Sullivan's Promise

by Joan Johnston

  Pete and Johnny had only brought three snowmobiles, so Rye would have to ride double with her. She’d brought her rifle, a short-barreled Marlin 1895, but she’d reminded Rye he should leave his Remington M700 in his truck, since firing his weapon in a national park was illegal, and he was just along for the ride.

  “Why do you get to shoot at the bear that attacked Mike and I don’t?” he demanded.

  “I’m only planning to shoot if we get attacked by a grizzly and bear spray doesn’t stop it,” Vick replied.

  “I thought that was the point of this trip—to find that grizzly and kill it.”

  “It is, but I would rather someone else did the killing besides me.” Which was why she’d brought a gun that was no good for long distances. She was willing to help track the bear, but she didn’t want to be the one to put it down. If she spotted the grizzly, she would contact the other team members and let one of them take the shot.

  “I brought my rifle with me,” Rye said to the ranger. “Do I have permission to shoot if I see that bear?”

  To her amazement, Lightfoot said, “You bet. We can use all the help we can get on this hunt.”

  Rye shot her a smug look and shouldered his rifle using its sling.

  The ranger went on to explain, “After what happened to Mike, we set a string of steel leg-hold traps in likely places. This bad boy was either hibernating or too clever to get caught.”

  “Don’t take any chances, and don’t wait on us,” Pete said. “If you see that grizzly, take the shot.”

  “How will I know it’s the right bear?” Rye asked.

  “The young woman who got mauled was Terry Smith,” Lightfoot said. “Another hiker, Robin Coffman, was with her during the attack. They didn’t have bear spray with them, so Robin had no way to help her friend. She got herself up a tree and waited the bear out. Needless to say, Robin got a good look at the grizzly. The bear has a streak of gold across its hump, and Robin saw an ear tag, Number 437, which turned out to be a bear called Goldilocks.”

  “Park bears have names?” Rye said incredulously.

  Vick explained, “Most of the bears in the park are tagged, and a lot of them have radio collars so scientists can monitor their habits, for purposes of research. The person who first tags a bear and tattoos its inner lip gives it a nickname.”

  “Goldilocks doesn’t have a radio collar,” Lightfoot said.

  “Goldilocks doesn’t sound like the best name for a renegade bear,” Rye pointed out.

  “She wasn’t a renegade until she got shot,” Vick said.

  “Killing cattle doesn’t make her a renegade?” Rye asked.

  “Until we find the remains of the calf you lost, we have no way of knowing whether it was actually killed by a mountain lion or wolves.” Vick saw the disgusted look on Rye’s face at her defense of the grizzly. But her version of events could very well be the truth, and a grizzly feasting on carrion left by other predators wasn’t a menace to ranchers like Rye.

  Unfortunately for this bear, it had been shot by a poacher and had subsequently attacked Mike and killed a young woman. It had to be put down.

  Vick shuddered at the thought of what the surviving girl must have witnessed. The screams of her friend. Her agonizing cries for help as the grizzly mauled her body. The growls and chuffing of the bear. The copper smell of blood. Robin would have to live with that memory the rest of her life.

  At least, Vick thought, the girl would have the satisfaction of knowing she’d helped to identify the bear that had killed her friend. The gold streak across the hump on its back, distinctive to grizzlies, would help them recognize Goldilocks from a distance. Of course, the ear tag would clinch it.

  “This grizzly also limps on its right forepaw,” Lightfoot said.

  Pete turned to Rye and said, “Sound familiar?”

  Rye nodded. That information coincided with what he and Pete had discovered about the bear that had attacked Mike.

  “Not much of Going-to-the-Sun Road is plowed,” the ranger said. “We’ll take the snowmobiles as close as we can get on the road and hike the rest of the way to the site of the attack.” He looked at each one of them intently and asked, “Everybody got bear spray?”

  “I thought we were going to shoot this bear,” Rye said.

  “Goldilocks isn’t the only bear in these woods,” Lightfoot replied. “I walk with my gun over my shoulder and a can of bear spray in my hand—with the safety off. And I carry a second can of spray on my belt.”

  “Are you kidding?” Rye said.

  “You only have to get attacked once to know you don’t have much chance with a rifle if a grizzly surprises you,” Lightfoot replied. “They’re faster than you can imagine.”

  “I suppose you speak from experience,” Rye said.

  Lightfoot pulled his coat collar down, where the sort of scars Mike was going to have once he healed angled down the ranger’s scalp and neck. He turned to Pete and said, “Ready to go?”

  Pete nodded, put on his helmet, and started up his snowmobile.

  “I’ll drive,” Vick said to Rye as she handed him an extra helmet. “I know the park better than you.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that. I’ve done a lot of hiking in Glacier.”

  “I’ve done more.”

  At his inquisitive look she explained, “I’ve spent days on end in the park with donors who wanted to see a grizzly in the flesh.”

  “And have they?” he asked.

  “Ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  “I hope you can deliver today.”

  “Me, too.” Vick was aware of Rye’s arms snug around her waist and his muscular thighs surrounding hers as they bumped over the snowy road. They had to shout to be heard over the loud engine.

