Wild and Free

by Vella Munn

  “I could get drunk on you” was the first thing Dean said after rolling off her. His hand lingered on the exquisite softness of her inner thigh. He shook off the promise of sleep clinging to him. “I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of this.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” He opened his eyes, but in the darkened room there was no reading the expression on her face. If his world was to end tomorrow, he wouldn’t leave this bed. He thought she would be relishing her mastery over him, but her simple question told him otherwise. He kissed her lovingly on the cheek. “Don’t you believe that?”

  “I—I don’t know.” Calley turned onto her side and drew her legs upward. She pressed her body against him and gripped his shoulder with desperate fingers. “I don’t understand my emotions around you,” she whispered. “Sometimes—sometimes I think I’m giving you too much of myself. I don’t know what’s left of me anymore.”

  She was scaring him. “Don’t say that, Calley. Please don’t ever think that.”

  She released him but didn’t draw away. She was a long time answering. When she did, the words were forced. “Dean? I’m going to tell you something. I don’t know if it’s right or the time, but I have to say it, anyway.”

  Dean closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. Scared? He was terrified. “Tell me.”

  He sensed her staring at him. “I think I love you.”

  The word entered Dean, spread throughout him, lit up his life and made him young. She loved him. She was afraid to tell him that, because being in love made a person vulnerable, but she loved him just the same. It was his turn to speak, but he had to choose his words carefully. He laid his hand across her cheek, mirroring the gesture parents use to comfort their children. “Why were you afraid to tell me that?”

  “Can’t you guess?” Her laugh was harsh but directed at herself. “I don’t know how you feel about me. Maybe I’m telling you something you don’t want to have to deal with.”

  She thought he might not want her to love him. That was incredible and ridiculous. He couldn’t believe that she didn’t know what she was doing to him. “I think—” He paused for a moment and then went on. “I think I’ve been waiting to hear that since the first time I kissed you.” He shook his head at the absurdity of what he’d said. Love didn’t come that quickly. “I’m glad it’s dark in here. I’m going to say some things that aren’t going to be easy.” Dean sought her lips, relieved to find them as warm and giving as they’d been before. “The night you walked into camp? I took one look at you and knew something special was going to happen between us. I didn’t know what that was, and because I’m not a dreamer, I tried not to let myself think about what that something might be. But, Calley, when I’m around you, and even when I’m not, it’s as if meeting you has opened up a whole new dimension to my life. You make it all worthwhile.”

  “I do?” The tremor in her voice told Dean that she, too, was grateful for the darkness.

  “I feel alive around you. I—” Once again Dean sought time by kissing her. “I wouldn’t feel that way if I didn’t love you.”

  “Oh.” Calley sighed. “Oh, Dean.”

  “What?” he pressed. He felt both freed and trapped by what he’d just revealed. Free because loving Calley opened up a whole dimension to their relationship and trapped because now she had a right to his deepest secrets. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

  Calley rose up on her elbow. He didn’t breathe when her fingers started trailing over his chest. “I think maybe we’ve said enough for one night,” she whispered. “I feel drained.”

  “You should,” he said in an attempt to tighten things. “You’ve just made love to a man who might very well be insatiable.”

  “That wasn’t the kind of drained I had in mind,” Calley said before following up her words with action.

  They held hands in the morning as they left their room. When they joined Hawk for breakfast, he glanced at them only briefly before shaking his head. “I take it you slept well?” he baited them.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business?” Dean snapped with mock irritation. Soon the conversation turned to the business at hand, but even though Dean now felt secure in the feelings they’d shared and revealed to each other last night, he knew the greatest hurdle was still ahead.

  For the first time since it had happened, he honestly wanted to tell someone, as long as that someone was Calley. It was worth the cold sweat and pounding pulse he knew would come with the words. His hesitancy came only because the time wasn’t right. What he would tell Calley might change what she felt for him, but he had to, wanted to, take the risk. Otherwise they would never be able to go beyond expressing an emotion that might be no more permanent than morning mist on a lake.

  Dean quickly seconded Hawk’s observation that having Calley at the meeting might be a positive factor in defusing what could be an explosive situation. “That hunting organization doesn’t want us here in the first place. In fact, they tried to get the meeting date changed when I told them I was coming. They said my presence wasn’t really needed. Fortunately for us, this is the only time the congressmen are all able to be here. The hunters might not pull out the heavy artillery with Calley around.”

  Calley laughed at that idea. She didn’t believe the presence of a female would suddenly turn everyone into perfect gentlemen. On the other hand, she had no hesitancy about personally locking horns with someone who tried to contend that killing grizzlies in any way served the good of mankind.

  The meeting was being held in a spacious convention room within the hotel. In attendance were a half-dozen representatives of a group that called themselves Sportsmen United and three politicians representing the Department of the Interior. A large round table had been provided in what Calley took to be an attempt to make everyone feel like equals. She wondered if this had been Hawk’s idea.

