Night of the Grizzlies

by Jack Olsen

  Setting up camp alongside the logjam took a matter of minutes. The hikers were so eager to catch their dinner before nightfall that they did little more than drop their packs and head for the lake, stopping only to cram their food into a single bag and haul it high into a tree. The puppy seemed to sense that an adventure was afoot, and he ran about the feet of the hikers, wagging his tail and asking with his eyes to be included. But he wound up in the arms of Michele Koons, who elected to stay behind in the camp while the others were gone. Michele could watch the dog and tidy up the camp, and when the others returned with their catches, they could get right down to dinner with a minimum of delay. The girl and the dog stayed together for two or three hours, then the others began to return. Paul Dunn had a single cutthroat trout, and he began to prepare it. Michele gave him a supplementary hot dog, and the 16 year-old boy laid both the fish and the frankfurter on top of the fire grate. Soon they were sizzling, and a thin wisp of aromatic smoke followed the gentle off-lake breeze and curled up the hill toward the berry patch. Michele, weary from her preparations for the dinner, was sitting at the edge of the campsite on a stump when she looked into the darkening woods in the direction of the smoke and saw a large shadowy form about ten feet away. She jumped up and said, “Here comes a bear!” Ron Noseck untied the dog’s leash, grabbed Squirt in his arms, and joined the others in a headlong flight up the rocky lakeshore away from the logs and campsite. All five of the campers came to a stop about fifty yards away, and they watched as a scrawny grizzly of a brownish hue descended upon their campsite and went to work. The food was lying within easy reach, and the bear strolled from dish to dish, taking big gulps, salivating generously, and licking its chops with a long tongue. Inexplicably, the lean animal grabbed a pack in its mouth and ran a few yards up the hillside with it, but just when the evicted campers were hoping that the grizzly was gone for good, it returned to the camp as suddenly as it had left and resumed eating. When fifteen or twenty minutes had passed and darkness was coming on, someone suggested that they abandon the old camp and spend the night where they were. Denise cradled Squirt in her arms while the other four gathered wood for a new fire. When the fire was ignited, the campers saw the grizzly saunter off in the opposite direction and disappear over the logjam.

  Now they hurriedly discussed the situation. Someone suggested that they dash over Howe Ridge to the safety of the Lake McDonald ranger station, but it was already dark, and among them they had only one undersized flashlight Anyway, the bear had disappeared in the general direction of the trail, and the group decided to stay as far as possible from the peculiar animal. Someone else suggested a flight in the opposite direction, along the lake trail to the Arrow Lake shelter cabin, but then it was remembered that the cabin was jammed full of weekenders, and a two-mile hike to Arrow Lake would force the refugees to depend on the inadequate flashlight to illuminate a trail through some of the thickest brush in the park.

  After the bear had been gone for several minutes, the group regained some of its courage and aplomb and fell back, once again, on the notion that nothing would happen so long as they gave the bear a wide berth. Paul and the Nosecks went down the lake to gather up the sleeping bags and a sack of cookies and a package of Cheezits that were left over and returned within a few minutes to the new camp at the water’s edge. As a double deterrent to the bear, the campers decided to keep the fire roaring all night and erect a kind of log barrier between them and the old campsite. When a stack of wood had been positioned, the five nervous hikers arranged their sleeping· bags in a semicircle around the fire and turned in. Denise looped Squirt’s leash over a log next to the fire and patted the dog into place between herself and the log. While the two couples and the young boy from Minnesota whispered away in the general direction of sleep, the girl from Arizona kept a gentle hold on her pet. It was a comfort to both of them. Now and then, one of the men would get up and throw a log on the fire, and soon the little camp was still.

