Abraham’s head pivoted around, and his blue eyes caught the eyes of the suit who had spoken. He was the youngest member on the board, a brown-haired Ivy Leaguer with a Southern accent who was destined for Congress in ten years. Maybe less.
“You have her file?”
“Angie Rippard,” Ivy League said. “Doctor Angie Rippard. If you ask me, Governor’s graspin’ at straws.”
He opened a manila folder atop the boardroom table. The table was forty feet long. Each board member looked at Ivy League. Abraham waited for the kid to capitulate and just gazed into his brown eyes. Eventually, the kid shrugged and looked at the fellow board members. Abraham stared a moment more, then turned calmly back toward the view of the Front Range.
“Governor Janet Creed wants you to think she’s grasping at straws. Never underestimate a woman in a position of power.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the three female board members. Two nodded. The third stared without comment at the varnished mahogany shine on the boardroom table.
“And our ground team?” Abraham said.
One of the women, an almond-eyed redhead in an ivory Carolina Herrera skirt suit with four cognac-colored buttons on the front, said: “We have mobile surveillance on the ground.”
“Of course we have mobile surveillance on the ground,” Abraham said. “What do they tell us?”
“It’s the same thing,” she said. “There are no grizzly bears in southwest Colorado. No one has seen a grizzly bear in southwest Colorado since 1979. They’re extinct.”
“That may well be,” Abraham said. “I want a dozen more men in the San Juan mountains. There can’t be so much as a paw print in those mountains. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If this biologist finds a grizzly bear in San Juan County, you know what that’d make it?” He stepped over to the boardroom table; every board member had heard this drill before, but no one answered. His eyes moved from one pair to the next. “It’d make it the most endangered species in North America.”
No one said a word. Abraham continued to look around at each pair of eyes. Everyone stared at him.
“Now our position is perfectly clear on this,” he said. “We’ve got the best publicity firm between London and Shanghai spelling out our wildlife conservation agenda to the people. I pumped nearly thirty million dollars into U.S. Fish and Wildlife to keep the nuts from Defenders of Wildlife off my back. And the truth is, even those lunatics know that grizzly bears are bad for the state. Janet Creed twice vetoed reintroducing the species, but now she’s realized that if she finds one that’s actually alive, she can shut down our proposed ski resort. She can shut down the culmination of my life’s work.”
All of the suits watched him. Everyone knew how much money he’d spent in the B.L.M. auction of San Juan County’s most skiable six thousand acres.
“Four hundred and seventy-nine million dollars may not seem like a lot of money to some people, but on the farm where I grew up, we scratched and saved every penny we earned. I’m not throwing away nearly a half billion dollars on land that I can’t even develop.”
No less than three people in the room wanted to ask him why he’d spent the money before making certain that the governor had no case, but everyone knew that risks were part of business. Chances were San Juan County was ready for the ski resort, but Governor Creed had pulled this wild card out of her hat at the last minute and everyone was panicked that she might actually find a grizzly bear in southwest Colorado.
If that happened, she’d have grounds to enact an emergency Preservation Act, and the land Abraham Foxwell had closed bidding at with four hundred and seventy-nine million dollars wouldn’t be worth half that. He’d have to sell at a loss. A huge loss. Because the land could not be developed.
It had been an enormous lack of foresight in not having seen the grizzly bear thing coming, but Foxwell enjoyed just this kind of high-stakes poker. So now everyone was waiting to see the governor’s hand. Abraham wanted to make certain he knew what was in her hand, and if she was hoping for the Ace of Grizzlies to come up off of the deck, he’d gladly have his people remove the card. Permanently.
“There can be no grizzly bears in San Juan County,” he said. “Do I make myself clear?”
Everyone nodded. He looked at each of them. In the tinted window on the boardroom’s west end, the Front Range’s snowcapped mountains loomed in the distance.
