Wild and Free

by Vella Munn

  Dedication

  To Neil Diamond, whose magic makes all moods possible.

  Chapter One

  Calley Stewart was back doing what she’d been trained for six years ago at Utah State University. She and Melinda Stone were crouched behind brush a few hundred yards from Highway 93, northwest of Missoula, waiting for daylight, waiting for what ancient Indians had once considered to be supernatural.

  Neither woman spoke as the first fingers of dawn light touched the wooded drainage area that they faced. Although Calley’s life had been one of too much tension during the past year, she hadn’t forgotten. This morning, this place, the anticipated experience, was what she’d been born to. She could feel that fundamental fact in her soul.

  Five minutes later the drainage area was light enough for Calley to make out the individual Western larches dotting the terrain. Silently she pointed toward one tree that was missing a slab of bark at least ten feet in length, which had been torn from it. Melinda nodded, acknowledging the work of the creatures they were waiting for and then cocked her head in a silent signal.

  Calley heard it—the deep, dry cough rumbling out of the forest—an awesome signal echoing up from the ages. The grizzlies were here.

  She rocked back onto her heels, her well-worn boots making no sound despite the strain she put them under as she reached for her camera with its 300mm lens. She knew she’d start shaking as soon as she heard the sound. As Mike had once said, “Anyone who isn’t in awe of the grizzly is either an idiot or a damn fool.” Beside her, Melinda was lifting her own camera into position. The other woman had her lips clamped between her teeth.

  There were three of them—a full-grown female weighing perhaps 700 pounds and two immature youngsters ambling after her, swinging their noses along the ground and sniffing the crisp air as their heavy bodies rolled through thick grass that reached to their bellies. The power contained within their compact frames was evident despite the long, thick hair that covered everything except the tips of their noses.

  If Calley was still breathing, she was unaware of it. Nothing mattered except concentrating on what was coming into focus through her camera lens. The sight of nature’s largest carnivorous land-based mammal wasn’t something she’d ever become blasé about. The grizzlies were why she’d returned to her career.

  Tears, which had nothing to do with the morning cold, touched her eyes. The Indians had been right. These creatures were to be treated with reverence—even with a kind of love.

  Calley waited another two or three minutes until the bears’ lackadaisical search for food—whether roots, tubers, mice or snakes—brought them close enough for the wind to introduce their pungent smell. For another moment she fought and then conquered a wave of panic that could be her undoing. Then she started running off camera shot after shot of the trio, thankful for the silent shutter that advanced the film without signaling that fact to her subjects. She thought, briefly, about the nearby highway. She doubted if anyone on it knew how close they were to the ultimate example of Montana’s wilderness. As long as she and Melinda remained out of view and the breeze continued to blow from bears to humans, there was little danger that the bears, with their weak eyesight, would locate the intruders to their world.

  And if Calley and Melinda were spotted, there was less than a fifty-fifty chance that they would be challenged. This wasn’t a mother with young cubs to protect or a male during mating season. These grizzlies had stood their ground despite humans brought to their turf by Highway 93. The sight of a couple of women in their territory would probably only bring a loud snort of disgust and a quick fade into the forest.

  Just the same, Calley didn’t take her eyes off the bears for an instant; complacency in the presence of grizzlies could be a fatal mistake. Calley had more than a degree in wildlife management under her belt. She’d been part of the Border Grizzly Project, based at the University of Montana, for three years. She would have never come here, or allowed Melinda to accompany her, if either woman had been having her period. Neither woman wore any cosmetics; they’d both washed their hands with vinegar after filling the gas tank of her jeep. Those were things she’d learned not from textbooks but because she intended to stay alive.

  The sight of three of Montana’s grizzlies lasted no longer than five minutes, just long enough for Calley to use up her roll of film. She was delighted to see that the bears were in excellent physical condition. “Not bad for a morning’s work,” Calley said once she was certain that the bears would not be returning. “God, I’m still shaking. That’s what a year away from them does to me. Did you get your pictures?”

  The University of Montana research assistant nodded, her eyes shining with a light Calley knew was reflected in her own deep gray eyes. “We did it! We actually did it!” Melinda laughed. “Dean kept waving his pictures in my face, but they didn’t mean that much to me. Not until now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be content to stay on campus doing paperwork for him anymore.”

  “Neither of us is going to be doing anything for the project if we don’t get a move on. Our respective boss is going to have my hide if I don’t get to the Flathead today,” Calley pointed out, holding up her wrist, with its relentlessly moving watch, for emphasis. “This is crazy. I’ve been working for Dean Ramsey for two weeks now, and I still haven’t seen the man.”

  “Yeah, you have,” Melinda said as the women started trudging through the high grass back to where they’d left the jeep.

  “I have not,” Calley insisted. She glanced back, hoping for a final sight of the bears, although she wouldn’t be responsible for the sounds that might come from her throat if they suddenly appeared. “He was in Yellowstone all last week and out on the Flathead River since he got back. The only proof I have of his existence is a phone call and a couple of letters.”

  Melinda winked. “You remember the bigger of those two young grizzlies? The one with the lighter coat. Put him on two feet and you have Dean Ramsey.”

