Yellowstone

by H. V. Elkin

  The men positioned themselves behind Kate and Emma. Cutler patted their flanks for them to move forward, and the mules proceeded with the men behind them. As they got closer, a big bull looked up from his grazing, the icicles in his beard tinkling. He snorted once; then the herd began to move on, blazing the trail the men would follow.

  “We were lucky,” Burgess said.

  Cutler nodded. “Sometimes you are.”

  They reached the Lower Geyser Basin while it was still light and checked in at the station there. A soldier was on duty.

  “Soldier,” Cutler asked, “do you think you could head off the patrol before it gets back?”

  “Yeah, I could. But what for?”

  “Got to ask your men to rough it this one night and stay away from the station until we signal you with three shots from my six-gun.”

  “I don’t see any military men in your party,” the soldier said. “Why should I be taking orders from any of you?”

  Burgess said, “You know me, don’t you, Sam?”

  “’Course I do, Felix.”

  “Then you know I got me a new glorification, I suppose.”

  “Hell, yes. Everybody knows you’re a marshal now.”

  “Well, that’s the authority we got. And this man here has been hired to get Big Spook. He’s here workin’ for the Captain. Figure that’ll do it?”

  “Guess so, Felix. But I still don’t see . . .”

  “We believe the bear’s comin’ here,” Cutler said. “Now, he’s a smart one, and I don’t think he’ll come near if all the men are here. That’s why I’m askin’ you to camp out until we get a chance to get him.”

  “You don’t even want us stationed around with rifles? If we all shot at the same time, one of us’d be bound to get him.”

  “Sure, you’re all crack shots. But those carbines of yours are clumsy. A grizzly can keep comin’ when it’s hit in the right places. How’d you think it’d do in a hail of shots from too far away?”

  The soldier shook his head. “Well, okay. But the boys won’t like being outdoors on the kind of night we’ve been having, not when they’ve been out on patrol all day and are thinking about coming back to a nice warm fire.”

  “Well,” Cutler said, avoiding looking at Rutherford, “sorry we’re not doin’ anything for your popularity, but that just ain’t the most important thing to think about right now. Just tell ’em it’s Captain’s orders.”

  The soldier grinned. “I’ll tell them, but it’s me they’re going to want to kill.”

  “Take whatever you can to make ’em comfortable. If mornin’ comes and you don’t hear the signal, let ’em go back on patrol, and you go with ‘em. We’ll take charge here.”

  By the time the soldier was leaving, loaded down with blankets and provisions, Cutler was already working with his traps.

  “The hard thing about this,” he told Bill, “is a trap has a good chance of not workin’ with a bear like this one. Best we can hope for is to stop him long enough to get a good shot without gettin’ killed ourselves. That might not sound fair to you, and it don’t to me. But this grizzly ain’t no knight in shinin’ armor either.”

  “Hell,” Bill said. “You don’t have to tell me that. We got to get him any way we can.”

  “Go see what kind of people food you can find in that shack, like a good chunk of meat. Rub your hands all over it so it smells like it belongs to people.”

  When Bill got back with some bacon, Cutler had an Aldrich trap ready. It was a leather noose, with a line leading over a hook and attached to a spring. Leading from the spring toward the noose was a trigger, a tongue of steel. The line over the hook led to a tree to which it was tied.

  “See how she works?” Cutler asked.

  “Think so. Bear steps through the loop onto the trigger. That released the spring. The hook pops up and tightens the noose around the bear’s foot. Only one thing I don’t get.”

  “Suppose you’re wonderin’ how we get the bear to step in the noose.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s get some brush.”

  They gathered twigs and branches from around the tree, and Cutler arranged them around the trap. Then he made openings in the obstacle, each one a bear step from the other, with the final step being the noose. He put the meat just beyond the noose.

  “You still wonderin’?” he asked Bill.

  “Guess I’m not. You already told me about a grizzly bein’ tender footed and lookin’ for the easiest trail. Well, you only left him one easy trail to the meat.”

  “Now we’ll get us that Newhouse we brought along.”