  ∞

  Lying in his uncomfortable bed in Granite Park Chalet, on the other side of a 9,000-foot wall of rock from the campers at Trout Lake, Dr. John Lipinski laughed to himself as he thought about the situation. Thirteen years before, he and his wife, Ann, had grown tired of the industrial dirt and noisy traffic and increasing congestion in the city of Chicago and decided to head for the Wild West, where they could indulge their love of nature and spend day after day hiking on wilderness trails. Lipinski was a surgeon, and his wife was a nurse, and when they had set up practice in the lumber town of Kalispell, Montana, the demands on their skills had been so incessant that it had taken them four years to find the time to make their first overnight hike—into Sperry Chalet, to see the mountain goats. Now, eight years after that momentous occasion, they were on their second overnight hike, into Granite Park to see the bears. With them were their daughter, Terese, 16, and their two adopted sons, Robin, 5, and Karl, 4. They had seen one bear, but not very clearly, and just before they had turned in, Terese had told her parents about a conversation with one of the chalet employees.

  “How do the bears get there?” Terese had asked.

  “Oh, they come to eat the garbage that we put out, ” the other young girl replied.

  “But don’t you think that’s kind of dangerous?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, the people come up here to see grizzlies, and we have to show them some. That’s what most of them are here for.”

  Lying in bed half asleep, Dr. Lipinski pondered this explanation and, in truth, he could not find it unreasonable. Years before, he had hitchhiked into Yellowstone and observed the grizzlies being fed, and one night he had heard shots as rangers exterminated a few bears that had lost their fear of man. The surgeon had great respect for park rangers, and he knew that any bear that strayed out of line would be exterminated. The simple fact that the Granite Park bears were still alive was proof enough to Dr. Lipinski that they were harmless.

  Fighting insomnia alongside her tall husband, Ann Lipinski was not so relaxed about the matter. She had been brought up in a teeming Polish section of Chicago, unlike her North Dakota-bred husband, and the wilderness still seemed mysterious to her. One could talk to Ann Lipinski for hours about the gentle, shy ways of the big grizzlies, but she would never change her attitude that anything that weighed up to 1,000 pounds and had teeth like ten penny nails and claws as long and as sharp as switchblade knives was just plain dangerous, always was, always would be.

  The night was cool outside, but the thick timbers of the chalet had taken an all-day baking from the sun, and Ann Lipinski pitched and tossed and perspired and worried in the closeness of the overheated room. Her daughter, Terese, lay sleeping, fully dressed, on top of another cot, and the two little boys were dead to the world, and now and then Ann would hear a brief snore from her surgeon-husband, but her own mind raced around and around, and sleep would not come.

  She had just decided to get up, put on her clothes, and lie atop the bed like Terese when she heard a tiny noise from the direction of a candy package her husband had left out on the dresser. In the pitch blackness, Mrs. Lipinski could see nothing, but it did not take her long to realize that she was in the presence of a terror almost as menacing as a grizzly-a mouse. She sat horror-stricken, and the noise stopped, and just then her husband jumped up and said, “There’s a spider on my nose.”

  “Oh, John, no!” the woman said. “It’s a mouse! Let’s get out of here!”

  A porch adjoined the upstairs room, and Dr. and Mrs. Lipinski opened the door and went outside, the one to breathe the cool fresh air and the other to escape from the mouse. To calm his nervous wife, the surgeon put the candy package in the wastebasket and removed the wastebasket to the porch. “Now if that dangerous mouse comes around again, he’ll stay outside,” the doctor told his wife, and the two returned to bed.

  But only a few minutes had passed when Mrs. Lipinski felt something nibble at her toe—or thought she did. “John,” she said. “John! Something’s biting my toe
!” “Don’t worry,” the sleepy husband said. “It’s probably only a mouse.”

  Ann Lipinski, RN, moved to the edge of the bed and decided that she would stop trying to sleep and just sit and worry for a while. When she had worried extensively about the mouse, she looked around for other worries and found one in the open door. The night was shudderingly still and thick, and the black hole of the doorway overlooked the gully where the bear had been seen earlier. Mrs. Lipinski thought how simple it would be for one of the big grizzlies to sneak up the stairs and devour her, her two boys, her daughter, and her husband. “Now let’s see,” the troubled woman said to herself, “what would I do if a grizzly attacked?” She figured she would hustle her family out the door and up on the roof. But what if the bear blocked the door? Mrs. Lipinski got up and checked the window and found it was unlocked. She decided that she would wake her husband, and they would push the children out the window to the safety of the roof the instant the bear appeared. Having settled all this in her mind, Mrs. Lipinski somehow found herself back on the bed, her thoughts becoming more and more indistinct, blessed sleep on its way at last, and just then she heard a muffled scream. It seemed to come from the direction of one of the outside bathrooms, and it occurred to the nurse that someone was being attacked. She shook her husband.

