At Turret Cabin, Lex drew Chuck aside.
“I owe you some pretty big thanks, from what I hear,” the ranger said. “Your wife, too.”
“Right place, right time,” Chuck replied.
“What happened, exactly?”
“They were messing around at the back of the boat when it hit a swell. Bad timing.”
Kaifong had completed the hike to the cabin without difficulty.
“Not a good way to start the summer.”
“Everyone will be more careful now.”
Lex chortled darkly. “We’ll see.”
The two men observed the research camp springing to life before them.
A white, rectangular mess tent towered beside Turret Patrol Cabin. The historic log cabin, half the size of the tent, was one in a string of “snowshoe cabins” built in the Yellowstone back-country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The cabins sheltered rangers chasing poachers who slaughtered animals slowed by deep snow during the winter months. In recent decades, with winter poaching under control, Turret Cabin had served as a lonely summer outpost for seasonal rangers—though this summer, with the arrival of the research teams, the cabin site would be anything but lonely.
The one-room cabin and canvas mess tent faced north at the base of an open, grass-covered slope. A wooden picnic table, its planks as weathered and gray as those lining the dock at Bridge Bay, sat in front of the cabin. The plastic storage drums containing the camp’s supplies lined the outside walls between the tent and cabin. On the east side of the mess tent, the wranglers loosened straps and removed the last of the geology, meteorology, canine, drone, and archaeology teams’ gear from the pack horses, lining the duffles and storage containers in the grass for retrieval by the team members. Fifty yards east of the horses, the beige cloth walls of the multi-seat camp latrine rose head-high at the foot of a stand of pines.
The scent of freshly cut lumber wafted from a dozen newly erected tent platforms, each fifteen feet wide by twenty feet deep. The platforms lined the hillside from east to west, a hundred feet above the cabin and mess tent. Team members swarmed their assigned platforms, putting up tents, setting out webbed camp chairs, and erecting mosquito-screened, nylon-roofed day rooms. Already, a number of fold-out solar panels lay face-up on the slope above the platforms. Wires from the panels fed juice into stacks of rechargeable batteries that would power the research teams’ computers, LED lanterns, and walkie talkies over the course of the summer.
“What do you mean, ‘We’ll see’?” Chuck asked as he and Lex watched the activity.
“How many contracts did you win at the Grand Canyon during the years I was there?” Lex asked. “Six? Eight?”
“Plenty.”
“So you know what it takes to score a research position in any national park, much less Yellowstone.” The ranger eyed the scientists as they assembled tent poles and unfolded camp tables. “I already told you what a bunch of Type A personalities these kids are. They’re good people, no question. Talented. Whip-smart. Capable. But they’re high strung, too.”
“Meaning...?”
“Meaning accidents are going to happen this summer; there’ll be too many people here together for them not to—along with the sort of thing Sarah pulled last night, going for Toby’s throat.” Lex lowered his voice. “Speak of the devil.”
Sarah approached with a large duffle over her shoulder, angling past the cabin from the trampled area where the wranglers unstrapped the last of the gear from the pack horses. She stopped before Lex and Chuck.
“Toby’s making threats,” she announced. She flopped the duffle to the ground at her feet.
Lex closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. “You tried to strangle him, Sarah.”
“Do I look like the kind of person who goes around trying to choke people to death just for the fun of it?”
“Well…”
Sarah had traded her pink vest for a brown, camouflage-patterned jacket. A ball cap bearing the Grizzly Initiative logo of a bear’s hulking outline hid her mohawk, and she’d removed all but the least showy of her earrings. She still sported plenty of attitude, however, with her hooped, gold nose ring; the rakish angle of her cap, its flat trucker bill set high and to one side so that it covered the top of one ear; the chipped black polish on her fingernails, banded with thin, orange stripes; and the multi-hued tattoo of a snake that wrapped around her wrist and across the back of her hand, the serpent’s tongue extending past pointed fangs to flick between two knuckles.
“Well, I’m not that kind of person,” Sarah declared. “What you saw last night was the finish. Toby started it before the meeting. I was just standing there, enjoying my punch and cookies, and he comes up to me and says, ‘We’ll see about that.’ And I’m like, ‘We’ll see about what?’ And he’s like, ‘If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t even be here this summer.’ I’m like, ‘Can’t take what?’ And he’s all, ‘Being second fiddle.’ Which is the last thing I am. We are.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lex said, waving his hands. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Our studies. Our funding. You. Martha.” Sarah raised her eyebrows. “It’s been the same thing every year for the last three years. Every summer, a little more for the wolfies, a little less for the Grizzly Initiative. It’s like the National Science Institute can’t get enough of the poor, wittle endangered gray wolf. Year after year, a bigger percentage for them, a smaller one for us. And then, this year, the Center for Predator Studies shifted all their funding, every last dime, to the Wolf Initiative.” She pointed up the slope at the row of tent platforms. “Look up there,” she demanded, spittle flying from her lips. “There were tags with the platform assignments. The Wolf Initiative has four platforms. Four. We only have three. And Martha gave them the first boat over this morning. We had to sit around and wait.”
Chuck looked from Sarah to Lex. It appeared the ranger was counting silently, working to control himself. “You said something about being threatened,” he said finally.
She nodded vigorously, her remaining earrings bouncing. “By Toby. Yeah. He said if I complained about funding levels, he’d make sure the Grizzly Initiative got even less next year. He said he knew enough people to make it happen.”
“That’s it? That’s the threat you’re talking about?”
