The Hunted (4 page)

“So that was it? That's all that happened?” Ashley asked.

“Yep. The amazing thing was the bear didn't eat any of my food, and I had Oreos. He just left all my food untouched, fortunately, because they say, ‘A fed bear is a dead bear.'” Ali paused, glancing down at the fire as she told them, “Once bears get people food, that's when they really begin to cause trouble. They start breaking into cabins and approaching people and cars. Luckily that bear didn't eat my food, so nothing was done to him.” She looked up again, glad to let them know that her story had a happy ending.

“You mean, if he'd eaten your Oreos, something would have been done to him?” Ashley wanted to know.

“Uh-huh. We'd have targeted him.”

Did that mean shoot him? To Jack, that sounded like a pretty severe penalty for eating a few cookies.
Bang!
At that precise second a branch snapped in the fire like a rifle shot, sending up a cascade of orange sparks into the night. Steven picked up a stick stirring the fire and spreading it out a bit so it wouldn't burn as high.

“We always hope we don't have to destroy them,” Ali continued carefully. “Whatever we decide, it's an unpleasant process for the bears. Sometimes they get captured and relocated. We don't want bears to hurt people, or the other way around.”

Hesitant, Ashley stammered, “I read…a book….”

“Night of the Grizzlies?”
Ali smiled at Ashley. “Everybody seems to read that when they come to Glacier. It all happened a long, long time ago. Things were very different then. The park staff sort of…uh…looked the other way in those days if visitors fed the bears up at Granite Park Chalet. There was an open-pit garbage dump right near the chalet, so the bears would come around regularly. To the visitors, it was great entertainment, but it turned out to be disastrous. Now we require people to lock up their food or hang it high in trees at campsites so bears won't even try to get it. We also have Karelian bear dogs.”

Olivia leaned forward. In the light from the campfire, her eyes reflected sudden animation. “I know about them,” she said. “They were bred in Russia specifically to scare bears. Usually they stay on the leash and just bark at the bears to try to move them away from a people area.”

“Right. And if you'd like to see a couple of Karelian bear dogs in action,” Ali announced, “you're in luck. Two of their handlers from the Wind River Bear Institute happen to be in the park tomorrow to harass a bear we've been having problems with. It's a big male that keeps hanging out near a cabin. The dogs will try to teach it to stay back in the woods, away from people.”

Olivia exclaimed, “Fantastic! The kids are coming with me tomorrow, and I know they'd love to see the dogs in action, too. Right, guys?”

“Yeah!” Jack and Ashley called out.

As the fire died down, Ali got up to leave, first brushing bits of leaves and bark from the back of her pants. “OK, Olivia, I'll pick up you and the kids at 8 a.m. Have a good night, folks. And thanks for the story, Jack. Maybe you'll be a writer someday.”

A
mere five days had passed since the summer solstice, the time of year with the most hours of daylight, and the Landons happened to be camped less than 20 miles south of the Canadian border. That meant the sun rose even earlier than at their home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, hundreds of miles farther south. These thoughts tugged at Jack's brain while he tried to decide whether to open his eyes. Even through his closed eyelids, he could tell that sunlight was sliding through the mesh-screen window next to his head. Could be 5:30, or as early as 5 a.m. To find out for sure, he'd have to open at least one of his eyes to look at his watch.

But why was the camping trailer moving?

Balanced on two tires and a jack beneath the trailer hitch, the trailer always teetered a little when anyone walked in it. Or—and this thought made Jack's eyes fly wide open—it could be a grizzly pawing the outside of the camper, getting ready to slash the canvas with six-inch claws!

Luckily, it didn't turn out to be anything that exciting—just Ashley, prowling around. Before Jack had a chance to ask her why she was up so early, she was gone, tiptoeing through the trailer door, closing it quietly behind her.

Probably she had to use the bathroom. She wasn't supposed to go even that short distance by herself because of a possible bear encounter, but last night, when he'd volunteered to accompany her down the path to the john, she'd practically hissed at him, “Leave me alone! I don't need you.”

