The Hunted (2 page)

N
ever in his life had Jack seen quite the shade of shimmering blue that filled Lake McDonald. As he stood with his family on the shore, his eyes swept across crystal clear water the color of turquoise, reflecting sky and clouds. The lake stretched in a nine-mile oval ringed by a forest of thick pine that erupted into gigantic glaciated mountains. Everything around it was heavy with color, from the jewel-like wildflowers that bloomed against the shore to the lavender, blue, and yellow stones that pebbled the ground. The sweet smell of pine filled his every breath. It was perfect.

“Those woods are thick,” Ashley murmured.

“I know,” Olivia agreed. “It's nothing short of paradise. Have you ever seen water so clear? It's as if you were looking through glass.”

“Can we swim in it?” Jack asked. After the long drive from Ulm Pishkun, his skin itched with perspiration, and his feet felt hot in their shoes. Ashley, he knew, was just as warm. The Jeep's air conditioner barely pushed out enough stale air to keep his parents cool in the front seat.

As they'd made their long descent through the mountains into Glacier National Park, Ashley's nose had pressed flat against the window to search the tightly knit pines for any signs of bears. Out loud she'd wondered how bears could stand the heat with such thick coats of fur, when she could hardly take it in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

Looking around now, Jack saw that although people clustered along the edge of Lake McDonald, not one of them was actually in the water. Fishermen cast off from land or farther out from canoes, their fishing lines catching the sun like long strands of spider web.

“I don't think you'd like to dive in there,” Steven told Jack, shaking his head. “This is glacial water. You'd have about three minutes before you turned as blue as the lake. Go ahead, put your hand in and check it out.”

Crouching low, Jack thrust his arm deep into water that felt as frigid as an ice chest. He pulled it out again quickly, shaking pearls of moisture off as he grinned and said, “So this is where frozen fish come from.”

“Very funny,” Steven chuckled. “Just make sure your sister doesn't fall in before we get back. We won't be long.”

“Daddy, I
won't
fall in the lake. I'm not some little kid. Besides, where are you going?” Ashley asked. “If it's to the gift shop, then I want to come, too. I want to get some bear bells.”

Olivia answered, “Honey, you don't need any bear bells.”

“But—”

“We're just going to the visitor center, right over there.” Olivia jerked her thumb at a low-slung log building a few hundred yards behind them. “I'm too grubby to go into park headquarters right now. I'll be fresher in the morning.” Their mother was dressed in denim shorts and a shirt that had wilted during the long drive. Strands of curly, dark hair escaped from her ponytail, which she shoved under her baseball cap while she spoke. Olivia was so small and trim, Jack thought she could pass for a college student. His father, all bones and angles, towered over Olivia. Steven's blond hair and blue eyes made a striking contrast to Olivia's darker coloring. The two of them were so different and yet, Jack realized, the same somehow. Ever since he could remember, it seemed as though his parents worked in tandem. They were a comfortable couple.

“But Mom, listen to me.” Ashley's voice was rising now. “If we're going to camp way out in the woods, then we should wear bear bells.”

“Don't worry about the bells, Ashley. They're not loud enough for the bears to hear.”

“What are bear bells?” Jack broke in.

“Jingle bells that you strap onto your wrists or ankles,” his mother answered. “They're supposed to warn a bear that you're coming through, but it's better to use your own voice and just call out every once in a while. Remember what I told you, bears won't bother us if we don't bother them.”

Olivia arched her back, stretching after the long hours of driving. “Anyway, we've got to grab a map before the center closes so we can nail down exactly where Quartz Creek is. Your father wants to photograph the unspoiled beauty of Glacier, which means,” she said, throwing a glance at Steven, “we have a long, bumpy ride ahead of us, through backwoods country.”

“Hey, at least I'm willing to ask for directions.” Steven grinned at her, then added, “How many guys do that?”

“Hardly any, which means you're this close”—she squeezed her thumb and pointer finger together—“to being perfect.”

“Wow, look at that—I almost made it,” Steven laughed. “OK, kids, we'll meet you back here at a quarter to. Don't wander off. We're going to have to really push to set up camp before dark, and I don't want to have to go looking for either one of you.”