Three
She was flat broke, standing in line at Peggy’s Grocery in Telluride counting change in her hand to make certain she could pay for food that would last her the next three days. She had a five dollar bill, four ones, and a handful of quarters, nickels and dimes that totaled little more than four bucks. Thirteen dollars altogether. Angie didn’t want to hold up the line.
Standing behind her in line, two people back was a young guy about her age named Jonas Frommer. Sheriff’s deputy Frommer wore jeans and a T-shirt with an ivy-green Rocky Mountain National Park logo printed on the front. He had shaggy blonde hair, freckles over his nose, and light brown eyes.
The cashier looked at Angie and said, “How we doing?”
“I think I’ve got enough.”
The cashier glanced at the change in her hand as he ran the items over the scanner: a loaf of bread, spaghetti noodles and sauce, a pound of ground turkey, a green pepper, a package of mushrooms, a can of Folgers, a half gallon of milk, and a three-quart jug of OJ. Angie anxiously watched the digital display as each item went over the scanner. The total was $17.97.
“I need to put the OJ back,” she said.
The cashier made the change without comment, and the monitor displayed $14.32. She was about twenty-two cents short, she thought, and she could feel the eyes of the people behind her in line. Everybody was trying not to notice. No one wanted her to feel badly. Angie laid the bills on the little stand for signing receipts, and she counted out the change. She already knew it was going to be fourteen dollars and ten cents.
“And the, uh, bell pepper,” she said.
The cashier had to look up the code from a plastic placard beside the register. He entered the number and placed the green pepper beside the jug of OJ. The total was now $13.47, and Angie could cover that. The bagger placed her groceries in a single bag and said, “Would you like the milk bagged?”
“I can carry it out.”
He placed the milk beside the plastic bag. The cashier was counting out the change, and it wasn’t enough and yet he didn’t want to make her feel any worse.
“It’s, uh”—he looked at Angie, and his pale cheeks spotted red—“it’s thirteen forty-seven.”
“I thought there was fourteen dollars there.”
“It’s thirteen dollars and ten cents.” He started counting the change again to make sure.
Angie looked at the bagged groceries. The bagger looked away. He didn’t want her to feel like he was looking at her meanly.
“Maybe the, uh, mushrooms, I guess,” she said.
The bagger started to reach inside the bag. There were now six people in the line behind Angie, and they were trying not to make her feel like they were watching her.
“I’ve got five bucks you can borrow.” Angie looked up and saw the guy about her age—Jonas Frommer—leaning forward. He waved a five dollar bill. “Hey, it’s no big deal,” he said.
Angie said, “No.”
He held the five dollar bill, and he wasn’t being a jerk about it. He seemed to sincerely want to help her.
“No,” Angie said. “Just take the mushrooms off.” She turned and looked at Jonas. “Thank you,” she said. “But I really couldn’t. It’s very sweet of you.”
The cashier ran the mushrooms over the scanner, and the total finally came down under thirteen dollars. The cashier tried to sound chipper and friendly, “Twelve forty-four.”
He placed the mushrooms beside the bell pepper and OJ, and counted the change into the appropriate slots in the drawer. He handed Angie the change with the recei
pt.
“Thanks,” she said. She turned and looked at Jonas. She nodded her head tensely and tried to smile. “Thanks,” she said.
Jonas shrugged. “No worries,” he said.
Angie pocketed the change, took her groceries and milk, and exited the store.
Four
Ernie Houseman liked to camp alone.
He lived out of the back of a 1985 Chevy Sport Van, which he drove from one town to another, never staying more than a few weeks in any one place. He was a talkative fellow when someone engaged him with conversation, but he had dark ideas about the government, free enterprise, and gainful employment.
A miniature wind chime hung from his rearview mirror, and his dashboard was covered with a dozen stuffed animals. Two hours before sunset on October 4th, he started north out of Durango along the two-lane strip of State Highway 550 up to Silverton, Colorado. There was not a lot of traffic, and the mountains seemed to rise straight up into the sky.
