Yellowstone Standoff

by Scott Graham

  “I don’t like this,” Kaifong said as she clambered aboard. “Not one bit.”

  Chuck clung to the rope, pinning the rafts to the riverbank, and scanned the forest and shoreline. A second flash of movement caught his eye, this one at the river’s edge a hundred feet downstream. The black wolf extended its head around the trunk of a stream-side tree. The wolf stared at Chuck, its yellow eyes unblinking in its dark face, its ears standing straight up.

  “Another,” Chuck said. The wolf withdrew its head, disappearing from view. “They’re surrounding us, pressing us against the river.”

  “The carcass,” Sarah said to Toby. “Leave it for them.”

  “Sorry. Not gonna happen,” Toby said.

  Another growl came from up the slope.

  Randall leaned the drone against the downstream raft’s side and hopped in after it. Toby slung the dead wolf onto the rubber floor of the upstream raft.

  The wind whistled through the trees as another crack of lightning lit the sky, this one directly overhead. An instantaneous boom of thunder accompanied the lightning, shaking the ground beneath Chuck’s feet. The first drops of rain fell from the clouds, striking the brim of his cap and wetting his face.

  A wolf howled from behind a low stand of willows at the edge of the river upstream. More howls answered from the surrounding forest, riding the wind.

  “Hey, wolves,” Sarah called out to the creatures from where she stood on the riverbank. “I’ve got a message for you. We don’t mean you any harm. We just want to learn what happened to your pack mate.”

  A large wolf, its fur slate gray, emerged from a thick stand of trees fifty feet up the slope. Its mouth hung open, revealing pointed teeth. The wolf barked, a single, sharp yip.

  The five other wolves of Stander Pack stepped from the trees, spaced to form a semi-circle fifty feet in diameter around the researchers. The first wolf bunched its shoulders and growled, the sound emanating from deep in its chest. A curtain of heavy rain swept through the forest to the river, large drops drumming the river bank. The wolf snarled a second time.

  “Into the boats,” Chuck said. Rain pelted his shoulders and head.

  Rather than climb aboard one of the rafts, Sarah raised a hand to the wolves, palm out, her back to the river. “Stay where you are,” she said.

  The lead wolf edged toward her. The other five wolves moved forward as well, tightening the semi-circle.

  “I said stop,” Sarah said.

  Beside her, Toby swung his pack to the ground, unzipped it, and groped inside. The wolves approached, moving in unison, closing the half-circle to forty feet. Their eyes, aglow in the shadowed forest, pierced the rain. Toby pulled a length of polished black plastic a foot long and a few inches wide from his pack as Lex climbed into the upstream raft.

  “Sarah,” Chuck urged, gripping the haul rope to steady the boats.

  She climbed into the downstream raft next to Kaifong and Randall.

  Toby rooted inside his pack a second time and brought out another length of black plastic, this one with a black metal tube attached.

  “Toby, come on,” Chuck demanded. “Don’t—”

  The six wolves charged.

  30

  The wolves dashed toward the rafts in a powerful burst, their teeth bared. Chuck stumbled backward, fear thrumming his insides. His foot slipped off the bank and his boot plunged into the icy water between the rafts and shore. Screams from the girls reverberated from the far bank.

  “Chuck!” Janelle cried out.

  The wolves came to a unified stop fifteen feet from the boats, paws planted, muscles bunched beneath their smooth coats. The rank odor of the animals’ wet fur drifted through the air.

  Chuck hauled himself back up on shore with the traverse line, blinking through the downpour. The wolves crouched, eyeing Chuck and Toby on the riverbank.

  “Toby,” Lex commanded.

  Toby backed to the upstream raft. He clutched the black plastic pieces he’d dug from his pack to his chest; now that he had them in his hands, he didn’t seem to know what to do with them.

  The wolves inched closer, growling. Lex helped Toby into the raft. Chuck stepped in after him. Instantly, the rafts moved away from shore, propelled by those on the far bank.

