“Yes.”
Rosie nodded. “If they don’t, we’ll spray them with our cans, won’t we?”
“That’s why we practiced. But we’ll always be in a group, so they’ll stay away from us.”
Carmelita and Rosie climbed into the rear seat of the truck. Chuck closed the door and turned to Janelle. “I’m having second thoughts,” he admitted.
Janelle looked at him, giving him time.
He cleared his throat. “You could drop me off at the dock and go back to Canyon Village with the girls. It’s only five nights. Clarence and I can go on in and do the survey on our own. We might even be able to finish up and come out early. We’d be back in no time.”
“You’ve been building up this discovery to the girls for the last six months.”
“It is a big discovery.”
“Which is what you’ve been telling them, over and over—that it’s such a cool mystery, that they’ll get to help solve it. You know how disappointed they’ll be if you take that away from them.”
“It’s a site survey, Janelle. That’s all the contract calls for. A simple, straightforward site survey. Stake it out, do the measurements, report back.”
“Try telling the girls that, after what you’ve led them to believe. To them, it’s the biggest thing ever.”
Chuck’s face flushed. “Yes, it’s a site survey. But it’s a survey of what might prove to be a truly significant discovery.”
“Then stick to your guns. You just told Carm and Rosie we’ll be fine out there as long as we stay in a group. That’s exactly what we’ve planned to do all along.”
“Yes, but...” Chuck looked at the patch of willows.
Janelle waited until he turned back to her before she spoke. “Were you telling them the truth?”
“Yes, I was.” He took a deep breath. “But I have to tell you about something else, something I saw last night.”
He described the video of the Territory Team attack, leaving nothing out. “Lex thinks the grizzly might actually have been hunting the team,” he concluded.
“There were two team members?” Janelle asked.
“Yes.”
“Grizzlies don’t attack large groups, right? Just ones or twos. And we’re going out there with forty or so people, verdad?”
“Sí.”
Janelle looked Chuck in the eye. “All of this might give me second thoughts if we were going camping on our own. But we’re heading out there with an army.” She stuck out her chin. “The girls and I are going with you. I want them to experience the world, your world, and I want to experience it, too.”
Chuck hid the start of a smile. “Did I know you were this stubborn when I married you?”
“You didn’t know the first thing about me when we got married.”
“I thought the learning curve would be over by now.”
“You thought wrong.” She hesitated, searching his face. “We will be safe out there, won’t we?”
He looked at the ground. The cold ache of responsibility gripped him with icy fingers. He’d promised his family the adventure of a lifetime. All this was his doing.
He’d been ecstatic two years ago when Janelle had agreed to marry him. Like Lex, he’d never been happier than the last twenty-four months, as a family man.
He settled himself on the soles of his feet. He was in Yellowstone with his family by choice, and he was heading into the backcountry with them today by the same choice. No need for mental histrionics.
He raised his eyes to Janelle. “Any bears in the vicinity of Turret Cabin will want nothing to do with our busy camp. That’s why Lex is requiring everyone to base out of the same place this summer. As long as we’re in camp or in a group, we’ll have nothing to worry about.”
“You’re sure about that?”
He took her in his arms. “Absolutely.”
His eyes strayed to the place where the grizzly had risen on its hind legs to observe the tourists gathered at the side of the road. Though only medium-sized, the grizzly had been tall and striking, and it had shown no hint of fear.
They ate their sack lunches at a picnic table on the north shore of Yellowstone Lake, down the hill from the porticoed front entrance to historic Lake Yellowstone Hotel with its vibrant, yellow-and-white paint scheme. Afterward, they drove on around the lake’s western shoreline to Bridge Bay Marina.
Yellowstone Lake stretched fourteen miles from the mouth of Bridge Bay to the foot of the Absaroka Mountains, the swath of forests, tundra, talus fields, and barren peaks that continued eastward out of the park to form one of the largest roadless areas in North America. Beyond the mouth of the bay, a cold, hard breeze piled waves into whitecaps. The wind rushed across the harbor, up the concrete boat ramp, and through the marina’s gravel lot, lifting dust in tight, spiraling dervishes.
Chuck put a protective hand to his nose and mouth as he crossed the lot while Janelle and the girls waited in the truck. A wooden dock, gray and weathered, extended a hundred feet into the water next to the ramp. Halfway down the dock, the two boats that made up the park’s cross-lake transportation fleet bobbed in the water, snugged by their boxy sterns to the dock’s rubber bumpers. The diesel-powered launches, thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide, squatted in the bay like miniature tugboats, their bows upswept to break the lake’s notorious swells, their open sterns low in the water. Three-sided wheelhouses, each big enough to accommodate a single, standing pilot, stood near the bows of the matching boats’ otherwise open decks.
A handful of scientists unloaded blue plastic storage containers in the shape of beer kegs, hinged plastic boxes the size of suitcases, and rubber-coated duffle bags from a pair of white cargo vans parked at the head of the ramp. The researchers carried the gear to a growing pile on the dock next to the secured boats. A woman stood beside the stack of gear, a clipboard in her hand and a nylon satchel draped from her shoulder.
“And you are...?” she asked Chuck upon his approach.
“Chuck Bender. You’re Martha?”
She nodded, a crisp tic of her chin.
Yellowstone National Park Research Logistical Coordinator Martha Augustine was as legendary for her drill-sergeant-like officiousness as for the power she was said to wield over scientific work in the park. According to widely accepted rumor, proposed research projects in Yellowstone gained approval only with Martha’s assent. It was whispered she could sabotage a project or researcher she didn’t like—and was regularly accused of having done so—with a mere stroke of her pen.
Martha’s fine silver hair poked from beneath her Smokey Bear hat. Wrinkles fanned out from her thin lips like the spokes of a wheel. A translucent plastic cover known among park personnel as a hat condom protected the hat’s porous straw material from spray coming off the lake. Crisp creases ran the length of her forest green, park-service-issue slacks. The badge on the breast of her gray jacket gleamed. Above the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, her brown eyes glinted with sharp intelligence.
“You’re the Archaeology Team, correct?”
“I am. With one other.”
“More than one, as I recall.”
Chuck risked a smile. “I do have three members of my fan club with me.”
Martha’s face turned to marble. “Five total,”