Grizzly

by Will Collins

  GRIZZLY

  A Major Motion Picture

  Novelized by Will Collins

  PROLOGUE

  The beast had been on the move for more than a week. Always alert to subtle changes in the sounds and movement around him, he had altered his territorial roamings in an attempt to avoid the noisy, foul-smelling machines that had appeared some months ago.

  Although the beast did not think as humans do, or measure time in days and weeks and months, he had an inborn sense of the passage of the phases of the moon and the climatic shiftings of wind and rain and snow. He had holed up for the winter months, when the blizzards howled through the high country, and when he emerged it should have been to an orgy of eating and lazy days of warm sun.

  Instead, he found angry steel machinery chewing away at the base of his mountain. The beast knew nothing of oil shale, and he had spent his entire life avoiding the two-legged enemy, Man. The smell of the invader offended his keen nose, and the stench of the gasoline exhaust and diesel fumes fouled the air for miles around the shale excavations.

  At first, he moved back into the recesses of the high country. But, relentlessly, the men and their machines followed.

  The beast had always been alone. From his birth, six winters ago, he had been shunned by his own kind and driven away by females who should have been eager for mating. His instincts fought with his awareness that he was somehow different, but he eventually accepted his role as outsider, and marked out his territory with claw marks and droppings, and defended it against all intruders.

  But the two-legged ones came in great numbers, and their machines tore away at his trails and the trees he had marked so carefully. He would have fought, but something in the back of his mind warned him against that.

  So, as they followed him up the invisibly rich outcroppings of oil-saturated shale, the beast was slowly, but inevitably driven away from his hunting grounds.

  There was nothing to do but accept it. He would find food somewhere else.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The entrance to the National Park was mostly parking area. In recent years, day visitors had been urged not to drive into the park, with free trams offered instead to transport them from scenic point to point. The narrow blacktop roads had been turning into fume-choked parking lots. Now, trams running every fifteen minutes, most cars remained outside the park in the huge lots that were patrolled by rangers who protected the vehicles against pilferage and theft.

  Near the park land, but not on it, were private vendors selling gifts, food, cocktails. The Park Service frowned on such activity, but there was little that could be done about it. A private individual on his own land had a right to go into business. And, because of recent attacks on the zoning system caused by the attempt to provide suburban housing for minorities, the Park Service was wary of trying to invoke local zoning to chase away the junky businesses that often gathered near the park gates.

  Besides, the tourists wanted to buy the junk. They grabbed for the little carved bears, with their cute noses painted black. That was something to show back home, a souvenir of their visit to the high country. Clay pottery, decorated with zig-zagged Indian patterns, dangled from colored hemp ropes—indoor planters supposedly created by the displaced tribes who had once roamed these mountains. Actually, they were mass-produced in Mexico.

  Since the gasoline shortage had become acute, the Park Service had gradually shifted its preference in vehicles toward the foreign, four-cylinder off-road copies of the Land Rover. One of these approached the gate now. It was painted a deep green, with the Service's new sky, water and land emblem painted on its side. The vehicle was made by Toyota.

  The same emblem was splashed across the big sign that read, "WELCOME TO YOUR NATIONAL PARK."

  The ranger vehicle moved past a long line of cars and pickup trucks with campers mounted in their beds. The occupants were a cross section of the population. Some were very young, with long hair and hopeful beards. Some were senior citizens, bald or grey-haired. And most were families, with two or three children. An occasional expensive RV, a self-contained house on wheels, waited democratically in the line of poorer visitors.

  Inside the gate, and down the road toward the lake, the ranger vehicle passed the new arrivals who were setting up their camp sites.

  Some had surplus pup tents. These were the younger contingent, usually traveling in an old VW beetle or on a pair of Honda trail bikes.

  Others had nylon umbrella tents, bought this spring from Sears, or Montgomery Ward. These older, more experienced campers, had brought folding chairs and tables, and bright green Coleman lanterns.

  The elite were the motorhomes, parked in the full sites with electrical supply and water hookups.

  A red Dodge van had just pulled up to a vacant spot, and the driver was starting to unload a tent, while

  his wife and small boy set up a folding table.

  The ranger vehicle stopped.

  The ranger leaned out.

  The ranger was a slim girl, tightly contained in a uniform that seemed a size too small.

  She said, to the man wrestling with the canvas tent, "Hi, mister."

  He looked up. "Hi."

  She pointed at the windshield of the van. "You don't have a sticker for your camp site."

  Puzzled, he said, "Do we need one?"

  "You sure do. Or they'll assign it to somebody else and you'll have to leave."

  "I didn't know. What should we do?"

  "Leave your stuff here to hold the site. Drive back to the gate and tell them where you are. This is N-43."

  "Hey," he said. "That's real nice of you."

  "No sweat," she said. "Tell them GaiI sent you."

  The man grinned. "Gail the ranger?"

  "That's me," said the girl. She gave a casual wave and drove on down the road. She checked in the mirror, however, and smiled when she saw the man closing the rear door of the van and getting in, starting to drive back up the road to the gate.

  He'd been lucky. By four in the afternoon, most locations would be gone, and he would have had to find a motel out on the private land, or head over to the nearest town, High City, more than a mile away.