  “John!” she said. “There’s a lady in trouble. John, did you hear the lady scream? ” Dr. Lipinski raised up from his mattress and said, “Why would a lady be screaming up here?” “Well, I think she’s in the bathroom outside, and somebody’s bothering her.” Dr. Lipinski eased himself back on the mattress. “Ann,” he said sleepily, “a lady wouldn’t be screaming out here.” Mrs. Lipinski slapped her hand to her forehead and said to herself that she had known better times: She itched all over from perspiration, a mouse had been nibbling at her toe, and now her husband was telling her that she was hallucinating. And yet she was convinced that she had heard a human scream and that she had not been dreaming. Now, how was she to convince anybody? Just then, she heard the same sound from the same direction.

  “John!” she cried. “A lady screamed! I tell you, she’s in trouble!”

  Dr. Lipinski had fallen back into a half sleep, and once again he suggested that his wife was imagining things or dreaming. “Now, why in the world would a lady be screaming way up here?” he said thickly, and rolled over.

  “Somebody’s bothering her, John!” Mrs. Lipinski said. “There’s a fellow bothering her in the bathroom.” “Oh, Ann, a man wouldn’t bother a woman up here. The people just aren’t like that around here.”

  Outside, the wall of silence fell again; not a whisper of wind disturbed the night, and Ann Lipinski let her head fall back on the mattress. She was absolutely certain that she had heard a female scream, if not the first time, then certainly the second, but for the life of her she could not figure out how to communicate the fact to her husband. She was pondering the problem when an unmistakable, distinct scream shattered the night, and both of the Lipinskis were on their feet instantly and rushing out to the balcony. As they did, they heard a far off woman’s voice cry, “Get out! Get out! Get away from me!” The doctor and the nurse reached the railing of the balcony and tried to see into the dark night and pinpoint the sound, and then the voice came clear and terrible across the stillness from the slope below. “God help me, he’s stabbing me!” There were a few seconds of silence and then, “God help me! Somebody help me!”

  Terese was the only member of the Lipinski family who was dressed, and her parents sent her downstairs to awaken the management. Now they knew beyond any question that something was wrong. Ann Lipinski thought she had it figured out, and she told her husband. “My Lord, we’ve got a murder on our hands. The poor girl must have been out walking and trying to get back to the chalet, and she must have been attacked by some fellow.” Her husband peered into the darkness, trying to get a fix on something, on anything, and did not disagree.

  Downstairs, Terese was having difficulty awakening the worn-out hikers and finding the leaders. She picked her way among the bodies lying on the floor of the big front room and said softly, “Hello,” but all she got in return were a few guttural complaints and some requests to shut up and let decent people sleep. Finally she called out, in teenager fashion, “Hey, who’s the head of all this stuff?”

  A voice said, “What’s the matter?” “There’s a girl in trouble out there,” Terese said, and another voice commented from the floor, “Oh, the poor thing!”

  When it appeared that the subject was closed, Terese banged loudly on the first door she could find, and in a few seconds a young woman appeared and asked what was the problem. Terese recognized Joan Devereaux, the naturalist who had guided them into the place, and she blurted out that someone was screaming and could be heard from the balcony above. The ranger said gently, “You’ve been dreaming. Nobody’s cried out. Now just go back to bed.”

  But Terese insisted, and several minutes went by before she was able to convince the drowsy naturalist that something was amiss. Wearily, Joan agreed to go upstairs with the young girl to see what she could hear. When one of the kitchen workers came into the room to find out what was happening, the naturalist told her to get the chalet’s shortwave radio and tum it on, just in case. Then she finished lacing her boots, turned to Terese, and said, “Let’s go.”

