Wild and Free

by Vella Munn

  “Do you think you’ll ever go back to ranching?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought,” Calley admitted. “I love what I’m doing now.”

  “You left it once.”

  “We do what we have to,” she answered, glad that she only had his back to look at. “Tell me something,” she pushed back. “Is this what you want to do with your life?”

  “Would I want to do anything except bear research?” Dean shrugged his broad shoulders but didn’t stop walking. “Maybe. I thought about it, but I have to go with what feels right for me. I like what I’m doing, my life-style. I guess if the day comes when I don’t like it anymore, I’ll find something else.”

  Calley couldn’t imagine that ever happening to Dean. Oh, yes, the time might come when the project was completed and the answers had been found for the grizzly. But there would always be something in the wild calling to the man walking ahead of her. “I don’t think so,” she said softly around the conviction she had about a man she barely knew. “They’ll never bring you indoors.”

  “Maybe not.” Dean paused long enough to turn around and look at Calley, but his expression told her nothing. “It’s funny how some people instinctively know what’s right for them. I grew up going on camping trips with my folks and Dad’s brothers. We didn’t have a ranch, but Dad did a lot of mountain climbing. He even led expeditions. That’s when he was happiest. It made it possible for him to stick with earning a living instead of riding the rails. I guess it rubbed off on me.”

  “Do you still do any mountain climbing?” Calley asked. She liked the sound of his voice. That had to be why she wanted to keep him talking.

  Dean had gone back to breaking trail. “No time right now,” he said over his shoulder. “But maybe this fall. I’m thinking about tackling Glacier Peak in Washington state. I don’t have the kind of responsibilities that keep most men at home. No personal commitments.”

  Calley wasn’t sure. It might have simply been because the wind was part of the conversation, but she sensed that Dean didn’t see his single status as being as positive as he was trying to paint it. She wondered, despite herself, if he was lonely.

  “I’ve never tried mountain climbing,” she said, “but I think I might like it.”

  “Give it a try. I think it’s the biggest damn challenge a person can give himself.”

  “And you think challenges are necessary?”

  “Don’t you? Don’t you want to know what you’re made of?” Dean stopped and faced her. “You must, or you wouldn’t be out here. We aren’t doing this just so we can collect a paycheck.”

  “You’re right about that,” Calley said with a laugh. “I’m a lot like Steve, I guess. The paycheck is almost anticlimactic.” It wasn’t easy meeting Dean’s eyes because of the intensity she saw in them, but Calley accepted the challenge. “I think that’s why my dad stayed with ranching. It hadn’t been easy, but it was the biggest damn challenge he could find.”

  “And studying grizzlies is yours?”

  Dean wasn’t going to let up. Calley sensed that he wanted, maybe needed, to learn all that he could about her and that he didn’t much care how he went about gaining that knowledge. It could simply be because he’d hired her sight unseen and was making up for lost time. Calley didn’t mind. Someday their survival might depend on how much they knew about each other. “I’m not sure whether stalking grizzlies is the most I could ever ask of myself,” she explained. “There are other experiences that have required a lot of me emotionally. However, this is the biggest physical challenge.”

  Calley had no forewarning that Dean was going to touch her. It was a simple gesture, a gentle touch of his fingers against her temples as he brushed her long, softly waving hair away from her eyes. She forced herself to stand motionless as he secured an amber lock behind her ear, but that touch changed things between them.

  When they started walking again, the distance between them wasn’t as great as it had been before. Calley wanted to be closer to Dean. She didn’t believe it had anything to do with physical attraction, even though she was aware of his masculinity. Rather, he was no longer someone she’d simply shaken hands with. They had shared something personal. He knew about her childhood; she knew of his love for mountain climbing.

  She reached out and snipped a few pine needles off a tree as they passed under it. She brought the long needles close and drank in the strong scent of pitch. It was a scent with the power to reach deep into her subconscious and touch fibers of the past. It wasn’t just the days that melted together in the forest; the years blended, as well.