“So all right,” he'd muttered then. “Go ahead and get eaten by a bear. You're the one who's so spooked about bears. Not me.”

Now Jack yawned and looked at his watch. 5:12. At bedtime last night, he'd called the toss of a coin that let him win the queen-size bed, so Ashley had to sleep on the bench-with-a-mattress. But since his bed was right next to the unzippered window facing east, he was getting a full dose of sunrise. Sighing, he decided he might as well get up. Besides, he was curious about Ashley. Seven minutes had passed, and she wasn't back yet.

Trying not to rock the floor too much, he picked up his tennis shoes and crept outside, first noticing that his parents were still peacefully asleep.

Sitting on a tree stump, he pulled on his shoes but didn't bother tying them. His long legs, stretching up from the floppy shoelaces to the bottom hem of his sleep shirt, were tanned except for the tops where shorts usually covered them. In the early sunlight, his leg hair looked fuzzy and golden. Like his dad, Jack was a blond.

He walked along the path to the outdoor john and gently tapped on its metal door. “Ashley?”

No answer.

“If you're in there, answer me.”

Nothing.

“Darn it, Ashley,” Jack said, louder now, “don't joke around!”

From a distance, maybe as much as a hundred feet away in the tangle of Douglas fir and springy ground cover, he heard, “You don't have to wake up the whole world, Jack.” Next came a rustling of leaves, and then, wading out through patches of wild roses like some forest sprite, Ashley appeared, fully dressed. When she stared at him, her expression was—there was no other way to say it—weird. Once again, weird.

“What the heck were you doing back in those trees?” Jack demanded.

“Oh, just enjoying the morning.” She took a deep breath and smiled, but it didn't look anything like a real smile. “I've decided I don't want to go with Mom to park headquarters this morning. It's so pretty around here, I'll just stay at the campground.”

“Fat chance,” he scoffed. “Dad's taking a hike with his camera equipment to shoot pictures at that lake we passed on the way here. You think Mom's going to let you stay by yourself?”

“She might. If I tell her I can't stand to drive down that awful road and get carsick all over again. And”—Ashley deliberately sweetened her fake smile—“if my big brother offers to stay with me.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. Something was definitely going on here, something only Ashley was aware of. Had she discovered a nest of baby animals of one kind or another? Ashley got all gooey over baby animals. If that was it, maybe Jack could get some really good pictures. As always, he'd brought his camera and plenty of film. “You found something, right?” he asked her.

She shrugged.

“Come on, tell me.”

“As
if!
The last time I told you a secret—like, yesterday—you blabbed.”

Jack grimaced. She was right. But his curiosity kept growing; he needed a way to persuade Ashley to spill it, whatever it was. “There's no guarantee Mom will leave us here even if I do stay with you,” he said.

Ashley doubled over, clutching her middle. “Ooooh, I'm sick from all those burnt marshmallows last night. A car ride's gonna make it so much worse! I'm scared I'll throw up all over Ali's park vehicle.”

What a little actress, Jack thought. But for Ashley to be willing to deliberately mislead their parents, the secret must be really big and important. She might not be as truthful, always, as her big brother, Jack the Eagle Scout, but she was pretty close to it. And whenever she did bend the truth a little, in her own mind it was usually justified by doing a good deed for some needy creature or person.

“If I agree to help you persuade Mom and Dad to leave us here, when do I find out what you're up to?” he asked her.

Now it was Ashley's turn to consider. She cocked her head, squinted one eye, and looked him over. Slowly, she said, “As soon as Mom and Dad leave. Deal?”

Jack raised his hand for a high five and said, “Deal!”

When they got back to the campsite, their mother was kneeling on the backseat of the Jeep with the door open, reaching into the tailgate. “You kids!” she said, sounding irritable.

“What?” Jack said.

“That game you play about who can close the car door more quietly? One of you left the door unlatched last night.”

Olivia climbed out of the Jeep to confront them. “You know how important it is to have all the fresh food tightly sealed in a container and locked inside the vehicle. Bears can smell food a mile away.”

