Grizzly (10 page)

Don pulled the rifle back into the chopper. "It's a man," he said.

"Son of a bitch," said Kelly, angrily. "It's Scottie."

"I've got her," Don said, retrieving the controls.

"Let's go down," Kelly said.

"Hang on," said the other ranger.

The Hughes tilted and fought the wind and downdrafts, until it made a shaky landing near the man below.

Arthur Scott came over and leaned against the helicopter, the blades winding down above him.

"Are you guys crazy?" he asked. "Damn it, I saw a rifle pointed at me."

"Scottie, you were supposed to meet me down at the station," Kelly said. "What the hell are you doing up here?"

"It dawned on me that it was pretty silly to come all the way down and turn right around and come up again. So I stayed here and started looking for your bear. I radioed a message through Barney."

"I didn't get it," Kelly said. "What I did get was another reaming out by Kittredge. He wants some action."

"Well, for openers," said the naturalist, "you can inform him that the bear isn't one of ours."

"How sure are you?"

"Postive."

"You still should have come down. Kittredge likes to have a real roll call, see the troops all mustered up in a bunch."

"Besides, which, old buddy," said Don, "you just now nearly got your tail shot off."

Scott grinned. He was a big man, and when he smiled his face seemed to be all teeth. "That would have been a shame," he growled.

"Oh, you're a big bag of grits, I'll give you that," Don went on. "But what would you have done if you had caught up with that big black?"

"It's not a big black," said Scott. "It's a grizzly."

Kelly said, "Grizzly?"

Don said, "Bull. There ain't no grizzlies up here. I've counted every bear in the woods. More than once. Not a grizzly among them."

"They were killed off years ago for bounty," said Kelly.

Scott said, "Well, one of them survived."

"How did we miss him?" asked Kelly.

"I don't know," said the naturalist. "But that's not all. This isn't your standard issue grizzly."

"How so?" said Don.

"A normal grizzly goes seven, maybe eight feet tall."

"Which is plenty tall enough for me," said the ranger.

Scott said slowly, "Well, this one is at least fifteen feet tall."

They had begun loading Scott s gear into the helicopter. At this, Kelly stopped and said, "That's impossible. They don't come that big even in Alaska"

"He's been marking the trees," Scott said. "I measured them. His claw prints go up so high it's unbelievable. He's establishing his territory, and he won't be challenged on it. There's nothing taller in the woods."

The rangers nodded. They were familiar with the normal bear's method of protecting his range. The claw marks, placed as high up a tree as the bear could reach, became bench marks against which each new invader would measure himself. If he could not scratch the tree higher, he turned around and looked for hunting grounds someplace else. If he beat the previous owner's height, either a battle ensued, or the first bear surrendered his territory and moved on.

"That's unreal," Don said. "Fifteen feet?"

"And weighing at least two thousand pounds," Scott said, tossing his pack into the baggage compartment of the chopper.

"How do you know that?"

"The depth of his paw prints."

Don Stober shook his head. "You make him sound like some kind of prehistoric monster. I don't believe in science fiction."

"Neither do I," said Scott. "At least, not the fiction part. But I have a hearty respect for science, and my expensive education reminds me that at one time, there were grizzlies that large. The books call them
Arctodus-Ursus Horribulus
. They were one of the mightiest carnivore during the Pleistocene era."

Kelly, listening impatiently, said, "And when was that?"

"Around a million years ago," said the naturalist.

"And what are you suggesting? That one of those million-year-old babies managed to survive? How? Frozen in a glacier, like that mammoth the Russians thawed out in Siberia?"

"No. But he must have had hearty ancestors with really enduring genes. He was probably born of normal grizzly parents, but he's a throwback to the Pleistocene period. He'd be an outsider to even his own pack, that large. They probably drove him out, or he drove them away."

"How come we never saw him before?" asked Don. "We couldn't have missed something that big."

The naturalist pointed up toward the crest of the mountain. "My guess is he was on the other side, on that private land where nobody ever went. Until the shale oil boys arrived, that is."