  Gail turned the green vehicle onto a rutted dirt road, and almost instantly caught a glimpse of a speckled fawn, lying under a spruce tree. The doe would be around somewhere nearby.

  Yes, there on the skyline.

  The deer's ears flicked up. But the animals recognized the sound of the vehicle as a friendly one, and there was no fear shown.

  This was the long way to the ranger station, but it was Gail's favorite, because few of the visitors ever drove along it and the wild life had adopted it as a private enclave.

  In the trees were deer, and the occasional shy black bear, and many partridges. By the dirt shoulder were often quail and aggressive skunks, meandering along as if they owned the mountain . . . which, in fact, they did as far as Gail was concerned. In the stream, which paralleled the road for a few hundred yards, an energetic family of beaver were trying to erect a dam of cut saplings. The rangers disapproved, because the water was needed further down the mountain, but so far no one had volunteered to destroy the half-finished blockade.

  Gail Nelson was a city girl, raised and educated in Cleveland. She had come to the western wilderness as a tourist, fell in love with it, and abandoned her college education to train as a ranger. She still got letters from her mother filled with subtle hints that Harry Bennedict, the second assistant vice president at the Gates Mills bank was still single and lonely. Gail responded with friendly gossip about the animals she had befriended, and Polaroid photos of her with her favorite horse, Tex, who had been named after the popular western singer, Tex Ritter. Ritter's recording of the title song of the film, "High Noon" was on the juke box at the set
tlement restaurant, and was nearly worn out by the dimes and quarters Gail's fellow rangers fed into it, because they knew how much the song pleased her.

  Gail's foot stabbed at the brake, and the vehicle made ruts in the rocky dirt road as it skidded to a stop.

  She smiled and gave a toot on the horn.

  The matronly opossum, a plump, grey-haired marsupial with three baby possums hanging from her upraised, hairless tail, continued across the road without even looking around.

  "You show 'em, mama," said Gail Nelson.

  These were the good days, after the season was over, and the influx of visitors dwindled to just a few hundred a day. There would be fewer lost children to find; fewer drunks to quiet down.

  And, she thought sourly, fewer drugstore cowboys to make snide passes at her when she came by their campsites, checking out unsafe fires and making sure they carried out all the tin cans they'd brought in.

  Still, she told herself, she was apparently a growing girl yet, and it was time she spent the hundred and eleven dollars it would cost her to buy a larger uniform.

  Next spring, she compromised. She didn't like grasping hands, but it was nice to have those admiring glances.

  The road was clear now. She pressed the gas pedal and moved out.

  The beast was finally forced over the divide between the valley where the oil shale mining was taking place, and into another forest, an unfamiliar one, where he had never been.

  At the highest point, he had been nearly thirteen thousand feet up, and the bitter cold had not treated him well. He had tried to bite ice off an outcropping of rock, since there was no liquid water to be found, and a blinding pain had shot through his head, jabbing inside his skull. He leaped back, but it was too late; one of his incisors had broken off almost even with the gum line, and as it began to throb with a steady pulse, the beast raised his head and gave a low wail of pain that increased until a nearby tern flushed and flew away, its wings making a fluttering, beating sound that only increased the beast's anger and frustration.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rangers are inclined to be solitary people.

  Until recently, their ranks were filled only with men. Even the Susan B. Anthonys of the world, seeking equality in a male-oriented society had little taste for the deep woods and the High Sierras.

  But after the Second World War, a new breed of young woman began to emerge. Akin to her pioneer grandmother, she sought adventure on skis and with climbing cramp-ons on treacherous mountain peaks. And she discovered the wonder of the wild life that shared the forests alongside man-made roads and settlements, often unobserved by anyone except the most persistent and gentle viewer.

  One cannot crash through a forest with a transistor radio blaring in the calm, still air, and expect to see anything except a distant, flying hawk. One cannot blunder through the trees, crushing dry deadfalls underfoot, and expect to hear anything except a chipmunk diving for cover under a pile of brush. One cannot harness mechanical horsepower and roar through the woods on a trail bike and expect to find anything except frightened tracks showing where the wild life has fled the noisy trails.

  On foot is the best way to explore the woods. The Indian found his game food because he respected its sense of privacy; instead of changing his environment, the Indian adapted to it and so survived.

  But the white man, accustomed to "taming" the wilderness only succeeded in destroying much of it. And many of his worst depravations have been committed in the name of preserving the wild.

  Gail Nelson hoped to be part of the new breed of forest ranger who would help turn the trend around. This was only her second year with the Service, but she had already made a mark with her superiors, who saw in her a hope for the future.

  Even in this post-season period, there wasn't time to roam the woods on foot. So today, as usual, Gail would saddle up Tex and set off on her rounds, her healthy young body straining the seams of the uniform she admitted she really must replace by next season.

  The ranger station was constructed of split pine, and fitted into the clearing which surrounded it like a piece of the forest circled by a lake of gravel and asphalt.

  Outside the building, a group of rangers were lined up, standing at ease. Their brown and green uniforms were trim and neat, however, and their attention on the ranger who stood before them was keen.

