He pressed his face against the glass as they lifted off. The Scouts stood back, ducking and holding hands up to shield their faces from the whirlwind. Amy and Michael waved. Dieter was too numb and too weak to wave back.
When the chopper paused in midair, Dieter stared down on the string of jagged boulders at the base of the waterfall. A flock of ravens had gathered on the bank, feasting on a large black carcass.
FIFTY-THREE
“Where are we anyway?” Josh asked.
“Bozeman Deaconess,” Dieter replied. “You just got out of surgery. The bullet smashed up your thigh pretty bad. Just plain luck the main artery wasn’t hit.”
Josh’s left leg was wrapped in a bandage from crotch to knee and his foot rested on two stacked pillows. “Who the hell was trying to knock us off?”
“Would you believe Jack Corey?”
“Not only do I believe it, I would have bet on it.”
“They found him floating in a hot spring—more or less poached.”
Josh coughed and reached for his glass of water on a bedside tray. “Sometimes the Lord acts in mysterious ways,” he muttered. “You should’ve taken that wolf out with your revolver, you know. Would’ve saved everybody a lot of trouble.”
Dieter moved closer and placed his head down to Josh’s ear as he whispered. “What revolver you talking about, partner?”
Both men smiled.
While Dieter had waited during the surgery that morning, a visitor from Yellowstone Headquarters arrived—Greta McFarland. She apologized that the superintendent couldn’t accompany her. He was called to Washington on urgent business.
No doubt he was.
The conversation was awkward. Of course, they were concerned about both his and Mr. Pendleton’s wellbeing. Of course, the National Park Service would cover all medical expenses. They also knew the details regarding the bravery of the Boy Scouts and intended to provide special Yellowstone Park Awards to each for their acts of heroism. Of course.
She spoke only in vague generalities about Jack Corey. His sudden and unexplained transformation shocked everybody, she said, adding nothing about a renegade wolf. Dieter made a quick decision not to bring up either topic.
Two days later, Dieter drove Amy, Michael, and Megan the twenty-four mile trip to Livingston and the veterinary hospital. Rusty was ready to be checked out. When they first spotted their precious pet in his cage, he wagged his tail and whimpered. He wasn’t able to bark. The throat wound was going to need a couple of more weeks to heal, but a complete recovery was expected.
That evening they drove back through the center of the Park toward Colter. Rusty was well drugged, lying on a blanket in the backseat, his head on Michael’s lap and his tail in Megan’s. Because the pair claimed starvation, Dieter stopped at the Yellowstone Lake Lodge for a buffet dinner.
After the kids had stuffed themselves, they wanted to explore the gift shop. Amy watched as they pranced away, then turned to Dieter. “I thought you might want to know that I’ve changed my mind.”
“About?”
“Moving.”
“You’re staying in Colter?”
“Nope, I’m headed upstate to Browning.”
“But what about the beaches of the West Coast? Wine and sunsets?”
“That can wait. My people need me more than California can use me. I finally got the call. I’m starting my teaching career on the Reservation.”
Dieter smiled to himself as he pictured the lively discussions that must have played out with her dad. He would long remember the Little Bear family.
“I’ll miss the kids,” she said. “I feel like they’re mine, too.” She folded her arms on the table, leaned forward and lightly gripped his forearm. “I suppose, if you really want to know, I just might miss you as well.”
They held their stare for a brief moment and he recalled the sinking of his stomach when he saw the pine tree flying at them from her plane and, afterwards, the fleeting moment his cheek brushed hers.
When he started to speak, she interrupted. “Things are changing around Colter, Dieter.”
“Aren’t they everywhere?”
“When I stopped by Molly and the Judge’s place this morning, she told me the latest. She didn’t want us to be alarmed by learning it from TV. There’s been a murder. An honest-to-God murder this time.”
He lowered his voice. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Joseph Vincent Loudermilk.”
“Joseph Loudermilk? What happened?”
“Stabbed to death. Undetermined number of times. He was found on his farm inside a cave, of all places. The details sound pretty gruesome.”
“How… gruesome?”
“His eyeballs were carved out and stuffed into his mouth.”
Dieter tossed back his head and looked away for a moment as he tried to grapple with the news. “Do they know who did it?”
“All I can tell you is that Molly hesitated for a long time when I asked. Then she said they didn’t have a clue.”
He fidgeted in his chair while she played with her spoon.
When Michael and Megan returned to the table, Dieter thought it a good time for a walk. They strolled down the path from the lodge as a full moon climbed above the silhouette of the Absaroka Mountains surrounding Yellowstone Lake. His mind drifted as they stared out over the wilderness and the vast body of water at the heart of Yellowstone. Amy was right. Although he’d barely settled in Colter, many changes had already taken place. He’d made many friends for life. His thoughts turned to the one image that flashed through his mind often since his ordeal on the Gallatin—Michael with his arms tightly hugging his waist, his head on Dieter’s belly as he lay in the mud.
He suddenly stopped and cupped his hand to his ear, motioning for the others to listen. Above the clamor of waves slapping the rocks along the shore came the howls of a wolf pack echoing across the lake.
It was like a song, Dieter thought. The song of wolves, thriving once again where their ancestors had roamed free a century before.
He held his stare out over the water.
AFTERWORD
The tragedy recorded here was not the first of its kind. Abbé Pierre Pourcher, from the French village of Saint-Martin de Boubaux, compiled historical accounts of the Beast of Gévaudan, a creature responsible for killing at least sixty-four people in the Cevennes Mountains of southern France between 1764 and 1767. After hunting parties failed to find and destroy the animal, an elderly villager by the name of Antoine de Bauterne finally succeeded in tracking down and shooting it. The animal was quickly identified by its unique color and size: a hybrid wolf.
Yellowstone Park’s superintendent resigned three days after that Labor Day in 1997. The following week, Acting Director Greta McFarland appointed Bantz Montgomery as the new chief park ranger. He remained in that position for five years before taking an early retirement and moving to a cabin on Huckleberry Gulch north of the Park. Greta McFarland lives in the suburbs of Washington, DC. She retired as a staffer for the National Park Service in the office of the Secretary of the Interior.
Charlene Loudermilk was never seen again. The remaining Loudermilk clan departed Colter a month after her disappearance; their whereabouts are currently unknown. The Schoonovers—Molly and the Judge—still get together with Josh Pendleton on his ranch near Colter. On occasional summer evenings, they share the sunset and a shot of single malt Scotch. Amy Little Bear resides on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana, where she teaches Native American History at the Alternative High School.