“Gotcha, Dad.”

After they left, Ashley muttered to herself, “The book says bear bells work.” While she perched on a tree stump close to shore, looking gloomy, Jack chose a smooth, plum-colored stone and skimmed it against the lake's surface. The rock skipped five times, not bad for a first try.

A flatter, topaz-yellow stone grazed the lake, and he let out a holler. “Hey, Ashley, did you see that? Nine skips—that's a record for me. Come on and try. I'm telling you, the rocks here are perfect.”

“No thanks,” Ashley answered. With her hand shading her eyes, she peered intently at the west side of the lake. Jack stopped skimming stones long enough to ask, “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.”

The way she said it, Jack could tell it was not
nothing
. She was chewing on something in her mind. During the last hour of their drive to Glacier, every mile they'd traveled seemed to subdue her more, as if the mountains themselves were pressing down on her. That was unlike Ashley, who usually jabbered away like a magpie.

“If it's nothing, then why don't you come skip a couple of rocks?” he asked her.

“Because I'm thinking.”

“Thinking about what?”

Hesitating, she said, “If I tell you, do you promise not to say anything to Mom?” She looked at him, half scared, half defiant. When Jack nodded, she said, “I'm…I'm watching out for grizzly bears. You know how Mom wouldn't let me read that book
Night of the Grizzlies
because she said it was too intense? Well, I read it anyway.”

“Ashley—”

“I'm old enough. And I'm glad I did, 'cause even though Mom knows a lot, she doesn't know everything. You should put on bear bells because a grizzly can charge out of the woods and kill you fast as lightning. Those bears'll eat you!”

Jack crossed his arms as he studied his sister. He remembered the argument. Ashley had brought the book home from the library, and Olivia had immediately told her not to read it, explaining that she didn't want it to spook Ashley right before their trip. It was rare for their mother to say no to any book. This one was banned, Olivia said, only until they got back home to Jackson Hole. “Here, Ashley, try reading this instead,” she'd suggested. “It's a book of Native American legends from around the Glacier area. This won't give you nightmares.”

Reluctantly, Ashley had taken the folklore book and scanned the first page. She didn't answer when their mother asked, “Isn't that better than reading about those gruesome bear attacks?”

“So you're all freaked, just like Mom said you would be, right?” Jack asked Ashley now.

She nodded miserably. “I can't stop thinking about it. There's a few of them in the mountains around Jackson Hole, where we live, but there's lots more of them up here.
Hundreds
of
grizzlies
.” Her eyes squinted as she looked into the distance. “They could be right in those trees, watching us this very minute.”

Jack snorted. “Look, McDonald Inn is right next to us, and behind that is a bunch of cabins, and up the road are two stores and a restaurant plus the visitor center. Quit worrying. There are way too many people around here for a bear to show up.”

“You don't know anything about it,” Ashley snapped back.

“Well, I know that the attacks in that book happened a long time ago, before we were even born. There's nothing to worry about. Forget it.”

His sister's eyes flashed. “Just 'cause I'm younger than you doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about.” Ashley's lips tightened. Her chin rested on her bent knees, while her toes extended beyond her sandals and curled over the edge of the tree stump she was sitting on. Dark hair skimmed forward to almost hide her face, but even so, Jack could see how pale she looked.

He dropped the fistful of damp skipping stones he'd been holding; they clicked against other rocks on the ground like rain on a tin roof. Walking to where she sat, he said, “What's going on, Ashley?”

“Nobody ever listens to what I think. It's like I'm too little, or what I say's not important. Did you know a girl was in her sleeping bag close to Lake McDonald, and this grizzly went right into her camp and dragged her off and ate her? She was only 18 years old. And on the exact same night, a different girl got chewed up in
her
sleeping bag, except that was up in a place called Granite Park Chalet only ten miles away. She died, too.”

“That's sad, but so?”

“So maybe we
should
buy bear bells. Maybe Mom should stay out of the woods where the grizzlies are. Dad, too. Maybe it's too dangerous.”

“Mom knows what she's doing,” Jack countered. “She's a wildlife veterinarian.”