The gates were still open along 550 seven miles north of the Purgatory-Durango Ski Resort, but Ernie caught a glimpse of the red sign on the gate as his van crawled slowly past; closed for snow, the sign said, and Ernie realized that in another month or two Park Services would begin shutting that gate quite regularly when the San Juan mountains got hit with several feet of snow every few weeks. By midwinter, avalanches would block hundred-foot sections of road every so often, and it would take the work of some hearty CDOT crews to keep the road clear through winter.
Ernie’s van crawled upward along the two-lane stretch, and he saw another sign (this one green) over to the right that read Elevation 10,000 Feet. It felt like he was climbing to the top of the world, and out behind him, he saw vast valleys carved by eons of erosion. At this elevation, only evergreens still grew, but in the distance around every switchback bend in the road, Ernie caught glimpses of the granite, snow-capped peaks in the distance that rose up above the timberline.
Occasionally the van would curve out onto a clearing, and Ernie could see the road back behind him on the far side of the valley where tiny matchbox-sized cars crawled along the stretch of 550 he’d just covered. Guardrails along the side of the road protected cars like his from plummeting several thousand feet straight down the mountainside, but still Ernie’s heart pounded in his chest and both hands gripped the wheel.
“Magnificent,” he gasped.
He rolled down the window and felt icy wind. He was energized. He turned the stereo up all the way and cruised onward toward the mining town of Silverton.
Two miles beyond town, he found the left-hand turnout for F.R. 585 and Mineral Creek Campground. Conifers lined roaring Mineral Creek on the left, and late afternoon shadows crept through the trees. He saw an innocuous sign that read: W.D.A. Corp.
Up ahead, a jeep with Colorado tags stood over to the side of the dirt road near a little bridge. It looked like two men were changing the front left tire on the jeep, and Ernie slowed up and waved out the window.
One of the men stood and said, “You can’t go up in that.”
Ernie felt his face flush red. He stopped his van and spoke out the open window, “What do you mean?”
“You’re gonna need four-wheel drive if you’re gonna try to make it up to the lake.”
The man wore a plaid flannel jacket and a bright orange hunting cap. Ernie frowned at the man and at the shotgun he saw sticking up from the backseat of the jeep.
“And they’ve closed off most of the side trails, if you’re plannin’ on campin’ up there.”
“You fellows need a hand with that tire?” Ernie asked.
“Hell no we don’t need no hand,” the man in plaid said. “I’m serious, buddy, if you try to drive up there in that van, a ranger’s gonna write you a ticket.”
Ernie said, “Well, I’ll take my chances. I drove three hours out’a my way to come up here.”
The man in plaid shook his head, leaned to his left, and spat on the ground. He glanced at Ernie’s New Jersey front tags, at the wind chime hanging from his rearview, and said nothing.
“Well, y’all take it easy now,” Ernie said, and he started to pull on across the single-lane bridge.
The man on the tire jack stood up, and both men watched Ernie as his van crawled across the bridge. Both men memorized his New Jersey tags.
“That’s an idiot right there,” the man in plaid said.
They watched the van ascend a steep section of four-wheel-drive-recommended road that carved along the forested hillside. Ernie’s van wound out of sight around the mountain.
Five
Angie steered her beat-up Bronco up the narrow winding forest road toward the cabin. Her bag of groceries sat in the passenger seat. It was about an hour before sunset, but the sky had been filled with snow clouds all day, and a gentle flurry fell through the ponderosa pine trees. The heater was on.
The gravel path was coated with about an inch of snow, but it wasn’t giving the old Ford any trouble. The forest was thick on either side, and the truck climbed, turned back to the left, and came out on a ridgeline that gave her a view out across a remote, Colorado high country valley. Another ridge rose on the opposite side of the valley about four miles as the crow flies, and Angie could see the two-lane highway running north to south along the valley floor.
The cabin was at the end of the forest road.