  ∞

  Innkeeper Tom Walton and his wife, Nancy, were sound asleep in their upstairs room, No. 3, when a loud banging on their door awoke them both. Tom looked at his watch; it was twelve forty-five, and hastily yanking on a pair of old Levis, he opened the door and saw Helen “Gracie” Lundgren, one of the more levelheaded employees of the chalet. “What’s up?” he said.

  Gracie Lundgren was plainly frightened, and the words poured out of her. “Tom, oh, Tom!” she said. “The people are all standing out on the balcony, and they say they heard somebody screaming, somebody being murdered out there!”

  “Calm down, Gracie! ” Walton said. “They didn’t hear anybody yelling down there. Nobody yelled, because there’s nobody to yell. Now go on back to bed, and tell the others to get back to bed, too!”

  He shut the door and took off his Levis and plopped back into bed, but again there was a pounding on the door. “Tom! ” the Lundgren girl cried. “They insist! They heard noises!”

  Walton tugged his way into his Levis once again and walked out to the balcony. He recognized Joan Devereaux and the Lipinski family and a few others standing quietly, as though they were trying to hear something, but this was one of those typical Granite Park nights when the silence pressed down on the place like a giant bowl of mushroom soup. Tom knew that the total absence of sound was unknown to most people, and he suspected that someone had let his imagination go wild. “There can’t be anything wrong out there,” he said. “Just listen to how quiet it is.”

  “I heard screams, and so did my husband,” Mrs. Lipinski said.

  “From what direction?” Walton asked.

  “Straight down,” Dr. Lipinski said. “What’s down there?”

  “A campground.”

  “Well, somebody’s in trouble down there.”

  Tom Walton still did not agree, but when Dr. Lipinski suggested that someone holler in the direction of the noises and ask if everything was in order, the young innkeeper said he could see no harm in that; everyone in the chalet was awake by now anyway. Dr. Lipinski cupped his hands and shouted, “Is everything OK?”

  From a point to the right of the campground, and more from the direction of the trail cabin, a barely discernible male voice floated back on the still night air. “No!” the voice answered.

  “What’s the trouble?”

  The voice answered, “Bear!”

  ∞

  Janet Klein did not know how long the animals had been fighting before she awoke, but now she sat straight in her sleeping bag behind the trail cabin and listened to the shrieks rend the still night. She tried and rejected several theories before deciding that she was definit
ely hearing a mountain lion attacking a deer. There was a catlike character to the scream, and she could think of no other big mammal that could make such a large racket, except a human. Then she realized that she was hearing words mixed in with the sounds. There was a long scream, and then the word “help,” and another long scream and the words, “Mommy, Mommy.”

  Her lanky husband stirred in the sleeping bag and Janet helped him awake with a brisk shove. “What made that noise?” Robert Klein said.

  “I don’t know,” Janet said. “Listen!”

  After a few seconds, the screaming began again, and this time the words were more distinct. “Why, it’s a child having a nightmare!” Robert said. “But there’s no child in the campground.” “They might have come in after we went to sleep.” Once again, the screaming started, but now it sounded farther away, as though the child were running down the slope of the broad bench of the campground. Then there was one long scream and silence. The Kleins had no idea what to do; the bright sliver of incandescent moon had gone down behind the mountain, and the geologist and his schoolteacher wife sat together looking into the wall of night, as though waiting for someone to come out of the void and make everything clear. The sounds did not resume. Robert Klein looked at his watch; it was twelve fifty.

  ∞

  If there was anything of which young Donald Gullett was certain when he crawled into his sleeping bag alongside the trail cabin, it was that he was going to enjoy a long and deep and dreamless sleep. He had hiked something like twenty miles that day, and another twenty miles the day before, and his body throbbed with fatigue. He should not have stayed up to see the bear come into sight behind the chalet; this had kept him up till ten or ten thirty; so instead of planning to continue his international hike at dawn, he simply decided to sleep out his fatigue and awaken when he awakened, even if it was some disgustingly late hour of the morning, like seven or seven thirty.