  Calley started telling Dean about the grizzlies she and Melinda had seen the day before. From there the conversation turned to the work Dean had done with polar bears, of winters in the far north and the pros and cons of different types of cold-weather clothing, subjects that gave Calley more than the weight of her day pack to think about. She fixed her gaze on Dean’s back, concentrating on the deep sound of his voice, enjoying the enthusiasm he brought to everything he talked about. She barely knew the man, and yet she knew he was the right one to replace Mike on the project.

  When they reached the area where Dean and Steve had set snares, they lapsed into silence. Calley walked with an eye to the ground in order to minimize any noise she might make. Her ears were alert to sounds that didn’t blend in with the forest’s melody. She acknowledged the prickling along her spine; they were in grizzly country, and Dean was depending on her to play her own role in this experience. She didn’t dare think about anything else.

  Slung across Dean’s back was a tranquilizer rifle, but they had no other weapons. Calley knew that their quarry was the only creature in the forest that wouldn’t automatically flee at the sight of a human. There was no reason why a grizzly should. The carnivores had no natural enemies. Calley’s mother had never understood why her daughter was drawn to the danger-filled study of creatures with skulls so thick that high-powered rifle slugs ricocheted off them. Calley wasn’t sure she understood it, either.

  Dean stopped so abruptly that Calley nearly ran into him. Now his only signal was a sharp forward jerk of his head. Calley tensed, senses alert. Then she heard what had brought Dean to a halt. The distant roar was angry, puzzled, maybe even a little frightened. She didn’t need to have Dean say it; they’d trapped a bear.

  Dean led the way to the brush-filled area near the river he’d salted with spoiled meat the day before. From their vantage point a few feet above the spot they could see the imprisoned bear and the wreckage around it. Dean had been careful to cover the snare with branches from a fallen tree, but now the snare was visible, torn from its covering by the violent movements of a magnificent grizzly with the white-tipped hairs responsible for the creature’s name. What shrubbery there was within the bear’s grasp had been torn up by the roots; the carpeting of pine needles on the ground was scattered in all directions. The bear was flailing about like a child weary of the toys in its playpen.

  “Too bad Melinda isn’t here,” Dean said over the bear’s growls. “She could really get some great close-up shots.”

  Calley breathed in the scent of bear and forest, very much aware of how rare the sight below her was. She felt the hair on the back of her neck raise and tears well up in her eyes. Thousands of tourists could go through Yellowstone and not see what she was privileged to see. “A million years. They’ve been on earth for a million years,” she whispered. “I wonder how much longer they’ll be here.”

  Dean turned toward Calley, attracted by the note of awe in her voice. What he saw was a woman who would never be able to take for granted one of the great mysteries of life. Just because she’d already seen more bears than most people dream of didn’t mean the experience no longer affected her. Dean hadn’t often put that sense of wonder into words, but that, basically, was why he was doing what he was with his life.

  Last night it had bothered him that Calley wasn’t a physically powerful woman, but that was before he’d seen strength a
nd commitment in her eyes. Waina was the only other woman he’d known with that look. But her commitment had been to something else.

  The bear roared its defiance at the world and put an end to the silent communication between the man and woman. The grizzly had spotted the humans and was challenging them with an energy that couldn’t be denied. Free, the bear would tear the humans apart. Dean pulled his rifle off his back and stepped closer. As he did so, he admitted to himself that he was taking unfair advantage; in an honest confrontation Dean would pay with his life.

  Dean didn’t put himself in position for a shot until he was certain that the leg hold was going to remain intact and give the drug time to take effect. He aimed at the bear’s powerful shoulder hump and fired. The grizzly shook its massive body, tried to bite at the dart and then lifted its paw with its four-inch-long claws extended in Dean’s direction.