“People all taste the same to a grizzly.”

Jack wanted to laugh at that, but he pushed down his smile. “Look, this is the first trip we've had in a long time without some foster kid tagging along, and I want it to be good. We're going to camp and fish and hang out with the animals. Can you drop the bear stuff?”

“It's not just the bears,” Ashley told him, standing up. “It's that
nobody
listens to me.”

T
he road flowed over the mountains like a silver creek—here dividing homesteads, there cutting through wild pine and underbrush that crowded right to the edge of the asphalt until the road emptied into ranchland again. To Jack, it was strange to see so many private homes and cultivated fields at a national park, but his dad had told him the homesteads had been bought long before Glacier had been created as a park, so the families who were already there got to stay. Jack wished people hadn't marred the natural beauty, but then again, he'd jump at the chance to live in one of those log cabins that glowed with warm, yellow light in the midst of grassy meadows. He guessed he couldn't get too mad at the people who wanted to stay put.

“How much longer?” Ashley groaned.

Peering at the map, Olivia answered, “It looks like we're still about 15 miles away, and they told me the final six miles are going to be pretty rough. I wish that Dramamine worked on you better—you've always had to be different, haven't you?”

“Rougher than this? Great!” Ashley moaned louder, clutching her stomach.

Jack knew what his sister meant. With the trailer hitched to their car, it seemed every bump gave them whiplash. Ashley always got queasy from rolling motion.

If the road ahead was even worse, she was really in for it. He was about to ask his dad if there was another way to the campground when their car slowed at a small ranger station that was not much bigger than a shed. A thin, weathered woman in a ranger hat leaned out of an open window. “May I see your park pass?” she asked.

“This is Olivia Landon, and I'm her husband, Steven, and that's Ashley and Jack. We're here from Jackson Hole, Wyoming—”

“Oh, yes, we've been expecting Mrs.—I mean Doctor—Landon. Hi, kids, welcome to Glacier.”

Ashley gave a faint wave as Jack said, “Hi.”

The ranger's skin had tanned to a nut brown, which made her gray eyes look extra bright in her square face framed by blunt-cut gray hair. Her hands looked rough but strong, and the muscles of her forearms stood out in thick ropes. According to the tag on her uniform, her name was Jane Beck. “Weird thing about those missing baby grizz,” Jane said, leaning from the booth. “I've been watching for them but haven't seen a single second-summer cub in, oh, I don't know how long. I'm glad the officials brought you in to help figure it out, Dr. Landon.”

“Call me Olivia. Have you tracked any mother that still has her cubs?” Olivia leaned forward so that she could look the ranger in the eye.

Jane pushed her ranger hat back on her head. “I saw one in the area a while back with two cubs, but then all of a sudden the mom showed up alone. Early spring, I saw another sow with one cub. The mom had an odd coloration, something like a rugby stripe, so for fun I named her Polo and her little baby Marco. Anyway, I've seen her a couple of times since, but Marco's been missing. Then there's a ginger-colored mom with two babies, but I haven't seen them in ages. Hold on, just one minute.” Jane's head disappeared, then reappeared with a map and a key. “Figured I'd better get your stuff, since it's getting close to dark and you've got a camper to set up.”

Pointing to the road beyond, she said, “Up ahead, where the road makes a
T,
take a right. You'll be going through a burn area, then it'll green up again. Quartz Creek Campground'll be about ten miles south of here, on your left. The camp is officially closed until the first of July, which means the entrance is chained—you'll need to unlock it to get in. When you leave, just chain it up again.”

“No problem,” Steven told her, taking the key from her outstretched hand.

“One more thing. There's a ranger station farther south from where you'll be staying, maybe four or five miles past. Other than that, you'll be all alone.”

“Great—exactly what we want,” Steven nodded.

“Alone as in people, but not alone as in bears. Adult grizz are still in these parts, so be careful.” Holding up her hand, she ticked off the points on her fingers: “Don't leave food anywhere they can get at it. Keep your garbage locked inside your car at all times. Always walk in pairs, even when you're going to use the outhouse. Make noise when you hike. I'm sure you know all of this, but I'll feel better if I tell you one more time. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

“I'd like to interview you to find out more about what you've observed with those mamma bears and their cubs,” Olivia told her.