  Chuck held out a hand to Toby, who handed over the plastic pieces from his pack as the rafts surged into the current. Still crouched, the wolves advanced to the water’s edge. Chuck slid the two plastic pieces against one another as the rafts tracked along the static line. The pieces snapped together with a well-oiled click. He hefted the result of the combined parts—a short-barreled break-down rifle, popular among the hundreds of out-of-state elk hunters who flew into Durango each fall.

  “Shells?” Chuck asked Toby.

  Toby dove into his pack. He came up with a box of 7-mm cartridges. Chuck thumbed the bullets into the rifle’s magazine. Though small in caliber compared to the 9-mm version favored by big-game hunters, the lightweight gun’s size was perfect for varmint control—or defensive purposes.

  The wolves paced the shoreline, their eyes on the rafts.

  Chuck slotted a shell into the firing chamber, slid the bolt home, and clicked on the safety. “No scope?” he asked Toby.

  “My dad thought open sights would be best.”

  The rafts passed the mid-point of the river. The current swept by, gurgling at the bow of the lead boat, the traverse line tight. The first wolf pawed at the water’s edge and snarled at the departing rafts. At well over a hundred pounds, the wolf was the largest of the six pack members by a distinct margin. A white plastic radio collar circled its neck.

  “That’s right,” Lex told the wolf. “Stay right where you are.”

  “Number 184,” Toby said. “Stander Pack’s alpha for the last few years. She’s a beauty. And a very capable leader. I can’t imagine what made her decide to bring the pack here.” He rested his hand on the carcass of the wolf between his feet. “This is 217, a two-year-old male. He was really easy-going—played with the pups, got along well with the adults. We probably would’ve collared him this winter.”

  Raindrops exploded on the surface of the river. Chuck wiped water from the sides of his face. He rested the rifle across his thighs, its barrel aimed at the pacing wolves.

  “You’re not allowed to have that thing with you,” Lex said to Toby.

  “After what happened with the Territory Team, my dad insisted—not that I know what to do with it. He’s a big-time hunter, goes after Kodiaks in Alaska every fall.” Toby looked across the water at the wolves. “It was supposed to be for grizzlies.”

  “Instead, it’s your wolves that have decided to go on the prowl for some reason.”

  “They must be reacting to our arrival out here in the backcountry.”

  “Reacting? From forty miles away?”

  “If you have any better ideas, I’m all ears.”

  “What about how 217 was hanging with the grizzly?” Chuck asked.

  “That I don’t get at all,” Toby said. He nudged the dead wolf with his boot and shook his head.

  “Neither do I,” Sarah admitted.

  She and Toby exchanged glances. “I’m sorry about 217,” she said.

  He dipped his head. “Thanks.”

  On the riverbank, the wolves sat on their haunches, tilted their heads, and yipped and howled. Chuck thumbed the rifle’s safety off and back on. Was this odd behavior the result of human interactions in the park? Or were the wolves, as Sarah believed, pursuing the carcass of their pack mate?

  Stander Pack’s alpha rose to all fours. Her forepaws sank into the mud at the edge of the water. She crouched, then leapt from the bank. The wolf hung in the air before landing in the river fifteen feet from shore and disappearing beneath the surface. Her head poked above the water and she swam toward the rafts, nose cutting the current like an alligator’s snout, furred spine curling back and forth at the surface.

  Chuck knelt in the bottom of the raft, propped his elbows on the sid
e tube, and snugged the rifle’s black plastic stock to his shoulder. Raindrops wormed their way down the back of his neck, cold and prickling on his skin. He clicked the safety off and rested the crook of his finger against the trigger as the wolf churned closer.

  “No!” Sarah cried from the downstream raft.

  Chuck aimed down the barrel of the gun and fired.

  31

  Sarah lunged at Chuck. Randall and Kaifong dove atop her, trapping her in the bottom of their raft.

  Chuck raised his head from the gun’s sights. As intended, the shot had passed well above the head of the alpha and ricocheted off the surface of the river and into the trees. The result was what he’d hoped. The wolf turned and swam back to the far shore, where she emerged, dripping, on the muddy riverbank. She yipped at her pack mates lining the bank, and the six wolves trotted up the slope, away from the river’s edge. The rain, sheeting from the sky, blurred the wolves’ departure until they disappeared into the forest.

