Apparition Lake

by Daniel D. Lamoreux

  Bear #264 lay prone on the floor of the trap, conscious but in a stupor from the sedative he'd been given twenty-five minutes before. J.D. unhinged the door on the short end of the box and Glenn sidled in alongside to help pull the animal free. The going was tough as the bear outweighed them both by at least a hundred pounds. “You're supposed to pull the bear,” J.D. snapped. “Not ride the thing.”

  Glenn grinned. “Too much to handle, little lady?”

  J.D. flushed red. She reached in, got hold of the bear's front leg, then grunted like a free-lift contestant at the Olympics while she pulled. With Glenn on the opposite leg, the bear slid forward and plopped out on the ground. With her fists on her hips in triumph, J.D. locked her jaw and stared Glenn down. The chief ranger laughed enjoying a triumph of his own. Her expression softened, turned reluctantly up at the corners and, finally, broke into laughter too.

  “Shall we finish?” Glenn asked.

  There were no parades, speeches, or keys to the city, but Bear #264 was home. Belly down in the high grass with his head resting sideways atop his front legs, the paralyzed bruin watched his captors with lethargic eyes. Glenn glanced into the sad brown orbs, sorry for the discomfort the bear felt, but knowing that here he would have a new lease on life, far from uninformed and inconsiderate people.

  Glenn also realized time was against them. The bear was showing signs of recovery and the drug would soon wear off. J.D. hurried to wrap the radio collar around the animal's neck.

  Dragging the bear across the smooth surface of the trap had been one thing but supporting the dead weight of its head, protecting the creature from injury in the process, and securing a bulky radio collar all at once was more than one small wildlife biologist could reasonably accomplish. Short arms didn't help. “Can I get a hand here?”

  Glenn turned the 12-gauge, offering the butt to Princep. “Hold this a minute.”

  “I don't want that,” the green leader said, refusing the weapon.

  “Would you rather Ms. Davies and I get mauled?” Glenn asked.

  Princep hated guns. Their invention had been nothing more or less than an earth-shattering symbol of man's barbaric tendency toward, and love of, violence. Making no effort to disguise his displeasure, he took the shotgun. He held it at arms-length, as if handling a poisonous snake.

  Though too groggy to lift it, the bear rolled its head to the side. It fell awkwardly off his legs and onto the soggy grass. “We'd better hurry with this,” Glenn said. “He won't be out much longer.”

  Princep wiped the sweat from his forehead nearly dropping the shotgun in the process. He hadn't realized what bear observation really meant. Without realizing it, he pulled the gun into his chest, gripped the stock as if it were trying to escape, and fingered the trigger.

  J.D. continued to fight the collar. In an effort to help, the chief straddled the bear next to the biologist trying to reach underneath. “Glenn,” J.D. griped, “get on the other side and lift.”

  “Relax. I'll slip it around his head. You grab the pliers.”

  J.D. released the collar and hurried to the field kit. Glenn jumped to the spot she'd vacated. Bear #264 jerked his head up and around, drawing his shoulders off the ground. Regaining some muscle control, the animal released a halfhearted growl and nipped at the ranger. “Whoa!” Glenn cried as he jerked away. Startled, Princep swung the shotgun down to his hip and inadvertently pulled the trigger. Glenn screamed, “No!” The environmentalist simply screamed. The 12-gauge issued a terrifying report. All three sounds merged into one unintelligible echo that bounced down through the valley.

  Bear #264's forehead exploded in a crimson arc as the slug disappeared into his skull just to the left of his right eye. His body twitched violently, then lay still, surrounded by a deafening silence.

  Chapter 7

  The drive from Mammoth down to the little town of Crowheart took hours but Glenn considered it time well spent, the cheapest therapy west of the Mississippi. From the moment his Suburban cleared the south entrance of the park, Glenn felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders unwinding. It had been a nasty week and he needed a few days away from the grind to put things back into perspective. The chief loved his job, and Yellowstone, but the last several days had just been too much. He needed someone to talk with, someone who actually knew how to listen. He needed Johnny Two Ravens.