“It’s pretty legit, I’d say.”
Lex shot a glance at Chuck, then looked Sarah over. “I’m going to tell you this one time, Sarah, and one time only: your emails last summer, with your concerns about not getting to go out into the field, got old real fast. Martha didn’t want you invited back this year, but I stood up for you. I know you were solid in the field two years ago, and I understand how frustrating last year was for you. I told her you deserved another season in the backcountry, that your thesis was riding on it.” Lex lifted a finger. “But I’m telling you right now, I expect you to get along with everyone this summer, just as you’ve always done—Toby included. No more childishness like you pulled last night. One of the reasons I’m out here these first few days is to make sure everyone is going to play nice for the next ten weeks. If you can’t manage that, then you can leave when I do.”
“Sure, but—” Sarah began, but Lex interrupted her.
“This is a new situation, this group camp,” he said. “It’s something we’ve never tried. Everyone will be working together here, in close quarters. Sharing will be the name of the game, not worrying about who’s getting more money than who.” Lex’s voice grew brittle. “I’ve looked at the list of your team members. You’ve only got one rookie, the kid from Princeton, which means there are plenty of experienced people on your team. I’ll put one of them in charge out here for the summer if I have to.”
Sarah started to speak, then snapped her mouth shut. The muscles at the sides of her face worked beneath her skin. “Okay,” she said. “All right. Message received. And just wait till you see the body of data we’re going to come out of here with by the end of the summer—” she flicked her fingers at the long row of tent platforms, swarmed by researchers “—frickin’ Boy Scout camp and all.”
She lifted the duffle with her sinewy arms, threw it back over her shoulder, and trudged off.
“Whew,” Lex said, sagging.
“You’re way more patient with her than I ever would be,” Chuck said.
“You’re probably right.” His eyes followed Sarah as she cut behind the cabin and climbed toward the platforms. “She reminds me of Lucy. And Jessie.”
“Your daughter and your wife?”
“You know full well how Jessie could be.”
Chuck nodded. He remembered many evenings at the Grand Canyon, after dinner and plenty of red wine, when Jessie had stood up for herself in heated conversations with the ever-changing cast of park workers, many of them know-it-all males, who gathered around the Hancock table night after night.
“You never really knew Lucy,” Lex went on. “She was in college by the time you and I met at the canyon. She got every bit of her mother’s feistiness. She’s a good bit older than Sarah, but she looks a lot like her—minus the mohawk and tattoos, that is. She’s been a big help to me, since Jessie…since the cancer…” He choked up.
“How has she helped?” Chuck asked softly.
“Oh, you know, just being there. Calling. Letting me know she cares.” He sniffled and waved a hand, taking in the camp and the valley around it. “But this is what really helps. God, it feels good to be out here.”
“Even if you have to deal with the likes of Sarah.”
“She’s no problem. Not when you realize that what’s going on with her has nothing to do with what she’s talking about.”
“Oh, yeah. You said something at breakfast about extenuating circumstances, didn’t you?”
Lex raised an eyebrow and tightened the corner of his mouth, pulling his mustache down on one side. “Toby,” he said.
Chuck recalled the look Sarah had directed at the lead wolf researcher as she’d left the meeting room with Clarence the night before. “Ahh,” he said. “Sarah and Toby. They were an item at one point, is that it?”
“The last two summers,” Lex confirmed. “Hot and torrid, from what I heard. And it’s not like I was trying to hear anything.”
“That explains a lot.”
“Sarah is dedicated to her team, tireless, smart. A lot of people have a hard time getting past her earrings and tattoos. But you should’ve seen her two summers ago. Last year, too. No one works harder than she does. She’s a natural-born leader, too. And she leads by example. Nobody’s more willing to pitch in and help out, anywhere, anytime, than she is.”
“What about her complaining that the wolfies are getting more money than the Grizzly Initiative?”
Lex flapped a hand dismissively. “That was all about Toby. Clearly, she’s still in the process of getting over him. And just as clearly, she’s not doing a very good job of it. That said, it’s true that the research teams are pretty aware of who’s getting what when it comes to grant money. But they tend to be very positive about it. They share information, give each other hints about what funding sources might be available, write letters of recommendation for one another.”
“So her concerns aren’t…?”
“There’s some truth to what she’s saying. But it’s just the pendulum swinging—funding amounts going up and down a little bit. And I won’t kid you. As supportive as the teams are of each other, there’s competition between them as well, most of all between the wolf and grizzly teams. That’s what made the relationship between Sarah and Toby, as team leads for the two programs, a bit dicey the last couple of years. And that’s why the aftermath has the potential to be a bit more problematic than the breakup of normal inter-team relationships. The things Sarah has been carping about—all that’s factual enough. But the way she’s been carping is what’s out of character for her.”
“On account of her breakup with Toby.”
“Yep. But she’ll calm down. It’ll sort itself out.”
“Except that my assistant, Clarence, has just stepped right into the middle of it.”
Lex nodded. “I saw him leave with Sarah last night. The truth is, he may be exactly what she needs to move on. Toby, too, for that matter. I wasn’t kidding when I told Sarah how important it is for everyone to get along here in camp this summer. And I wasn’t kidding, either, when I said she’ll be out of here if she doesn’t settle down and play nice.”
“She clammed up pretty quick when you told her that.”
“She did, didn’t she? That’s because she really is a good person. The best we’ve got. You’ll see.”
“I hope so.” Chuck chuckled. “Silly me. I thought it was just the bears I had to be worried about out here.”