The Hunted

by Gloria Skurzynski

  Too terrified to yell, Jack flattened himself against the door, sucking in his midriff as the bear’s claws scraped across the steering wheel. He was barely out of reach. If she’d plunged the front part of her body—head, neck, and foreleg—through the opening, she’d have had him, but her leg alone wasn’t long enough to cross the width of the Jeep.

  Now Miguel was yelling, “Bear, bear, hey, oso.

  ¡Atención!” and imitating those hooting sounds the cubs kept making, like the middle notes of a badly played clarinet. Miguel darted so close to the grizzly that if her foreleg hadn’t been inside the Jeep, she could have clawed his face.

  Looking from Jack to Miguel, the grizzly backed out of the Jeep. Immediately Miguel began to run, stopping every few yards to turn toward the bear and wave his arms, goading her on.

  Ashley was on her feet now, clutching the seat back as she watched through the windows. “What’s he doing?” she squealed, and Jack answered, “Saving our lives.” Never in his life had he felt so scared or so helpless.

  And there was Miguel, risking his own neck to save Jack, who had betrayed him.

  “Miguel, Miguel, Miguel.” Ashley repeated it like a prayer as the boy ran away from the lumbering grizzly. “He’s heading toward the pump!”

  “Yes! The pump!” Jack raised his right fist in excitement because right away he could picture what Miguel was planning.

  Miguel reached the pump just seconds before the bear did. He pulled up the sheet metal cover on the compartment housing the pipes, dived inside, and pulled the lid down on top of him.

  Ashley collapsed against Jack, sobbing, “He made it.”

  Not wanting to frighten her, Jack didn’t answer. Miguel was safe, but only for the moment. How long would it take before the bear managed to lift the lid with her long, lethal claws? Bears were smart and could use those claws almost like fingers. For now the grizzly just prowled around the lid, snuffling, growling, head down, the massive muscles of her shoulders hunched.

  And then came the rumble of a truck’s engine. Doors opened. Jack’s heart sank. Were the poachers coming back?

  If they were, they could grab the cubs, still tied up in the netting, and get away with them before the mother grizzly figured out that she should go after the real bad guys and forget about Jack and Ashley and Miguel, who’d only been trying to help. At first Jack couldn’t see what was happening because of the trees, but then he heard a sound he could no way have expected: barking.

  It all happened so fast! Before he knew it, his mother was running toward him. Beyond her were three women. Each woman held a black-and-white dog on a leash, and each dog was barking furiously at the female grizzly. The woman in the lead fired a shotgun at the bear as she shouted, “Go away, bear! Get out of here, bear! Get out of here!”

  Olivia, looking frantic, had reached the Jeep and wrenched at the door, reaching through the broken window to release the lock. In an instant she pulled out her children, crying, “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  “We’re fine,” Ashley cried, “but Mom, that woman is shooting the bear!”

  “That’s Carrie Hunt and she knows what she’s doing. She’s firing rubber bullets and firecracker shell rounds. They won’t hurt the bear.”

  The grizzly, forgetting Miguel, stood up to face the three dogs and their unceasing barrage of barks. The loud noise of exploding firecrackers blasted Jack’s ears as he yelled, “Mom, we gotta get her cubs. They’re tied up back there. Where are Dad’s wire cutters?”

  “You’ve got her cubs? No wonder she’s—” Olivia pointed to the tailgate. “The cutters—they’re inside the box with the starter cables.”

  Ashley wailed, “I don’t want Jack to go out there, Mom. It’s too dangerous!”

  “I’ll be with him. You stay here. The bear doesn’t want to hurt any of us—she just wants her cubs.” When Ashley still looked frightened, Olivia added, “See the other two women with Carrie? One’s a handler named Angela, and there’s Ali, the ranger, with the third dog. All three of them will stay between us and the bear, and the dogs will keep barking. Look—they’re already getting the bear to move back into the trees.”

  Loping, the grizzly had turned toward the thickest stand of Douglas fir. As she ran into the shelter of the woods she made all kinds of worried sounds—barks, grunts, roars, all of them combining with the steadily accelerating barking of the dogs, the shouts of the women dog handlers, and the explosion of firecracker shells.

