about it—an agnostic killing.”

“Ag-what?” Randall asked.

“That's the term for any killing by a bear, particularly a grizzly, that's not about meat or protecting cubs. From what I've read, they're fairly common.”

Chuck said, “That would explain a lot—the grizzly sticking around, the howls of the dead wolf's pack mates.”

The members of the lead team had reached the carcass. Toby tugged on a pair of latex gloves and probed at the body of the dead wolf. Lex, Sarah, and Clarence stood behind him, facing the lounging bear.

“Duuuuudes,” Randall said, his eye to Toby's scope. “Git the frick outta there.”

“They're doing what we came out here to do. They're determining cause of death,” said Keith.

“But the bear's right in front of them, man,” Randall replied. “A whole pack of wolves is cruising around somewhere nearby, too.”

“Bears, wolves, that's what we all came here to study—except for you, sounds like.”

Randall turned from the spotting scope. “This is their world, not ours, is what I'm saying. It's like we're intruding, invading even.”

He bent back to the scope just as the grizzly snapped its jaws shut and rolled up on all fours.

Chuck set his binoculars head-high on the tripod, focusing on the bear.

The grizzly easily weighed five hundred pounds. Its smooth, rounded ears swiveled from side to side. It shook itself, muscles rippling, then reared back and lifted its forelegs from the grass to balance on its hind legs, rising a full seven feet above the ground. The bear batted the air with a forepaw and let out a resounding roar, its jaws stretched wide.

Chuck swallowed. The size and ferocity of the brown bear made clear to him the folly of his idea that the handgun in his daypack would somehow act as an effective deterrent against Yellowstone's massive grizzlies.

With a powerful huff, the grizzly dropped back to all fours and charged toward the lead team.

28

C
huck jerked up from the binoculars, his chest seizing. The lead team consisted of four people—four. Grizzlies didn't charge that many humans.
Ever
.

“Uncle Clarence!” Rosie screamed.

“What's happening?” Carmelita demanded. “What's going on?”

Chuck put his eyes back to the binoculars. The bear galloped across the meadow, straight at the lead team.

“It'll stop,” Chuck said through clenched teeth. “It has to.”

In the face of the charge, Toby rose and stepped backward toward the others. All four extended their pepper spray canisters at the bear.

The grizzly's ease of movement belied its bulk. With each leap, the bear hung above the grass like a thoroughbred for an instant, its legs outstretched.

The grizzly was thirty yards from the team.

Another leap.

Twenty.

Chuck gulped, powerless to do anything but witness through his binoculars the scene playing out before him.

The bear leapt to within yards of the gray wolf's carcass. The team stood shoulder to shoulder, ten feet from the dead wolf. A cloud of red mist appeared in front of the team as they put their canisters to use—but the steady breeze sweeping off the ridge blew the mist away from the grizzly and, instead, into their faces. They doubled over, hands to their mouths and noses.

The bear took one final leap and came to a halt next to the gray carcass humped in the grass. The grizzly rose on its hind
legs, towering over the dead wolf and Lex, Toby, Sarah, and Clarence. The pepper spray melted away on the wind. Clarence gripped Sarah's arm. Again, the bear let out a ferocious roar, gnashing its teeth and shaking its head. The grizzly batted the air once, twice, its forepaw a blur of motion. Then, the bear dropped to all fours. Eyeing the team members, it lowered its head, took the wolf's body in its teeth, and lifted the carcass from the grass. The dead wolf's tail was bushy, its legs trailing.

The bear threw the carcass violently to the ground and backed away. The team backed the other direction, distancing themselves from the retreating grizzly, until Toby came to an abrupt halt. Lex reached for him, but Toby knocked Lex's hand away and returned to the carcass.

The bear stopped and watched from no more than twenty feet away as Toby grabbed one of the dead wolf's hind paws and dragged the animal backward through the grass until he reached the other members of the lead party. Toby lifted the dead wolf by its legs, threw the carcass over his shoulders, and resumed the retreat with Lex, Sarah, and Clarence. After a moment, the bear, too, recommenced its movement in the opposite direction.

When the distance between them grew to fifty feet, the grizzly turned and strode across the meadow at a stately pace until it disappeared into the trees. The team members turned and headed back across the meadow with Lex in the lead. Lex broke into a jog, the others hurrying behind, the wolf's long body bouncing on Toby's shoulders.

Chuck straightened from behind the binoculars as the lead party neared the trees. Rosie and Carmelita broke from Janelle's grasp and ran to Clarence. He bent and spoke in their ears before walking with them back to Janelle.

“
Hermana
,” he said to her, his eyes alight.

“
Hermano
,” she replied.

They embraced. A tear rolled down Janelle's cheek. Clarence brushed it away with his thumb.

“There, there, Sis,” he said, stepping back from her. “No need for that. That's how it's supposed to go.
Exactamente
. The griz showed us who was boss, then backed off, gave us our space, without the spray doing a thing.”

“Uncle Clarence told us he peed his pants.” Rosie giggled.

“I did,” he admitted with a tight smile, his cheeks rosy. “But only a
lee
-tle,” he said, emphasizing his Latino accent.

Sarah's tone was awestruck. “It was ten feet away from us.
Ten feet
.”

Lex coughed, eyes still watering from the bear spray. “Too close. We were lucky.”

Thunder rumbled from the thick bank of clouds in the west, now rolling down the ridge toward the valley floor, driven by the wind.

Lex clapped his hands. “Time to get out of here. We'll debrief at camp.”

Toby lowered the carcass of the wolf to the ground. Blood streaked his daypack and the shoulders of his jacket.

The dead wolf was larger than Chance. Its torso was long and lanky, its fur the color of concrete save for the tip of its tail, which looked as if it had been dipped in tar. Its eyes were closed. Its tongue, matted with bits of dry grass, extended from the side of its mouth. A long wound slashed its side, gouged through gray fur into its ribcage.

Toby, Sarah, and Chuck set about shortening the legs of their tripods and strapping them to their packs. A chorus of wolf howls rose from the far side of the meadow. Chuck stared across the rolling grass. From the place where the grizzly had vanished into the trees, half a dozen wolves trotted out of the
forest into the meadow. The six wolves—four gray, one coal black, one white as a snowshoe hare in winter—spread out as they came into the open.

Chuck's throat went dry as the wolves loped across the grass in an even line, heads high and snouts forward, as if on a hunt.