  “Hey, Bill!” It was Rutherford’s voice.

  They looked toward a geyser opening, and Rutherford was standing by it. When he saw he had their attention, he threw some white stuff into the opening, then ran away. In a moment, the geyser spouted steam sixty feet into the air, almost obscuring the setting sun. It spouted for fifteen minutes while Rutherford came running up to them.

  “What do you think of that?” he asked.

  Cutler shook his head, but not in amazement.

  “It was just soap,” Rutherford said. “You can’t get ’em started with soap sometimes. You want to try?”

  “We’re busy,” Cutler said, going to one of the packs they had left by the shack door. Burgess was standing and watching.

  “That’s a part of him. Country boy’s gotta have his fun when he can, that’s all. What good’s a sour disposition gonna do him when he’s dead? What do you want me to do?”

  “Stoke up the fire in there. Then get out.”

  “We spendin’ the night outdoors, John?”

  “Yes, we are, because I’m puttin’ something in front of this door you wouldn’t want to step on.”

  Cutler handled the Newhouse number six with gloves. “I’m doin’ it this way,” he told Bill, “so you’ll know the right way. This bear’s not likely to shy away from human smells, but others will. The trap’s been boiled in potash and left outside to rust. Then I boiled it in water with walnut hulls until it got black. You never want to give your own scent to a trap or leave the scent of the last kill.”

  The Newhouse was a set of iron teeth over a trigger plate. After Burgess got out of the cabin, Cutler showed Bill how to set it. They used sticks to lower its two springs, one on either side of the jaws. They each put a boot on one of the sets of teeth to lower them into place. When the springs were locked, the jaws were opened flat against the ground surrounding the trigger plate.

  “If a bear gets caught in one of these,” Cutler said, “you better get to him before he chews off his own foot to get away. The only thing worse than a rogue grizzly is a wounded rogue grizzly.”

  They covered both traps with snow. Then they all took rifles and set up for the vigil. Cutler and Bill sat with Red behind some brush several yards from the Aldrich. Rutherford and Burgess were behind the shack.

  “You sleep now,” Cutler said. “I’ll watch. You can spell me in about four hours.”

  It would have been the right time for a grizzly named Big Spook to appear. As the moon rose, the area took on a haunted look. Steam shooting up from geysers nearby made them look like ghosts celebrating.

  Big Spook did not appear that night.

  The next morning when they were both awake, Cutler and Bill huddled in blankets and chewed on hardtack. “And there’s a nice hunk of bacon right out there,” Bill said. “Almost worth gettin’ trapped to get it.”

  “Don’t talk,” Cutler whispered.

  Rutherford appeared around the side of the shack. Cutler waved him back.

  On the ground near the geyser Rutherford had set off the day before, were strange ice shapes; they looked like jewels in the sunlight. Moss could be seen near the geyser as the geyser spouted, its boiling water freezing at the top of its arc and falling down in ice crystals.

  It was at this time, when the place had been transformed into an enchanted land, that Big Spook appeared. Cutler touched Bill’
s shoulder, pointing to where a grizzly lumbered toward them through the snow. He put his hand on Red to still the dog’s growling.

  As the bear got closer, they could see it was exactly as Captain Anderson had described: badger colored and about nine feet long, weighing more than nine-hundred pounds. It stopped fifty yards from the station, raised up on his hind feet, and put his nose into the air. Then he came down and started directly for the bacon and the Aldrich trap.

  A sound of thunder came suddenly from the south. So intent were Cutler and Bill on the bear and so intent was the bear on the bacon, none of them paid the sound much attention. The bear got to the edge of the brush obstacle course and was about to set its foot in the first opening when it stopped and drew back to the south. Both the bear and Cutler knew the sound was not of thunder. It was the buffalo herd stampeding toward them.

  The bear rose on its hind legs and let out a great throaty growl at the intruders who could not yet be seen but who would be upon him in five minutes. Fear was sending the buffalo’s speading in this direction, blinding them to anything that might be in their path. In such a state, they were capable of running over the edge of a cliff to their own destruction. Even encountering a grizzly would not turn them back.

