This time they finished it together, “Yellowstone will help you cope.”
Glenn and J.D. returned north by the Dunraven Pass. Both felt renewed, as if the river had taken their cares down that gorgeous canyon and into places unknown. J.D. kicked off her boots, to put her feet on the dash, but found her comfort crimped by the maps, papers, and random items she could only call ranger brick-a-brac. She moved a handful and, on the top, found a copy of that morning's Billings Reporter with the headline: YELLOWSTONE'S `CHIEF' CONCERN and a kicker asking: `Should Merrill Resign?' She read several sentences into the first paragraph before Glenn interrupted.
“Is ouster even a word?”
“Not a good one,” J.D. said tossing the rag aside. “Who's Howard Lark anyway?”
“You remember, that big mouth that chased us through the hall at Mammoth the other morning.”
“Oh, him.”
“Yeah, him. My own personal devil, it seems.”
“Well, if you ask me,” JD said, “he's trying to make a name for himself. Don't let him get to you.”
“He's not. What bothers me is, as far as the poaching is concerned, the pretentious cretin seems to know what he's talking about.”
*
The Roosevelt Lodge was behind them and Mammoth not far ahead. But neither Glenn nor J.D. were quite ready to jump back into the fray. The road offered one last chance to disappear for a few minutes and together they decided to take it. Glenn pulled off the road at Apparition Lake.
They climbed from the Suburban, easing their doors shut until they clicked. It would have been sacrilegious to announce their presence just then. The soft orange glow of sunrise brought out surreal colors in everything it washed. The human world slept while the natural world never rested. Were it within his power, it would always be sunrise wherever Glenn stood.
The Yellowstone River passed below him running nearly even with the state line at the spot. He stared north over the river at the rising slopes in Montana, bathed in the golden touch of the sun, while he stood in Wyoming where the dark shadow of the ridges to the south and east shaded him from that same warmth. Nature always seemed to keep things in balance. Good and evil, life and death, even warmth and cold. We have so little control over most of it, Glenn thought, and that's the way it should be. It works the way it is.
Glenn breathed deeply of the mountain air and then turned toward the object of his interest. The cool of the morning created wisps of light fog over the surface of Apparition Lake. Glenn understood the scientific principle behind morning fog over water in the high country but that explanation meant little now. The rising mists were a mystical part of the atmosphere and he preferred to think of it as mountain magic. He'd seen what he came for at the Canyon, still Glenn was drawn to Apparition Lake. There really was something different about that place.
As much as his logical policeman's mind told him that Two Ravens' theory was over the edge, there was something about it that troubled Glenn. Hocus-pocus didn't cut it in his world. Everything was supposed to be black and white; gray areas meant trouble.
Without purpose but feeling that same draw, Glenn and J.D. walked the shoreline chilled by the breeze, mesmerized by the rolling mists, and more than amazed at how the lake level had risen in so short a time. The chief couldn't remember when the lake was so deep. Summer grasses grew thick around the edges of the water and, submerged, in the depths as well. The strangeness they'd felt at the close of their first visit came back tenfold. Neither of them would have been surprised if it were to vanish right before their eyes. The phantom lake; Apparition Lake.
Behind them, distantly, the radio squawked. It stabbed the silence like a knife and startled both Glenn and J.D. They shared nervous laughs. “I left my portable in the truck,” he said. “Are you okay if I…”
“Of course. Don't be silly.”
He started away. “I'll be right back.”
J.D. watched him go. She turned back to the misty lake and drew her jacket tightly about her.
*
Glenn pulled the mic through the driver's side window and took the radio call beside his vehicle. “Dispatch, one-oh-one, did you have traffic?”
“Ten-four, one-oh-one. Another elk carcass was found in the Canyon area. Do you have any special instructions?”