Angie hit the windshield wipers, which swept light snow off of the glass, and she looked up at the place. It looked haunted, but she wondered how much of that was in her mind because she had read a newspaper story of how the last tenant had died. He’d hung himself from a tree with barbed wire.
Not a pleasant way to go, but it had been ruled a suicide. The paper said he lived alone in the place, and the isolation had gotten to him.
The story was published because a reporter caught wind that Angie had taken up residence, and everyone in town thought the cabin was cursed. Angie didn’t like being referred to as the “controversial wildlife biologist” who had rented the place. She didn’t need the bad press, and she didn’t need everybody in San Juan County knowing where she lived. She wondered how much of that had come from Dalton’s office. Probably the entire scoop.
A porch ran along the front, and there were two windows on the second story that looked out over the trees and valley below. A gravel driveway pulled up to the right side of the cabin, and Angie parked and put the emergency brake on. She took her keys and the bag of groceries and stepped out into the cold.
The door squeaked, and snow crunched under her feet. A wind picked up coming down from the hillside back behind the place. She turned and looked out to the west out over the valley.
Dusk settled over the land.
She saw the lone headlights of a single car traveling south along the remote state route about two miles down the hill.
“I hope you don’t mind being alone,” she said to herself and walked up to the porch.
Six
Ernie’s van came up over one final ridge, and he saw Clear Lake spread out before him, shining in the dusky twilight like a giant round mirror. It was a half mile long, and no one else was on it. He found a spot with a picnic table and parked the van a few feet from the water.
He saw something moving on the bare slope across the lake, but he was so excited he didn’t focus on it. He grabbed the keys from the ignition, climbed down from the driver’s seat, and walked right down next to the water.
The surface was smooth. No waves. No sound.
That was when he saw the bear.
He saw it at a distance of two hundred meters. He said nothing and felt only mild alarm. Two smaller cubs gamboled along behind the big bear. They looked like they were rushing up the slope away from the lake.
Ernie stood up, and his eyes narrowed. The big bear’s light brown shading blended in with the slope, and it would be dark out in a matter of minutes.
Ernie still held the van keys, but he wasn’t thinking about them. He wasn’t thinking about the van. He saw three bears
—an adult and two juveniles—on a slope less than a quarter mile from him, and he was curious. The big bear stood still; the other two seemed unaware.
“Son of a gun,” Ernie said. “It’s a bunch of bears.”
He still had the keys in his hand. He thought of his camera and wanted to take a picture. He opened the double back doors and looked around at his luggage, groceries, and bags.
Where is the camera?
He wasn’t a neat packer, and all of his bags, coolers, food, and luggage lay unkempt on the floor. He was so excited he forgot he held the keys, and he climbed inside and began rummaging through the bags.
He glanced out the open back doors across the lake at the bears on the hillside. The big bear now stood on its hind legs.
Ernie swung back around. “Where did I put my camera?”
He grabbed his hiking backpack and unzipped pockets on its front. He slipped the keys into one.
He remembered where he had put the camera and rummaged through another pile of bags. He lifted up a black suitcase, unzipped it, and found the Minolta camera bag.
“Sweet!”
The van creaked under his weight, and on the left side, a bubble plexiglass window protruded. Ernie glanced through it, and then looked out the open back doors.
The brownish bear had come down the hill but was still across the end of the lake. Ernie grabbed the backpack, his camera bag, and climbed out. He carried them to the picnic table. His hands shook. He unzipped the camera bag.
He forgot about the keys. He removed his Minolta, popped the lens cap off, and aimed it across the lake. He tried to find the bears, but the thirty-five millimeter lens was inadequate.
He set the camera down, opened up a pocket on the backpack, and removed a long lens. He attached it and aimed out across the lake with it.
“Holy mother,” Ernie said.
The big bear was one hundred and fifty meters from him, and it stood up on its hind legs. It stared at him. Ernie snapped two pictures.
CLAWS 2 Page 2