  Dean didn’t want to face the bear. He wanted to avoid the eye contact that caused the memory of a slashing pain to eat away at his side; but the bear knew. Dean’s vulnerability had been exposed.

  A minute later the grizzly settled sluggishly on its side, eyes closed.

  Dean reached the bear first. He stood over it, his muscles taut knots ready for futile flight. If the animal moved— No, the drug had done its job. Before Calley could guess at the struggle that was going on inside him, Dean sat on his haunches, watching the quiet animal, the persistent, if impossible, desire to ask the bruin to trust him waging a war with other emotions.

  “It’s a female with cubs,” Calley pointed out. He nodded in agreement as she pushed away the thick mat of hair to reveal swollen breasts. When Calley’s hand moved to the bear’s small ear and scratched the animal gently and lovingly, Dean watched with wonder. She wasn’t afraid; it was so simple for her. He both envied and hated her for that courage. She wasn’t repulsed by the creature’s pungent smell, the deadly claws, the fangs slipping through slack lips. To Calley Stewart this was simply the proud survivor of a world once teeming with saber-toothed tigers and mastodons.

  “She’s worth ten thousand dollars to a poacher,” he said, trying to sort out his emotions.

  “She’s worth a hell of a lot more to her cubs.” Calley lifted a huge limp paw in both her hands and rested the solid weight on her thighs as she knelt beside the animal. She spread the paw, running a finger over the worn, granitelike nails. “Sometimes I think we have no right invading their privacy,” she whispered. “We talk about needing to study them, but sometimes I wonder. I wish they could be left alone.”

  Dean’s voice was just as soft, but he didn’t seem able to make it stronger. The need to begrudge her her courage was already fading. She hadn’t been through what he had; she could be forgiven. “I don’t know if we can ever manage bears. Maybe we have to back off.”

  Calley’s eyes left the unconscious bear and sought Dean’s face. He felt the moment coming, but despite the danger inherent in the contact, it was too precious to avoid. When their eyes locked, he knew she felt it, too.

  They were on the same wavelength. They were probably the only humans for miles around, and for this moment, at least, they were thinking as one. The knowledge rocked him and made it necessary for him to touch her again. He started by covering the hand that held the bear’s paw with his own, but a minute later his fingers were traveling upward, touching a cheek that had been scratched and sunburned and attacked by insects and yet was still young and lovely. He’d made love to a model once, a beautiful creature with satin flesh and a flawless complexion who smelled as if she’d just stepped out of a lady’s boudoir. This was better.

  “We think alike,” he managed to say.

  “Maybe. Dean?” Calley was staring at him, trembling a little.

  He was taking her places she wasn’t ready to go, risking their fragile relationship. He could sense that. But her needs weren’t the only ones being buffeted by the emotions of the moment. Dean Ramsey had needs of his own that had been buried in recent months. They were coming alive; he didn’t know how to handle them. He’d been conscious of her femininity from the moment he met her, but this was the first time he’d allowed himself to acknowledge that.

  “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to,” he said.

  “I know.”

  But maybe she didn’t. If he wanted to take advantage of the situation, there wouldn’t be much Calley could do about it. He outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds, and despite her having been conditioned by an outdoor life, his strength was more than it had to be if he wanted to overpower her. That was the last thing he wanted her to have to think about.

  “I think we better check this old girl out before her kids start missing her,” Dean said. He didn’t know where the strength to say that came from. He removed his hand from her and reached for his day pack. His fingers still carried the message given off by her flesh.

  Throughout the process of checking the grizzly’s general health and clamping the radio-equipped collar securely around the animal’s neck, Calley scrupulously maintained an outwardly professional demeanor toward Dean. Although there had been men since Mike in her life, none of those men had affected her in a deeply personal way.

  Not until today. It would have been easier to tell herself that she hadn’t expected the head of the project to break through the professionally prescribed barriers. She could have told herself that she was reading too much into a simple touch. But if she’d done either of those things, she would have been lying to herself. Dean Ramsey had touched her because there was something he wanted to share that couldn’t be communicated with words.