  Cutters in hand, Jack raced down the path to reach the cubs. He cut through the cord-wrapped wires of the net that held them while his mother pulled the cubs free of the netting and gently set them onto their feet. Freed at last, they stood up, gingerly trying out their legs, terrified by the presence of so many people plus the wildly barking dogs, not knowing whether they should risk a dash to reach their mother.

  Hearing her babies squealing and bawling, the agitated female grizzly came out of the trees once again and started toward them, but Carrie let loose another barrage of rubber bullets. Bending forward toward her lead dog, she spoke to it just loudly enough for Jack to hear, saying, “Cassie, this is going to be a hard one. She thinks we’re going to hurt her babies. We need to let her know that if she stays back, we won’t hurt her or the cubs either.”

  Cassie, the lead dog, doubled her barking, while Angela and Ali encouraged their dogs to do the same, shouting, “Bark at the bear! Bark at the bear!”

  When the mother grizzly once again retreated into the trees, Carrie instructed, “OK. Ali, Angela, pull the dogs back now so the cubs can go to their mother. Olivia, have your children back up behind us. We need to stay together so we don’t look like a threat. Let’s clear a path and keep real quiet.”

  The cubs, stumbling, took a few hesitant steps in the direction of their mother and then took off, their back legs tucked under them as they scooted toward her. When they got close, the female grizzly rushed to them, sniffing each one thoroughly to discover whether they’d been harmed. Maybe it was knowing that the cubs were safe, but the rage seemed to seep out of her. She was wary but no longer interested in Jack or Ashley or anyone else. Woofing, she hurried her cubs into the trees. One behind the other, they followed their mother until all three bears were hidden by the foliage.

  “They’re gone! Thank heavens!” With the bears out of sight, Olivia took a deep breath and said in a trembling voice, “Now can someone please tell me what’s been going on here? I mean everything! Starting from the beginning.”

  Ashley was about to answer, but Jack shook his head and said, “Wait.” Taking his mother’s hand, he said, “Explanations later. Come on, Ashley. There’s something we have to show Mom.” With Ashley on one side of Olivia and Jack on the other, they led their mother toward the pump.

  “All clear!” Jack yelled as they approached it. “Es bueno, dude! You can come out.”

  By only an inch, the sheet metal lid moved upward. After a wait that seemed minutes long but probably was just a few seconds, the lid rose another inch. Then, slowly, like the top of a coffin in an old vampire movie, the metal lid squeaked open a little at a time, until it was high enough to reveal Miguel jammed inside the concrete compartment, his slight body twisted between the pipes. With a final thrust, Miguel flipped the lid all the way open until it banged on the ground on the other side.

  Laughing, Jack grabbed Miguel’s hand and pulled him to his feet. Ashley was laughing, too—at the astonishment on Olivia’s face. “Mom,” she said, “this is Miguel. He’s from Mexico. Say hello to our mother, Miguel.”

  “Buenos días, Señora,” Miguel said, and gave a little bow.

  Fifteen minutes later, after the most basic explanations had been made, Olivia kept hugging Jack and Ashley, saying, “I never should have left you two alone here.” And then she’d hug them again and look them in the eyes and ask, “Are you sure you’re alright?”

  “We’re OK, Mom,” Jack kept telling her, but Ashley just nestled into Olivia’s hugs.

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nbsp; Carrie, the leader of the bear dog team, said to the kids, “Your mother asked me to drive her back here so she could show you the dogs, but I never expected you were going to get a demonstration.”

  “That bear—” Ashley began. “Mom, I was so scared!”

  “I’m sure you were, poor baby,” Olivia answered, hugging Ashley again.

  Angela told them, “The way the grizzly was acting makes me think those men used an old, outdated drug when they darted her. Years back, bears got darted with something called Sernylan.”

  “Yeah, you might have heard of it,” Ali added.

  “When it’s sold by street dealers, it’s called angel dust. It put the bears to sleep fast, all right, but the park people quit using it because it’s no longer manufactured legally.”

