by Will Collins
On one such trail, a long blue Cadillac was clawing its way up the steep slope, lurching from one rut to the next, bottoming out with sickening crashes of metal against rock and hard-packed earth. On its gleaming imitation leather top, a huge green plastic baggage carrier strained at the tightly stretched shock cords that held it to the luggage rack. These cords, gaily striped with metal hooks at each end, had been intended to lash down loads on a motorcycle rack or to attach a suitcase to the trunk of a sports car. Lashed around the big baggage carrier, they were strained to their utmost endurance.
Inside the Calllac, a heavy-set man clutched the wheel and mashed his foot to the floor. He was afraid to lose momentum. Once stopped, he would spin out trying to move the car again, and there wasn't room to turn around. Nor could he back down that winding trail. He was committed.
But, he thought, as he smashed over another hump in the road, the Caddie would never be the same again.
"Hang on!" he shouted, as the car reached what looked like the crest of a hill.
The twelve-year-old boy beside him had been hanging on for quite a while now. He was afraid they were going to crash into a tree.
The road widened as they topped the grade, and his father hit the brake to keep from passing the camp site. As usual, he forgot that the Caddie had power brakes, and its nose dipped and slammed into the ground, and he and his son were thrown forward into the dash-board.
"Goddamn it!" yelled the man, glaring at the boy as if it were his fault. "Lousy power brakes!"
He turned into the camp area. As he pulled up onto the sod, the car bounced up and down as if it were mounted on a pogo stick.
They got out. The man walked around the car, inspecting it. There were enough dents to make him grit his teeth, but the big blue Caddie was apparently unharmed otherwise.
He pushed down on the hood and let go.
The car tried to become a yo-yo. It leaped up and down as if alive.
"Stinking shocks are gone," mumbled the man. He glared at his son. "Well, Fred, how about it? Are you waiting for the sun to go down? Get that luggage rack untied."
The boy climbed up onto the hood and began to struggle with the shock cords. They were drawn too tight for his twelve-year-old fingers to pry free.
"Come on!" yelled his father.
"They won't come loose," called the boy. "They're too tight."
"Oh, hell," said the man. "Get down. I have to do everything myself. I don't know why I take you camping, anyway."
The boy, sliding down the hood, didn't know why either. Because it always turned out like this, with his father shouting at him for not being able to correct for some mistake in planning that the man himself had made.
The camp grounds in the parks are filled with such misplaced vacationers. With no aptitude for adjusting to the woods, they try to force the woods to adapt to them. The result is always a miserable visit.
"You've got to use a little muscle," said the man. He slipped one of the shock cords loose, and once free it whipped out of his hands, taking off a little skin in the process, and slashed the metal tip against the side of the car, just behind one of the fancy opera windows.
The man saw paint fly and said, "Oh, my God!" The car was less than two months old, and it looked as if this single trip had already depreciated it by a couple of thousand dollars. He slid down from the open door, where he'd been standing, and examined the damage.
The scratch was enormous, and had gone through paint and primer to bare metal, which was dented with a long, narrow mark that would have to be filled.
"Now look," he told the boy. "Why do you make me nervous? If you didn't make me nervous, this wouldn't have happened. But you always make me nervous."
Frightened, the boy said, "I'll unzip the carrier." He wanted to be out of reach. After outbursts like this, furious slaps usually followed.
"Sure you will," his father said sarcastically. "And you'll rip it, right? That's all we need after everything else. A scratched car and a ripped zipper."
"I'm good at zippers," said the boy. "I can do it. I always fix Mom's zipper when it gets stuck."
"Some trick," mumbled the man. He wondered where he'd put the bourbon. A drink would go down good right now.
A green ranger vehicle came down the hill and turned into the clearing. The man did not hear it coming, and almost fell over the trunk of his car when he suddenly saw it. His attitude changed instantly. He was eager to please, to ingratiate himself with Authority, lest he be arrested for breathing.
To Kelly Gordon, leaning out the Toyota's window, he said, "Hello, Officer. How do."
Kelly bit his lip to keep from grinning. He had seen many like this man—cowed and respectful in the presence of a uniform, loud-mouthed and resentful of its authority once it was gone.
Kelly said, "I'd like a word with you."
The man approached the ranger vehicle, wiping sudden sweat from his forehead. "Why, sure." He looked at the Cadillac. "I . . . I'm parked all right, I think. What—"
Feeling pity, Kelly said, "Hey, mister, settle down. You haven't done anything wrong."
Disbelievingly, the man said, "I haven't?"
"You're just fine. I only wanted to tell you to be careful, don't wander off up toward the high country."
"Careful?" The man's voice rose. "Why should we be careful?"
"We had a little trouble with a bear and—"
The man went pale. "Bears? Oh, my God!"
His son said happily, "I like bears."
The man yelled at him, "But we don't feed them. It's against the law, right?" This last was to Kelly. "We always obey the law."
"You see any bears, stay well away from them," Kelly said. "We think one attacked some campers yesterday up in area R-Four."
"Attacked?" The man was trembling visibly. "It doesn't happen often," said the ranger.
