by H. V. Elkin
“You gonna get on the roof?” Felix asked.
“I’m goin’ into the shack.”
“Figure that’s a smart move, John?”
“There’s a man in there.”
“Thought your only concern was to get the bear.”
“This time we will.”
On reaching Felix’s position, Cutler saw steam coming from the ground nearby. “She ain’t gonna spout now, is she?”
“Like I said, John, you never know. If she does, it won’t be any worse than a Buffalo stampede, anyway.” Felix lay on the ground; his and Bill’s positions formed a triangle with the door.
Cutler took off his skis. Carrying his Krag. he went to the side of the door opening. The grizzly track went inside, but they did not come out. Cutler raised the rifle and pivoted around into the door opening. What he saw made him sick. The soldier was a bloody pulp lying against the wall. His missing arm was on the floor near the door.
From the other side of the doorframe, a paw shot down like a bolt of lightning against the rifle barrel. The barrel fell, but Cutler managed to keep the gun from being knocked out of his hands by bringing it down as fast as the bear’s paw moved. He backed away from the door and fired two shots through the wall. The unseen bear bellowed from inside and came forward to fill the doorframe. Anger was in its eyes; bloody patches were on its chest and left shoulder. Cutler fired again toward the bear’s head. A new bullet mark appeared near the bear’s right eye. The bear still kept coming toward him, getting too close for Cutler to fire another shot.
Felix stood up and shot in the air, not wanting to hit Cutler. He yelled like a crazy man. Bill followed suit. It distracted the bear, who started toward Felix. Felix hit the bear in the chest, but the bear continued to go toward the man.
“Red!” Cutler called.
It was what the dog had been waiting for. Red barked loudly and ran toward the grizzly, who was now on top of Burgess, preparing to hit at him with its deadly claw. Red jumped, his strong white teeth showing. He buried his fangs in the bear’s neck, and the bear backed away from Felix unable to make the dog release its hold. It backed off toward the geyser with the dog still clinging to its neck.
Cutler was now behind the bear and tried to position himself for another shot. The bear turned and pushed Red off with a swipe of its paws. The dog fell back onto Cutler.
The bear got up on all fours and ran with blind rage toward Bill on the other side of the geyser. Cutler chased after the bear from behind, firing once more; the bullet parted the hair long the bear’s back and nicked its skull. The bear should have died then but it turned back toward Cutler.
Cutler’s rife was empty. The moment was frozen in time.
Felix stood about thirty feet away, unable to get a clear shot. Bill was on the other side of the geyser, also unable to get a shot because of the way the bear was positioned. Red lay on the ground, unconscious.
Cutler thought his moment had come. He could see his own death waiting in the bear’s eyes.
“Shoot!” Cutler yelled.
“Can’t get a bead!” Felix yelled back.
“I’d hit you!” Bill shouted.
Cutler pulled out his sheath knife. If this was to be his end, he wasn’t going to die without a fight. “Shoot, damn it!” he yelled. “I’m dead anyway!”
Just then the geyser erupted, its force picked the grizzly up and dropped it several yards away.
The hot mist from the geyser might have boiled the skin off Cutler’s bones if it was not cooled by the cold air. He backed off to the edge of the spray. He could neither see the bear nor Bill.
After the mist cleared and Old Faithful was silent again, Cutler saw Bill standing on the other side. He looked as if he had been waiting for a curtain to rise and was afraid of what he might see when it did. When Bill saw Cutler standing and not much the worse for wear, except being wet and freezing, the young man smiled with relief. The bear was motionless near him. “Bring your rifles!” Cutler shouted to the others.
Felix and Cutler circled around Red who had recovered, sniffed at his former enemy, then backed away. There was nothing more had to be done. The bear was dead. Its scalded body was freezing over; it did not bleed anymore.
“Well,” Felix said, “there he is. It’s a job done, John. We’d better get you in that shack by the fire before you look the same way.”