  He looked up as Gail Nelson parked her vehicle. Without making it a big thing, he glanced at his watch, and she saw the glance. She gave a little, "I couldn't help it," movement of her hand and head, and he smiled, motioning her into the line of rangers.

  All of the others were men; most of them were in their late twenties, although a few were younger.

  "I didn't think you'd make it," said the ranger who stood alone.

  Gail said, "I wouldn't miss a Kelly Gordon briefing for the world."

  This sent a chuckling series of remarks down the line of rangers. They were friendly gibes, most of them, about how women were always late.

  "I had to straighten out a camper at the 'N' site," Gail said without apology.

  Kelly nodded. "You're late, but we're just starting."

  Tom Cooper, a young ranger, slipped down the line so he could stand next to Gail. She gave him a half smile, trying to keep the side of her lips that faced toward Kelly Gordon, immobile.

  Kelly said, "We've got us a problem and a half today. This is the biggest post-season mob we've ever had. If we're not careful, they can get out of hand."

  Tom Cooper said, maybe a bit too loudly, "Kelly's worried that we've got more back-packers up there in the high country than raccoons."

  Gail winced. Tom was too obviously trying to draw attention to himself while poking fun, not too subtly, at his supervisor. She had warned him more than once about this. But he didn't seem to be able to control his mouth.

  Kelly ignored the remark. "So I'm sending patrols out to Area Four," he went on. "No way of knowing what might happen. The long-range weather's good, but we could get a freak storm, or a fire or anything."

  Gail, to keep Tom from mouthing off again, said, "There's no way to wet-nurse all those back-packers. There's too many of them scattered too far."

  "I know," said Kelly. "But we'll still do the best we can." He looked down the line of rangers. "Okay, you've all got your jobs. Go do them."

  The casual line broke up. The teams of rangers moved off toward their vehicles or the stable.

  Kelly waited, as Gail Nelson came toward him. He wanted to smile at her anxiety, at her fresh young face and ripe figure bulging through her underestimated uniform. He had made up his mind to mention its tightness to her if she didn't do something by next season; there was so little time to go this year, it wasn't worth the hassle. Privately, he believed that she wouldn't need prompting. She had a good head.

  At thirty-eight, Kelly looked five years younger. His dark blue eyes and sleek brown hair gave him the appearance of an actor. In fact, once while in New York, he had been offered the starring role in a shaving cream commercial. He had turned it down when he learned he was expected to wear makeup. Often, Kelly had wondered what might have happened to his life if he had taken the job.

  Kelly was born in Montana, and grew up in the snow country. His friends often said (out of his hearing) that Kelly was suckled by a bear and raised by a bobcat. Actually, his parents were normal folks in Helena, but there was a great deal of emphasis on hunting and fishing, and Kelly excelled at both of them.

  He brought down his first twelve-point deer before his fifteenth birthday, and for several years after that, kept the Gordon freezer filled with game.

  Then, one day, he had seen his best friend shot down by a city hunter who made a sound shot into the brush with a high-powered thirty-ought-six rifle. The slug was an expanding soft-point, and after it tore through the unlucky young man, there was never a chance of saving his life. Kelly had shoved handfuls of his shirt into the wound, and never even slowed the bleeding.

  Since that day, he had never shot
at a living thing.

  When he was drafted for the Vietnam war, he did not refuse to go. Instead, he explained his feelings to the officials, and volunteered for the most dangerous medic duty available. Several times, he'd flown with Don Stober, four years his junior. But he trusted Don, and when Stober had shown up after the war, looking for a job, Kelly had interceded for him and helped him get the flying ranger post.

  Kelly liked Gail Nelson. She wasn't the first female ranger who had served at this park. But she was the most popular one. She had a serious dedication to the work, and a real love of the wilderness and its animals.

  She told him, "I'm sorry. My apologies."

  "Accepted," he said, with his best Charlton Heston grimness. It fooled nobody.

  Tom said, apparently to Kelly, but actually to Gail, "Well, I'm on my way up to R-Four."

  She said, "That's pretty crowded. Maybe the two of us should go?"

  And this was as much to Kelly as to Tom.

  The idea of Gail joining him appealed to Tom Cooper. To Kelly, eagerly, he said, "R-Four is loaded, Kell. And a lot of those back-packers up there are green as grass."

  Kelly looked at the work sheet on his clip board and shook his head.

  "Gail, I need you down here today. Thompson phoned in sick, so the home base is all yours."

  She nodded, flashing a smile that she hoped would hide her disappointment. "Good," she said. "Maybe I can get my paperwork up to date."

  Tom shrugged. Moving toward his jeep, one of the last of the old American vehicles left in the park, he told Gail, in a low voice that Kelly couldn't hear, "Well, we tried. Listen, I'll catch you later for dinner."

  She nodded, warming up the smile especially for him. Tom raised his voice and said, confident that Kelly would overhear, "See you later."

  Automatically, Gail replied, "Alligator."

  "Hey," Kelly called. "You can't get up to R-Four in that four-wheeler."

  Caught in mid-stride, Tom halted, grinned. "How true," he said. "I don't know what I was thinking of."