Yellowstone Standoff Page 8

  The dawn sky shone lavender above camp as he followed the smell of fresh coffee down the hill to the mess tent. Frost clung to stems of grass on the slope, and the cold morning air fogged his breath. He ducked through the front flaps to find a squat, middle-aged Hispanic man working at a pair of gas stoves set at the back of the tent. On one of the waist-high stoves, the man poured and flipped pancakes on two griddles at once, stacking the cooked, golden pancakes in a covered pan on a side table. He paused at the second stove long enough to pour boiling water from a kettle through coffee grounds in a cloth filter fastened to the top of a large metal urn with a low flame burning beneath.

  Chuck made his way between the tables, lined with folding chairs, that filled the front half of the tent. The air inside, toasty warm, smelled strongly of the fresh coffee. Upon spotting Chuck, the cook grabbed a plastic mug from a stack on a side table, filled it from a tap at the base of the urn, and presented it with both hands.

  “You figure I’m a coffee drinker, do you?” Chuck asked him.

  “If you aren’t now, you’re about to be,” the cook said with a slight Latino accent.

  “You’re Jorge?”

  “That would be me.” The cook wiped his hands on a rag tucked through the strings of the white apron he wore over blue jeans and a long-sleeved dress shirt, with snaps instead of buttons, rolled to his elbows.

  Chuck took a sip. The coffee was strong and crisp, with the perfect amount of bitterness. “You’re right. I’m hooked.”

  “Martha thinks we’re drinking Folgers out here,” Jorge said. “Ha.” He patted the urn. “Single source. One-hundred-percent Guatemalan, land of my forefathers. I’d never make it through the summer without it.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Out here in the middle of nowhere? Never. My lady, she works at Lake, in the hotel. I’m usually stationed in the staff kitchen at Canyon. We work winters at Big Sky, the ski resort over by Bozeman. They said they needed someone to come out here this summer. Seven days a week, twelve hours a day, ten weeks straight. I said okay, I’d give it a try: the mountains, the fresh air, the sunshine—and all the overtime pay. We got two in college. Aiyee, the tuition payments. But it’s going to be a long summer. The two of us have never been apart this long.”

  Chuck raised his cup. “I agree with you: this’ll help.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.” Jorge turned back to his pancakes.

  When Chuck walked up the hill from the mess tent with two lidded mugs of Jorge’s brew, he found Janelle bundled up and seated in a camp chair at the front of the platform, overlooking the mist-shrouded valley.

  “Today’s the day,” he said, setting the mugs on the edge of the platform and climbing up to join her. “I’m stoked.”

  “Me, too.”

  He handed her a mug. “It’s five miles farther up the valley. Ten miles roundtrip. Think the girls are up for it?”

  “They did the four miles from the lake without breaking a sweat. All the practice hikes this spring are paying off.”

  “Today’s the real payoff.”

  “You really think they’ll be there?”

  “No one could have gotten to them over the winter.”

  “It just seems so odd, out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “There’s good reason, though. The passes provided easy summer access from the south—a thoroughfare—to the central plateau, with all its food and game.”

  Janelle hugged the mug to her chest and looked north, down the valley and across the lake. “It’s beautiful, I’ll grant you that. But cold.”

  “That’s why the old ones spent their winters down low along the Snake, and only came up and over the passes to the plateau in the summer. When they got here, though, they were in the land of plenty.”

  Janelle’s gaze took in the forested ridges and snow-covered peaks lining the sides of the valley, the whitebark pines waving in the chilly morning breeze. She drew her arms to her sides. “Doesn’t look like the Garden of Eden to me.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Chuck popped the lid off his mug and took a sip, savoring the tanginess of the coffee on the back of his tongue. “The early Sioux controlled the plains, and the Navajo and Apache and Utes were in charge farther south. That left the Yellowstone uplift to the predecessors of the Shoshone. They used atlatls—spear-throwers—to take down game. Plus, they collected the nuts and berries that grew in huge quantities up here, with all the moisture and long, summer hours of daylight.”

  “Which is what brings you here, among other things.”