  Carrie, kneeling next to the panting dogs as she rubbed their necks affectionately, looked up to explain, “Some bears, when they started to come out of that drug Sernylan, would fixate on movement and charge at anything that was moving anywhere near them. I imagine that’s what was going on with this grizzly.” She tilted her head back as the dogs licked her chin, then added, “And even in her drugged state, that poor mamma bear kept hearing her cubs bawling. No wonder she reacted the way she did, charging you kids.”

  Ashley shuddered in Olivia’s arms before she said, “But Mom, everything that happened—that wasn’t the bear’s fault. Terry and Max lured her with a dead deer for bait, and then they shot her with drugs. So she shouldn’t be destroyed. That would be so wrong.”

  “Don’t worry, she won’t be destroyed,” Carrie assured Ashley. “When a mother’s defending her cubs, the park doesn’t punish her. In fact, that grizzly was very good to us. Even though she was afraid for her babies, she stood back when we confronted her. Most bears really don’t want trouble, and they’ll do the right thing if you just give them the chance.”

  As Carrie moved away, Miguel took her place, sitting on the ground to pet the dogs, who seemed to tolerate the petting rather than encourage it. So many words were flying around while Jack and Ashley and the women discussed what had happened, Miguel must have given up trying to understand. When Carrie and the handlers gave each dog a treat of beef jerky and told them, “Good job on the bear,” Miguel shyly held out his hand. For a minute Jack thought Miguel was asking for some jerky so he could eat it himself, but when Carrie handed him a piece, he fed it to the lead dog, Cassie, who licked Miguel’s salty fingers.

  On the long drive to Glacier, Olivia had talked a lot about the Wind River Bear Institute. Carrie Hunt—small, blond, wiry and energetic—had devised a whole new way to handle problem bears. With pepper spray, rubber bullets, and the constant, continuous barking of her specially trained Karelian bear dogs, she aimed to teach bears to stay away from humans and from occupied places, like cabins. Sometimes a few encounters between a bear and the dogs was all it took. If the bear got the message—Do not approach people or their things—its life could be saved.

  “After the mamma bear left with her babies,” Ali said now, “I phoned park headquarters. They told me they’d radio every law-enforcement ranger in a 20-mile radius of Quartz Creek and send them here. The rangers ought to begin arriving soon. Oh, they said to tell you kids that you gave a good description of that van. Good work, guys.”

  Jack growled, “I hope the rangers get here before the poachers do. I’d just love to watch those guys get busted.”

  “If the poachers come back at all,” Olivia added. “What I’d like to find out is what they intended to do with the cubs. And if they’ve taken other cubs before this. If they have, that might solve the mystery of all those missing second-year cubs.”

  Sounding startlingly out of place in that wooded setting, Ali’s cell phone rang. She flipped it open and switched it on, then listened for a long while before she said, “Wow! OK. I’ll tell them.” Closing the phone, she announced, “The state police think they’ve spotted the van. They didn’t stop it because it looks like it’s on its way back to Quartz Creek. Approximate time of arrival is 20 minutes!”

  “That’s a ‘wow’ all right,” Jack agreed.

  “There’s more. Several law-enforcement rangers are near us now, but they’re going to park their vehicles a distance away so the poachers won’t see them. Carrie, you’re supposed to move your truck a ways down the road, and you and Angela stay inside it with the dogs to keep them quiet.”

  Just then two of the law-enforcement rangers arrived, their guns strapped to their belts. After a few quick words, they instructed, “As soon as we get word the van’s getting close, I want all of you people to disappear. It’s possible these men are armed. We don’t know what we’re in for. The rangers will take cover in the trees. Ma’am,” he said to Olivia, “is that your camping trailer back there at that site way down the loop?”

  When Olivia nodded, he said, “I guess it’s far enough away, and it’s hidden behind the trees, so it ought to be safe. I want you to go there right now, and I want you and those kids to stay inside.”

  “We don’t want those poachers grabbing one of you to create a hostage situation,” the second ranger added.

  Frowning, the first ranger complained, “Hey, Roger, you didn’t need to tell them that part.”

  “Thought they ought to know. It’ll make them more careful,” Roger answered, checking his gun to see that it was ready.