  “We better chance it,” Cutler said and raised his Krag, taking aim at the bear’s skull.

  At that moment, the bear went back onto all fours and started toward the back of the shack.

  Aroused by the tumult, Burgess and Rutherford came around the edge of the shack and stood in the grizzly’s path. They did not know the bear was there. They did not expect to know of the bear’s presence until it stepped into the Newhouse trap by the shack door. Only that should have aroused them. They were totally unprepared. The bear leaped at Burgess just as Cutler was running toward them with Bill close behind.

  Rutherford stepped in front of Burgess, too close to get a shot, but raised his rifle butt at the bear’s jaws. The bear embraced Rutherford in a hug of death and snapped off the rifle butt with its teeth. As he did so, he turned and backed away, holding Rutherford in a viselike grip. Cutler could hear bones snapping, but he couldn’t get a bead on the bear without hitting Rutherford.

  “Shoot the bastard!” Rutherford screamed with most of the air he had left in him. “I’m just one person. Shoot!”

  Cutler drew his sheath knife while he ran toward them. “Red, come!”

  But the buffalo herd got there first. The dark, wooly death cloud rumbled by, throwing up a flurry of snow that obscured vision. None of the men knew if the others were being trampled. Cutler was lost in the whiteness and the noise. He could see nothing but white and heard nothing but the thunder. Then he heard the shack rip and crash and Rutherford screaming in anger. His voice seemed to come from everywhere.

  It was almost over as suddenly as it had begun. The thunder moved to the north now and diminished. The shack lay in ruins; the Newhouse trap had sprung when the house fell. The brush was trampled and scattered near the Aldrich. The tree that had held the trap was bent. Red rose from the snow, unhurt, and shook himself. Burgess stood wide-eyed, looking at Rutherford writhing on the snow, coloring its whiteness with the blood pouring from his mouth.

  Cutler knelt by Rutherford. The stage driver turned on his back and lay still but continued to breathe. He opened his eyes that had been scrunched shut from the pain and saw Cutler. The pain seemed to pass and he looked peaceful. He spoke in a voice made strange by what had happened inside his body.

  “Wouldn’t shoot, would you, John? Just this one worthless life between you and the bear, and you let it stop you.”

  Cutler did not tell him he had been about to shoot. He did not tell the man not to talk, either. It didn’t matter now. His life was almost gone. Let him use it as he wanted to.

  Rutherford made a ghastly grin. “Time for the savage to stand Sam. Time to pay the bill. No more gettin’ a heaver to go out rotten loggin’ in the park. Know what that means, Bill?”

  Bill shook his head, not wanting the man to waste his breath explaining. “Sure I do.”

  “He’s gonna be a good man, John, Bill is. Just don’t let him get so serious like you are all the time.” The grin faded. “Don’t let him get like me, either. Workin’ here in the Park, sometimes you get into a frame of mind, makin’ the rhino ... the money, I mean ... lookin’ for tips. Man gets into a frame of mind. One day you’re a young man carvin’ out a place for yourself in the wilderness. When you got it carved out, the dudes come, and you get civilized in the worst ways. Savage? Hell, it’s easy to turn into a person out to make a fast dollar in any way he can. In any way. Always worried about that after the tourists left and was alone with myself. Wonder if that Waters ever worries. Waters runs a steamboat on the lake over east.”

  “We met,” Cutler said.

  “He was a good man, too—’til he stole money from meat contracts. Wouldn’t trust him now farther’n I could throw him.”

  “You ain’t like that,” Cutler said. “The man who went for the bear ain’t like that.”

  “Get that damn bear, John. My life ain’t turned out to be worth a hell of a lot. Least you can do is help me make my death amount to something. You do that for me, John?”

  Cutler nodded. “We’ll do it.”

  “He’ll probably backtrack and head for Upper Geyser now. He makes a wide enough loop, and you might get there in time.” Rutherford closed his eyes, and they thought he was gone. But then he said, “Bill?”

  It was becoming harder to understand the dying man. Bill had to kneel down with his ear close to Rutherford’s mouth. “Yeah?”