  “Wonderful!” Calley pretended to shiver, her broad but slender shoulders moving easily under her limp cotton shirt. “Don’t tell me he smells like a bear, too. I am definitely not ready to spend the summer working side by side with that.”

  “Of course he doesn’t smell like a bear, although—” Melinda paused dramatically. “Maybe he does by now if he’s been out setting snares for several days. What I mean is, he has this mess of dark brown hair and a beard that’s kind of going tan instead of gray, like that one bear. When he smiles, he has these incredibly white teeth that show through all that hair, just like a bear with its mouth open.”

  “A bear’s teeth are yellow,” Calley pointed out, her eyes on the ground so she wouldn’t trip over a hidden log.

  “Minor point,” Melinda countered. “Take my word for it, that man will make you think about everything positive that can be said about grizzlies. We don’t have to meet him at any particular time, do we? We’re going to be half the day just getting there, let alone finding where he and Steve are camped.”

  “No, the telegram from Bigfork just said he’d be looking for me on the twenty-fourth. You do have the map, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Melinda parted her back pocket. “Given the state of Dean’s desk, that’s no small accomplishment. I swear, the amount of time that man has had to spend trying to get funds for the project is unreal. I mean, he’s a biologist, not a bureaucrat.”

  “He’s not pushing pencils now,” Calley said. “Thank goodness that extra funding came through. How do you think I was able to come back here?”

  It was a poor choice of words. The reason for Calley’s leaving the project last year had remained a subject that the two friends hadn’t touched. Melinda was waiting for Calley to bring it up; Calley wasn’t ready yet.


  Calley shook off the past and concentrated on finding her footing in grass too thick to allow her to see the ground. The two women walked silently in single file until they’d covered the mile that took them back to Calley’s jeep. They repacked their cameras and placed them on the floor behind their seats. After grabbing a thermos of coffee, they started north to where Dean Ramsey and Steve Bull hopefully were snaring bears as they collected data for the project.

  It wasn’t until Calley no longer had to fight to see around the sheen of a Montana sunrise that she broke the silence. For the past two weeks she’d been occupied with redefining the job, which was financed by the Endangered Species Act, finding a place to stay and having her jeep serviced. There’d been little opportunity to find out what Melinda was up to other than assisting Dean Ramsey. “Are you still entering those photography contests?” she asked. “If those shots of the grizzlies come out, you’ll really have something.”

  A self-satisfied smile spread over the compact thirty-year-old’s face, crinkling her eyes and seeming to turn her into a child again. “That’s just what I was thinking. Why do you think I talked you into hooking up with me at four a.m.? And why do you think I’m trailing along on this trip out to the Flathead? I’ve got enough film in my camera case for shots of every grizzly south of the border.”

  “Your friend doesn’t mind?” Calley asked with the boldness that came from learning that a year’s absence hadn’t destroyed a strong friendship.

  “My friend, as you so charmingly call him, is used to my idiosyncrasies. Poor guy. If he thought he was hooking up with a lonely old maid, he sure was wrong. Calley, what would you say if I told you I was thinking of marrying Kirk?”

  “Marriage? I don’t know.” Calley stumbled. It wasn’t as if Melinda and Kirk’s relationship was something still in the forming stages. They had been living together for almost two years now. But Calley had always thought of it as only that—living together. Melinda was a strongly independent woman, while Kirk fiercely guarded his personal space. They were hardly the typical couple walking hand in hand through the pathways of life. But maybe that was precisely why their relationship was working. Melinda and Kirk complemented each other without intruding.

  “I don’t know,” Calley started again. “I’ve never given it any thought.”

  “Well, think about it. I am.”

  Dean Ramsey’s jeans were caked with mud from the knees down. His boots squished with every step. He was sweating, cursing the life-style that made a beard and shaggy hair more a matter of lack of time for personal grooming than an attempt to imitate one of the creatures he’d spent the past ten years studying. He also needed a shower.

  No, he felt as if he needed to be thrown into a hot, soapy washing machine and left on the wash cycle for an hour. The sleeves of his flannel shirt were rolled up, partly because he needed to feel air on his muscular forearms and partly because his elbows kept poking through the tears in the sleeves. He was sweating between his shoulder blades, under the extra layer of fabric formed by his bright orange vest. But he knew enough not to remove what should be proof to other humans that he wasn’t something to be brought home to mount over a fireplace.

  Behind him he could hear the labored breathing of biologist Steve Bull as the other man followed his lead along the transparent vein of water that snaked its way through the vast roll of mountains that made up the Flathead area. Dean first met the Sioux Indian while Steve had been working for the Yellowstone National Park bear-management program. Dean had spirited him away when additional money from public and private conservation groups became available for the Border Grizzly Project. Steve, who had never quite been able to adjust to the demands of tourists, had been a willing transplant. The twenty-six-year-old, who Dean thought of as a boy with an old man’s wisdom of the wilderness, operated on the same wavelength as Dean. They sought out civilization only when their clothes would no longer come clean in a river and the food in their backpacks could no longer be supplemented with chokecherries, thimbleberry or trout.

  Dean was pretty sure it was Wednesday. If it was, the newest member of the project team, Calley Stewart, would show up.

