I have a sudden urge to kick him in the shins, or someplace else. But that’s how a child would act. I clench my teeth and hold my tongue.
“What I want to show you is up here a ways.” He starts out again, his little day pack slung over one shoulder. I consider picking up a dirt clod and throwing it at the back of his head. He suddenly stops and looks back at me. “Come on! This is important.”
“All right!” I follow after him. I still wish I could find a dirt clog, or maybe a nice rock.
A minute later he stops. I step up next to him and he points down. “See that?”
I look down at what he’s pointing to. It takes me a few seconds before I realize what it is. “This is important? A pile of animal shit?”
“First of all, wild animal shit is called scat. With domesticated animals like horses and cows we generally call it dung, or manure.”
“A pile of animal scat, then?”
“Right. If you’re going to spend any time in these mountains, you’d better learn to recognize it because that’s your first clue as to what kind of animals are around you.”
“What kind is this? Elk?”
“No.” He squats down and I squat down next to him. “Elk looks like a pile of large elongated marbles.”
“Yeah! I remember seeing that back where I saw the elk.”
“Very good. Deer are small round marbles. This, my little Texas gal, is a grizzly.”
I stand up so fast I nearly get dizzy. “Grizzly bear?” I look around. “You’re joking, right? I thought they were all in Glacier Park.”
He points off in a direction. “Glacier National Park is right over there, not twenty miles, and it’s not like there’s a big fence to keep them in. This entire mountain range from Canada down to Highway 200 is their territory. One bear can cover a lot of territory if he has a mind to. Seeing fresh grizzly signs around here certainly ain’t rare.”
I’m still looking around. My finger is on the switch that flips the camera on. “Which way did he go?”
Matt stands up. “No! We aren’t going to go chasing after him. That’s the stupidest thing to do. Besides, this scat is a day or two old so he could be clean up to Canada, or back into Glacier. Right now, though, we need to go back to the house and report it.”
“Report it?”
“Yes. Any grizzly sighting has to be reported.”
“Why? So someone can come out and shoot it?”
“Good God no. A grizzly alert is put out so that precautions can be taken, and people can be more guarded of their kids and domestic animals. Some forest service people may come out and take a sample of the scat, probably track him if they can, see if they can get a fur sample from a tree he scratched on.”
“Why?”
“It’s their way of keeping track of them. With that they have the DNA and thus the actual ID of the bear.”
“Oh! That’s cool.”
“Yeah. High tech in the back country.”
He slips his pack off his shoulder, unzips a pocket, and pulls out what looks like an oversized cell phone. “You can get a reception out here?”
“This isn’t a cell phone. It’s a two-way radio and GPS locator.” He punches some buttons and then stands up. “In a minute or so I’ll have coordinates of this location saved. When I do get to a phone I can tell them exactly—within three meters—where this scat is.”
“That’s cool.” I step up close to him to look at it. My arm brushes against his and I feel a tingle. I stifle a giggle and ask, “What is it doing?” That’s a stupid question. I know exactly what it’s doing. I did a report on the Global Positioning System as a junior.
“It’s acquiring the satellites.” He goes on to explain the satellite grid, and then how his GPS can use any number of satellites to triangulate the location, including elevation. I could tell him about the first satellite launched more than a decade before either of us was born, and the evolution of the system over the years from a primarily military use to now world-wide civilian and military use. I could tell him a whole lot more, but for some reason I decide to act dumb.
“That’s amazing.” I watch as the coordinates lock in.
“Okay. I’ve got it.” He pulls his pack up onto his shoulder again. “Let’s go.” He starts down the trail.
“I don’t want to go back to the house.”
He stops and looks me. “I need to report this and you can’t be out here alone.”
“Why not? Because of the grizzly bear?”
“Yes and no. Unlike humans, grizzlies don’t kill just for the fun of it. They kill for two reasons. Food and self defense, or defense of their cubs. We are not on the grizzly’s preferred menu, despite what you might hear in the sensationalized media. Chances are this one doesn’t have cubs. If she did then she probably wouldn’t wander this far from her territory. This is probably a male doing some exploring.
“Basically, it’s not good to walk upon a grizzly when you’re alone. If he feels at all threatened, he has no problem with picking a fight. If there are two people, he’s a little less inclined unless he really feels threatened. If there are three or more people, then he’ll generally turn and run away. Like I said before, if it’s a female and there are cubs, all rules go out the window.”
“So, since I am not a tasty treat, and since this is probably a male, what should I be worried about? If I see him I’ll keep my distance. I’m sure people up here hike alone all the time.”
“As far as the grizzly, if you know the rules, your chances improve considerably. Your chances will never be perfect. You can do all the right things, but if a grizzly decides he wants to sharpen his claws on you, he will.”
“It’s a risk. I know that.”
“But you don’t know the rules.”
“What more is there to know?”
“I assume you’re carrying food with you.”
“Yeah. A little.”
“What?”
“Some power bars and jerky.”
“Have you eaten any?”
“Yeah. I had a power bar.”
“What did you do with the wrapper?”