Cutler nodded and went with them into the shack. It was the first time Felix and Bill saw the gore the bear had left behind. Bill nearly retched at this sight of the soldier’s body, but gained control of himself. Felix calmly picked up the arm, put it with the rest of the body, and threw a blanket over the remains. “Least there won’t be any more like that,” he said.
Though they had been next to death, the men stared at the stove and thought no more of what was beneath the blanket. They were hungry. A side of bacon and some canned beans were commandeered and cooked over the fire. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
Once their hunger had abated, they looked at each other and smiled. Then they chuckled. Then relief grew like a prairie fire into laughter that would not stop. Red cocked his head, unable to understand their strange human behavior. When the men saw this, they laughed some more. Red lay down near the fire, chewed on some bacon, and ignored them.
“A bear killed three men,” Felix said, “and three men killed a bear.”
The others stopped laughing and only smiled.
Bill looked at them. “Seems fittin’.”
“Well,” Cutler said, “maybe we softened that grizzly up some, but it took Old Faithful to finish the job.”
“Don’t go givin’ too much credit to the geyser,” Bill said.
“Why not?” Felix asked.
“Because,” Bill said, “it was me that threw in the soap.”
Chapter Nine
“Keep the boy with you,” the medicine man had told Cutler. And it was the boy who had saved Cutler’s life by starting the geyser spurting.
Now they were headed to pick up the poacher’s trail. The sun was still cold and the chill of death had not left Cutler. He knew it was not over yet.
The high spirits shared in the shack at Upper Basin had faded. That sort of thing could put you off your guard. He knew he couldn’t let that happen. If he had had a bottle with him, he would not have opened it. But he was still working.
A grizzly who had been turned rogue by people was a sorry thing. You might curse the thoughtless acts of man, but once you had spent your breath on that, the fact remained that the bear had become a dangerous animal. It killed people and could never again be trusted to behave like its own kind. For all the bear’s animal intelligence, it was a misfit, an insane creature whose instincts had turned against men.
The other insane creature was a man, the man who had killed several buffaloes, a man who killed for profit, someone who left the meat and the fur lying there where it fell. The man could think and used his thoughts against nature. The man was capable of starting a dangerous fire to cover his own tracks, just as he had thoughtlessly started a buffalo stampede. The man didn’t know he had indirectly kept this party from getting the bear on the first encounter. He didn’t know he had caused the unnecessary deaths of Rutherford Klock and the soldier at the Upper Basin Station. He might not know, but to Cutler’s way of thinking, the man was still responsible. Cutler’s job was not over until that man had paid for what he had done. Embodied in this unknown man were all the senseless actions of men that had turned the grizzly into a rogue in the first place. The result had been killed; now there was the cause to go after.
The hunting party returned to where the bear’s tracks rejoined the trail. A lightly falling snow had already covered the blood stains and was beginning to fill the bear’s tracks. They left the trail and went in the direction from which the bear had come.
The trail led upward into a stand of tall pines to a clearing where the blood spots started. There, the smooth snow was disturbed. Cutler stopped the mules and looked at
the spot before going into it; the story could be read only if you didn’t change it by adding your own. Cutler studied the area for a couple of minutes.
“What do you see, Bill?” he asked.
“Looks like there’s been some kind of fight here.”
“That all?”
“Well, I figure it had to be between the bear and the poacher. I can see where the man’s tracks and the bear’s are goin’ toward each other.”
“What do you see, John?” Felix asked.
“We’re lucky the trees have kept the snow off so far, or I wouldn’t be able to see any more than Bill just said. But the way it is, I figure the man didn’t know the bear was nearby until they were just about nose to nose. When that happened, the packhorse shied and threw off one of the buffalo heads and ran off a bit. The man got a shot at the bear, and he also got gashed by the bear. Knocked the rifle out of his hands where he couldn’t get to it in time. But he got up a tree, and the bear couldn’t. The bear gave up and went about its business. The man couldn’t get down the tree as easily as he got up, maybe because his wound was botherin’ him. But when he got down, he picked up the buffalo head, got back to his horse, and kept goin’ up this slope. Man was probably a cowboy.”