  Onshore, Chuck emptied the gun of its bullets and gave them to Toby, then broke the gun in two and handed the pieces to him as well.

  “Thank your dad for me,” Chuck told him.

  Sarah confronted Chuck. “You could have killed her. She was just curious.”

  “I shot above her, to keep her from crossing to our side of the river.”

  Sarah pounced. “Our side? Both sides of the river are the wolves’ side. The whole park is theirs.” She aimed a finger at Chuck’s chest. “Clarence is right. You’re so old-school. First thing you do when you get a little scared is go for a gun.” Her eyes burned into him. “You just had to bring your little girls along with you, didn’t you? And now you’re just like every other creature out here in the wild, willing to do anything to protect your young.”

  Chuck rocked back on his heels. Sarah’s words stung—because she was right. He turned away and squinted across the river. Pinpricks of yellow glowed through the rain from the shadowed forest on the opposite slope. The wolves hadn’t retreated far. He climbed the slick riverbank to Janelle. “Hanging in there?” he asked.

  Her wet cheeks were crimson in the cool air, her hazel eyes bright with determination. “I know we signed up for this,” she said. “But still.”

  The girls huddled beside her in their raincoats, water dripping from their hoods. Chuck took their hands and turned them toward camp. The rain slowed, then stopped, as they made their way through the woods.

  Back at the cabin, Lex called for an all-teams meeting as soon as everyone changed into dry clothes.

  Disquiet rippled through camp with the return of the group. The members of the Grizzly Initiative huddled around Sarah on one of their platforms as she filled them in. At the other end of tent row, Toby addressed the gathered wolfies. Between the two large teams, Randall and Kaifong visited on their platform with members of the geology and meteorology teams, while Keith squatted in front of his tent, checking Chance’s paw pads for injury.

  Chuck took in the view to the north from tent row. The clouds remained low and dark. The wind continued to slice across the valley. Thunder rumbled over the lake, a sea of shadowed gray.

  Behind him, Carmelita and Rosie chattered in the tent, comparing the Stander wolves to their grandparents’ Labrador retriever, as Janelle helped them out of their wet clothes. Rather than head for his own small tent, Clarence lingered beside Chuck.

  He hung his head as he spoke, his voice low. “You’re not paying me enough for this.”

  “The bear did what it was supposed to do. It stopped.”

  “It scared the crap out of me is what it did.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You were half a mile away.” Clarence raised his head and looked into the distance. “It was so big. The smell of its breath, Dios mio, like something rotten. They look so sleek and clean in the pictures. But up close? Its legs were caked with mud. It had a big scar on its nose. A couple of claws were broken off its front paws. And its teeth? Like a T-Rex. When it roared, it was all I could do to keep from running.”

  “You sprayed your pepper spray along with everyone else. You did everything right—even if the wind screwed it up.”

  “Did you see the wound on the side of the dead wolf? Its ribs were snapped right in two.”

  “It definitely looks like the bear killed it. But the question is, why? They were hanging around together. It was like they were friends.”

  Clarence closed his eyes. “I’m not sure any grizzly has friends.”

  Lex came into sight around the corner of the mess tent. He spotted Chuck and hurried up the slope toward him, waving for him to descend.

  “The satellite phone,” Lex said when they met on the hillside. “Our link to the outside world.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s gone.”

  32

  What do you mean, gone?”

  “It’s not in the keg where it’s supposed to be.” The blue, plastic storage keg containing the satellite phone, emergency flares, and first aid kit sat beneath the eave at the front corner of the cabin for easy access in the event of an emergency, its list of contents facing out for all to see. “I popped the lid,” Lex said. “It’s not there. Just the other stuff—the med kit and extra flashlights and lanterns and all.”

  “Was it there when we arrived?”

  “I never checked.”

  “Maybe Martha forgot to pack it.”

  “Martha? Are you kidding me?”

  “Or somebody working for her forgot.”

