Beardance

by Will Hobbs

No matter which way he turned it over in his mind, he just couldn’t. He couldn’t leave the bears behind. He hated that mine and he could sense his own death, but the bears were still inside it, lost in the pitch dark. He’d gone down ropes before, he told himself; he’d climbed up ropes. He had to try.

  Cloyd turned and started inside again. This time when he came to the drop and the ladder, he didn’t hesitate. Tying off the rope to a boulder, he eased the lantern to the bottom of the drop. With the rope passed behind his back, he started down the slope, bracing with his feet. Toward the bottom he slipped and came down hard. In a heartbeat, the mine was filled with the sound of breaking glass and with utter darkness.

  Panicky, he reached for the flashlight and flicked it on. Its light seemed strong enough, but its beam was flickering. These batteries were playing out. How long would they last? His heart gradually stopped racing. He told himself to try to stay calm. The beam would hold for a while. He was going to keep going. Nothing could stop him now unless he was buried with rock.

  Farther and farther into the mountain he continued, passing side tunnels that went nowhere. One was closed by a cave-in. He wondered if this was the place where Sixto’s brother had met his death.

  For a long time, he waded through water halfway to his knees. He was shaking with cold. Water was dripping out of the ceilings and running down the walls. He knew that if he touched anything here, it all might come down.

  After Cloyd passed through a series of rooms, the tunnel began to climb. He stopped every few minutes to listen for the bears or for Sixto, but there was no sound but the dripping of water. The tunnel narrowed and climbed. He eased on all fours through an opening braced by rotten timbers. More rooms, more side tunnels that led nowhere, nothing anymore that he could call the main tunnel. The one he was following spoked off into three directions, each leading into rooms where ore had been removed, each climbing and narrowing.

  The second tunnel led to a room where the flash-light’s beam, flickering from strong to weak and back, fell on another skeleton. His heart jumped in his chest, yet he crept closer. A rusted sword lay close by the bones. Next to the sword lay a rawhide bag chewed apart by rats. He knelt to discover … gold coins, perhaps fifty pieces of Spanish gold, each a little bigger than a quarter. Had no one discovered this place before, not even Sixto and his brother?

  He would take only one of the coins….

  Cloyd backtracked to the third tunnel. A hundred feet into it, he heard something. Not the bears, not the whimpering of the cubs. He listened again. It was Sixto Loco calling, “Coy-o-te! Yu-ta coy-o-te!”

  He kept moving forward; the echoing voice stopped. Several minutes later Sixto called again, and this time his voice was much stronger. Cloyd yelled back, “Here I am, Sixto, here I am! Where are you, Brownie? Cocoa, hey Cocoa! I’m coming for you!” He made the smacking noise with his lips that he’d used so often to talk to them.

  In less than a minute the bears appeared in the shadows at the edge of the light. Then they raced toward him. He got down on the floor of the tunnel with them, and he let them whimper and whine and lick his face and claw him up and down in their excitement.

  “Sixto!” he called. “Can you hear me?”

  The old sheepherder replied joyously, “I can hear you! I can hear you!”

  “They’re okay, they’re fine. When I come out, though, we can’t be around people. I don’t want them to be around people.”

  There was silence, and then Sixto’s voice came again. “I understand. You turn them loose, Coyote, then come back to my camp. We’ll come out of the mountains together. It’s time to come out of the mountains.”

  Cloyd didn’t respond. He hadn’t been making plans, he’d only been going from day to day. There was so much he had to think about.

  “What is it?” the shepherd called.

  ‘I’m … I’m not sure I can,” Cloyd said tentatively. “I might have to stay with them.”

  “How long?” Sixto called.

  “I don’t know… until I think they’re safe.”

  “You’re crazy! Bad weather’s coming. It’s too high up here, too cold! You might stay a little while, but if you stay too long …”

  I’ll just stay a little while.”

  “I tell you what, Coyote, I’ll leave my tent right where it is. It’s a strong tent. It can stand there all winter I bet. I’ll leave the food I’ve got left. I’ll leave the stove, I’ll leave some other stuff. I have a pair of snowshoes, and a pair of winter boots. You’ll need those things if a big snow comes!”

