by H. V. Elkin
At night they slept on a level spot beneath a climbing tree. They raked with their fingers the spot to remove twigs, pebbles, pinecones and elk pellets before they put down their bedrolls. The tree would serve in case of a bear attack.
At the end of the next day they reached the southern border of Yellowstone. Four more days remained before reaching the Fort at the northern end. Now there were people along the way. Not the leisure-time travelers who, at another time of year, made improbable dots on the landscape, the men in dark suits and derby hats or straw skimmers, the women in flounced gowns and carrying parasols. The dudes were elsewhere now, facing hardships different from those Yellowstone offered in winter.
The Park belonged to the soldiers. The first ones were at the Snake River Station, but they were not in uniform. Instead, they wore old woolen breeches and shirts. Inside the flimsy structure that was home at this outpost, hung the apparel they would be needing soon: blanket coats, caps with ear flaps, mittens, bulky felt overshoes. Their equipment included six-shooters, cartridge belts, service Springfield carbines, and ten-foot skis. Most of the men had mustaches.
“How’s the road up ahead?” Cutler asked one of them.
“Not finished yet, sir. But passable.”
“Then you figure I can get this rig to the Fort?”
“Yes sir. I’m sure you’ve taken it over rougher places. The only thing is . . .” The soldier hesitated, took a bite of plug tobacco and offered some to Cutler and Bill, who declined. “The only thing is . . . well, you might get her there all right, but you might not be able to come back so easy.”
Cutler nodded.
“Why’s that?” Bill asked.
“Well, you can see that white stuff on the mountains, can’t you?” The soldier grinned.
Bill nodded.
“Well sir,” the soldier said, “it gets lower every day. Won’t be too long now, and you’ll wake up one morning and step out into an eight-foot drift.” He looked back to Cutler. “So, like I say, you’ll get to the Fort, but you might not get out ’til spring.”
Cutler and Bill spent the night at the station. The soldiers were anxious for news from the outside world. What was Grover Cleveland up to these days? When were they going to put the Republicans back in office? Cutler was not able to tell them much about politics, but the soldiers were able to tell him something about Yellowstone.
“So you’re the John Cutler the Captain’s been waitin’ for, eh?”
“Guess I am at that.”
“Well, you’ll like the Captain—if he likes you.” The soldier grinned at a couple of the men, and they laughed. A private joke.
“You ever been in the service?” one of them asked.
“Marshallin’s the closest I ever got.”
“How about you?” The soldier turned to Bill. “No, guess you’d be a little young yet. Well, Captain Anderson’s all right. He’s the right man for the job. I’ll say that. Didn’t have somebody like him here and, in another ten years, there wouldn’t be anything left to Yellowstone. He’ll probably tell you all about that. But this grizzly business has got him edgy. Damn bear’s worse’n a spook. Captain knows it’s got to be caught one way or another. But . . .”
Cutler helped the soldier out. “Except a good military man wouldn’t be too happy about takin’ help from civilians like Bill and me.”
The soldier nodded. “It’d help if you’d been in the Army yourself. But you haven’t, and there’s an end to it.”
“Maybe, if we try to act like soldiers, it’ll put the Captain at ease.”
“Might at that.”
The next morning, Cutler and Bill set out early.
“Seems like we’re gonna have more problems than a rogue grizzly,” Bill said.
“What’s that?”
“Us bein’ civilians.”
“Worse’n that,” Cutler said, “civilians who might have to spend the winter with the Army.”
They traveled through thick pines and arrived at Lewis Lake by nightfall.
The next day, shortly after crossing the Continental Divide, they reached Yellowstone Lake. It was a beautiful lake, with clear blue water. From the high bank on the west side, they could see a distance of fifteen miles. For men who lived near desert and who seldom saw a body of water much wider than a creek, it was a breathtaking sight. It made them understand why a lot of trouble was gone to make a national park out of the land around it. It was a scene about as perfect as God could make it.
But man had to make his dent, too. In the midst of the magnificent wilderness, near the shore of a beautiful lake, was the Zillah. The Zillah was a big steamboat, owned by E.C. Waters, who was on the shore. It seemed appropriate for a man named Waters to have a boat on a lake, but Waters made Red growl. Bill couldn’t understand why, because the man seemed pleasant enough.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” Waters called. “Welcome to the Yellowstone Lake Boat Company. E. C. Waters, President and owner, at your service.”
“What kind of service?” Cutler asked.
“Well, what I usually do is ferry folks between the bay and the Lake Hotel up by the outlet. See you’re headed that way. It’s my last trip this season, because there aren’t any more customers, and the hotel’s just about closed. Going to dock by the hotel for the winter. I guess there’s no point in going back empty, is there? So I’d be willing to take you aboard and save you twenty miles of wear and tear on your rig. Save you some time, too.”
“How much?”
“Figure two-fifty a person, dollar for each animal and the rig. Come to nine dollars for the lot.”
“Guess we’ll just stay on the road then.”
“Mister, you got me over a barrel. Five dollars will pay for the steam. I got to go back anyway.” At the thought of saving time, Cutler agreed. It might make the difference between getting the job done and getting out before winter set in badly, or being holed up in Yellowstone four months or more.