  After a casual, good-natured get-acquainted session, the meeting got down to business. Basically, the sportsmen were presenting an argument for expanding the hunting areas around the Wrangell Mountains. Their contention was that there was enough sanctuary for grizzlies within the national parks. Hawk snorted derisively several times but said nothing until the moderator provided by the local chamber of commerce introduced him. With an economy of words, Hawk pointed out that grizzlies were all but extinct from the lower forty-eight states and that expanded hunting grounds in Alaska would mean a giant backward step following recent improvements made by the National Park Service. When he was finished, he introduced Dean as the bear researcher who knew more about grizzlies than any man alive.

  To Calley’s surprise, Dean didn’t reinforce what Hawk had said about the necessity for giving grizzlies enough space to roam. Instead, what he said was designed to strike at the emotions of the men who held the future of bears in their hands.

  “Stepping into bear country can, I believe, be one of the most powerful experiences of one’s life,” Dean began. “Most people tend to think in such terms as ‘petrified by fear’ when they imagine sharing the same turf with something that weighs over eight hundred pounds. Yes, I’ve felt that very real fear, but it’s much more than that. We’re debating something we’re going to lose for all time if we don’t appreciate that a grizzly is one of the last remaining ties to a vanishing way of life. When I’m in grizzly country, my senses are extraordinarily sharp. There is a super-awareness about myself and everything around me. There’s a continuum in grizzly country that exists from the beginning of time. I can’t imagine being able to duplicate that emotion any other way.” Dean leaned forward, resting his hands on the table. “That’s when I feel the most alive. It’s a sensory charge that can’t be described, only experienced.”

  Dean exchanged a look with Calley before continuing. “A grizzly is history. A wilderness area is an ancient, immensely complex system capable of producing and supporting life. Perhaps the answer to the mystery of the origin of life lies in the grizzly and his turf. Gentlemen, a grizzly isn’
t only a wilderness animal. He is the wilderness. Destroy that and you’ve destroyed a little of yourselves, as well.”

  Calley felt chilled. Dean’s words had an impact she could no more deny than she could resist. The men listening to him would have to be emotional cripples not to understand the point he was making. Dean couldn’t have made the matter any clearer. Just as a spaceship was proof of how far man had gone, a grizzly was living proof that yesterday still existed. Dean was asking them not to destroy yesterday, the wilderness.

  Although the politicians cloaked their questions and observations in bureaucratic terms, Calley felt heartened. Most of their questions were directed at Dean and Hawk. Just as the meeting was breaking up, three of the congressmen asked if Hawk could take them on a tour of Mount McKinley National Park the next day.

  “I think we have them in our pockets,” Hawk said later as the three met in his room. “Did you see the look on the sportsmen’s faces when I said I’d have a plane ready at dawn? I’m sure it was what you said, Dean. That business about a grizzly being synonymous with the wilderness really got to them.”

  “That’s why I said it,” Dean admitted. He and Calley were sitting on Hawk’s bed. He was resting his back against the headboard, while Calley leaned against him. He was slowly rubbing her shoulders and neck, his warm breath making it difficult for her to concentrate on the conversation.

  “What are you going to show them?” Calley asked. “They aren’t going to be able to learn a lot in one day.”

  Hawk frowned. “I’ve been worrying about that. I’ve taken groups like this through the park before, but I’m never sure they’re getting enough of the picture. What do you think, Dean? Toklat? They should be able to see a grizzly there.”

  Behind her Dean turned into a pillar of stone. She wanted to look around so she could see what was in his eyes, but his body language was telling her he wasn’t ready for that. “They should” was all he said.

  “Will you come with us?”

  Until Hawk asked his question, Calley had assumed that she and Dean would be part of the expedition into the park, but now she wasn’t sure. Dean was so tense that his fingers were digging into her shoulders. She flinched from the pressure but sensed that now wasn’t the time to distract him from his thoughts. There were still mysteries and shadows to Dean. Now she knew that the answers lay in the place called Toklat.

  “I’d like to come along,” she said, consciously taking the decision out of Dean’s hands. She might be backing him into a corner, but they’d made certain commitments to each other last night. She believed she could force him to face himself without it destroying the relationship they’d begun.

  “What about you, Dean?” Hawk repeated his question.

  “You’re a bastard. You know that, don’t you?” Dean growled.

  “Yeah.” Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “So I’m a bastard. Are you coming?”

  “I’m coming.”

  Dean didn’t speak for the next five minutes. Calley filled the silence by asking Hawk about Toklat, the river called “dirty water” by the Tanana Indians. She could reach out and touch the tension in Dean but chose to ignore it. When and if he was ready to open up to her, she would listen.

  “It’s too bad you won’t have time to hike any great distance along the river,” Hawk was saying. “The river itself isn’t much to look at, because the meltwater is filled with glacial silt, but it’s a natural roadway for many animals. If we’re lucky, the Dall sheep will be down where we can see them. Bring your camera.”

  “And the bears,” Dean said tersely as he pushed Calley aside so he could slide off the bed. “Don’t forget the damn bears.”

