by Nick Thacker
10
Mirum Ursi
Yellowstone National Park
Spring 2003
Eight Months Later
8:25 A.M.
“Easy,” Travis breathed. “Let him come.”
Ben watched the massive bear close the distance between them. In his imagination, it looked like the bear would run over them at any second, but in reality, it was moving at less than a slow walk, and not in anything remotely resembling a straight line. In fact, the bear had no idea they were even there. If it had noticed them, it would have stopped to listen and smell, but it was completely at ease, meandering through the sagebrush, idly digging at rocks and stumps as it came.
Every hair on the back of Ben’s neck was standing up. His heart was hammering at the inside of his chest like it was determined to break out and run off under its own power, and his mouth had gone so dry, he thought he might choke.
Still the bear came closer.
The bear had been injured when it was hit by a car three days earlier. Several tourists and park employees had since sighted the animal limping heavily, and the sightings had been getting progressively closer to a heavily used campground. Ben and Travis were there to sedate the bear so he could be evaluated by park veterinarians, and relocated if necessary. They’d tracked the bear’s movements for two days before deciding on lying in wait for him at the edge of a clearing he’d crossed regularly a mile away from the campground, and their patience was about to pay off.
Ben had seen Travis tranquilize other animals since he started working at the park eight months earlier, but this was Ben’s first time behind the dart rifle, and the first time they’d dealt with a grizzly. He was incredibly nervous. All the previous shots he’d seen Travis take, Ben’s role had mostly been limited to working the radio in the truck, relaying communications between Travis and the vets or the wildlife biologists back at park headquarters.
Now, staring down the open sights of a low-powered dart gun, with a massive male grizzly less than fifty yards away and shuffling closer, Ben found himself wishing he’d called in sick that day.
“I still wish they’d given us a helicopter,” Ben whispered.
“Not in the budget,” Travis answered quietly. He was stretched out prone at Ben’s side, a .300 Winchester Magnum rifle at his shoulder. If the bear charged, Travis would have no choice but to shoot. With the wind blowing directly from the bear to them, their bear repellant spray would blow back and blind them as much as it would the bear, so the rifle was the only option if something went wrong. If Ben could place his dart without overly frightening the bear or alerting it to their presence, chances were good it would only run a short distance, then simply lay down and fall into near-unconsciousness. The drug in the dart could take up to a half hour to have an effect, so having the .300 as a back-up was a necessity.
Ben kept watching as the bear meandered toward them. “Wait ’til he crosses that rotten log,” Travis whispered. “Then take him.”
The bear moved to Ben’s left slightly, then stopped ten yards from the log and raised its head, sniffing. It blew out a snort of air, then dropped its chin again, the massive head swaying from side to side as if it were attached to a pendulum. Ben had to force down the irrational fear that the bear had spotted them and was about to charge.
As if he was reading his mind, Travis whispered, “We’re good. Wait for it.”
Ben focused on his breathing. Several months earlier, Travis had taught him a technique called autogenic breathing that allows a person to get their breathing quickly under control. As a means of calming himself down, Ben started focusing on the exercise. Deep inhale to the count of four, hold for the count of four. Slow exhale to the count of four, hold empty for the count of four, and repeat. As he went through the exercise, Ben could feel his heart rate slowing again as his breathing normalized, and the panicked feelings started to fade.
Then Travis urged him sotto voce, “Any time now’s good, Ben.”
Ben blinked, and realized with a shock that the bear was now ten yards past the rotten log, and ambling toward them in an almost straight line. Ben took careful aim…
…and didn’t fire.
The bear continued to close the distance, now less than twenty yards from them. Keeping his cheek welded to the stock of the .300, Travis flashed a concerned sideways look at Ben out of the corner of his eye. “Ben -” As he looked, Travis realized that Ben’s finger was still resting on the rifle stock above the trigger guard, where he’d taught him to keep it until he was ready to shoot. Travis knew that if Ben hadn’t moved his finger onto the trigger, he wasn’t ready to shoot.
Travis judged the rapidly decreasing distance to the bear again. Ten yards. Too close. Making a snap decision, he aimed the barrel of his rifle away from the bear’s chest and fired a single shot into the dirt ten feet to the bear’s left. The gunshot shattered the stillness, and the bear turned on a dime and bolted off into the trees, accelerating in spite of its limp. It had been so close when it turned that it had kicked dirt and twigs almost in their faces.
Travis pressed himself up off the ground and sat back on his haunches. Ben was still holding his rifle, but he’d allowed his forehead to drop down onto the stock, his face buried between his outstretched forearms.
“Wanna tell me what happened, Ben?” There was no judgment, no accusation. Just the question. Still, it hit Ben like a guilty verdict hits an innocent man.
“I’m sorry, Travis,” Ben murmured. “I froze up. I just froze, man. I’m so sorry.”
Travis pulled his hat off and mopped his forehead with his sleeve. “All right. Thanks for owning it.”
“I really don’t know why I did that,” Ben said. “I just couldn’t pull the trigger.”