“Sure. I'll be here tomorrow if you need me.” She touched the brim of her hat and said, “I hope you can solve this mystery, Dr. Landon. For us, the grizzlies are like family.”

As their car bumped along the road, Jack watched the land change in the waning twilight, not gradually like a suburb changes into a city, but suddenly, like the sea to a shore. Gone were the cottonwood trees and the endless lodgepole pine; gone were the islands of wild grass that bent their stalks to the wind and the clusters of wildflowers that dotted the meadows as if they were buttons on a silk dress. In their stead were the remains of charred trees, lifeless and silent. It felt to Jack as though he were entering a cemetery. Blackened spikes reached into the air, some erect, some broken into crazy angles, others toppled one against the other like fallen tombstones. There was a hush in the car as they stared at the charred emptiness.

“What happened?” Ashley breathed.

“A lightning strike.”

“Why didn't the park people put it out?”

“You know, they used to put out every fire they could,” Olivia answered, “but the truth is, it's a lot better for the environment just to let it burn.”

“I don't get it,” Ashley protested. “Why is it OK to let trees get killed?”

Steven quickly glanced over his shoulder and told Ashley, “I know it seems bad, but letting the land take care of itself is the best way to preserve it in the end. It's better for the trees, the other plants, and especially the animals. Like the bears. I've learned a lot about them since your mom's been doing her research. Did you know that grizzly bears don't really like the woods? They need open spaces—meadows and rangeland.”

Shrugging, Ashley said, “So, what does that have to do with letting a fire turn the forest all ugly?”

“Everything,” Olivia answered, twisting around in her seat. “When the settlers came into Montana and took over the lowlands for farming and grazing, the grizzlies had to move. They fled to the mountains, and they've adapted to living here, but it's not their first choice. So the grizz tend to hang out in the open places in the forest. You've seen a lot of meadows up here, right?”

Jack nodded. Glacier's thick woods were like a sea of evergreen broken up by meadow islands. He'd seen small lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, lots of open grassland, then thickets of woods dotted by meadows again.

“OK,” Olivia went on, “follow me here. The fires clear out space, meadows spring up in that space, and the grasses bring the little animals and a place for the huckleberries, which, in turn, bring the bears. Do you see how it's all connected?”

“The circle of life,” Jack chimed in.

“Exactly,” Olivia nodded. “The circle of life, which we shouldn't mess with. When the parks used to put out fires, the forests got heavy with dead trees, and the meadows were getting all crowded out. It took a while for folks to figure it out, so now when there's a fire, it's allowed to burn. And pretty soon Mother Nature will put it all back together again.”

“Hey—do you think the missing baby grizzlies might have been killed in the fire that was here?” Jack asked, thinking that nothing much could survive the devastation of a searing forest fire. “Maybe that's what happened to them.”

“No, believe it or not, forest fires aren't anything like what you've seen in the movie
Bambi
, where all the animals are running for dear life. Most of the animals leave ahead of the flames, and a few burrow underground and aren't even scorched, unless it's a really hot burn. That's not why the baby grizz are disappearing.”

A shadow crossed Olivia's face, and Jack noticed smudges underneath her eyes. She was worried about the missing cubs, he knew. She'd spent countless hours researching the information the park had given her. All the way to Glacier she'd reviewed the material, studying bear-sighting records and weather patterns and bear-mortality numbers and plant-growth statistics, especially about the abundance of huckleberries, because they are the bears' favorite food. Doggedly, she'd searched for a clue the park officials might have overlooked. So far, she'd found nothing.

Tiny lines gathered in Olivia's forehead as she crinkled her brow. “You know, I can't help thinking about little Marco, and what's become of him. Jane's right: The grizzly are a threatened species here in the lower 48, and we can't spare even one of them. I just wish I knew what I was looking for.”

“You'll fix it,” Jack assured her.

“I hope so. Somebody's got to, or the number of grizzlies in this park will be seriously impacted in a few generations, and that would be a terrible loss to everyone.”