Bill shook his head. “What was the color of the man’s eyes?”
“Now, look, Bill, and see what I see. You can see the bear tracks comin’ from one direction and the man’s from another.”
“Sure. I see that.”
“Look how close they get, like they was just walkin’ toward each other to shake hands.”
“So they surprised each other.”
“Yeah. Now look at the horse tracks. Over there you can see where something the size of a buffalo head hit the ground. It was heavy cause it goes deep in the snow. After that, you can see the horse’s tracks are heavier on the right side than they are on the left. So the head that didn’t fall off was on its right side, and its left side was freed of its load.”
“Yeah, and the horse kept goin’ up into those trees.”
“The blood on the ground tells me they both got hurt. We already knew the bear was wounded. But up there you can see the man’s tracks where they go off after the horse. There’s some blood trailin’ there, too.”
“How about the rifle gettin’ knocked out of his hand?”
“Over there,” Cutler pointed, “you can see the shape of a rifle in the snow. You can see where the man walked toward it and picked it up before goin’ off after the horse. The rifle’s far away from the scuffle, so it had to be knocked there—far enough away so that the man’d go for the tree instead.
“You can see where the moss and snow’s been rubbed against on the bark. Part way up the tree you can see the bear’s marks. The rest of the rub-bin’ has to be the man gettin’ up to a branch. See over there where those two deep footprints are? They just start there, but there aren’t any prints goin’ to them. Figure the man had to jump to get out of the tree, or you’d see his prints goin’ away from the trunk instead of only to it.
“He was hurt, and the buffalo head was too heavy for him at first, because you can see how it’s been dragged part way until he got if off the ground. I think up ahead we’ll see where man and horse came together again. Don’t think he’d’ve tried luggin’ the head if he didn’t know the horse was waitin’ close by.”
“I’ll be damned,” Bill said. “Now that you say it, I can see it, too. How do you know the man was a cowboy?”
“By the shape of the boots and the depth of the heel. You notice my boots, Bill. They’re flat-heeled, ‘cause they’re best for a man who doesn’t spend his life in the saddle. They’re okay for ridin’, but they’re better for walkin’. Cowboy boots like those ain’t practical in this kind of territory, where he’s gotta lead his horse instead of ride him. I figure only a cowboy’d come into a place like this in boots like that.”
Burgess shook his head. “I got some of that but not all.” He looked at Cutler with a twinkle in his eye. “What about the color of those eyes?”
Sure enough, several yards away the man’s tracks met with the horse’s.
Bill said, “Here’s where he put the buffalo head back on the horse. You can see the horse’s tracks are deep on both sides now.”
“Yeah,” Cutler said. “We’ll probably find he’s got a cabin at the end of this trail.”
“How do you know that?”
“If his job was finished, he’d be headed down and out of the Park, not up. He had to go back where there’s more heads waitin’ for him to get ‘em. Or there’s someplace up there where he can fix his wound. Otherwise, a man wouldn’t choose to head upcountry to camp if he could help it. Got to be some kind of shelter.”
And there was. It was hidden in a tree-covered outcropping of rock, a cabin made of large logs with a heavy slab roof.
“Looks like he’s been in business a while,” Cutler said. “But he ain’t there now, or he’s dead. No smoke, no fire, no poacher.”
No one was inside, alive or dead. The cabin was a single room about, seven by twelve feet. It had a stone fireplace near the door, and the roof was partly supported by two iron buggy axles. In a corner was a small cot (“One man operation,” Cutler said.) With a buffalo robe over it (“Once, anyway, he took more than the heads.”).
A bloodstained shirt had been thrown into the fireplace, but it had only partially burned. Cutler fished it out and looked in its pocket. There was a yellowed newspaper clipping there. It was hard to read it in the darkness of the room, so Cutler stuffed in into his own pocket for when he got outside again.