  Glenn passed through the small community of Dubois, heading steadily southeast and marveling at how the country changed so quickly in the western states. The lodgepole forests he spent so much time in gave way to unending miles of open country covered with sagebrush.

  He'd heard many tourists call it ugly country. and Glenn could understand that point of view coming from the uninitiated. At first glance, it did seem to be little more than interminable flat barrenness speckled with dry bushes looking more dead than alive. A closer look, however, revealed something magic and wonderful about the land. The country spread before him like a hand-woven Native American blanket; more complicated and beautiful than the casual observer could know. The land was not flat. It was, to those who took the time to really see it, an unending vista of softly rolling hills fractured and framed by jagged washes carved maze-like into the sandstone by the torrential rains of fall and the run-off of melting snow in spring from the surrounding mountain peaks. Throughout the seeming desolation thrived herds of mule deer; feeding on grasses, forbs and sagebrush to replenish body fat lost during the hard winter on the wind-blown side of the rugged, distant rock buttes. On those distant peaks lived bighorn sheep and elk. There was not a square inch of the wilderness that Mother Nature didn't fill with productive life. Little was as it appeared in the west.

  As he crossed the boundary into the Wind River Indian Reservation, that final thought frustrated the chief ranger. There was something about the recent events in Yellowstone; they were not as they appeared. Glenn felt like a tourist seeing only the surface. He was missing something. But what?

  “Relax,” he said aloud. “You're on a mini-vacation.” He'd been talking to himself too much of late. He laughed, then yelled, “Help me, Johnny Two Ravens!”

  Two Ravens was the closest thing to a best friend a man in the wild could have. He was honest, too much for his own good, and had a sense of humor as sharp as a Bowie knife. Not to mention he drank his whiskey straight. Glenn and Two Ravens had polished off many a black and white labeled bottle over the years. They made quite a team; fishing, fighting, carousing.

  Two Ravens was a full-blooded Shoshone; the son of a tribal sub-chief named Oscar Eagle Feather. Glenn remembered the night Two Ravens had enlightened him to that fact. He had confessed, in his own way, that he didn't know Indians still had chiefs “and all that jazz.”

  Two Ravens had simply stared back at him, wearing his trademark emotionless expression. “It isn't jazz,” he said. “And I could write a book about what you don't know.” Glenn was having too much fun at the time to pursue the issue. He'd let the discussion drop with every intention of picking it up again one day.

  Two Ravens owned an outdoors shop and outfitting business. If you met his healthy price, he'd take you anywhere in the greater Yellowstone area or Wyoming. His regular clients knew they would find game and fish aplenty, they'd have a good time and Two Ravens would get them back in one piece. His reputation was his best advertisement and he made a fair living at what he did.

  Glenn respected the man for more than his business sense. Two Ravens had a good ear, which Glenn troubled sparingly. He didn't spout nonsense and he wouldn't listen to it. His friend was just the medicine Glenn needed. He'd had all the nonsense one man could stand.

  The beauty of the reservation countryside was upstaged and tarnished as Glenn entered Crowheart. The snowcapped peaks of the Wind River Mountains towered in the background to the west, making midgets of men. The sky was just as stunningly blue and free of clouds, the air just as sparkling clean. Yet from the moment he passed the bent, bullet hole ridden government sign declaring he'd entered Crowh
eart, the only descriptive word that came to the chief ranger's mind was bleak.

  The highway Glenn traveled was maintained for the sole purpose of transporting tourists to and from the great parks on the opposite side of the Continental Divide. The highway, therefore, was as beautiful as asphalt could be. Were it not for tourists, however, that same roadway would have been neglected long ago.

  Neglect was the rule of the day once you exited that two-lane strip of yellow brick road. It was the only asphalt in the community, a dividing line that nearly split the reservation down the middle, and at once proved unequivocally that maintaining the place was always somebody else's problem. It had apparently never been decided just who, exactly, that somebody might be.