“I kept it. If you pack it in, pack it out. I know that.”
“Where is it?”
“In my pocket! What difference does it make?”
“Rule one concerning food, don’t ever place food or something that once contained food anywhere on you that you can’t get rid of fast. Seal it in plastic and put it in your pack.”
“Why?”
“Grizzlies have some of the most acute noses. The attractive smell of people food is probably the biggest reason for bear attacks, outside of the defense of their cubs.”
I think of the other power bars and the jerky and wonder if it is all sealed well enough.
“By keeping anything that would attract a grizzly in your backpack instead of your pockets, all you’d have to do is drop the pack to the ground and back away.”
“Let him have my backpack!” I’m incredulous.
“If he wants what’s in it, he’s going to get it. Would you rather he dig through it while it’s on your back? Or how about let him go after that wrapper that’s in your pocket.”
He makes his point. I pull the wrapper from my pocket. As I start to slip off my pack, he stops me. He reaches into his own pack and pulls out a small plastic garbage bag. I drop my trash in it and he ties it up and puts it back in his pack.
“Thank you,” I say. “Now I don’t have to go back.”
He rolls his eyes and blows out a lung-full of air. “All right. Let me see if Dad has his radio up. We’re definitely in range.” He puts the GPS/radio up to his face and says, “Dad! This is Matt.” He waits a half minute, says, “He may not have his turned on,” and then tries the call again. When there is no response he says, “He’s probably already headed back home. He had some contractor coming or something. He’s probably pissed at me.”
“Or worried about you if he doesn’t know where you went.”
“Yeah
, but I’m not a kid anymore.”
His inflection upon the word “I’m” tells me again that he thinks I’m a kid. My jaw tightens. “You go on and do what you need to do.” I keep my voice as friendly as possible. “I never asked you to follow me and I’m not inclined to want your company anyway.” I turn and start up the trail, past the bear poop. I then hear his radio say, “Matt.”
“Dad,” Matt says.
“Where the hell are you?”
“A mile or so north of Sam’s, on the game trail. Reba is with me.”
“Hold on,” his dad says. We wait an uncomfortable minute. I watch a tiny bird flit about the branches of a tree. I realize I haven’t seen much in the way of birds since I left Sam’s place. I also realize something else.
“Matt,” his radio squawks.
I’ve not been able to read anything on Matt. Things just rolled off of Sam, but there’s been nothing at all from this good looking guy.
“Yeah,” he says into the radio.
“Zach’s been looking all over for his daughter. What the hell is she doing up there?”
Matt looks at me. “You’ll have to ask her yourself. She told me she wanted to go hiking . . . alone.”
“That’s stupid. Did you tell her that?”
“Certainly did. Why don’t you head on back, Dad? I’ll stay with her.”
“Sounds okay to me, but Zach isn’t looking too excited about it.”
I walk to him and snatch the radio. “Which button do I push?” He shows me and then I say into it, “Tell Dad not to worry about me.”
There is only silence until Dad voice comes on. “Becky! Get back here!”
“I’m just hiking, Dad.”
“Not alone, you’re not! I’ve got to go with Brian to get my car. When I come back you and I can hike together. We need to talk.”
“I’m not going home, Dad.”
“That’s fine, but we have to talk; at least figure out what we’re going to tell your mother.”
Oh!
“Come back to the house and wait for me. I’ll be about an hour.”
“I’ll be there. I want to explore a little more.”
“I’d rather you come straight back, but if you don’t, stay with Matt.”
“Well, he’s going to have be able to keep up with me.”
“Whatever you do, don’t get separated.”
“We won’t.” I hand the radio back to Matt.
“Let me talk to my dad,” Matt says.
Matt’s dad’s voice comes back. “Yeah?”
“One other thing. I’ve got a grizzly scat here. It’s a day or two old. Probably should call it in. Could you do that? I’m sending the coordinates now.”
Matt does something with the GPS and a few seconds later his dad says, “Got it. I’ll make the call when I get back to the house. Don’t stay out there too long. I’ll pick you up here this evening.”
“Okay.” He hooks the radio to his belt. “Looks like you’ve got me for the duration.”
“Wonderful!” I’m not sure if I’m being facetious, or if I’m truly excited. There’s something about him that I really like, something that creates a giddiness inside me. I’m seventeen. I know what it means. Half of me wants to fight it; the other half wants to go with it, but doesn’t want him to know it. I’m not going to puppy dog after him. He’s going to have to keep up with me.
I head up the game trail at a pace that I’m sure will have him breathing hard in short order.
Chapter 20
Zach
We’re barreling down the road; a huge gray curtain of dust is screening out everything behind us. I hold on and try to block my mind, and my eye, from the sheer drop offs—however slight they might be—at the centrifugal edge of each hairpin turn. That’s when they are on his side. When they’re on my side I simply turn into a petrified statue with a death grip on the suicide handles. He didn’t go this fast on the way up, and I don’t remember these drop-offs. Brian drives and grins. The road straightens out. I relax a little. I feel like I just finished fifteen minutes on the mechanical bull down at the J-Bar-T. I adjust my seatbelt.