  “Which is what brings us here—me and Clarence, and you and the girls, too—for the initial field survey of what may well be one of the top archaeological discoveries in North America in decades, all thanks to global warming.”

  “ExxonMobil should be proud.”

  “Spoken like a true greenie,” Chuck said with a grin. “Wait. What ‘other things’?”

  She looked him in the eye. “You’re a man of convictions. That’s one of the things I love about you. You’re an honest guy, living your life in an honest, hard-working way, unlike all the gang-bangers I grew up with in Albuquerque. What I saw of you when we met is what I got, and it’s what I want to keep getting, even while you figure out what it means to be a parent—which is, basically, loving your kids while worrying about them all the time, too.”

  Chuck blinked. “I think I understand you.”

  “I know you understand me,” she said. “All your worries about bringing the girls out here with you? Welcome to your new life. It’s not the grizzlies, Chuck. It’s parenthood.” She smiled. “You may think you’re here to find whatever there is to find up there at the base of Trident Peak. But the way I see it, you’re actually here to find something else: balance. As long as you offset your fatherly worries with the person of conviction I know you are, this week will be the greatest ever. Got it?”

  Chuck leaned from his seat and kissed her cheek. “Got it.”

  It was mid-morning by the time Chuck and Janelle rousted Carmelita and Rosie, and the four of them worked their way through Jorge’s pancakes, assembled to-go lunches from fixings set out on the tables in the mess tent, and topped off their water bottles from the filtered supply outside.

  “What’s the rule?” Chuck asked the girls as he bent to cinch the laces on their hiking boots.

  “Tight shoes rule!” they recited in unison. “Blister-free is blissful!”

  “Any hot spots on those feet of yours, let me or your mom know right away.” He straightened. “You did great yesterday, but it’s a lot farther today.”

  “Piece of steak,” Rosie declared.

  Chuck grinned as she ran in place, her elbows flapping.

  Carmelita beamed. “No hay problema,” she said in a rare outward display of confidence.

  Lex climbed the slope to the platforms from the cabin. His straw Smokey Bear hat cut straight across his forehead. The back of the hat’s circular brim nearly touched the U-shaped aluminum frame of his decades-old, full-size backpack. The pack’s cavernous storage compartment, faded from red to pink by years in the sun and empty of all but the day’s worth of supplies he carried, swung loosely from the metal frame. A leather pocket-knife scabbard, inscribed with his initials, rode his belt at his waist next to a walkie-talkie and canister of bear spray.

  “I’ll lead since I know the trail,” he said while he walked with Chuck, Janelle, and the girls to the east end of tent row, where the trail from the lake climbed past the platforms and on over the hill to the south. The trail split a mile farther up the valley at the base of Hawks Rest, a craggy peak at the junction of Thorofare Creek and the upper Yellowstone River. The east spur of the trail climbed around the base of Hawks Rest, past Trident Peak, and along Thorofare Creek to a high pass over the Absaroka divide favored by elk and grizzlies alike. The west spur of the trail climbed out of the headwaters of the Yellowstone and up along Atlantic Creek to the Continental Divide at Two Ocean Pass. Water in a b
og atop of the broad, flat pass separated and ran down both sides of the divide, resulting in the only place in America where a water source split in half to feed both the Pacific Ocean, via Pacific Creek and the Snake River, and the Atlantic Ocean, via Atlantic Creek and the Yellowstone River.

  Waiting at the end of the row were Clarence, Kaifong and Randall of the Drone Team, Keith and Chance of the Canine Team, and, to Chuck’s surprise, Sarah.

  “Why’d you invite her?” he said in Lex’s ear as they approached the group.

  “I told you, she’s great,” Lex answered, his voice also low. “She asked if she could come along. There are no wolf packs in the vicinity right now, so the wolfies are organizing their gear in camp today. But uncollared grizzlies could be anywhere around here. She said she’d like to be along for any sightings.”

  “I’ve never been too fond of hotheads,” Chuck told Lex, “other than the one I’m married to.” He glanced from Sarah to Clarence. The two stood well apart, each acting as if the other did not exist.