  The Lunkers Galore Trout Farm was the first place of business encountered as Glenn motored into the reservation town. Serviced by a dirt lane intersecting the pavement, the farm consisted of a barn on the left that served as the fish rearing facility for the trout pond and a small single story house nearly as old as the town. The residence was a tiny version of the barn and its first coat of paint had probably been its last. The pond was a two-acre puddle set back in the sagebrush with a half dozen weathered picnic tables dotting its sparse shoreline.

  Tommy Two Fists was the owner and sole operator of Lunkers Galore, and a more cantankerous old geezer Glenn had never met. He would argue about the color of the sky. There must have been something to Indian mysticism that Two Fists' parents were able to pick a name for him that wore like a tailored suit. That or he must have been a bilious grouch screaming at all of creation as he slid out of the birth canal.

  Two Fists made his living charging white tourists an exorbitant fee to rent a pole and catch trout from his pond. There was little challenge to the affair, particularly since Two Fists fed the fish only enough to keep them sufficiently active to bite the baited hooks offered by the saps he graciously called clients. Idiot folks from Chicago and New York were more interested in a guaranteed catch, complete with a victory photograph, than they were of seeking out a stream somewhere in the backcountry and actually going to the trouble of doing it the right way. That was fine with Two Fists. It provided him with day old bread and a bottle of his favorite-colored liquid. Two Fists was nowhere in sight as the ranger passed. It was just as well.

  Ramshackle housing in stereo made up the remainder of the first block of Washakie Street, which was the only entrance to the town. The street was named after the Shoshone's greatest chief; and Crowheart after one of Washakie's greatest victories.

  It was near that spot in 1859 the Shoshone and Crow Indians, bitter enemies, met in a decisive battle. Big Robber, the chief of the Crow, had taunted Washakie, calling him a “squaw” and “an old woman.” He proclaimed the Shoshone chief too cowardly to fight. The ensuing battle lasted three days before culminating in a duel between the chiefs. Washakie killed Big Robber, cut out his heart and ate a portion of it. What remained of the organ, he impaled upon his lance and carried during their victory War Dance. Thus was born Crowheart.

  Teetering picket fences seemed to bow as Glenn passed. That imagined graciousness, coupled with the serenading of mutt dogs from several of the yards, was the only outward greeting he would receive from the residents of the sleepy settlement. At that, he was never sure whether the dogs were giving him a welcome or telling him to get out. The message from the people on the street was subtler. White people, in general, were a necessary evil to the Indian population. Few were liked, none were trusted, but their tourist dollars bought food and clothes. Shopkeepers offered them fake smiles, plastic beads, and rubber tomahawks in exchange for their money. Indians on the street simply stared as they passed wondering to themselves what the whites wanted now. As a whole, the community would have preferred to put a turn lane at the town's entrance, with an arrow pointing into a basket, and a sign reading: Put your money here and get out! Unfortunately, it didn't work that way and they knew it.

  Every time Glenn entered the town, he was greeted by hollow stares. At times like that he wished he were any other color because of what his `white' government had done to the once proud Native Americans. Glenn did not, however, feel sorry for them. He didn't feel sorry for anyone.

  The American continent had hundreds of varied Indian Tribes stretching to its four corners. Crowheart had two, Shoshone and Arapaho. In truth, however, Glenn had come to realize that now there were really only two kinds of Indians regardless of tribal affiliation: the traditional and the BIA.

  By far, the majority were BIA; that is, they worked and lived under the governing rule of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. Their ancestors had, for the most part, come to the reservation over a century before under treaty with the white Union government. Realizing all things change, they'd chosen peace instead of war and believed the promises made to them. They'd signed away their freedom, their history, and their way of life to get along. They'd signed away their spirits.

  Hundreds of broken promises later, all on the part of the government, the BIA's who were once a proud people were now a clan of burned-out drunks living in squalor and hopelessness. They had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody to care about their plight, least of all themselves. It was easier to give the Bureau total control of their lives – and their destiny. Glenn felt no remorse for a people who had surrendered their very souls.