“Think the man’s on his way out of the park,” Cutler said.
Felix said, “That’s what I figure, too.”
They found no more trophies. Outside were the man’s tracks leading a heavily loaded horse that was also pulling a sled. They were headed southeast.
“Think we can catch him while he’s still in my jurisdiction, John?” Felix asked.
Cutler shook his head. “He’s almost a day’s travel ahead of us by now. From here, I figure it’s not much more than that, and he’s out of the Park.”
“Oh, to hell with that!”
“If you want to go, Felix, we’ll go with you, but...” Cutler remembered the clipping. He took it out and read it. “Never mind, Felix. You stay here where you’re needed. We got the bear for Rutherford. Bill and me’ll get the man for you.”
“You mean you know who he is and where to find him?”
“Yes, Felix, I believe I do. Bill’ll know, too, in a minute.” Cutler handed the clipping to Bill.
The story was about five years old; it was about the Johnson County War and told of some cowboys who had been arrested and taken to Fort Russell for imprisonment. One of the names mentioned was that of Hedge Bannister. Bill looked up.
“Figures, doesn’t it?” Cutler asked.
“Yes,” Bill said. “It does.”
“Felix,” Cutler said, “do you believe I’m a man of my word?”
“Sure do.”
“Then you’ve got my word I’ll get your poacher for you.”
“That’s good enough for me. How’ll I know when it’s done, so I can celebrate?”
“We’ll get word to you in the spring.”
It was snowing heavily now. Felix looked up and shook his head. “Not sure you’ll get out of here before then.”
“We got to,” Cutler said, “if I’m gonna keep my word.”
“You goin’ on now?”
“After we get back to the Fort and I got all my rig together.”
“That makes it almost two weeks back to Jackson Hole!”
“Yeah.”
“And travelin’ with a wagon on some of those trails ain’t easy.” The words trailed off and Felix shrugged. “But guess you know what you’re doin’.”
They spent the night in the poacher’s cabin. The next morning they burned it to the ground before leaving.
Five days later, they were back at the Fort.
Rutherford Klock’s frozen body rode Emma. Cutler had never told Bill that this was one reason for taking the mules. They might have carried all they needed on their own backs and left the mules at the Fort for a much-needed rest, but there was always the chance someone would have to be carried back.
The death of a good man lingered in the atmosphere of the Fort and clouded the good news that the grizzly was dead. No one had been killed at the Riverside Station, but they had lost the man at Upper Geyser.
“Why is it,” Captain Anderson asked, “you always got to get some bitter?”
Cutler knew that was true, but he did not know the answer. At least, when you got older, it got to be true. It probably was not true for Bill yet. It seemed the young man had come through the experience without a scar on his soul. If anything, he was more optimistic than before, and that made him seem younger yet. It was Bill who got into the spirit of celebration at the supper the Captain threw that night for the hunters and several of his officers.
To Cutler, the supper was premature.
The Captain raised his wineglass. “I’d like to propose a toast to John Cutler, Bill Taylor, and Felix Burgess.”
The others raised their glasses, the officers said, “Hear, hear!” and they drank.
Cutler did not drink.
“I’m authorized to give you this,” Anderson said and handed an envelope to Cutler. “Won’t mention the amount or my men might want to change their occupations. Might even think about it myself. But I’d say you earned it, John.”
Cutler nodded to acknowledge the compliment, but he did not smile.
“John,” Anderson said, “I’m sure Rutherford Klock would want us to enjoy ourselves tonight. Or maybe you’re bothered about being holed up here for the winter.”
“We leave tomorrow,” Cutler said.
“What? You’ll never make it!”
“We’ll make it. Don’t want to speak for my partner, of course. Bill, you can stay if you want to.”
Bill grinned happily. “I figure if you can make it, I can, too. Figure the both of us have a better chance of makin’ it together than one of us does alone.”