  “Bill, take the soap.”

  Then his mouth erupted like a red geyser, and his head fell to the side. His breathing stopped.

  “That was the other part of him,” Burgess said. “Not many people knew that part.”

  Cutler looked grimly to the south. “Let’s get on to Upper Geyser,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  They backtracked the trail of the stampede, moving quickly over the snow on their skis. There were only three men now. Rutherford Klock’s body had been left at Lower Basin, with instructions to the soldiers. The body was to remain where it had been left in the snow, covered by rocks and brush to protect it from scavengers until its scent disappeared. On their return from their trek—those who would return—they would carry the frozen body back to the Fort.

  More geysers were passed along the way, thin steam rising from a frozen landscape. In one thermal pool, a coyote lay tenderly cooked.

  They passed the Grand Prismatic Springs, a one hundred and fifty degree, turquoise lake surrounded by a shore of algae in rust colors. It was near here, in Biscuit Basin, that they discovered what had started the buffalo stampede. Two buffalo bodies had been beheaded. Their blood was on the snow along tracks of man and packhorse. The poacher’s trail went off in a south-easterly direction.

  Burgess stopped. He had to make a decision now.

  The others stopped, too.

  Cutler said impatiently. “A man can only do one job at a time,” he said.

  Burgess shook his head. “Which one?”

  “Can’t tell you that, Felix. Decide what’s right, but do it fast, or we’ll have to do it for you.”

  Burgess looked from the buffalo corpses to the poacher’s trail. “Couldn’t have happened more’n three hours ago. I could catch him if I started now.”

  “Reckon you might.”

  “Then again, you and Bill might need me with you. That’s what I came for.”

  “I won’t hold you to that, Felix.”

  “No, but Rutherford would. You made him a promise, John, and I’m gonna be a part of your keepin’ it. Let’s go.”

  A mile later on, they knew they would not get to Upper Basin before the bear. The grizzly’s tracks came in ahead of their own from the northeast. Drops of blood in the snow.

  “The worst kind of rogue,” Bill said. “A wounded one.”

  Cutler nodded. “If it’s th
e one we’re after.”

  “Might be a mixed blessin’,” Burgess said.

  “Not for us.”

  “No, not for you. Not for me either while I’m with you. But if that bear’s hurt, I know Rutherford didn’t get a chance to do it. That means it might’ve been the poacher. If he had a run-in with the bear, chances are he didn’t get off scot free. The bear might’ve taken care of the problem I had back there and killed the man. If the man’s still alive, I’ll bet he’s slowed down some.”

  “If we come back from Upper Basin,” Cutler promised, “we’ll go with you after the poacher.”

  Bill looked at Cutler.

  “Maybe we won’t get out of here this winter,” Cutler told him. “But if Felix is gonna help us now, we owe it to him to help him later.”

  Burgess skied alongside Cutler. “Where we’re headed,” he said, “is a lot like where we been. It’ll be like meetin’ the bear at Lower Basin all over again, except for the bear bein’ wounded this time.”

  “Okay,” Cutler said, “I got it in my mind.”

  “Only special thing about Upper Basin is the geyser, the one they call Old Faithful. Supposed to spout like clockwork. Tourists believe every hour on the hour. But that ain’t true. It can vary as much as half an hour. Old Faithful’s about as faithful as Big Spook is a spook.”

  They saw the Upper Basin soldier station. As Burgess had said, it looked much like the one at Lower Basin, except that the door was open—torn off its hinges.

  Cutler stopped the mules a short distance away and took his Krag from Emma’s pack. “Now or never,” he said quietly. “Red, stay.”

  “You don’t want the dog with us?” Bill asked.

  “His job is to guard the mules this time. Bill, you take my Winchester and lie flat over there about twenty feet from the door. Felix, take the same position about thirty feet this side of Bill. If the bear’s inside, you can catch him in crossfire when he comes out. Aim for the head.”

  Bill skied to his position, took off his skis, and lay belly down in the snow with the rifle pointed at the door.