  ‘Thank you,” he called. “Thank you!”

  At the place where Cloyd was standing, a side room bulged from a narrow opening in the tunnel. His light followed one of the bears inside, and at first he doubted his eyes. He shone the light all around. There was nothing wrong with his eyes. This was the room, at the end of the Spaniards’ tunneling, that Walter Landis had dreamed of his whole life. A natural pocket, its walls were made of gleaming, crystalline gold. This was the freak of nature, the chamber of solid gold that Walter liked to paint with word pictures down on the farm. “The heart of the mountain,” Walter called it.

  The Spanish hadn’t removed this gold when the end came. They’d only just discovered this room.

  But he would never tell the old man that he’d been in this mine. And not because of any ghosts. Because Sixto Loco had helped him, and Sixto had asked him to keep a promise.

  He turned with the cubs for daylight. When they got to the ledge and the open air, it was snowing.

  Far below, the aspen forest was turning quickly toward its prime. The bears were watching with him. Several days before September ran out, the colors reached their vivid peak, and the flanks of the mountains were all wrapped in blankets of gold sprinkled here and there with patches red like fire.

  No wind was arriving to shake the leaves prematurely from the trees. Skies of the deepest blue marked each day as fall hung suspended in its glory. It almost seemed this was the way it always was in the mountains, as if the lightning bolts and the thunder, the drenching rains, the sudden hailstorms, and the early snows were made-up memories.

  Sixto Archuleta and his flock had disappeared over the Divide, and the sheepherder too, like the grizzly woman and the old man, had become a memory.

  Cloyd was glad he had stayed to see all this, to see it from up high looking down. In the shadows behind the peaks, the new snow lingered. Everywhere else it had burned off. The cubs weren’t finding their table as crowded as before. They were depending more and more on roots and nuts. Their claws had grown longer and they’d become more powerful diggers since he first spied them.

  Every day Brownie and Cocoa would catch a few mice scurrying between runs in the grass. With a thrown stick, Cloyd struck a grouse that had flown to a low branch. And the cubs smelled out a big beaver that had felled a tree on itself.

  A few days after Sixto’s flock disappeared over the Divide, Cloyd started for the shepherd’s camp on Middle Ute Creek. The ammonia smell of sheep urine was still strong on the meadow. He wanted the bears to continue to avoid the scent of sheep, as their mother had taught them. In the deep timber high above the meadow, he spoke to them and knocked his finger sharply across their muzzles. He told them to stay behind and wait for him.

  The sheepherder who was supposed to be so fierce had left his tent pitched for Cloyd, as he had said he would. Inside, Cloyd found all manner of gear that might be useful to him. The first thing Cloyd noticed was the shepherd’s sling, which he had worn around his waist, and a note on it that said, “Bienvenidos, Yuta coyote. The sling is yours. You could be a good shot too if you practiced. Eat the food, use what you like, ‘Mi casa es su casa’ Good luck with your purpose.”

  The flashlight remained, the axe, the snowboots Sixto had talked about, the long snowshoes with wood frames and rawhide webbing, a big box of matches, the whetstone, lard cans for cooking, two blankets, even the sheepskins on the floor. Most important of all, Sixto had left food s
trung in a tree. Cloyd lowered the food down and inventoried it. He’d never guessed Sixto would leave this much for him. The sack of flour was here, with the baking powder and salt already mixed in. He could make all the “fat ones” he wanted. Sixto had left cornmeal too, lard, a sack of beans, coffee, even sugar. Cloyd counted four dozen assorted canned goods, including tuna, chicken, pork, peaches, plums, cherries.

  He packed all he could carry. Cloyd worked quickly, wanting to return to the bears as soon as he could. He had room for only half the food. He tucked the whetstone into his pack and tied on the big snowboots. When he’d lashed the long snowshoes to the pack, he was done.