The Zillah had not been designed to ferry vehicles, so it took a bit of doing to get the rig aboard with a makeshift ramp. Soon, the whistle blew, and the grinding of the engine was heard under them. The great boat pulled away from the dock, taking the two men and four animals on the first boat ride of their lives. Red was excited and forgot his animosity toward Waters. The mules accepted it without much fuss, at least Emma did. Kate’s reaction was to despot yesterday’s supper on the deck. The horse Apache was spooked by the engine noise, and Cutler comforted him with hard rubs of the neck.
For all of them, it was a rare sensation to be moving without being jounced around. Cutler thought it must be close to the way a hawk feels with its wings spread out as it drifts effortlessly on air currents. Only the boat’s noise violated the natural silence of the lake. Except for that, the smooth ride made a man forget what was bothering him, even helping Cutler let go of his need to avenge the death of his wife—at least for a while, the way liquor did.
“Of course, you know,” Waters told him, “there’s no hunting or trapping in Yellowstone. Man might get away with some of it, but it’d be hard you being so conspicuous with your wagon and everything.”
“You just find out I was a trapper?”
“’Course not. Could see that first thing.”
“Then seems funny you didn’t tell me about the restrictions before you got us on this five-dollar ride.”
Waters got flustered. “Well, it’s none of my business what a man’s going to do. Carrying customers is my business. Trapping’s yours.”
“Well, I’m here on a job.”
“For the Park Association? They aren’t worth two hoots in my opinion. If they had their way, I wouldn’t have this business.”
“Don’t know anything about an association.”
“Then you must be here for the government, I guess. About the buffalo, is it?”
“Well, it might be, and it might not.”
“Can understand if it is. Nobody around here knows what to do about the buffalo. You can lose a lot to
winter and poachers. Man named Hofer’s been trying to get them into some kind of pen by Alum Creek. Put out hay for them there. But so far there hasn’t been enough snow to drive the animals in his direction.”
“Might be bad when it does come, though.”
“Now, what I want to do,” Waters became expansive, “is put some over there on Dot Island. They could be controlled there and protected.”
“Make a nice little tourist attraction, too, wouldn’t it?”
“That, too. Wouldn’t hurt my business any, I got to admit. Good for the animals and me all at the same time. What’s wrong with that? Think I’ll wait until Hofer fails with his pen; then I’ll make my little suggestion.”
When the boat docked, the hotel was in the process of being boarded up for the winter.
Cutler and Bill moved on to the Lake Outlet soldier station, where the men were out on patrol.
They camped for the night on the Yellowstone River above the upper falls. The falls made a great roar as the water dropped over a hundred feet, followed farther downstream by a drop three times the size. Vapor from the falls rose several thousand feet to give a mystical quality to the scene. The river cut a canyon twelve hundred feet deep. Beyond the canyon, you could see an open valley, about eight miles wide. Buffalo and elk were there, grazing with great purpose before the snow would make their job more difficult. Scattered amid the feeding animals were many fountains of steam rising from hot springs.
“Not much like home,” Bill said.
Cutler said, “Not like any place I ever been, either. And I’ve been all over.”
“Maybe we died when we weren’t lookin’ and we went to Heaven.”
“Not yet.” Cutler shook his head. “Not just yet.”
The next day they followed the river to the Grand Canyon soldier station, where they got a better view of the canyon.
The day after that they pushed all the way to the end of their journey.
In the past twenty-eight days since leaving the Taylor farm west of Cheyenne, something had happened between the two men. It happened so gradually that neither had noticed it. But it was there. It was happening during the fight at the Gates Ranch, when they met the medicine man on the trail from Fort Washakie, when they watched the bighorn sheep make an impossible descent down a rock face, when they shared the bottle of bourbon in Jackson Hole, and when they took the ride on the steamboat. More importantly than during those memorable events, it had happened during the nothing, during the silences. Two men had started to be a team. They had begun to know each other in the same way Cutler knew his animals—from spending so much time alone with them.
They were now as ready as they could be for whatever it was that was known so far to the Shoshone medicine man and the coyote god that had told him.
Chapter Six
The Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel was located in a little valley at the north end of the park. It looked like a big yellow barn, and it seemed deserted.
Near the hotel were the Mammoth Hot Springs themselves. The lime water flowed from one end of the valley and had worked for centuries, creating Minerva Terrace, a collection of giant rocks shaped like barrels filled to overflowing with pink and white lime. Only the overflow was frozen in rock. A jet of steam rose fifty feet in the air and ran in rivulets down the terraces. No matter how urgent their business at the Fort might be, travelers were compelled to stop a moment and stare in wonder.
The light was fading fast, and a chill came into s the air. Cutler turned his rig toward the Fort, east of the hotel and separated from it by a parade ground. The Fort consisted of fourteen buildings of varying shapes and sizes; all were painted white and had red tin roofs. The Fort looked austere in its silent.
Cutler stopped at the guardhouse to ask where the Captain could be found. The man on duty looked much like the soldiers they had met at the outposts along the way. He had a mustache, was thin and wiry, and was about twenty years old. The difference was, he was in a dark-blue uniform that looked like a leftover from the Civil War. He also wore a pistol and cartridge belt.