“Don’t let it get you down,” Travis said, getting to his feet. He shouldered the .300 and held his other hand out to Ben. “C’mon. Let’s get back to the office. Gonna have to write a report on why that fancy tranquilizer rifle malfunctioned.” Ben looked up. Travis was grinning. “And on a totally unrelated subject, I also may or may not need to change my shorts.”
When they made it back to their truck, Travis tossed Ben the keys.
“You sure you want me driving?”
“Better that, than staring out the window and moping for the hour and a half back to headquarters. Busy hands are happy hands.”
“You sure you don’t want to keep your hands busy by happily throttling me?”
“Nah,” Travis said as he climbed in the passenger side. “At least not until after you buy me lunch.”
“Deal.” Ben started the engine and pulled the truck out of the campground and onto the road. “You seriously gonna write that in your report?”
“What?”
“That the tranq gun malfunctioned?”
Travis slid down in his seat, pulling his hat down over his eyes. “Well, the Park Service, in its infinite wisdom, has decreed that I account for every single cartridge I fire through that rifle. If I say that you froze, then they start an investigation into why you were on the tranq gun in the first place. Which means they call into question every second of your training to this point, trying to prove that you weren’t ready, and that I didn’t train you properly.”
Ben’s stomach sank as Travis went on.
“They’ll look at all your training records, and I guarantee you, they’ll find discrepancies, because it is humanly impossible to complete every training report one hundred percent perfectly over the course of - how long have you been working here?”
Ben thought about it. “Since early last August.”
“Call it eight months then,” Travis said. “Eight months of daily, sometimes twice or three times daily, training reports. You willing to bet your career on whether or not I crossed every t or dotted every i?”
“Hmph,” Ben answered. “No offense, but -”
“But, maybe not,” Travis interrupted. “No offense taken. I wouldn’t bet my own career on my ability to be perfect, so do
n’t feel bad. The point is, if upper management gets wind that a trainee failed to take a shot on a bear that potentially put another employee -” he tilted up his hat brim and gave Ben a significant look, “- namely me, in danger - they’ll lower the boom on both of us.”
“I understand that, and I appreciate it, but I don’t think I want you to have to lie for me.”
Travis went silent for a moment. “Look at it this way, Ben. If I actually thought you were dangerous to work with, I’d march into the Park Superintendent’s office myself and recommend you get the boot. But give me a little credit for knowing how to do my job. Do you know where Superintendent Jeffers worked before he took over here?”
“No.”
“Thirty-five uninterrupted years with the Park Service in Washington, D.C.,” Travis said. “He spent most of his time there working at the National Mall and the White House. He has zero experience working with large wildlife, and he’s made it clear he despises firearms as a general principle.”
“Wait a minute,” Ben said. “The White House is a national park?”
“The grounds are maintained by the Park Service, yeah. Same with the National Mall. So the guy goes from working at two different urban parks that total less than two hundred acres between ‘em and have no large wildlife, to running the second largest park in the continental U.S., with more than 2.2 million acres - not to mention the highest concentration of apex predators and other large mammals in the lower forty-eight.
“He was a political appointee, Ben. He mostly seems like a good guy, but he’s not a biologist. Heck, he’s not even a hunter, or even much of an outdoorsman, if we’re gonna be honest about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t know the difference between a whitetail and a mule deer, so if I allow him to remain blissfully ignorant of how I manage the bear population, I think that’s probably best for everybody concerned, don’t you?”
“Wow,” Ben said. “I just don’t want you getting into trouble on my account, is all.”
“Not gonna happen,” Travis said. “If I admit that you froze, and that I used the .300 as a very expensive noisemaker instead of using my bear spray, they’ll fire you and suspend me, which is the exact kind of trouble we’d both like to avoid. Then the department will be even more shorthanded than we are now, and because of that, they won’t have enough staff to safely tranq and relocate that bear.”
“Which means they’ll just have to shoot him.”
“You’re catching on.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.” He pulled his hat back over his eyes. “I hate it when the tranq gun malfunctions.”
Back at Park Headquarters, Ben followed Travis to the farthest cubicle in the back of the administration wing. A fifty-something woman with slate-grey hair was peering over her half-moon reading glasses at her computer screen as they passed her cubicle. Jean Draper was the head of Yellowstone’s Bison Ecology and Management Program, and a fixture at the park for more than two decades. She kept her eyes on her computer as Travis walked to his neighboring cubicle.
“Didja get him?” Jean asked.
“Nope,” Travis answered, sitting down at his desk.
“What happened?”
“Tranq gun malfunctioned.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
Ben couldn’t help but grin a little, until Travis looked over and saw him.
“C’mere, Laughing Boy,” Travis said, rolling away from the computer. “You were on the tranq when it failed, so you get to type up the expended ammunition report for the .300.”
“Aw, man…” Ben slouched into a chair and took over the computer, while Jean snickered on the other side of the cubicle wall.
“Where it asks if ‘other means of deterrent’ was used, just enter ‘NO’, then type ‘unfavorable wind’ in the comment box below that,” Travis said. “Then meet me back at the truck and we’ll go get that lunch you owe me.”