“Yeah, I know but—” Jack began.

“So the door wasn't closed all the way,” Olivia went on, “and some creature or other got inside. It must have been a raccoon, because I don't know any other animal with paws agile enough to open the catch on our cooler. But what if it had been a bear that got into our food! That would have been disastrous. Remember what Ali said—‘A fed bear is a dead bear.'”

Meekly, Ashley murmured, “It was probably me who didn't close the car door all the way. Sorry, Mom. Did the raccoon take anything?”

“As far as I can tell,” Olivia answered, “all that's missing is a couple of hot dogs.”

“Should have taken some buns and mustard, too,” Jack said, trying to be funny.

Olivia just glared at him. “From now on, you kids make sure these doors are tightly closed. Hear?”

Maybe it was just that Ashley happened to be standing in a shaft of sunlight that angled through heavy fronds of fir, but her cheeks looked pinker than usual.

“Gotcha, Mom,” Jack answered.

 

She pulled it off, Ashley did. Their mother left with Ali, and their father—after being convinced that Ashley just needed to rest, and no, she didn't want her dad to stay—finally left on his photo-shoot hike. But before they said good-bye, Jack and Ashley were bombarded with instructions:

Steven: “You don't make a move alone. If one of you goes somewhere, the other goes, too.”

Olivia: “The food stays in the cooler inside the Jeep. If you want any cheese or fruit or orange juice, get it out of the cooler but make sure you shut it. Garbage gets locked inside the Jeep, too.”

Steven: “I won't be that far from here. Lake Winona is just across the road and a little way up—not more than a mile. If you want to come find me, I should be visible along the shoreline. Take the binoculars.”

Olivia: “But unless there's an emergency, do not leave the area of the campground, hear? You can play in the creek, or go fishing if you want to, or play cards on the picnic table—”

Steven: “As soon as Ali and Mom leave, I'm going to lock the chain across the campground entrance so no other vehicle can turn in here.”

Ashley had been staring solemnly at first one parent and then the other while the list of instructions went on and on—she looked like a spectator at a Ping-Pong match. Jack started to laugh.

His father's fingers dug hard into his shoulders. “Come here, young man!”

“What?”

Steven didn't answer as he marched Jack toward the entrance of the campground and stopped him in front of a red-and-white sign with a picture of a grizzly on it.

“Do you see that?”

“Yeah, I saw it before.”

“Well, read it to me. Out loud.”

Parents! With exaggerated patience, Jack read, “Bear Country. Bears Enter This Campground. Store All Food In Vehicle. All Wildlife Is Dangerous. Do Not Approach Or Feed.”

“Well, remember it.” Steven gave Jack an only halfway playful cuff on the back of the head.

At last Steven took off, his tripod and monopod sticking out of the straps on his backpack, making him look like an antenna-bristling, battery-operated toy. At the same time, with one final, worried frown, Olivia leaned forward from the front seat of the park vehicle to wave, as Ali started the motor. The two kids waved back, first at their mother, then at their father, smiling assurances at both parents as they went in opposite directions: Olivia south, Steven north.

“I thought they'd never go,” Ashley breathed before the van had driven altogether out of sight. “Look, Mom's still waving through the back window.”

“Yeah.” A moment later, Jack declared, “I can't see either one of them now. The trees are hiding them. So!” He crossed his arms to confront Ashley. “I did my part of the deal. Now you have to let me in on your secret. What is it? Some helpless little animal in a nest?”

Ashley giggled. “You
could
say that.”

“Then let's go see it. Only first, I want to get my camera out of the trailer.”

Inside, the camping trailer was beginning to get stuffy. Jack unzipped all the clear plastic sheeting that covered the mesh screens on the windows, then lowered the metal panel on the upper half of the door. It was good to let in as much fresh air as possible; otherwise, by late afternoon, the trailer would be stifling. Shoving an extra roll of film into the pocket of his shorts, then hanging his camera around his neck by the strap, he opened the door and stepped outside.

Ashley was gone.