The soldier said the men were at mess, but the Captain should be free in a few minutes. In the meantime, there were some formalities to follow. The soldier wrote down the names of the visitors and a description of the animals and wagon. If this were not enough of a reminder to Cutler and Bill that they were civilians entering an Army compound, the young soldier next asked to borrow their guns.
Cutler balked at this. “What do you mean by borrow?”
“I have to tape them, sir.”
“Soldier, don’t you know who I am and why I’m here?”
“Why, yes sir. I’ve got your name right here in my book, and I know a John Cutler’s been sent for by Judge Meldrum. Don’t know it officially, though. Just that news gets around in a place like this, what little there is of it.”
“Well, if you know what I’m doing here, why do you have to tape my guns?”
“Got to follow procedures, Mr. Cutler, or I won’t just be on duty at this guardhouse. There’s room for fifteen in there, and I’d be one of them tomorrow if I let you go on without fixing your guns.”
Bill grinned at Cutler. “Tell you what, boss. Seein’ as how I’m the junior member of this partnership, why don’t I stay here and see to the procedures? That way you can go on ahead and see the Captain and get some of the heat out from under your collar at the same time.”
“That’d be all right,” the soldier said. “Captain’s headquarters are right in the next building.”
Cutler nodded, got down from the wagon, and walked to the next building. By the time he got there, the Captain was waiting for him in an office with a large wooden desk that had a picture of Abraham Lincoln behind it. He was working on some papers when Cutler walked in.
“Yes?”
“John Cutler, sir.”
Captain Anderson looked up. He was a large man with a florid complexion and red hair to go with it. He had about him the air of a man with many years of military experience, as a result of which he knew what he was doing. The Captain looked at Cutler matter-of-factly, then rose to his full, commanding height—nearly as tall as Cutler—and thrust out his hand. They shook.
“You have a letter?” he asked.
Cutler handed it over, and Anderson read it. A small smile came to his lips by the time he got to the end. “Meldrum.” he said.
“Sir?”
“The Judge. No question this isn’t a forgery. Damn man might be president some day if they give him a chance to do it with talking.”
Anderson was nobody’s fool. The Judge’s diplomatic words had been intended to soothe the pride of a military man who was forced to accept help from a civilian.
“Yes, sir,” Cutler agreed.
Anderson looked up from the letter. “Don’t mistake me. He’s a good man, and he knows what’s needed here. If he says it’s you, then he’s probably right.”
“Guess you probably got more things to deal with around here than one grizzly,” Cutler said.
Anderson sighed. “Meldrum doesn’t lie, and he’s right about that. The bear’s a problem but it’s not the worst one. We’ve got to stay on our toes every minute, Cutler. Financing this operation has always been a problem. It’s one thing to set up a national park, and it’s another thing to take care of it. We’ve got close to thirty-five hundred square miles and about a hundred and fifty military men to watch it. How would you like to be in charge of twenty-five square miles of your own, Cutler?”
“I know what it’s like.”
Anderson raised his bushy red eyebrows. “Do you?”
“I was a federal marshal once.”
“That’s right. Oklahoma panhandle, wasn’t it?”
“Mostly.”
“Well, we got the same kind of characters you were after right here. Difference is, it’s easier for them to stay lost here. What we find is the evidence, seldom the criminal.”
“I heard there’d been poachers.”
“Poac
hers and fires. If it isn’t one or the other, it’s one setting the other. A man who comes onto national land to cut off a buffalo head doesn’t hesitate about burning down the whole damn park if it’ll help him get away with valuable trophies.”
“A lot of it, is there?”
“No way to tell how much exactly in a place like this. But we know they’re there. All of our fires weren’t caused by lightning. You can still see the results at Gardner River by the east fork from the fire ten years ago. It took three weeks to put out the one in ’89 above Madison Canyon. Takes an hour to walk around the damage.” He shook his head and changed the subject. “But that’s our problem, not yours. The problem you and I share, Cutler, is predators. Meldrum tells me you know about them and know how to catch them after they turn rogue.”
“That’s my business, and I’m good at it.”
“So I’ve been told. Hear you don’t believe in poisoning, though.”
“No, sir, I don’t. Poison kills more than it’s meant for. Man puts himself in a position of controllin’ animal populations, things the animals did all right by themselves before man came along, he puts himself in a situation where he’ll probably do more harm than good in the long run. It’s bad enough without killin’ more than you’re goin’ after.”
“What would you say if I told you I intend to use poison to control the coyotes that’re killing off the buffalo.”
“I’d say you were likely to wind up with too many gophers, and that’d hurt the winter range.”
Anderson sighed. “You’re right, I know. But I don’t know what else to do. It’s a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”
“Well,” Cutler said, “least we won’t be usin’ poison to get your grizzly, not if I’m goin’ to be in charge.”
“How far you come to get here, Cutler?”
“Got the message in Cheyenne.”
“And do you mean to tell me, if I ordered you to use poison, you’d turn around and walk out of here and take that same trip back without a cent of pay?”