“Can he owe me lunch, too?” Jean asked.
“No, ‘he’ can’t!” Ben said.
“Quiet, rookie,” Travis interrupted. “What do you need, Jeanie?”
“Bacon double cheeseburger and an ice tea, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“No problem. Ben doesn’t mind.”
“Says the guy who didn’t bother to ask Ben,” Ben said.
“Did you hear something, Jean?” Travis asked.
Jean kept staring at her computer. “Not a thing.”
After lunch, they took the truck back out for an extended drive around the area where they’d seen the bear, re-scouting all the nearby places where the grizzly had previously been reported. They visited two large campgrounds and one smaller picnic area, asking tourists at each location if they’d seen a big bear with a limp. At the picnic area, a man told them that he’d seen a bear like it a mile down the road, but it had been sitting still in the trees off the road, so he wasn’t sure if it had a limp or not.
Travis had Ben drive to the top of a wide bluff overlooking that area, so they could use a spotting scope to try and locate the bear. They were both standing in the bed of the truck, leaning on the cab roof, using the scope and binoculars to sweep the area below. Travis finally broke the silence.
“So. You figure it out yet?” Travis asked.
“Figure what out?”
“Why you didn’t shoot.”
Ben lowered his binoculars. “Like I said, I’m not sure. I just froze.”
“I know what you did,” Travis said, glancing up at Ben before looking back through the scope. “What I want to know is why you did it.”
Ben stood there, elbows resting on the roof of the truck, binoculars dangling from his hands. “Maybe… maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic,” Travis said. He stood up, stretched his back, and took a swallow of water from his canteen. “I’m not asking you to fall on your sword, kid. I want you to at least understand what’s going on up here.” He tapped his index finger against Ben’s temple. “Now, I’ll ask you again. Why did you freeze up?”
When Ben didn’t answer, Travis continued. “Let’s be realistic about it. A bear killed your dad. Then you had to kill that bear, along with her cub, to keep ‘em from killing your little brother. Now you’re in a job that has the potential to put you in conflict with other bears. It’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to think that might cause most people some mental distress.”
“I’m not distressed, Travis.”
“Really? So when we find this bear again, and I put you back on that tranq rifle, you’re gonna take the shot?”
“I can’t guarantee that! If you’d have asked me the same question before we left the office this morning, I would have answered yes without batting an eye.”
“So? What’s changed?”
“What changed is, is that I choked! Nobody plans to do that. You expect that you’re gonna do your job, but then something happens, and you blow it, that’s all! How am I supposed to prove I’m not gonna blow it if you give me another chance?”
Travis leaned back down and started scanning the forest below through the scope. “Well, you better figure out a way.” He stepped away from the scope and motioned at Ben to look through it. When he did, he saw a large bear shuffling across a clearing more than a mile away.
The bear was limping.
“Pull in there,” Travis said, pointing at an access road in the trees that looked more like a logging trail that hadn’t been traveled in a century. Ben wheeled the truck up the embankment, then killed the engine and got out. Travis was already uncasing the Winchester. “Tell me right now, Ben. No screwing around. If you’re exorcising bear-shaped demons in your head, you’re in no kind of shape to be out here, so I need to know. Can you take the shot?”
Ben slid the tranquilizer rifle out of its case. “I can do it.”
“If you freeze up again, you realize I’m probably gonna have to shoot that big sucker, right?”
“I’m not gonna f
reeze, Travis.” Ben looked him in the eye. “If I do, I’ll save you the trouble of firing me - I’ll quit.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder and closed the door. “Let’s go find us a gimpy bear.”
They had parked a couple of miles from where they’d spotted the bear, using the truck to get around in front of it and potentially set up an ambush. Travis knew the trail the bear was using, and said there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that he’d stay on the trail and come right to them. It was just a matter of hiking half a mile off the road, finding the trail, and settling in to wait. Travis set Ben up on the south side of the trail, pointing out last chance reference points. When the bear passed a burnt stump on the north side of the trail, Ben was free to shoot. If he hadn’t fired by the time the bear got to a granite outcropping, then Travis would have to shoot.
As Ben settled in, Travis got set up on the north side of the trail. This arrangement would allow them to have the bear bracketed from two angles. The down side was that they were a little too far apart for whispered conversation once the bear got within range. If Ben didn’t step up, Travis wouldn’t be able to encourage him, and he’d have to put the bear down himself.
As he waited, Ben thought hard about what Travis had said. Was he dealing with some kind of post-traumatic stress leftover from the bear attack at Glacier? Was that why he hadn’t been able to take the shot this morning?
I’m some kind of mess, he thought. Afraid to fly, afraid of bears, what next? He stole a glance at his shadow on the needle-strewn ground beneath him. At least my own shadow didn’t give me a heart attack. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.
A loud snuffling sound from somewhere ahead got Ben’s attention. It sounded almost like a horse snorting, but deeper, more… predatory. When a horse snorts, you don’t get the feeling it’s just clearing its palate to make room for, well, you. Ben shifted his eyes across the trail to Travis, who nodded slowly. Here we go.