J
ack stood stock-still in the center of the campsite. Nothing moved, not even the leaves on the wild roses that broke the monotony of green with the colorful splash of their vivid pink blossoms. He turned all the way around, first checking the Jeep parked beside the fir trees. She wasn't in there.

She wasn't sitting at the picnic table farther away in a little clearing, or next to the fire pit sunk in the ground. Probably she was playing mind games, trying to spook him. Maybe she'd hidden behind the brown-painted garbage can bolted to a concrete base. But unless she crouched in exactly the right spot in relation to his line of sight, the garbage can couldn't hide all of her. One little giveaway patch of red shorts would have been easy to see.

The creek, then, maybe. Their campsite was nicely located a hundred yards from the rushing waters of Quartz Creek. Jack walked the distance to the creek, which was wide enough to wade across yet swift enough to splash and soak anyone who did. He looked up and down both banks. No Ashley.

No sense calling out for her beside the creek—its noise would drown out her reply, if she bothered to shout back. Whatever game she was playing, she probably wouldn't answer him anyway.

He went back to the trailer. Maybe she'd ducked back inside when he walked to the creek. But she hadn't. The beds were neatly made, all the boxed dried food was locked away, and the morning's dishes lay drying on the drain board.

Next, check the john. Maybe he'd meet her coming back from the john. But when he got there, everything was just as still as before.

The pump. Another hundred yards down the double tracks left by vehicles stood a green-painted pump, one of those with a handle that you pull up and down to get water—not for drinking, but for washing. Beside it was a flat concrete box of some kind sunk into the ground. It had a sheet metal lid; Jack lifted the lid to find another metal box inside the concrete, and inside that were metal pipes that had something to do with the pump. Ashley might have been able to squeeze inside there, if she were trying to hide from him. But except for the pipes, the box was empty.

Enough of this! He was beginning to get mad now. “Ashley!” he yelled, “you better answer me.”

He waited, straining to hear, and then her voice came from—he wasn't really sure where. “OK.”

“Where are you? You know you're not allowed to go off all by yourself.”

“I'm not all by myself.”

“Huh?” Since he didn't know where to look, all he could do was keep shouting, “Get back here, Ashley! Now!”

Then, once again pushing through the leaves as she had early that morning, Ashley appeared. And not alone. By the hand, she led a boy, shorter than she was, but close to the same age.

Jack had the strange feeling that he might still be asleep and dreaming, or reliving his fantasy from Ulm Pishkun. The boy was the buffalo runner of Jack's fantasy. Brown-skinned: His bare torso, arms, and face were the color of maple-sugar candy. Hair: thick, black, and tangled. Eyes: such a dark brown they looked almost black. But it was his bearing that reminded Jack of the buffalo runner—this boy didn't hang back; he kept pace with Ashley, not as someone being led, but as someone filled with confidence and curiosity, ready to take charge of any new situation. It didn't matter that his shorts were torn and dirty, or that his tennis shoes were ragged, or that his legs were scratched and he looked like he could use a good meal: This was a boy who knew who he was and what he wanted.

Now they were almost up to Jack. They stopped, both Ashley and the boy smiling. “Meet Miguel,” Ashley said.

“Who…how…?” Jack sputtered.

“Our stowaway. He sneaked into our camping trailer when we stopped at the visitor center at Ulm Pishkun,” Ashley explained.

“That's impossible,” Jack protested. “No one could have got into that trailer when it was already folded down.”

“Well, Miguel did. Can you imagine, Jack? He rode all those miles squished almost flat inside the trailer on that bumpy road that made
me
sick just sitting in the backseat of the Jeep. He's got to be pretty darn tough to have handled a ride like that.”

“Wait a minute.” Jack smacked his forehead. “That ‘baby deer' you said you saw when we were setting up the trailer….”

“Uh-huh, it was Miguel.” Ashley giggled. “That was when I was mad at you because you squealed to Mom about the book, so I wasn't going to tell you anything.”