  “All the better for you and me to keep an eye on her—make sure she’s minding her P’s and Q’s.”

  All the better for Sarah to spend the day with Clarence, too, Chuck thought. “What about the others?”

  “I invited them for a test run. This is the first time the drone and canine teams have been in the backcountry. It’ll be good for me to spend some time with them away from camp. I want to make sure they’re set for the summer before I head back to civilization.”

  Lex halted in front of the group. He toed a clod of dirt that had been kicked up from the damp, heavily chewed trail. Chuck had listened from his sleeping bag before dawn as the wranglers and their pack string headed south up the trail, the horses’ hooves digging into the soft dirt of the path as they made their way past the row of tents.

  “They were in a hurry to get back to civilization,” Lex commented.

  Over the preceding week, he explained, the wranglers and their pack horses had hauled from the boat landing to Turret Cabin the lumber for the tent platforms along with the kitchen equipment, mess tent and poles, latrines, and additional supplies needed at the camp for the summer.

  “The wranglers built the platforms for you, too,” Lex said.

  The horsemen were headed over Two Ocean Pass and on south out of the park, down Pacific Creek to their waiting trucks and trailers at the end of the nearest Forest Service road more than thirty miles away.

  “As early as they left,” he concluded, “it’ll still take them most of the day to get over the pass and all the way down to the road.”

  Chuck scanned the group. He stopped at Randall, who stood a full head taller than anyone else. In contrast to Lex’s ancient backpack, the gear-hauling system on Randall’s back was futuristically high-tech. Fiberglass stanchions rose from a web of shoulder and waist straps to form a cradle for the Drone Team’s quad copter. Lashed to the frame and rising higher than Randall’s head, the copter consisted of a square black aluminum frame two feet across topped by engines and rotors at each corner. Wires ran from a gray metal box at the center of the frame to each of the four engines. A small video camera hung from a bracket below the metal box at the base of the drone. A black plastic control console with a pair of thumb toggles and numerous buttons and switches on its face dangled in a holster of nylon webbing at Randall’s waist.

  Chuck pointed at the console. “That’s a lot of controls.”

  Randall turned sideways, displaying the drone riding high on his back. “The flight capability of this thing is out of this world, man.” He tapped the console at his waist. “But it takes a lot of operational capacity to take full advantage of it.”

  Next to Randall, the Canine Team’s canine, Chance, panted at Keith’s side, flank pressed against his master’s leg. Keith held a retractable tether attached to the dog’s collar.

  Chuck glanced at the sun, already high in the sky. “Ready when you are,” he said to Lex.

  Walking single file behind the ranger, the hikers topped the hill above tent row and entered a thick grove of whitebark pines. Piles of moist horse dung littered the trail.

  “Yuck,” Rosie said, leaping a particularly voluminous mound in front of Chuck.

  “Double yuck,” Carmelita agreed from her place in line ahead of her sister. She held her nose against the stench.

  “Poopy, poopy, poopy-head,” Rosie chanted.

  “Rosie,” Janelle admonished from behind Chuck.

  The trail soon cleared of the horses’ start-of-the-day evacuations and the air filled with the piney scent of the forest. The path wound through the trees along the east side of the valley. To the west, bordered by shoreline ranks of brilliant purple lupine, the river swung back and forth, glittering in the sunlight as it meandered across the flat, marshy valley floor before straightening and picking up speed where the drainage steepened below camp.

  After the first mile, the trail angled southeast to follow Thorofare Creek beneath Hawks Rest. Thorofare Creek flashed through openings in the trees, the creek bottom as wide and flat as the continuation of the upper Yellowstone River valley stretching away to the southwest. The only sounds were the morning breeze sighing through the treetops and the occasional caws of magpies flitting through the branches overhead.

  “I’m surprised we haven’t passed anyone on the trail,” Chuck said to Lex.

  “It’s still early in the season. And we’re inside the park, which requires permits with set user day limits.”

  “As it oughtta be, brah,” Randall said from his place near the back of the line.