  “Not the way she rides people.”

  “Meaning...?”

  Lex hesitated, then said in a rush, “Meaning I’m sure someone took it.”

  “You really want me to believe—”

  Lex lifted a hand. “I know, I know. Why would anyone do that? The answer is, I have no idea. But with all the strangeness going on around here...”

  “At least we have our locator beacons.”

  “Which are of no use to us at this point. I simply want to get some information, see what people know about Stander Pack’s movement, not scramble an emergency response team.”

  Chuck rubbed the stubble on his unshaved chin. Wind rattled the nylon walls of the tents on the platforms above him and whipped across the slope, cold and damp and biting. “Maybe somebody’s got a girlfriend or boyfriend back in civilization they just had to talk to.” He remembered Jorge’s admission that the summer would be a long one for him.

  “Everyone here knows how important the phone is to us.”

  “He or she may have just borrowed it, figuring to slip it back into the keg before anyone noticed.”

  Lex lifted his cap, enshrouded in a plastic cover, and ran his fingers through his silver hair, stringy in the aftermath of the rain. “Think I should announce it at the group meeting?”

  “You don’t have any choice.” Chuck stamped his feet, wet and numb in his boots. The pounding sent shock waves up his legs. When he stopped, the vibrations continued.

  He balanced on the soggy slope, the ground vibrating beneath the soles of his feet—another of the low-level earthquakes pulsing through the thin crust of the central plateau.

  Lex crouched and pressed his hand to the ground as the vibrations subsided. “These are getting to be a pretty regular thing.”

  Chuck plucked a stalk of grass from the hillside. “Could the earthquakes be messing with the animals somehow?”

  “I can’t speak for the wolves and grizzlies,” Lex said, “but the tremors sure have got me on edge.”

  Chuck forced a chuckle. “Maybe the lake’s getting ready to switch oceans again, and the critters know it.” He bit down on the grass stem, the taste tart and vinegary in his mouth. “Hell,” he said. He moved the stem to the side of his mouth. “I mean, heck, it’s only a couple of miles and fifty feet of vertical gain from the west shore of the lake to the Continental Divide. Wouldn’t take much to send the whole thing sluicing out of the mountains and across northern Utah.”

  “All I
know is, the world’s getting way too complicated, even out here in what’s supposed to be the middle of nowhere.” Lex checked his watch. “Almost three o’clock. How about you go one way along the tents and gather everybody while I go the other?”

  Ten minutes later, Lex climbed atop the weathered picnic table in front of the cabin. The scientists, grouped in front of him, quieted. Lex filled them in on the missing satellite phone.

  “I don’t care who did it,” he said. “I just need it returned.” His eyes roamed the crowd. “Anyone?”

  No one responded—including Jorge, Chuck noted.

  “I’d like for every one of you to go back to your tents and check your things. If one of you happens to ‘stumble across’ the phone—” Lex made air quotes with his fingers “—you can bring it to me with no questions asked, or leave it out in the open where it’ll be found.”

  Upon their dismissal, the researchers angled up the slope to their platforms. Most climbed into their tents, out of the cold. Chuck worked with Clarence, tying additional guy lines to their two tents to stabilize them against the gusting wind. When he finished, he headed back down the hill to the mess tent, where Janelle and the girls were holed up. Lex and Keith approached him before he entered the tent. Lex was empty-handed.

  “I take it the phone hasn’t shown up yet,” Chuck said.

  “No. But Keith has an idea.”

  “If someone took the sat phone for their personal use,” Keith said, “they’d have gotten away from camp to use it where no one would hear them. I’m betting they left it behind in the trees somewhere. Probably planned to return it after dark, when no one would see them.”

  Chuck pursed his lips and nodded. “That would make sense. They couldn’t have known Lex would want the phone this afternoon.”

  “They figured they had plenty of time—and if I’m right, they’ll have left a scent trail.”

  “Keith thinks Chance can find the trail for us,” Lex said.

  “The rain won’t have helped,” Keith added, “but I figure it’s worth a shot. It’ll take an hour, tops, to loop around camp.”