Immediately angered but needing to concentrate, Glenn failed to notice a fog curling through the trees. “Get hold of Franklin,” the chief said. “He's heading the poaching investigation.” The first white wisps thickened to gray rolling clouds that filtered the sunlight and threw the area into gloom. “Find out where he's got the chopper flying right now. Have them rerouted. Tell Franklin I want him to work grids on the Canyon. And keep me apprised.” Dispatch acknowledged the order.
As Glenn hung the mic up, he suddenly noticed the dark. More, he felt a sudden chill as if Old Man Winter had arrived early. The hair stood on his arms and neck and he rubbed the goose flesh. With the cold and gloom came something else, something he'd never felt in all his thirty-one years; an unseen presence. The rising darkness and descending fog crowded in on him. He turned to the trees, straining to see through the gray, searching, for something real, something he could put his hands on. Suddenly the presence was upon him.
It came, literally, out of nowhere and was lurching from the fogbound trees before him, not even appearing to touch the ground; an enormous grizzly. Glenn's mind raced, rejecting what he was seeing as real. It couldn't be. Yet on the monster came, moving at a terrifying speed, its eyes aglow in the sudden dark. It released a roar like a thousand screaming demons from the pits of Hell. Glenn's ticket was punched. He saw the face of death.
But the chief ranger was not afraid. He was startled, absolutely, even stunned, but most of his surprise came from realizing that he was not afraid. A single thought repeated itself in his mind, over and over again, the thought he'd had at sunrise, the same thought underscored at Inspiration Point: There is a balance to all things. It works the way it is.
The bear was almost upon him when, as suddenly, it ceased its charge and stopped. The creature rose up on its hind legs, towering over him, and stared down at Glenn. His prey? Time, like the marauding bruin, stood still. Even the sounds of the forest came to a halt as if there, on the shores of Apparition Lake, a vacuum had formed around him and the animal. The monster's burnt sienna coat glowed hot, while the silver-tipped hairs blended with the shroud of mist swirling around them.
Death took leave. Glenn felt it go.
For reasons he did not know, and couldn't fathom, as certain as he was that the bear was there, Glenn was suddenly just as confident he was not going to die. The threat remained, the animal as deadly but, for now at least, he knew it would do him no harm. Glenn looked up in awe at the massive creature, waiting. Then, unspoken but burning in his brain, he heard a voice, fragile with age yet ringing with authority. “Prepare your Death Song, white warrior,” it said. “The time is near.”
In that instant, the bear was gone. It did not flee. It did not walk regally away having proved itself the king of the beasts. It hadn't even dropped back down onto all fours. The animal simply stretched out its mighty paws, reared back its head as if praying to the heavens and then, taking the fog and darkness with it, vanished into thin air.
Worried by his long absence, J.D. returned to the Suburban a few minutes later. She found Glenn just standing there, clearly shaken by something that had happened but refusing to elaborate. She saw something at the ranger's feet, gasped in disbelief, and bent to retrieve it.
J.D. lifted the object into the now brilliant sunlight; the feather of a golden eagle.
Chapter 17
Glenn sat, staring out the window at the passing reservation, outwardly silent but with thoughts screaming in his head. It was insane. What he was doing was absolutely insane. Two Ravens was at the wheel, driving toward… what? The chief couldn't believe they were on their way to see a shaman. Worst of all, he'd requested the meeting himself. The bulging packet of tobacco i
n the inside breast pocket of his jacket was a reminder of just how crazy the whole business had become.
“It is customary to bring a gift,” Two Ravens had told him. “Tobacco would be appropriate.”
Glenn bit his lip. We're going to see a holy man, he thought. We're going to visit a kook. We're off to see the wizard. His black and white mind screamed, What are you doing? Turn around. Go home. He would have voiced those thoughts to Johnny Two Ravens had he not been completely out of sensible options. But he was and he knew it. He was also out of time. Two Ravens had just brought his pickup to a stop in front of the shaman's house.
Had it been kept up; mended, tended, or even just painted the house of the Shoshone shaman would have looked like a cottage from a child's storybook. It had not and it did not.