"And they chased him over here?" asked Kelly.

"It's the most logical theory," said Scott. "One more thing to blame on the Arabs."

"Well, what's a million-year-old bear doing over here anyway?" demanded Don Stober.

"Looking for something to eat," said the naturalist. "Most bears are omnivores. Especially grizzlies. It'd be easier to make a list of what they won't eat than what they will. They live for their bellies. But something, maybe his size, has turned this one into a carnivore. The son of a bitch simply loves meat."

He almost said the rest, but it wasn't necessary.

Human meat.

As they rode down to the ranger station in the Hughes chopper, Kelly Gordon realized that his worst fears had come true.

Any rogue bear was bad enough. But a grizzly standing fifteen feet tall was nightmarish.

Kelly had known, deep down, that a bear was responsible. But he hoped that the evidence would prove otherwise. Now, Scott's discovery of the bear sign—and especially the fact that it was a grizzly—would start events in motion that might eventually destroy all he and the other rangers had been working to achieve.

Bear cubs are blind and completely helpless at birth, during the chill of winter when the mother is hibernating. But the cubs feed from the teat until spring, and usually come out of the cave weighing thirty pounds or more, frisky, and ready for play.

The giant grizzly who had come over the mountain was huge when he emerged from his birth cave. While mother bears and their cubs usually enjoyed a summer of happy play together, the mother lying in a cool stream with the cubs, teaching them to fish, cuffing them when they became too energetic, the big grizzly had not had such loving times. Before July, he was as big as his mother, and frightened her. One night, she simply vanished, leaving him to fend for himself. This was unusual, for most mother grizzlies will die defending her cubs. And the usual training period for a cub is two years at his mother's side.

But the big bear survived. And he staked out his territory with instinct ruling him. If he was slower to learn, with no teacher, he was also bigger and stronger than anything else in the forest, and that gave him the extra edge he needed to live. Twice, foolish packs of wolves tried to drag him down, and several died for their error.

Because of the high elevation at which he lived, the big grizzly had never been seen by man. If he had, the stories would probably have been dismissed as outright lies. Even scientists admit that not more than fifty percent of bear stories are true.

Although a throwback, the giant bear earned his name of grizzly because his fur, multi-colored with silver, gray, yellow and deep brown, gave him the grizzly appearance of an old man's beard.

The Indians called the grizzly bears "Moose Killer," because only a grizzly could bring down those bovine elephants of the forest. The giant bear had never been seen by an Indian, but if he had, another legend would have been born.

Like most grizzlies, he was powerfully built, with a great hump above his shoulders that marked him apart from even the tallest black bear, the
Ursus americana
, which is the only other bear indiginous to the North American continent.

Able to run almost as fast as a horse, the normal grizzly often startles those who come upon him in the forest by streaking away with a sprightliness that astonishes those who think of bears as clumsy and bumbling.

Like the shark, the grizzly has been designed as an efficient eating machine. His teeth are canine, and the giant elastic muscles that power his jaws are able to crunch his molars through a deer's leg and bone like a knife through soft cheese.

But the grizzly's most terrible weapons are his forepaws. Ending in razor-sharp claws that may be six inches long, capable of severing a victim's head with one powerful blow. Like man's feet, the grizzly's are plantigrade, with heels, and toes that are tipped with the fearful claws.

Although he hears nearly as well as a man, the grizzly's eyes are poor. Scent is his chief sense, and he uses it to spot his prey. It is this well-developed sense of odor that keeps him out of man's way most of the time, for the average grizzly wants nothing to do with the two-legged predator.

But the beast that came over the mountain was not an average grizzly, not in size, and not in instinct. For he had now tasted the red meat of an easy kill, and had also developed a growing hatred for those he killed, and until he himself was brought down, he would continue to kill both for food and for vicious sport.

Camp site A-2, near the blue lake, had full hookups for campers and RVs, and it was still nearly filled. The rangers had assured the visitors that the bear was in the high country, and besides, what bear in his right mind would wander into what looked like a supermarket parking lot, filled with vehicles, noisy radios and TV sets crackling with the latest exploits of the FBI?