  The traditional Indians were another matter entirely. As far as the government was concerned they were red devils. They were uncooperative, stubborn, single-minded ingrates who didn't know a good thing when they held it in their hands. They were given everything and appreciated nothing. The government's stand on traditional Indians was simple; they were troublemakers. Glenn liked them.

  Two Ravens was a traditional Indian and Glenn was proud to call him a friend.

  The Crowheart business district stood much like that of any other small town but overshadowed by the shabbiness of the worn and weary reservation. The town's one small liquor store and lounge sat opposite the post office. White painted wooden letters were nailed above its single picture window, which faced the street and announced to the world its unimaginative name, The Crowheart Bar.

  The heavy front door stood wide open, as was customary. The solitary patron inside was enjoying the comfort of air-conditioning in true reservation style. Over the front of the building hung a dilapidated shake-shingle roof, supported by ageless burled pine timbers. Between them hung a bright orange banner, a harbinger of the season, reading WELCOME HUNTERS. If the truth were known, anybody with a spare quarter was more than welcome at The Crowheart Bar.

  A transplanted Nez Perce Indian named Smohalla owned the place. With the trade slightly off of late he was also behind the bar whenever the doors were open. Not unfriendly, Smohalla was nonetheless quiet and seemed to frown deeper with each drink he sold. The community had lost more than its share of bright, young Indians thanks to alcoholism and suicide. Glenn often wondered if Smohalla seemed so sad because he felt responsible.

  Down the street and opposite stood the Tomahawk Motel. Gray and vacant, it resembled the monoliths of rock found just outside of town in the sagebrush. Mrs. Boinaiv, the owner, had lost her husband seven years before. He'd been shot in a bar brawl and the old woman had run the place on her own since. She teetered slowly back and forth in an old rocking chair on the wide front porch, as colorless and empty as her motel. Mrs. Boinaiv wore a glazed expression, lost in a distant place and a better time, and seemed not to notice Glenn's passing.

  Joe White inflated a child's rear bicycle tire with the rusted air compressor on the south side of his filling station. He waved to Glenn as the ranger passed, smiling as if the world could not have been a better place. Joe was a jolly fellow, by reservation standards, and only the good Lord knew why. Other than tourists, few cars needed filling. Joe's wife had gone east years before and had never returned. The details he kept to himself. His only son, Ed, was a first class hellion on a first name basis with law enforcement agencies throughout th
e area.

  Faded signs in the dirty windows advertised oil and transmission fluid. A vintage gas pump, with a glass globe top, sat at the side of the building. It would have been worth a fortune, had the globe not been shattered years before. A scratched soda machine designed to dispense bottles, and still sporting a price of fifteen cents on its front, guarded the space between the yawning front door and the open overhead. An Out of Order sign hung over its coin slot, and had for months.

  Joe finished with the little girl's bike. She tried to offer him money but Joe simply waved her off with a smile. The repair stall was empty, so happy-go-lucky Joe wandered over to a lawn chair in the shade alongside the building and sat down with a magazine.

  An F&E Grocery store stood watch over the far end of the main drag. Within, BIA's traded food stamps for overpriced staples; without, two old codgers told lies on a wooden sidewalk bench. They paused as Glenn passed, eying him from behind weathered copper faces, showing neither friendliness nor malice but simply bland stares. Framed in his rear view mirror they took up where they'd left off.

  Across from the grocery sat the brightest, newest building in town, the Wind River Taxidermy Studio. Its red brick seemed on fire in comparison to the sad nothingness of the rest of the block. A stuffed black bear towered at the entrance, greeting visitors with its frozen glare. Antler racks hung from the upper corners of the front window and a lifeless beaver, its tail aloft like a cricket bat, grinned over a chiseled log beneath.

  Glenn turned off Washakie Street, just past the Taxidermist's, following the dirt side street a stone's throw to Two Ravens' place. He pulled to a stop and stepped out in a cloud of dust.