  “I thought more snow would be melted,” Vick said.

  “It should help us tracking that bear,” Rye shouted back.

  It was a serious hike through the muddy grass and snow from the spot where they left their snowmobiles to the site of the attack, on Reynolds Creek near Deadwood Falls. The air was fresh and clear and cold. The vast Montana sky and the crystal clear water in the creek seemed to be fighting with each other to see which could be a brighter blue. Cow parsnip and monkey flower, both grizzly forage, were pushing up through the snow.

  Vick listened to the chatter of a red squirrel that had claimed a fallen log and trekked through a stand of hemlock filled with raucous jays that seemed to resent their intrusion. The fact that the hikers were so far off the main trail went a long way toward explaining why this tragedy had occurred.

  “Looks like they were bushwhacking,” Vick said.

  “They were from Chicago. They wanted to be sure to see a grizzly,” Lightfoot said with a grim smile.

  Vick saw where the grizzly had scratched out a bed beneath a ponderosa pine. There was evidence Goldilocks had eaten sedge and skunk cabbage and stolen most of a squirrel’s stash of pine nuts. It appeared the grizzly had been awakened from sleep and charged the two girls when they surprised it.

  According to the surviving girl’s account, her friend had made the fatal mistake of fighting back, which was likely why she’d ended up dead. Vick knew from her research on grizzlies that they attacked other bears only until they surrendered, and they exhibited the same behavior when charging humans. When people did what seemed natural—fighting back—grizzlies continued their attack. When humans surrendered, the bear bit and clawed, but usually left within minutes. The difficulty, of course, was to stifle your screams and lie unmoving, preferably on your stomach with your hands protecting your head, while your flesh was being viciously clawed and your bones were being crunched by a five-hundred-pound grizzly.

  “I did some scouting,” Lightfoot said, “and Goldilocks left this location headed east, in the direction of St. Mary Lake.”

  Vi
ck bit her lip at the thought of the sort of trek they might be facing if the bear headed up into any one of the three rugged mountains, each between eight and nine thousand feet, that towered over the lake. The dense forests at the base of the mountains were filled not only with bears but with other dangerous predators.

  Goldilocks could easily move fifty square miles within the park looking for food, and they’d brought supplies in case an emergency arose that forced them to spend the night. Each of them carried a heavy backpack, with Vick hauling her fair share of the load. She’d been on other hunts in the past, when bears were being tracked to be collared and tattooed, and she knew the terrain could be grueling.

  Vick wore binoculars on a strap around her neck, and her rifle was slung sideways across her chest by cords around both stock and barrel that were connected to her backpack across each shoulder, supporting the weight of the weapon. That kept her rifle easily accessible and left her hands free to carry pepper spray.

  “The trail peters out about a quarter mile from here, so my suggestion is we follow the trail as far as we can, then split into two teams until one of us picks up the trail again,” Lightfoot said. He turned to Pete and added, “You come with me. Vick can partner Rye.”

  Vick saw the surprise on Rye’s face when the ranger suggested he team up with her. It was a vote of confidence, an acknowledgment that she knew as much about tracking in the park terrain as Lightfoot did.

  “You’ve got your sat phone?” Lightfoot asked her.

  Vick nodded. A satellite phone could be a lifesaver in an emergency, and it was the best way for them to communicate if they got more than shouting distance apart.

  “Give me a call if you find Goldilocks’s trail, and we’ll do the same.” Lightfoot turned to Rye and said, “Keep your eyes and ears open.” Then, to both of them, “Good hunting.”

  ONCE THE TWO teams separated, Rye found himself consumed by a primitive dread. He and Vick were noisily shoving their way through dense brush along Reynolds Creek that might very well be concealing the grizzly that had gravely injured one person and killed another. He found Vick’s serenely undisturbed demeanor irritating.

  “You’re not going to carry that pepper spray in your hand like that all day, are you?” Rye was having trouble accepting the fact that pepper spray would be a better deterrent to a grizzly charge than a bullet.

  “I am. With the safety off,” Vick replied.

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “If we spook a bear, I might not have time to get my pepper spray out before I end up flat on my back with a grizzly standing on top of me. Better safe than sorry. Where’s your pepper spray?”

  “In my pack.”

  Rye walked three more steps before he realized Vick wasn’t with him. He turned and asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “Get it out.”

  “What?”

  “Your pepper spray. Get it out right now and attach it to your belt.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Rye said. “You’ve got spray right there in your hand. Why do I need it, too?”

  “Because if a bear puts me down and comes after you, my pepper spray isn’t going to do you much good.”

  “I’ve got my rifle.”

  “Were you listening to Lightfoot?” she said. “Did you hear a word he said? If I have to point it out to you, Mike had a shotgun with him that turned out to be useless. Guns are great from a distance. I hope we’re able to take out this bear without putting anyone in danger. But there are eight hundred grizzlies in Montana—three hundred of them in this park—and bushwhacking like this, our chances of running into one of them, not necessarily the one we’re hunting, are pretty good.”