“I
knew
that wasn't any deer. So you were covering up all along. But what—who—”

Her smile got bigger; she was enjoying this, he could tell. “There's a big piece of the puzzle you're missing. Think a minute. When we left Ulm Pishkun…in the car….” She waited, challenging him to figure it out.

What did she mean? Jack frowned, forcing his mind to go over everything that had happened since they left Ulm Pishkun, trying to visualize it like a videotape running backward.

“The newspaper…,” Ashley hinted.

Suddenly he got it. “He's the Mexican kid they wrote about!” Jack exclaimed. “The one who sneaked across the border all by himself. Three times!”

“Bingo,” Ashley said quietly, and raised Miguel's hand, which she was still holding, lifting it up like he was a champ.

Through all this talk Miguel had been peering from Jack to Ashley, back and forth, his eyes bright and interested, his expression curious.

“You've got to be kidding. This is him?”

“Yep.”

“Can he talk?” Jack asked.

Ashley turned to Miguel. “This is my brother, Jack, I told you about,” she said. “He wants to know if you can talk. Say something to him.”

Miguel grinned, his teeth large and white in his brown face. “Hey, dude,” he said.

It was so unexpected that Jack burst out laughing. “Hey
dude?
You know English!”

“Ummmmm,
un poco,”
Miguel nodded, holding his thumb and forefinger close together. “Little bit.”

“Miguel told me all about his escape from Mexico,” Ashley said. “That's why I had to sneak out and meet him this morning. All last night you wouldn't let me go anywhere alone for more than five minutes.”

“That was because of the bears,” Jack said, trying to remember what had seemed so important about their feud less than 12 hours before. Nothing much, he realized.

“Forget bears. This,” Ashley said, wiggling her eyebrows, “is bigger than bears. This is rescuing somebody who needs us. Are you going to help?”

Jack didn't know what to say. Standing there, in the sun-dappled clearing, it seemed impossible that he was actually in front of a Mexican runaway, one who had been reported in the papers and who was even now probably being hunted by the police. Even more impossible was the fact that his sister had managed to keep a secret this big from both his parents and him.

All he could think to say was, “You must be hungry, right, Miguel?” He tried to remember any shred of Spanish he'd learned in school, but the only words that came to mind were
sí
and
no,
and those weren't going to get him very far. “Hungry,” Jack said again, bringing his fingers up to his lips as if he were taking a bite. Again, more slowly, he said, “Eat. Food.”

“He's not deaf, Jack.”

Miguel nodded, patting his flat stomach. The sound it made was as hollow as a stick beating a drum.
“Sí,
eat. Food.
Bueno.”

“Last night I told him how to get into the Jeep and take the hot dogs,” Ashley said, “but I bet he's starving now. Come on, Miguel.” Tugging his arm, she pulled him in the direction of the trailer, calling to Jack over her shoulder, “He's on his way to Seattle to be with a teacher who used to live in Mexico. He says he wants to work in her restaurant.”

Miguel turned to smile broadly, eyes bright, dark hair standing in stiff tufts that looked like black feathers. “I go Seattle,” he said haltingly. “Earn money.”

“But he's too young! How can he—”

“Food first,” Ashley told Jack, “then the story.”

Every time Miguel emptied the green plastic bowl of Cheerios Ashley had given him, she poured more into it, as if it were bottomless. Miguel wolfed the food so quickly, bits of milk dribbled down his chin. Periodically he'd stop to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, then return to the cereal with an intensity Jack had never seen before.

Ashley sat cross-legged at Miguel's elbow, pouring milk into the bowl to keep it filled. Jack had settled in across from them, watching, thinking, wondering what to do next. How would it feel to be that hungry? Jack always felt deprived if he missed a snack before bedtime, and here was this little kid, who had traveled from another country without a dime and no food at all, who looked dirty and bug-bitten and road weary. It reminded Jack once again why his dad welcomed foster kids into their home whenever they got a call from the Jackson, Wyoming, Social Services. “Being a foster kid myself, I came through some hard times,” Steven had often told Ashley and Jack. “I want to help kids who are in the same rough place I was.”