  “There’s not a chance of either of us forgetting that, Dean,” Hawk said to Dean’s retreating back. He continued after Dean had left the room. “It isn’t getting any easier for him, Calley. The man has tied himself up in knots over this one.”

  “Over what?” Calley protested. “All I know is he doesn’t want to go to Toklat. What happened there?”

  “The three of us had flown in there—Dean, Waina, me. Ask him, Calley. That’s what he’s going to have to tell you.”

  Calley picked up her shoes and said goodbye to Hawk. There’d been a barrier between her and Dean last night; talking and loving each other had knocked down that barrier. Now it was back in place. Feeling as if she was caught in a relentless time warp, Calley opened the door to their room.

  This time Dean was waiting for her. “Sit down, Calley,” he said. “I have something to tell you.”

  “I kind of figured you did,” she said in an attempt to keep things light. “I hope we can get everything out in the open this time. I can’t keep up with your moodiness.”

  “You’re responsible for it, even though I can’t expect you to understand,” Dean said in a conversational tone that didn’t fool her for a moment.

  “Is it something I’m going to want to understand?” she asked. Dean was sitting on the bed. She took the nearest chair, not wanting to touch him but wanting to be close enough to reach him in any other way he needed.

  “I’m not sure. Calley, I was at Toklat a little over a year ago.”

  “You were with Hawk and Waina,” she said in an effort to help him.

  Dean nodded. “How much did Hawk tell you?”

  “That’s all he told me,” she supplied. She tried folding her hands in her lap, but that didn’t feel right. Finally she let them trail over the sides of the chair. “He said the three of you had flown into McKinley.”

  “We flew in because there was a large concentration of grizzlies fishing the east fork. Things weren’t going well between Waina and me. I guess I was hoping that we still might be able to work things out. We worked together so well professionally. I wanted her to see that.”

  “I see,” Calley said, although she didn’t care whether she did or not.

  Dean went on. “We set up camp there after warning hikers to stay out of the area. We planned on staying the better part of the week observing and photographing the bears. I think we wound up counting a dozen of them.”

  Calley whistled. She’d seen Dean’s pictures of a group of browns fishing in McNeil River in southwestern Alaska. Although there was a certain playfulness in the way both mature bears and cubs dipped their paws in the fast-moving water in an attempt to snag salmon, knowing that some of the bears weighed as much as fifteen hundred pounds and could rear to a height of nine feet made her hold the photographs in awe. “So many,” she commented.

  “That’s one of their favorite spots,” Dean explained. His tone was conversational enough, but Calley noted that he was gripping his knees with white-knuckled fingers. “The fish population was high at that time last year. It attracted bears for miles around. They were pretty aggressive. That’s why we closed down the hiking trails.”

  Calley’s mind locked on what it felt like to be surrounded by bears, to never know when one of them might emerge from the lower slopes of the mountains. “What happened there?” she asked, although she was beginning to believe she knew what he had to tell her.

  “That’s where I got the scar.”

  It took every bit of reserve Calley had to keep from launching herself at Dean. He was battling a thousand demons; she could see that in his eyes. But if she stopped him now, they would only have to come back to this point at another time. “How?” she asked.

  Dean stared at his hands. When he lifted his eyes, his knuckles were still white. “I was ambushed. Caught off guard. That’s not supposed to happen to someone who makes a living following them, but it happened.” He took a deep breath. “It was almost dark. I didn’t see them until they were on me.”

  “They?” Calley didn’t dare close her eyes long enough to blink. Otherwise, the image Dean’s words were painting might overwhelm her. Dean, the man whom she loved, had been attacked by more than one grizzly bear.

  “Two of them,” he said in an icy voice that frightened her. “A couple of immature males, we later decided. I
don’t know how big they were, but big enough for me to believe they could drag me into hell.”

  Once again Calley fought down the need to wrap her arms and body around Dean. Not yet. He wasn’t finished. “Didn’t you have a weapon?”

  “Yeah, I had a weapon; not that it did me any good. I didn’t have a chance to use my rifle before they were on me. I should have sensed them, Calley. It was too quiet. Nothing moved. I had enough warning, but earlier that day Waina said she wasn’t going to leave Alaska. I wasn’t thinking about the right things.”

  Dean had been thinking, all right, Calley realized. He just hadn’t had his mind on survival. “Where was Hawk?”

  “In camp with his sister.” Dean’s lids slid down over his eyes. “I’ve started, so please let me finish. It was almost dark. I’d been near the river but was leaving it to return to camp. I shouldn’t have been moving so slowly, but I was thinking—well, I was trying to reconcile myself to leaving Waina behind in Alaska. The first I knew I was in trouble was when I smelled them.”

  Calley shuddered. She wished Dean would open his eyes so he would know he wasn’t alone.

  “They charged me. A grizzly can be silent when he wants to. By the time I saw them, it was too late for me to use my rifle. Besides, there were two of them. I didn’t have much of a chance.”

  “You’re alive,” Calley whispered.

  “I didn’t think I was going to make it. Calley? They stayed with me for hours. Hawk thinks it was at least three.”