  Rye dropped his pack in the snow with a grunt of disgust and rummaged through it for his pepper spray. It was near the bottom, so maybe she had a point about it not being readily available. He pulled it out and snapped a holster containing a metal can the size of the Yeti he used for his morning coffee onto his belt, then slung his backpack back on before reshouldering his rifle. “Satisfied?”

  “Thank you. Frankly, I thought you were going to be stubborn about this.”

  He grinned. “Did you have a Plan B?”

  “I was going to let the next five-hundred-pound grizzly we encounter take a bite out of you.”

  Rye laughed. It dawned on him that he was thinking of Victoria Grayhawk as “Vick,” not “Lexie,” and interacting with the woman she was today, not the fantasy he’d held in his head for so many years. His change in attitude toward her was something he likely would have shared with Mike while they were doing dishes together. He missed his brother. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that it didn’t matter one bit that they had different fathers.

  Vick veered closer to the creek and stopped to examine a spot where dirt was splattered across the snow. “A bear dug up a bunch of glacier lilies for breakfast this morning, but it used its right paw, and I don’t see any blood, so maybe not our bear.”

  “Our bear might be healed if the wound was slight,” Rye said.

  “That’s possible.” She started walking again, glanced at him, and asked, “What shall we discuss?”

  In order not to surprise any bears, it was necessary to make noise, which meant they had to keep talking. That was something Rye hadn’t considered when he’d decided to come along. For however many hours they spent hunting Goldilocks, he and Vick would need to talk about…something.

  He grimaced and said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens if Angus marries my mother.”

  “Oh?”

  He made a face at her. She was leaving the entire conversational ball in his court. He sighed and said, “I don’t think I can live in the same house with him.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would feel too strange to have another man sleeping in Dad’s bed or sitting at Dad’s place at the table or slouching in Dad’s chair in front of the fireplace.”

  “Does your mother want Angus to come live in her home? Or is she planning to go to Jackson Hole to live with him?”

  Rye’s brow furrowed as he considered the second option Vick had suggested. “I don’t think she’d leave Montana before Amy Beth gets her degree.”

  “Why not? Amy Beth is away most of the year at school. Your sister could either stay with you and Mike in the summer or spend her summers with your mom and Angus in Wyoming.”

  “My mom has been doing the lion’s share of taking care of Cody while Mike and I work the ranch. I don’t think she’d want to leave me without help.”

  An uncomfortable, and quite literally dangerous, silence grew before Vick said, “I could help with Cody’s care.”

  Rye knew Vick wanted more time with Cody, and that she was willing to go to court to get it. But the reason she’d first given for relinquishing custody of her child remained an issue. “What about your work?”

  She lifted her chin militantly. “There are lots of spaces between travel and events when I could be with Cody. You—we—could hire someone to fill in when I’m gone.”

  Rye noticed Vick was no longer adding the qualifiers, the “If it’s all right with you,” or the “If you think it’s a good idea,” when she made suggestions about spending more time with their son. He realized how much his attitude had changed, when it dawned on him that her change in attitude was okay with him. That long-ago promise he’d made to a seemingly irresponsible girl named Lexie didn’t apply to the woman he’d come to know as Vick. “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

  “One problem solved. What else have you got?” Vick said with a cheeky grin.

  “How about sending Angus back to Wyoming with his tail between his legs?”

  “How about giving your mother a chance to be happy?” she shot back.

  “I don’t like the guy. I don’t expect I ever will. But you have a point. Mom obviou
sly loves him. I guess my having to give blood was a blessing in disguise, since now she’ll be able to reunite with her long-lost love.”

  “You sound bitter,” Vick said.

  “She should have told me the truth sooner.”

  “People make mistakes,” Vick said. “It’s hard to judge the choice she made, since we have no way of knowing whether things would have been better or worse for you if she’d told your dad the truth. Haven’t you ever done anything you regretted?”

  “Yeah.” He met her gaze and said, “Keeping my distance from you for way too long.”

  The surprise on her face was comic. “When did you decide that was a mistake?”

  “I’ve known for a long time. It’s only since you moved to Montana last year that I admitted to myself what an ass I’ve been. I could’ve been loving you all this time. Instead of despising you.”

  “Can you shut it off like that? Loathing me, hating me, spurning me? Can you banish it with the snap of your fingers?” She snapped her fingers, but with her gloves on, there was no sound.

  He shrugged. “It felt like you rejected me when you rejected our son. And it wasn’t easy to accept the fact that you thought so little of our night together that you could walk away without looking back.”

  She met his gaze, her eyes filled with distress. “The night we met, I told you a little about my situation. That my mom ran off and left me behind. That my dad was pretty much absent from my life. What I didn’t say was that I didn’t trust you—or any man—to hang around once you’d gotten what you wanted.”

  His face flushed as a wave of anger washed over him. He couldn’t believe she’d held such a low opinion of him. But what else was she supposed to think? After all, they’d hooked up in a bar and ended up in bed. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…But damn it, she was wrong. “That night wasn’t only about sex.”