“Except to the people who get eaten,” Ashley muttered, under her breath. “Nobody cares about what happens to them.”

“What did you say, Ashley?” their mother asked.

Ashley slumped in her seat. “Nothing.”

“She said, ‘Nobody cares about the people who get eaten,'” Jack offered, miffed that his sister sounded as though she didn't worry about the baby bears.

“Jack!” Ashley cried, punching his thigh at the same time their mom called out, “Ashley!”

“Hey!” Jack told his sister, “Knock it off!”

“Well, you shouldn't have told Mom.”

“Then you shouldn't have said it!”

“Ashley,” their mother began, but Ashley said hotly, “People do get eaten by grizzlies, so maybe it's better if the grizzlies go live someplace else! Why doesn't anybody care about the poor visitor who turns into bear food?”

“Sweetheart, we can't push the grizzlies out of Glacier just because people want to hike here—the bears need someplace to live, too. You know, this isn't like you. You've always loved every kind of animal.” After a pause, their mother asked gently, “What is it, Ashley?”

When Ashley didn't answer, Jack stared at the floor of their car. His sneaker had a smudge of mud on one side that he rubbed against the floor mat. It was obvious Ashley was really bothered by that stupid grizzly book, but he'd told his sister he'd keep quiet about it, and that was almost the same as a promise. The best he could hope was that she'd spit it out and get the whole thing over with.

Outside, the living forest had returned, gray-green in the half-light, branches melting into other branches to create an awning of pine. Their Jeep pitched along the road, the front end bucking up first, and then the back end, like a crazed bull in a rodeo; then left to right, swinging wildly like a boat in rough water, at times scratching against the wild roses that flowered along the road's edge in bright pink splashes against the green. Ashley sat, sullen, her arms crossed over her white T-shirt in a tight clamp. Two braids bounced against her shoulders as the Jeep bumped along; Jack noticed curly bits of hair had managed to escape from her part to create a fuzzy halo. Her mouth was pressed shut as if to keep any sound from escaping.

“Aren't you going to talk to me?” Olivia asked.

Come on, just tell her,
Jack pleaded in his mind.
It's not that big a deal. You're only making it worse.

“She's not saying a word, so now I
know
something's wrong,” Steven teased. “Hey, Ashley, I saw that look. You just rolled your eyes right at the ceiling—I can see you in my rearview mirror. Help me out here—isn't Jack the one who's supposed to get temperamental?
He's
the almost-teenager. Technically, there're three years to go before you go moody on me.”

“I'm
not moody—” Jack protested.

Ashley snorted, “Yeah, right,” at which Jack reminded them that it was Ashley they were talking about, not him, to which Ashley replied that he, Jack, was always bossing her around. At that, Jack blurted out, “That's because you don't listen and do what you're supposed to. You went right on and read
Night of the Grizzlies
and got all freaky. Now you're ruining the vacation for the rest of us 'cause you've turned into a bear psycho.”

His mother's mouth made a small
O
as she thought a moment, then said,
“Night of the Grizzlies
—is that what this is about? No wonder you're so spooked.” Olivia turned around in her seat so that she could look Ashley full in the face. She didn't appear to be the least bit annoyed that Ashley had read something she wasn't supposed to. Instead, an expression of concern filled Olivia's face as she centered her chin over the back of the headrest. “Ashley, listen to me. The grizzlies that attacked those girls were fed by people all the time. That was the problem. They'd totally lost their fear of humans. You've got to remember that the tragedy happened a long time ago. Bears are managed very differently now.”

“How?” his sister asked softly. Her eyes, wide and dark, were fixed on her mother.

“Well, in just about every way. Trust me. The park would never let that kind of thing happen nowadays—a bear like the ones in that book would be taken out of Glacier so fast it'd make your head spin. Today's Glacier grizzlies are truly wild, which means they steer clear of humans, just the way nature intended. Like I said, leave them alone, and they'll leave you alone.”

Biting the edge of her lip, Ashley said, “OK.”

“Good. And I hope you'll also understand that when I tell you not to do something, it's for a reason. You've wasted a lot of energy over this. It could have ruined your stay in this beautiful park.”