The house was small, with a second floor that could only have featured a single bedroom. A door occupied the center-front of the ground level atop three crooked wooden steps with no landing. Two windows, one on each side of the door, looked out over a faded picket fence that separated the brown yard from the brown road; weary eyes and a smile missing teeth on the house's sad face.
A little dog, its species generations lost to mutt-hood, yipped at the end of a rope tied to the sagging gate. A second dog, half husky, half school bus, lay like a sack of potatoes across the top step. The big one had no leash. There seemed no need; you couldn't have lifted its tongue with a corn shovel.
“Hello.”
The voice, though friendly and gentle, startled Glenn by the simple fact it seemed to come from nowhere. Two Ravens was rarely startled by anything and after the incident at Heart Lake probably wouldn't be again. Scanning the yard Glenn located the source of the greeting.
Half a dozen cars filled the small enclosure, some on blocks, some buried hubcap deep in overgrown weeds. Several were in varying stages of repair. None looked operable. One of them, a rusted Skylark with a spidered windshield, had two occupants. The shadowy figure behind the steering wheel waved in their direction.
Two Ravens waved back, as if sitting in a junked car were a perfectly normal activity for a resident of Crowheart, but he did not move toward the vehicle. Several uncomfortable minutes passed while the two in the car continued their conversation. Eventually they exited the wreck. The passenger was a young Indian in his late teens. He pocketed both hands, passed Two Ravens and Glenn with a silent nod, and left the yard. The other was the shaman, known to the locals as Bill Pope.
Glenn wasn't sure what he had expected but it wasn't the stooped old man who approached them. He wore faded jeans with the right pant leg tucked into his worn cowboy boot and the left riding over, a western-cut red shirt with a slip rope tie, and a straw cowboy hat with a black eagle feather pointing to the rear. He walked slowly not, it seemed, because of any physical infirmary but because it was his way. The copper skin on his sallow face had been sun baked for over sixty years yet, even from a distance, his blue eyes danced with life and energy.
He shook hands with Two Ravens genuinely pleased to see him. “Hello, Bill,” the outfitter said.
“Johnny. I haven't seen you for a while.” The old man turned to Glenn. “Who are you?” While blunt, his childlike question was friendly and asked out of what seemed true curiosity.
“Glenn Merrill,” the ranger said extending his hand. “National Park Service.”
The Indian shook his hand, appearing more pleased with the ranger's name than his affiliation.
“Glenn,” Two Ravens said, “this is Snow on the Mountains.”
The silent moment that followed seemed awkward to Glenn. If the Indians noticed his discomfort, they didn't show it. Snow on the Mountains, in fact, looked to be deeply contemplating something and, had he not still been standing there, you'd have sworn he'd gone somewhere else. Finally, the shaman said, “I think we can go inside and talk.”
He led them to the house and swung wide the frame of the screen door. It struck Glenn as funny because the screen was missing entirely and they could easily have walked right through the door. Snow on the Mountains led the parade over the sleeping dog as if it weren't there. The animal did not stir in their passing.
The living room was an extension of the house's worn exterior, with two old chairs and a sagging couch making up the furniture. A portable TV sat on the floor in a corner unplugged and seemingly unused. With the exception of three bright paintings of Native Americans, hung about the faded walls, the room was colored in shades of worn drab. Through an open door, in the small room beyond, Glenn saw a stuffed bald eagle hanging from a pedestal on the wall. Its petrified wings flew outstretched and its talons seemed poised to strike. Beneath the creature stood a glass case, its shelves were dotted with intricate charms, amulets, trinkets and feathers. Glenn longed for a closer look but thought better of the idea. He took the offered seat on the couch instead while Two Ravens and the shaman deposited themselves in the chairs.
“Oh,” Glenn said, remembering. He pulled the packet of tobacco from his duty jacket and handed it to the shaman. “I brought you some tobacco.”
A surprising look of delight registered on the old Indian's face. “Let me get my pipe.” He jumped up like a six-year-old heading for the playground. He was back a moment later, sending great bursts of gray smoke to the ceiling and nodding between puffs as if tasting a fine wine.
