The two men creep out of the forest and stand at its edge, where it meets the apron of level ground ringing the hill. Their movement attracts Claire’s eye at once. These are the first of the squatters to drift into the park. Many more would follow later in the year and next spring. Some would be homeless, looking for shelter in abandoned buildings. Some would be thieves. Some wanted to see the volcano for themselves. Some wanted to be a part of the news. And some knew that the park rangers had pulled out, making it the wild west all over again.
These men stand below the camp. They survey the hilltop to see if a man might appear. They decide that they have found a woman in the forest alone. They do not give a damn why. Quickly, they run their odds. She is looking at them. Surprise is gone.
It is likely that they can run up the hill before she can get to her cell phone. Or, if she carries her cell phone, then before she can dial it without a fumbled keystroke. Maybe it will take too long for her 911 to become connected.
It is likely this woman has no firearm. If she does, it is likely that she could not get to hers fast enough. The odds are that it is unloaded. Even if she gets the drop on them, it is likely that she will hesitate with it too long, and they will take it away from her.
Finally, one turns his face up to hers. He speaks, ready at any second to break into a dead run up the hill. “Hello, Baby. You be that honey from them television shows, ain’t ‘ya? How ‘bout you show us a good time.”
Fast as a thought, Claire shouts, “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.”
He replies, “Yeah baby, hey-hey-hey right back at ‘ya. Don’t give us no trouble.”
When Amy bursts from the shadowy tree line, the first man intends to derisively exclaim “Well, if it ain’t Lassie,” but all he manages to get out is a long, folksy “Well.” That is enough to turn the bear dog toward the voice. The men’s plans change as Betty emerges and then Carol and then the Doris.
Forming a squadron of four abreast, the Karelians charge across the open ground. They fly beneath the tall Quaking Aspen from which hangs their bag of dog chow. They round the hood of the Purdue truck. They leap the stream to land like four angry angels arriving on judgment day.
Claire now runs down the hillside to the truck, hoping that her keys are in her pocket. They are. She unlocks the truck and withdraws Bennington’s .44 magnum, unholstering it, she steps around the front of the truck. Then Claire sprints for the point at which the two men, followed by the four bear dogs, have disappeared back into the trees.
Running through the pines, leaping fallen logs, catching up to the barks and growls—the curses and screams—Claire has only two trees remaining between them and her, when she fires her first blast high over their heads. The dogs instantly disengage, and run to her. Emboldened, Claire lowers the barrel, halving the distance to the ground and fires again.
Claire sleeps with the revolver that night, never giving the episode a thought except to wonder aloud, “Bears, men, what’s next? Like maybe a volcano?”
As she is drifting off to sleep, she thinks she has dreamed that the bear dogs have become whining and restless. As always, they sleep just outside her tent, good camp-mates, and quiet, nearly always.
Next morning, in the midst of her string of chores, the whumping sound of a distant helicopter—as usual seeming to come from everywhere at once—makes Claire realize that she should have reported this. She pauses to hear how the sound will change. It gets louder. She waits to look up until the Doppler shift is nearly reached, announcing its imminent appearance. Within a second, it flashes over the tree line. Since the start of June, whenever they are nearby, they always overfly the camp, whoever they are. The little one is always Cherry Brady, but the larger and much noisier Blackhawks might carry Colonel Jeter, or any of those men.
Those two drifters would be breaking into park buildings by now. The closest buildings were at Old Faithful, eight miles west, or at Grant Village eight miles southeast. They would have made it through the forest by this time. Or might they have found the road and made better time? The Colonel and Marshal Blevins should know.
Marshal Blevins wishes to confirm, “Two men, did you say, Claire? Was one of them white, medium height and build, age thirty give or take.”
“Yes, sir. That description fits them both.”
Blevins becomes grim. “We can’t tell about the other one. Claire, I think we’ve got them accounted for. They made it to the road all right, but they turned the wrong way. If they had gone west, they would be sitting in the Old Faithful Visitor’s Center right now eating candy bars taken out of the vending machines.
“But they did not go west?”
“No. They did not. They went east. Nowadays, you gotta be careful walking around Yellowstone, especially in the dark. We found them where the lava has cut the road. One had his feet burned off. The other must have tried to help him and got pulled in. The one that lost his feet managed to crawl back onto the pavement. Then he slit his own throat. Can’t say I blame the poor devil.
Claire begins sobbing uncontrollably. She knows there is no reason. They would have raped her, or murdered her. This is a silly, pointless response and she is embarrassed by it, but she cannot help heaving sobs. She tries to get off the phone, but she cannot talk, and she refuses to simply hang up on the Marshal.
He speaks soothingly. “Claire. Claire. Claire. Easy honey. Have a good cry, but remember, those men meant you no good. If you did not have those dogs, we might have been taking you out of the park right now instead of them.”
He waits. “Claire.”
“What?” She sniffs.
“How much longer are you going to stay up there?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“We’ve got a place down here all ready for you and your dogs, your own place.”
“I know, Marshal Blevins. Thanks.”
“It’s going to start getting cold here before long.”
“I know.”
“Just remember.”
“I will.”
Their first pass had been the occasional overfly inspection of the park. They had landed on the road, staying only briefly, and then took off again to bring back Blevins. When the Blackhawk returned to Craig’s Pass, Blevins was sitting in the open doorway. He did not get out until the rotors stopped and then walked very slowly to the bodies. The others strung out behind him.
The legs of the one on the pavement ended in stumps encased in cooling stone. The other one lay in the lava as crisp as a chitlin, but blackened. A puddle of lava had surged under his torso and had tilted him. It made him seem as though he was trying to sit up. Only the briefest contours remained to show that he was human. Nothing remained to show that he might once have been a man.
They would excavate him with a backhoe. This was official. They felt nothing. Perhaps Claire and Blevins had, but only briefly. At Yellowstone in the early fall of the first year, there yet remains time for such matters of propriety and form.