  It was several days later, as Cloyd was bringing the cubs across the Divide, over the grassy slopes high above the tree line, that he heard the plane. He was heading for the drainages of the Pine River that felt like home and would eventually lead him back to Walter Landis. He’d always hurried the cubs to cover when planes approached, but this time there was nowhere to hide. Cloyd began to run, with his heavy pack bouncing from side to side on his back. It was much heavier than it used to be. The cubs could have run much faster if he wasn’t holding them back.

  The plane passed over the Divide, a thousand feet above him perhaps. He hoped wildly that the pilot hadn’t been looking his way. Now he realized that he should have searched out a rugged spot to cross the Divide, one with plenty of hiding places. At any rate, he shouldn’t have run. He should have frozen, made a tent of himself and the leaning backpack that he could have hidden the cubs under.

  To late now. The plane banked and returned, this time flying low. Cloyd huddled with the bears next to a rock sticking out of the tundra, but it was no use. The damage was done. It was that same plane, white under the wings, red on top, only with a new windshield. It buzzed him so closely that he even got a glimpse of the pilot, in a gray shirt, with hair that looked like it had been cut by a helicopter flying upside down.

  What did it matter? Cloyd kept telling himself. They couldn’t catch him and take the cubs. Now he was down in the timber, now he was on his guard.

  Every day the game warden came looking, buzzing all around the mountains like an angry insect. For six days Cloyd kept on the move, visiting basins high above the Pine River that had no trails up them. The Dog Rincon. The Grouse Rincon. Basins with no names. At last he’d come to a deep pond at the head of the rugged Canon Paso, where he felt secure. The pond hadn’t completely iced over yet, and he was catching fish out of it.

  The leaves were off the aspens now, blown off by two days of high winds. The first week of October was ending, and the skies were turning gray. He was wearing many layers of clothes now, even his wool gloves and his wool cap in the daytime. Sixto Archuleta’s snowboots, rubber on the outside with leather uppers, insulating felt on the inside, were keeping his feet warm and dry. And he had the snowshoes in case he would need them.

  There was cover at one edge of the pond, a dense spruce forest. No trail led up the Canon Paso toward him; there was only the kind of hard going that he and the bears had managed as they sought out the most rugged and protected places. That game warden, Haverford, would never find him. It made his heart go fast—being hunted, being an outlaw. It made him feel like a grizzly himself.

  Every day he was practicing with the sling. One time out of six he could hit a piece of granite no bigger than a basketball, across the pond.

  He would have felt better if he hadn’t lost the bearstone. It happened when they’d first come to this pond. He’d been showing the bearstone to the cubs, telling them about it. Brownie’s tongue had quickly flashed, and she’d swallowed the bearstone right before his eyes.

  He hoped losing the bearstone wasn’t a bad sign. He still hoped he could find the bearstone in one of Brownie’s scats.

  Maybe the game warden had given up and wasn’t hunting him and the bears after all, Cloyd thought. But he knew better. He had a bad feeling.

  At least Walter Landis would know by now that he was okay. Walter would have been told about him being spotted by the airplane. Walter would have been told that he was with the cubs, that he was okay.

  The old man would be pleased. Walter would like the idea of Cloyd hiding out from that game warden who wanted to bring in the last grizzlies.

  By now the game warden must have a pretty good idea, Cloyd realized, about how those two cubs got out of those cages. It must have made him mad.

  It was hard to understand the government. The grizzly woman had said that some of the government people had spent the whole summer trying to find grizzlies in Colorado so they could protect them and bring more. Then there were other government people, like the game warden, who’d like it better if the last grizzly bears were in the zoo.

  These cubs were still living wild. He’d been careful not to feed them his food. It was okay for him to graze along with them, but it couldn’t work the other way around.

  They’d said there wasn’t even much chance of one cub surviving. So far they were both doing okay. Why wouldn’t the game warden just leave him alone to help them beat the odds?

  He hadn’t thought that anyone could track him to this place at the head of the Cañon Paso. All the same, he had a bad feeling, and he was keeping sentry now on the bald spot far below.

  His fears and his waiting had been justified. Down the mountain, three men were moving across the bald spot. Cloyd recognized the big man in the lead by his bright shock of red hair and the full red beard.