  “It’s a different story six miles farther up the creek,” Lex continued, “where the park ends and the Teton Wilderness begins. Cross the boundary into the national forest in the middle of the summer and it’s like you’ve stepped into downtown New York City. They’ll start pouring in from the south on horseback in another week or two, when the snow on the divide fully clears. By the end of June, there’ll be camps every few feet, people cheek by jowl, thick as the mosquitoes that’ll be eating them alive, not to mention illegal campfires, and all the pack animals eating the grass down to the roots, leaving nothing for the elk.” Lex shook his head wearily.

  “I’ve heard the real yahoos show up in the fall,” Chuck said. “The outfitters with their pay-to-play elk hunters. Rumor has it some of them have even set salt licks just outside the park in the past, to draw trophy bulls across the boundary for their clients to gun down. And I’ve heard, because the state of Wyoming won’t limit the number of outfitters, some of them take matters into their own hands, sabotaging each others’ camps, shooting over each other’s heads to scare game away from one another. And God help you if you’re a private hunter up here on your own, competing with the outfitters. They say you’re liable to have your stock run off or your water supply fouled—anything to keep you away from the bulls the outfitters see as their divine right.”

  “The truth is, there actually are quite a few good, dedicated outfitters,” Lex said. “The majority, I’d say. They understand the limited nature of the resource and are willing to work with each other and the game-and-fish folks to ensure its sustainability. As for the few bad apples, we keep waiting for natural selection to do something about them, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “They can just get away with it?”

  “We don’t have any say. They operate outside the park. There are those who claim the outfitters own the Wyoming Fish and Game Department lock, stock, and barrel. I can’t speak to that. But I do know this much: when you watch them from this side of the boundary, you get the pretty clear sense they’ll do anything—anything—to score a trophy kill for their big-spending clients, and that goes for the good outfitters as well as the bad.”

  “Including killing wolves, I suppose.”

  The broad brim of Lex’s hat tilted back and forth as he nodded. “Whenever they can, wherever they can, as many as they can. It’s funny; the success rate for guided elk hunters in the Teton Wilderness wen
t way up—from thirty or forty percent all the way to ninety percent—after the 1988 forest fires in and around Yellowstone. The fires were so destructive that there basically was no cover left for the elk to hide in. These days, though, the new trees are tall enough to provide cover for the herds again, and the hunting success rate has fallen back to historic levels. But will the outfitters admit that’s what’s going on? Of course not. When the success rate was high, they started offering their clients guarantees—kill a bull or get your money back. Now that things have returned to normal, where hunters actually have to go out and hunt if they’re to get a shot, the outfitters are fit to be tied. And what do you think they blame their troubles on?”

  “Wolves.”

  “Of course.”

  “Which explains the push by the states around here to get the feds to remove the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List.”

  “That’s right. Gray wolves already are under what amounts to extermination orders outside the park. De-list them entirely, and who knows what’ll happen.”

  “They’re doing well inside the park, though, right?”

  “That they are, thanks to the East Coast politicians who set aside the lands of Yellowstone National Park a century ago for the American people.”

  “And for the animals,” Randall added.

  “And for the animals,” Lex agreed. “Can you imagine that happening in Congress today?”

  They hiked on. After another mile, the smell of sulfur overrode the scent of the pines.

  “What’s that?” Rosie asked, sniffing.

  “I know what it is,” Carmelita said. She turned and walked backward up the trail, looking past Rosie at Chuck. “It’s what you told us about, isn’t it?”

  Chuck nodded. “It’s what Yellowstone is known for, along with all the critters.”

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Rosie said, thrusting her hand skyward. “It’s the Thermos stuff!”

  “Thermal,” Carmelita corrected, turning forward and hurrying to catch up with Lex.

  Curving, the trail left the forest and cut across a grass-tufted hillside. A mile away, on the far side of the broad Thorofare valley, the creek flowed between stands of pines. Between the creek and trail stretched the Thorofare thermal basin, a pan-flat expanse of hissing steam columns, cauldrons of boiling water, and bubbling mud pots.