  A chill went through Jack. Hadn’t they had enough scary stuff for one day? Now it looked like they’d be witness to an ambush! Miguel must be clueless about what was going to happen; Jack ought to try to explain.

  But Miguel was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Ashley.

  He found both of them huddled on the dirt under the camper trailer. “He thinks they’re immigration officers, and they’ve come to get him,” Ashley whispered to Jack when she saw his bent head appear at ground level. “I’m trying to tell him that they’re just rangers, and they won’t arrest him.”

  “It’s OK,” Jack assured Miguel. “Remember the promise? Seattle. Promise.” Jack made an X on his chest with his finger. Did kids in Mexico use the same sign for “cross my heart”?

  Staring first at Ashley, then at Jack with those big, dark eyes, Miguel nodded and crawled out from underneath the trailer.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Tension mounted as more rangers arrived on foot, listening to dispatches on two-way radios, conferring among themselves. Standing just outside the Landons’ camping trailer, Jack watched the rangers, impressed that they acted so professionally—not scared or nervous, like he was. Finally one of them said, “Just got the word that the delivery van is less than two miles away. On this road that means about 15 more minutes. Everyone take cover, and don’t come out until I tell you it’s safe.”

  “Get inside the trailer,” Olivia said to the kids. “On the floor. Now!”

  “But I want to see what’s going on! Can I use the binoculars and watch from behind the door?” Jack asked. “The door’s metal, too. I’ll watch just until they drive up, OK, Mom?”

  “Except we don’t know where the binoculars are,” Ashley quickly added. “Do you know where Dad left them, Mom?”

  “In the drawer under our bed. But I don’t know if this is a good idea. It’s not safe.”

  “From way back here? We can hardly even see the Quartz Creek entrance through all those trees. Come on, Mom,” Ashley begged, “I want to see what the rangers are doing, too! Please?”

  Their mother hesitated. “Maybe we can lower the top part of the door, but only by an inch or two. If you see that van, then I want you down on that floor flat. Understood?”

  Jack nodded. Grabbing Miguel’s arm, he steered him inside the trailer, where the air was hot, the walls were made of easily penetrated canvas, and the slightly opened top section of the door provided only the narrowest view of the campground. After scrounging around in a drawer, Olivia pressed a pair of binoculars into Jack’s hand. “Be careful,” she said. “And this is only till the van comes.”

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sp; “Hey, what about me?” Ashley complained.

  “We’ll share,” Jack told her quickly. “Just give me a second, Ashley. Then we’ll trade.”

  The binoculars pressed into his eye sockets as he peered through the two-inch space above the sliding art of the metal door. At first he couldn’t detect a single Smokey Bear uniform, because they blended perfectly with the underbrush, but when he moved his head a little he spotted a ranger in the distance with his back against a tree. “OK,” Jack muttered to himself, “I found you guys. Now, where’s the entrance?”

  The loop their camper was parked on meandered south before joining the straight part of the lane, which jutted west. If he looked diagonally through the trees, Jack could barely make out a post and a bit of chain at the entrance.

  “My turn, Jack,” Ashley declared, crowding next to him.

  Sighing, Jack passed the binoculars. Moments later, Ashley passed them back. As the minutes crawled by, they switched places and possession, as if the binoculars were a pendulum. Miguel sat quietly next to Olivia, who was perched on her bed, nervously tapping her foot, waiting. It seemed to take forever before they heard the engine and then the sound of tires spitting stones on the rough road. Jack was lucky enough to have the binoculars in his hands when the van approached. “They’re here,” he said quietly.

  “Down. Now. Everyone,” Olivia ordered. As Ashley, Miguel, and Olivia dropped to the trailer floor, Jack strained for one last look. The rangers were so motionless he could barely see them. Terry and Max would never suspect an ambush.

  “Heads up, rangers,” Jack whispered.

  “Jack, get down,” his mother ordered.

  “Just one more second!”

  The engine idled as one door slammed. Max must be getting out to unlock the chain. “Don’t lock it up again,” Terry yelled. “I don’t want to mess with it on the way out.”