  Calley stopped her thoughts. She hadn’t known Dean twenty-four hours yet.

  She didn’t try to speak until they were finished working over the inert grizzly. As Dean released its massive rear paw, she moved back, gathering up her pack and waiting for him to join her. She didn’t need him to tell her that they had to leave quickly before an enraged bear regained consciousness.

  “It was a healthy specimen,” Dean said a few minutes later when they were once again back on the ridge overlooking the unconscious grizzly. “Steve’s kind of bear. She’ll be able to raise her cubs without any trouble.”

  “I wish we could have seen them. It’s late enough in the year that they’re out and about.” Calley smiled at a memory. “Once, when I was in Yellowstone, I spent a whole day watching a couple of cubs fighting over a jacket they’d found. There wasn’t enough left of that jacket to make a pile of lint by the time they were done, but they had a marvelous time. It wasn’t until the bears left that I discovered it was my own coat.”

  “I don’t like thinking about grizzlies becoming extinct in the United States,” Dean said as they started retracing their steps. “Cubs should be able to grow up anywhere they want to.”

  Dean was doing it again, saying things, feeling things, that dovetailed with her emotions. “I really was lucky that time,” she explained. “I’d gone camping by myself. I was taking a busman’s holiday by spending my days off hiking the back country. I had no idea where the mother bear was.” She shook her head. “It’s a wonder I survived. Since then I’ve gotten a lot smarter about grizzlies.”

  “I’m not going to tell you how many times I’ve been treed by a bear,” Dean said conversationally. “Some experts say to hightail it for the nearest tree. Others advocate standing one’s ground, calling the bear’s bluff. Frankly, my nervous system isn’t made for that kind of a confrontation.”

  Calley acknowledged Dean’s admission that he was human and not Daniel Boone reincarnated. “I have no qualms about admitting I’m very cautious around those creatures,” she said, her ears tuned to any sounds behind them should the bear regain consciousness sooner than anticipated. “I’m not afraid, but anything that can cover a hundred feet in two seconds has my utmost respect.”

  Their conversation was general in nature for the rest of the time it took them to get back to camp. Melinda and Steve hadn’t returned, but Melinda had left e
nough paperwork to keep Dean busy. Calley occupied herself by reading the daily log Dean had been keeping since taking over directorship of the project. Much of his writing was devoted to the logistics of fulfilling the requirements of the various state and federal funding bodies, but occasionally his personality shone through.

  Calley particularly enjoyed his observations on the grizzly’s diet. According to Dean, a bear was a far cry from a gourmet. “Their reputation as carnivores is vastly overrated,” he wrote, “unless one counts mice, birds’ eggs and insects. Their appetite for nuts, roots, grasses and of course berries is proof that bears will tackle anything edible in the never-ending attempt to pad their bodies with the necessary layers of fat. However, unless they have no other choice, they avoid true hunting and killing.”

  She was still reading when a squawk from the CB on Dean’s pickup put an end to the comfortable silence. A few minutes later, Dean returned to fill her in on the conversation. According to the message relayed in from a park ranger, there was an injured black bear in Yellowstone who had so far been able to elude those trying to capture it. Would Dean, or anyone working for him, be willing to lend a hand?

  “Damn. I really can’t leave here,” Dean groaned. “The park’s shorthanded, or they wouldn’t have gotten in touch with me.”

  “Can’t you send Steve or me? We both know Yellowstone, and I’ve never been involved in helicopter transport. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” Calley pressed. “I don’t know my way around this part of the Flathead as well as you do. I don’t know where the snares are. I wouldn’t be much use left here on my own.”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone. Nor am I going to pull you off the project at this point,” Dean said in a tone that effectively shut down any argument. “Maybe I’ll send Steve. I’ll see if I can talk him into going.”