  He hadn’t given the woman much thought. Knowing that she’d worked for the project before, under its former director Mike Bailey, was all he needed to know. Despite having certain philosophical differences, Dean admitted that Bailey knew what he was doing. Bailey wouldn’t have tolerated anyone who didn’t understand that making peace between humans and grizzlies was the only way the great creatures were going to survive.

  “I don’t know why we have to drag this rotting meat around with us,” Steve whispered. “The way the two of us stink, no bear’s going to be able to smell anything else.”

  “You noticed.” Dean wrinkled up his nose but he didn’t turn around. They were getting close to the last of the seven snares they’d fastened to ponderosa pines yesterday. The first six had been empty, but already they could hear angry growls around the bend in the river. To an outsider, all bears probably sounded the same, but Dean already knew from what he heard that their prisoner was a black, not a grizzly. It wasn’t what Dean wanted, but he could still learn something from the smaller bear.

  A scruffy-looking male weighing just over three hundred pounds glared at Dean and Steve as they came around the bend. Its right rear foot was caught in a snug noose that wouldn’t injure it unless the creature was left trapped long enough to become desperate. The two men had no intention of letting that happen. The black raised a free front paw at the humans, pointed its muzzle in their direction and angrily shook its coal-black body. The movement revealed a blaze of white adorning the bear’s chest.

  “Look at him,” Steve pointed out. “I’ve seen healthier specimens.”

  “I agree.” Dean noticed the strange way the bear kept shaking its head randomly as if the trapped foot wasn’t the only thing on its mind.

  Dean pushed closer through the underbrush hanging low over the river shallows until he was close enough for a good shot. Something he recognized all too well clawed its way into his throat and made breathing difficult, but Dean refused to let the emotion control him. He pulled the rifle out of his backpack and took aim, wincing as the dart found its target beneath the thick hide. Fascinated, Dean watched the bear snap its sharply curved teeth at the inaccessible dart. His body was drenched with sweat, which had nothing to do with the day’s heat and might haunt him as long as he went into the woods. He sensed the Indian watching him, but Steve said nothing. Unless there was no alternative, neither man ever would.

  Five minutes later the black was sleeping under the effects of a tranquilizer, its movements no longer taking Dean back fourteen months into hell. While Dean released the trapped foot, Steve started checking the animal for evidence of parasites. It wasn’t until Dean parted the loose lips to check the animal’s teeth for an estimate of its age that he located what had robbed the bear of its health. A lower fang was sheared off close to the gum line, leaving an infected stump.

  “Bit off more than you could chew, did you, big fellow?” Dean asked his sleeping patient. Now he could relax. The teeth and claws and muscle were immobile. “I wouldn’t be in a very good mood, either. Steve, you got those antibiotics? I think it’s time we turned dentist.”

  Removing the stump with improvised tools took fifteen minutes and left the two men limp from the exertion. Finally, Steve applied medication to halt the infection, patted the snoring bear on the nose and then rocked to his feet. “Not a bad job, if I do say so myself. Of course, if it was a grizzly—”

  “If it was a grizzly, we’d still be working on that tooth,” Dean admitted. “I had to remove one once a few months after college. Biggest damn thing I’ve ever seen. I had it made into a footstool.”

  Dean’s joke was lost on Steve, who was closely gauging the bear’s breathing rate. “I think nap time is coming to an end. What say we mosey on down the road? Do you want to reset the snare?”

  “Not this one,” Dean
answered. “There’s too much of our scent around. Besides, we’d better start back to camp. It’s not going to be light much longer.”

  Actually there were still three hours of light left, but it took most of that time for the men to tramp through the thick stands of ponderosa that clung to the ridges on their way back to the camp, which was situated some twenty miles out of Bigfork. As they walked, Dean took note of the long lenticular clouds floating downward to touch the mountaintops. Storms, he knew, could come with amazing speed.

  Dean’s and Steve’s pup tents were set up side by side between supporting evergreens near the base of a valley that served as one of the wilderness’s many drainage areas. They’d left enough space in the small clearing for Calley Stewart’s tent to be put up when she arrived. They’d managed to park Dean’s battered pickup within a hundred feet of the campsite, which was to their benefit considering the amount of equipment needed for the Flathead study.

  Neither man had taken time to set up a campfire, because they were never in camp long enough to sit around a fire and because the forest was summer-dry. Working efficiently, they went about their tasks of starting the Coleman stove, bringing buckets of water from the shallow river branch running past their camp and opening packages of dried beef and mashed potato flakes and preparing a rare hot meal.

  They ate with the quick efficiency of men who saw food as a means of fueling their bodies, washed their plates with water warmed by the Coleman, and then Steve announced that he was going to wash up before it got much cooler. “Save some of the warm water. I may shave.”

  “Shave?” Dean frowned and buried leathery fingers in his beard. “I heard of that once. I’ll have to try it someday. Don’t take too long, will you? If I don’t get into some different clothes, I’m not going to be able to stand myself.”

  “Yeah,” Steve said with a wink. “Besides, we’re going to have a female joining us. You wouldn’t want to chase her off on the first night.”