Several of the campers near the road had gathered wood (dead falls were permitted, but no cutting) and built a cheery fire in a stone-ringed pit provided by the park engineers. The popping of beer tabs and the occasional clink of a bourbon bottle made the evening merrier.

Two young boys, perhaps seven years old, stalked each other around the wood pile. One carried a toy machine gun.

"You're the bear," he yelled. "I got you. Bang-bang-bang!"

The other boy, the "bear," clutched his chest and died.

"Tommy!" called a shrill female voice. "You get out of that dirt and right over here!"

The "bear" got up and ran over to his mother, who gave him a sharp slap. "You go inside and wake up your daddy. It's time to eat."

Near the fire, Sally and Harry Dunham sat in the shadows. They were so close together that it was hard to tell where Sally ended and Harry began. His exploring hand completed the joining.

"You're up to no good," she whispered.

In his best W. C. Fields imitation, Harry said, "Just fondling the merchandise, m'dear."

Sally did a fair version of Mae West. It was their little game before love. She said, huskily, "l'd say you've got something more in mind than squeezing the tomatoes.

"Sointenly do, m'dear," he drawled.

She stirred. "In that case, let me throw on something more . . . comfortable. And why don't y'come up and see me sometime."

"
Dee
lighted," he growled, flicking an imaginary cigar.

She strolled over toward their Dodge pop-up camper, parked at the edge of the camp site where there was privacy and plenty of shade during the day from the tall pines which surrounded the site.

Deliberately, she switched her ample behind at Harry, knowing that it drove him wild. In four years of marriage, he had never tired of admiring her plump derriere.

As she clicked the flimsy door shut, she thought she heard him growl tantalizingly behind her.

She smiled and plugged in an eight-track tape of Ravel's Bolero. Harry simply went ape screwing to Bolero. It was her signal to him to give her two minutes to strip, and then come in ready for action.

Tonight she'd wear the dark blue peignoir. Harry liked pulling it up slowly. From the rear, of course.

At the fire, Harry heard the first pulsating sounds of the music. He felt the urge beginning to stir, and shifted his position slightly. No need to let the other campers at the fire see what he was thinking about.

He looked at his watch, gave a great yawn. "Well," he said, "Time to turn in."

"Yeah," chuckled a young man nearby, seated with his girlfriend. "It's really late. Almost six o'clock."

Harry stretched, his back to the fire.

Mama, he thought,
l'm ready!

Then there was an explosion of movement from the camper. It shook violently, and he heard the canvas top ripping like the sound of a low-flying jet.

He started to move toward it, but the world was in slow motion. He thought he saw a giant shape reaching down into the top of the Dodge, and he shouted, "Sally! Look out!"

She never heard him. The huge claws had dug deep into her stomach and she was making soundless, gasping motions of her mouth, the kind seen when a fish dies on the beach. The pain was so intense that all she could do was gurgle, deep in her throat, and plead in her mind for it to stop.

The group around the fire had leaped up and were frozen in fear. They saw a giant, shadowy thing behind the camper, but no one recognized what it was. Then there was a flash of white, as Sally was dragged through the camper's torn roof, and someone cried, "Jesus, that's a woman!"

Harry made a wordless sound in his throat and tried to run toward the camper. Two men nearby caught his arms and held him back.

Now Sally found her voice. "Oh, no, God!" she screamed. "Not me, not me! No, God, no!"

The voice was cut off as her body smashed against a tree trunk. The creature had her by the feet and beat her back and forth from tree trunk to tree trunk, and after the second impact the woman stopped screaming.

But Harry didn't. Inside his head, he never would.

Incredibly, Avery Kittredge arrived at the camp site before Kelly. He was waiting, in his neatly ironed green uniform, a shiny Colt .38 strapped around his waist.

He looked at his watch. "So you finally got here," he told Kelly.

Kelly nodded. "I guess you heard the radio report."

"That's my job," Kittredge said, loud enough for the shocked campers to overhear. "Is the ambulance with you?"