The part of me worried about Becky is far from relaxed, though. I had sat on the patio for a good fifteen minutes before Aileen returned saying that she couldn’t find her. By that time everyone was gone except for me and Brian. Where was Matt?
“Maybe she and Matt went off together somewhere,” I suggested. They had both looked at me like I had implied they were having sex together. Maybe that was my own fear rising to the surface. The fear is rising high in me right now as Brian’s truck bounces sideways across a portion of washboard road, and I’m no longer sure exactly what I’m afraid of. It’s all knotting together in the pit of my stomach. At first it was that she was being spiteful in the face of her new-found knowledge about her father and her hostess by having sex with the first guy she ran into. I should have been relieved to discover that they were only hiking together, and that she was not hiking alone, except that I could only think about the long-toothed predators who roam these mountains. And then Brian and Matt started talking about a grizzly bear. I didn’t want to leave, and nearly took off up the trail after them. Right now I truly wish I had stayed, not because I’m afraid Brian’s going to flip his truck and land us upside down in a ditch—a very real fear no doubt—but because I’m afraid that I will not be able to find my way back. But I will. I have to because the tightness in my chest says that something terrible will happen, and as always, I’m to be a witness. That means Brain is not going to kill me or put me in the hospital.
He hits another washboard and the truck saddles sideways onto the blacktop. A few more of my muscles relax. “Sam told me a little about your group,” I say.
“Like what?”
“The Blackfeet legend about the returning spirit who’ll take back the Blackfeet land.”
“That’s the legend all right. Until recently only the old tribal leaders believed it. I never believed there was a spirit strong enough that could undo the damage our technology has done to the wildlife in this territory. Until the arrival of Smilodon we were barely content enough to hold on to what’s left, to keep the current levels of bear, elk, moose, cougar, buffalo, what have you, where they are. I don’t have to tell you how many animals roamed this country just two hundred years ago. What’s left is being squeezed into a few National Parks. We come along and build our houses in their mountains with the idea that we want to live close to them, in harmony with them. Then when the bear or mountain lion do something we deem dangerous, like kill one of our livestock, or one of us, we hunt them down and execute them. The rest we allow sport hunters to take so they can hang them over their fireplaces and brag to their friends.”
Since leaving the gravel our speed has doubled. Whatever relaxing I had done has been replaced once more by my white knuckles. I’m working at convincing myself I’m glad for the speed as it means I’ll get back to Aileen’s sooner. I force activity from my vocal cords. “How has Smilodon changed things? What does he have to do with the legend?”
“She didn’t tell you the entire legend?”
“I don’t know. She said that they believe that the spirit is here now. I asked if this spirit was Smilodon and she said no. That was all.”
Brian laughs and looks at me. I wish he’d keep his eyes on the road. “It is said that when the spirit returns she will bring with her a great cat with long knives for teeth.”
I take my attention off of his driving for a few seconds. “Then you knew that the night when you and I escaped from them?”
“Oh hell no. I was told those stories by my grandfather when I was six or seven years old. Although I took them serious—child serious I call it—they were eventually filed away with other such stories told by my tribal elders, and along with the white man’s stories of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I didn’t remember it until my grandfather died in the fall of that year, about six months after Sans Sanssabre burned to the ground. All of his famil
y was gathered around a bonfire memorial, sharing memories of him. I didn’t know what I was going to say, so when it came around to me I started mumbling something about being six years old and sitting on his lap listening to stories of the cat with long knives.” Brian looks over at me again. “Have you ever had an epiphany, Zach?”
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
“I had the granddad of epiphanies that night. October 28th. Once I said the words, ‘cat with long knives,’ I became dumb struck. Everyone thought I was distraught over my grandfather’s death. Actually, my mind was in an epiphany.”
“And then you started this group long before Ai . . . Sam showed up?”
“I tried talking to a few people. Without proof, I was getting nowhere. I thought your book would help, but it didn’t. You weren’t taken very seriously in the Blackfeet Confederacies. The Pikuni probably the least. I even went over to Browning to talk to some of the elders. Basically they asked me what I was smoking in my pipe.”
I laugh and then ask who the Pikuni are.
“They’re the Montana Blackfeet. The Siksika and the Kainah, who prefer to be called Blackfoot, are in Canada. I talked to a few of them too. They knew of the legend, but they didn’t take much stock in my claims of the sabre-toothed cat’s return. Then several hunters disappeared. Their half-eaten bodies were eventually found, sparking a fear that there was a huge man-killing mountain lion running around.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I waited. I knew they were around and sooner or later some lucky hunter would bag one. I was also still the sheriff so I couldn’t go about publicly raising an alarm bell over the return of a prehistoric animal no one but I had seen. But as time went by even the crazies disappeared, finding something else to chase after. I even began to doubt myself. There was no more sign of them, or at least no more than the Big Foot sightings. No more hunters disappeared. A couple head of cattle were lost to a predator, but again it was believed we had a huge mountain lion in the area, or a wolf. I considered the possibility that the winters were too harsh for them and they froze to death.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 50