"What—were they—"
Kelly didn't want to say it, but he had to give this man all the facts. "They were killed. But—"
"My God," the man repeated. "Killed? Freddie, did you hear that? You and your bears you like so much. What are you doing up there on top of the car? Get down right now. We're getting out of here."
Kelly, not wanting their vacation to be ruined, said, "I don't think there's really anything for you to worry about down here. Just obey a few basic rules. Stay out of the high country, and—"
"Sure," said the man, anger rising in his voice. "Stay in our car all day. No, sir. Not me. Come on, Freddie. Get that damned thing zipped up again. We're going home."
Kelly said, "Mister, there's no reason to panic. You're in Area Two, and there's every reason to believe you're safe here. Bears usually stay up in the high country. That's where the . . . accident took place yesterday. We're just taking a few precautions—"
"Fine," the man almost yelled. "And that's what I'm doing, too. Taking precautions. We're taking the precaution of getting the hell out of here."
Kelly shrugged. "There's no reason to, but if you want, that's your right. Turn in your sticker at the gate, so somebody else can get the camp site."
"How about a refund?" the man asked.
Kelly gave him a tight smile and drove away. As soon as the green Toyota was out of sight, the man raised his voice, "Power crazy, bossing people around. I've seen his sort before." He looked up at the boy, struggling with the zipper.
"What's taking you so long?"
Fred said, his voice frightened, "I think it's stuck, Daddy."
"Sure," said his father. "I thought you knew everything about zippers. Well, there's a trick to it." He climbed up and took over. "Let me show you. You hold the edges straight. Tighter. I'll pull."
The boy pulled the fabric as tight as he could. "Okay," he said.
"Got it?" demanded his father.
"Yes. But—"
"Now what?"
"I don't think you'd better jerk it, Daddy. It goes better if you do it slowly."
"Slowly is how you catch the fabric with the teeth. Fast
is how you close a zipper. You just watch me."
He gave one rapid motion with all his strength, and with an awful tearing sound the whole zipper ripped loose.
Furiously, the man hurled the zipper down to the ground and yelled, "Now look what you made me do!"
The boy shrank back against the windshield. He knew what was coming.
Tom Cooper came down the steep slope carefully. It had been a harder climb up to Powder Ridge than he'd anticipated. He was hot, and he was tired. He envied Gail.
She was gone from the stream where he'd left her. But he saw her tracks going upstream. He smiled. He knew all about the waterfall, and the beauty of the glade.
He called, "Gail?"
She didn't answer. Slowly, he traced his way up along the stream's edge.
The water was cloudy today. Almost reddish.
He came around the boulder and found her clothing and the rifle there. He smiled. This was too good to be true. He looked around. She was nowhere in sight.
She'd known he would be back soon. if this wasn't an invitation, it would serve.
There was only one place she could be, he realized. Hiding under the waterfall. He'd taken more than one co-ed visitor there during the past summer.
He slipped out of his boots and rolled up his pants. He knew how to get past the curtain of water without getting wet. Carefully, he picked his way through the sharp underwater stones.
A shimmering glaze of crimson slid past his ankles. He was looking at the waterfall, and didn't notice it.
Just before he reached the falls, something nudged his leg, and this time he looked down.
It was a red chunk of meat, torn from the body of some living creature.
A stab of fear struck Tom's heart cold. He felt a wave of dizziness stagger him.
He saw what his eyes perceived, but his mind would not accept it for one long, terrible moment.
The chunk of meat had fingers.
Tom screamed. He might have been calling, "Gail!" or it might have been only a mindless roar of fear and anger. He plunged into the waterfall, heedless of getting drenched, and disappeared behind its cascading facade.
There was a long pause, and then—from under the falls—came a cry of such rending pain and sadness that a nearby squirrel, feeding on fallen nuts, turned and ran up the tree.
The music from the juke box in the Wildhorse Mountain Lodge bar was sprightly, but the atmosphere in the rest of the bar was one of dark gloom.
Walter Corwin worked behind the bar, mixing drinks for the overflow crowd of visitors who had come down from the camp sites. His rooms were full, unusual for this time of year. But rather than cut their vacations short, many campers had decided to spend the extra money for a room at the lodge.
He should have been elated at this good fortune. But Corwin was gloomy too. Allison had not volunteered details about the two campers who had been killed in the high country, but without seeking, the details came to him through overheard conversations at the bar.
And now that cute little girl who had filled the ranger uniform so well. It made him sick.
In the corner, Kelly Gordon sat with Allison. His highball glass was empty, and he was popping ice cubes into his mouth and crunching them.
Allison said, "Have another drink. The house is buying."
He shook his head slowly.
"It'd do you good," she urged.
"I sent her up there," he said. "Jesus, when will I stop remembering?"
"With luck, twenty-five years. But probably never. Don't try, Kelly. There's no way you're going to drown her out. Accept the pain, live with it. And don't blame yourself. She was a ranger doing a job. It could just as easily have been Tom."
The pain showed on his face. "That poor bastard. He found her."
Allison said, "They had a thing, didn't they?"