  Cloyd’s heart was suddenly in his throat. There, right down there, was the man he hated, coming hard and fast after him. Rusty Owens, who’d gone to Alaska. Rusty, the red-haired man, the man who killed the bear. Now Rusty was entering the trees, leading two others up the faint game trail.

  Cloyd knew there was only one man who could have tracked him here—the best hunter, trapper, and tracker in the San Juan Mountains. Rusty wasn’t in Alaska any longer.

  All the men had snowshoes strapped to their backpacks.

  The cubs had seen the men too, or smelled them, and they were just as alarmed as Cloyd.

  No need to strike his tent; it was rolled up in his pack. He only kept it for an emergency. He hadn’t used it since the day he’d met those cubs and fed them fish and they had followed him up to Lost Lake.

  Up and out of the Cañon Paso he climbed, careful to step only on rocks. Brownie and Cocoa seemed to know too. They knew they were being hunted and they seemed to be aware that their tracks would give them away.

  Cloyd was determined. Rusty Owens wouldn’t catch him. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Rusty Owens was a proud man. Rusty thought he could do anything. Rusty Owens thought he was the lord of the mountains. But Rusty Owens wouldn’t catch him and these cubs.

  He climbed up and over, into the basin of the Rincon La Osa, without the men catching sight of him. All the while his lungs were screaming for air. He had climbed more than a thousand feet above the timberline, almost straight up, without ever stopping to slow his heart or catch his breath.

  Deeper and deeper into the mountains Cloyd withdrew, zigzagging in a route he judged would be impossible to follow. He kept going through the dusk, finding a place to ball up with the cubs only when he couldn’t possibly continue. Before dawn he was up and moving. Brownie and Cocoa understood his urgency. They often stopped to look and listen. Nothing. If the bears, with their senses, couldn’t hear or smell those men … He was beginning to feel safe.

  Now that he was so close to the Divide, he determined to cross back over to the Rio Grande side. At the head of the Pine River, he skirted the low meadows of Weminuche Pass. In the trees high above the pass, he began to work his way west toward the Ute Creeks by way of the northern slopes of the Rio Grande Pyramid. No trails could be found on that northern side of the Pyramid. It was wild and it was rugged. When it was safe again, he could visit Sixto’s camp on Middle Ute Creek and resupply with the food there.

  The wind blew hard all night the second night, and the snow began to fall on the th
ird day. Daytime arrived dark and never turned brighter. The snow fell silently hour after hour in flakes big as half-dollars. The wind was gone, it was uncannily quiet. He sheltered with the cubs in a dense cluster of spruce where almost no snow was reaching the ground.

  The snow began to fall even more heavily at night. Cloyd had seen snow fall this fast, this long only once the previous winter at the farm down on the Piedra.

  The following day the storm raged on, this time with powerful gusts of wind that blew the snow from the trees. Cloyd stayed put. He had the snowshoes but it would be crazy to travel in this storm. He was sure that he’d shaken the men behind him. Even if he hadn’t, the snow had come along to cover his tracks!

  After two days, the storm had mostly cleared. Squalls were still dropping heavy snow here and there, but the sun was beginning to shine through now and again.

  In the openings among the trees, four feet of snow covered the ground.

  It was bitterly cold in the wake of the storm. Moving would warm him up. He was wearing all his layers, from his thermal underwear to his bright-red mountaineering shell, and still he was cold. It was time to be moving again. He started out on the snowshoes.

  The cubs followed in the trail that Cloyd broke as he headed in the direction of the Ute Creeks. This was an altogether different world from the mountains he’d known two days before. Everything was softer, rounder, quieter. With the white of the snow and the dark green of the spruce timber, the world had only two colors now.

  To his surprise, the cubs started looking back, as if they were being followed. They kept looking back, when there was nothing to be seen back there. They yawned with anxiety as Cloyd had seen dogs yawn.

  Cloyd trusted the cubs’ senses. He shoed faster. If those men were back there, they were using his packed trail, while he had to break the snow.

  He was about five hundred feet below the timberline on the steep north slopes of the Pyramid. He came out of the trees now and stood at the opening of a break in the timber two hundred feet across. It was starting to snow heavily again.