Miguel ate until the box rattled empty and his stomach bulged, round and hard. Finally satisfied, he settled back contentedly, his smile wide and lopsided.
“Gracias,”
he told them.

“You're welcome,” Jack answered. Then, to Ashley, “Now what?”

“Miguel, tell Jack what happened to you. Tell him why you are here.”

Nodding solemnly, Miguel began his story. “I come from Nogales, near the border. Shantytown, no water, my sister carry
agua
from the river. My—
familia
—live in house of paper.”

“Paper?” Jack asked.

“I think he means cardboard,” Ashley explained.

“We want to work, but no work. No work, no
pesos.
I always dream to come to the other side.” He said all this as though he'd recited it often, maybe to get food from sympathetic listeners on his journeys.

“‘The other side' means the United States,” Ashley told Jack. “Go on, Miguel, tell Jack where you're going.”

Miguel took a deep breath and concentrated, trying to make the words come out right:
“Hace mucho tiempo
—a long time ago—maybe six years—
seis años
—my brother have a teacher, Crecensia Álvarez. She hate to see children go hungry. She want better life for her people. So she come to U.S.A. to sell burritos, tacos, enchiladas—real food from Mexico, with spice hot like fire.
Norteamericanos
love her food. Now she is rich, with many
restaurantes.
She give always a job to people from Nogales.” Jabbing a finger into his chest, Miguel announced, “I will work for
Señora
Álvarez. Send money to my family.”

“Work! How old are you?” Jack asked.

“Ten,” Miguel answered. “Old enough.”

“You want to work when you're only ten? What about school?”

Miguel shrugged.
“No es importante.”

“Sure it is,” Jack exploded. “Anyway, you can't get a job if you're only ten.”

Miguel laughed and held up the fingers of both hands. “I work when I was this many—
ocho años.
Eight. In
supermercado.
I carry groceries to cars. No pay; tips only.”

Ashley looked at Miguel with admiration. “Go on, Miguel, tell Jack how you left Mexico and got all the way to Montana,” she encouraged.

Grinning, he answered, “I ride the rails.”

“He hopped a train, Jack. Can you believe it? He said he sneaks onto trains all by himself. He's done it a lot—that's how he learned English, 'cause usually the trains took him to Texas or California, and when he'd get there he'd hang out with a bunch of other homeless people till he got caught. But it hasn't always been good. One time some hobos stole his shoes.”

“Sí.
My shoes got swipe,” Miguel said, wiggling his toes. When he noticed Jack staring at the toenails protruding through the holes in the dirty canvas, Miguel added, “These I find in garbage can in San Diego.”

“And each time the immigration officials caught him, they sent him right back. I think it's wrong that the U.S. does that to him, don't you? Miguel's just trying to help his family, but nobody cares, so they make him go home to his paper house in Nogales.”

“Then he's been caught—”

“Two times—once in Sacramento, California, and once in Salt Lake City. But this time he's made it all the way to Montana. He's been sneaking into trucks, and when one of them stopped at Ulm Pishkun, he got out. Then he saw a man in uniform and thought it was a policeman—it was probably a park ranger—so he opened the bottom part of our trailer door and ducked inside. Before he could get out, we started driving.”

Miguel sat there nodding, although he probably couldn't follow much of what Ashley was saying.

“He's lucky we were heading west,” she added. “He's been trying every way he could to make it to Seattle.”

“Sí.
To find
Señora
Álvarez,” Miguel said.

Ashley questioned Jack with her dark eyes. “Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”

“I—I don't know.”

“Jack! You
promised!
You said I could trust you. If you tell, they'll
have
to call the police. Immigration officers will take him, after he's made it all this way. They'll send him back to Nogales. Is that what you want? Do you want him to live where there's no electricity and not enough food?”

Jack could answer this one honestly. “No,” he said, “I don't want that at all.” Still, he didn't like the idea of lying to his parents, and they'd have to do a lot of lying to keep Miguel a secret. He studied the boy, who had once again picked up the plastic bowl. “Just what do you want to do with him, Ashley? We can't keep him here. He's not a pet.”