Kelly shrugged. "Could be. If they didn't already, they were going to. It was in the cards."
"Is anybody with him?"
"Don Stober. I think they're getting drunk."
"Not such a bad idea," she said.
He started to get up. "I ought to be up there right now with a goddamned elephant gun."
She pulled him back down. "No you shouldn't. Didn't you tell me once that you never intended to kill anything again?"
"Total recall, that's what you've got."
"I don't like killing either," she said.
"Maybe I'm not cut out for this job," he said. "I'm not a hunter anymore. I give lectures at campfires. I'm a whiz at projecting nature slides, and when somebody needs a guide to take them through the woods looking at birds and butterflies, old Kelly's always available."
"Hush up. For an ex-mercenary, you're doing just fine."
"Allie," he said, gripping the glass with both hands, "I'm scared. There's a goddamned killer bear out there, and here I sit crushing ice cubes in my mouth. And where the hell is Scottie?"
"He'll get here," she said. "It's dark outside. There's nothing else you can do but wait."
"I bet there is," he said, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. "The only trouble is, I'm too paralyzed with inertia to figure out what."
"You're too hard on yourself."
"It's like those years when I was married, and didn't like being married, and didn't know how to go about getting unmarried." He looked up at her. "So I just stopped being a man for a while. You know what I mean."
"No," she said. "I don't know what you mean.
"I mean that l'm angry and can't do anything about it. And I'm frightened, and can't do anything about that, either."
"What you are," she said, "is tired and frazzled, and what you need is another drink to chase those goblins out of your head."
"No," he said. "Booze won't do it."
"Then how about another ice cube?" She took some ice from her glass and put it into his. He picked up one of the cubes and munched on it.
She watched him chew, and her heart ached at his misery. But there wasn't anything else she could say.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The helicopter made its egg-beater sounds over the edge of the clearing just below the timber line. It was cold in the chopper, because both doors had been left off this morning.
Kelly glassed the forest below with ten-power wideangle binoculars.
Don Stober, at the controls, said, "Maybe he's holed up in a favorite cave."
Kelly shook his head. "No. The reason we can't find him is because he's moving all the time. And he's got a million acres to cover his tracks."
"Well, he can't stay under cover forever. If he comes near one of these clearings, we ought to pick him up."
"How about putting this whirlybird down closer to the trees?"
"Negative. There's too much convection today. The thermals are popping off those rocks, and where there's updrafts, you find downdrafts too. I don't want to start chopping trees with those blades."
Kelly lowered the binoculars. He blinked. "I feel like those things have become part of my face."
"How about patterns?" Don asked. "Most bears get into some kind of routine."
"The only patterns we know are that he likes to kill women, and he's always on the move."
Don chuckled. "Sort of like me. Always on the move, searching out poontang."
Unamused, Kelly said, "Yeah."
"Which reminds me, where's that filly you've been riding?"
Kelly whipped his head around, and Don saw the anger in his eyes. He hurried to say, "No offense, Kell. Just funning."
"Some fun," Kelly said. Then he stiffened. "Hey, I see something. Take her down."
Don tilted the yoke and the chopper began to lose altitude. Kelly pointed.
"See? Moving through those pines?"
Don nodded. He saw the dark figure clearly. "That's our baby," he said. "He's a big one."
Kelly reached for the dual set of controls. "I'll fly her. You take the rifle."
Don stared at him.
"Hurry up, damn it!" Kelly said. "The S.O.B. sees us."<
br />
"Don't you want to take him?"
"Put those crosshairs on him," Kelly ordered. "Move!"
Don shrugged and shoved the heavy rifle out, resting it against the edge of the hatch.
He searched for the dark object with both eyes, and then let the crosshairs of the telescopic sight snap into focus. His finger stroked the trigger.
"Wait until we're sure," Kelly warned.
Suddenly the figure ran out into the clearing, waving its arms.
Don pulled the rifle back into the chopper. "It's a man," he said.
"Son of a bitch," said Kelly, angrily. "It's Scottie."
"I've got her," Don said, retrieving the controls.
"Let's go down," Kelly said.
"Hang on," said the other ranger.
The Hughes tilted and fought the wind and downdrafts, until it made a shaky landing near the man below.
Arthur Scott came over and leaned against the helicopter, the blades winding down above him.
"Are you guys crazy?" he asked. "Damn it, I saw a rifle pointed at me."
"Scottie, you were supposed to meet me down at the station," Kelly said. "What the hell are you doing up here?"
"It dawned on me that it was pretty silly to come all the way down and turn right around and come up again. So I stayed here and started looking for your bear. I radioed a message through Barney."
"I didn't get it," Kelly said. "What I did get was another reaming out by Kittredge. He wants some action."
"Well, for openers," said the naturalist, "you can inform him that the bear isn't one of ours."
"How sure are you?"
"Postive."
"You still should have come down. Kittredge likes to have a real roll call, see the troops all mustered up in a bunch."
"Besides, which, old buddy," said Don, "you just now nearly got your tail shot off."
Scott grinned. He was a big man, and when he smiled his face seemed to be all teeth. "That would have been a shame," he growled.