Glenn was unsure how to begin. How, after all, did one start a conversation about murder, evil spirits, Indian curses, and the like? He didn't even know if he had the capacity to believe any of it, no matter what he had seen.
Two Ravens began in a different direction. “The Bureau of Land Management is brush beating the sage south of Lander.”
“It is their way,” Snow on the Mountains said. “They chain cut the forest lands, knocking down all the pinyon trees, to starve the Indian. Then they revitalize the sage to save the mule deer.”
Glenn didn't know but he was about to learn an important lesson regarding Native Americans in general and Indian holy men in particular. They took their time getting wherever they were going. The three had a long visit, their conversation drifting between politics, business, and pleasure but always returning to Indians and Indian affairs. Several times, Snow on the Mountains appeared to fall asleep. His head lolled and then he jerked up as if startled. He ended the movement by nodding to Glenn's right as if communicating with somebody on the empty cushion beside the ranger. Each time, he smiled and rejoined the discussion as if nothing at all had happened.
Snow on the Mountains seemed pleased about his talk with Two Ravens. He repacked his pipe and sat back in his chair as if sated by a Thanksgiving meal. “What is it you want of me?” he asked Glenn while relighting his pipe.
The ranger was taken aback by both the change in topic and, again, the abruptness of the question. The holy man seemed not to notice his hesitation. He simply waited enjoying his smoke.
“As you probably know,” Glenn said. “There have been some strange, terrible things happening in the park.”
“I read the papers,” Snow on the Mountains said noncommittally.
Glenn briefly recounted the bear attacks and explained how the incidents made no sense. Despite feeling ill at ease, he even described his own encounter at Apparition Lake, ending with an emphatic, “I know what I saw. The bear simply disappeared!” He did not mention the voice or the warning. There were some things you just didn't tell people. Outside of his nature, the put-upon ranger finished his story with a plea. “Can you help me understand this? Why the killings? And why wasn't I killed?”
There was further talk between the three but Snow on the Mountains seemed reluctant to say anything of substance. Save for an occasional sigh or grunt of acknowledgment, he said nothing at all. He continued to smoke and listen until the conversation between Glenn and Two Ravens finally died and the silence that seemed to make up most of Snow on the Mountains' world surrounded them.
From that silence, the shaman finally spoke. “Go outside, will you, while I talk with
Johnny.”
Glenn was surprised by the request but stood immediately to go. He stopped on his way out. “The Park Service,” he said, “will, of course, pay you for your services.”
“You can sit in one of my cars, if you like. It's a good place to think.”
Glenn stepped over the dog and into Snow on the Mountains' yard. The animal was awake this time and looked at him without interest. It had one blue and one brown eye both of which, after the cursory examination, it again closed. The afternoon had only gotten hotter and, despite the wide-open space, the air was close. The dirt road was empty. The quiet was all encompassing. Glenn looked to the cars in the yard, shrugged, and headed for Bill Pope's Skylark.
“Your friend seems to be a man of character and honesty,” Snow on the Mountains told Two Ravens.
“I believe he is.”
“What is your reason for wanting me to help him?”
“I think the things happening in Yellowstone point to the Indian as much as the white men. Mother Earth is angry. The whites call it coincidence and happenstance. My friend does not believe or understand but is willing to listen that it might be more. If we have offended Mother Earth we should make amends.”
Snow on the Mountains puffed slowly on his pipe. “Tell your friend I will take three days to consider it. Then I will let you know if I will help.”
Two Ravens nodded. That, he knew, was all Snow on the Mountains would say on the matter. He stood to go but was stopped by a final word from the shaman.
“Tell him he must withdraw his offer of money.”
*
Glenn waved to Two Ravens from the passenger's seat of the Skylark. The Indian chuckled and crossed the yard to meet his friend as he stepped from the car.
Apparition Lake Page 17