Static. “. . . A couple of lives endangered, and if we don’t get any help here pretty soon I’m going to have to do something drastic.”
Henry, Vic, and I looked at the handheld radio in my grip as if the device itself might have blurted out the words and interrupted our conversation.
I punched the button on the mic and responded. “This is Walt Longmire, sheriff of Absaroka County. Copy?”
Static. “. . . Crazy Woman Canyon, and the situation is pretty serious. We can’t get to our vehicles and . . .” The sound drifted off, and I glanced at Henry. “. . . Without backup I’m going to have to use my gun.”
I keyed the mic again; it sounded like Chuck Coon, one of the forest service rangers. “Chuck, this is Walt Longmire. Over?”
The Bear mumbled under his breath. “Did you say Chuck Coon?”
I nodded and smiled. Coon was actually a very nice guy—the kind of ranger who wouldn’t cite you if your campfire was an inch too close to the trail or your horse was picketed a little too near a water source. Henry, however, had had a few visits with him about the difference between brook trout and brown trout and the number of each species allowed a day, but ever since I had dissuaded a group of motorcyclists traveling from Sturgis from beating Coon to death at West Tensleep Campground, the ranger had pretty much decided we were best friends. “Sounds like he’s in trouble.”
Henry shrugged. “We could go help whoever is trying to kill him.”
I thought about the distance between where we were now and where the ranger was. “How long do you think it’ll take us to get there?”
The Cheyenne Nation thought about it. “Not too long.”
Looking out the window to avoid Henry’s intermittent gaze as we glanced off another tree, I folded my arms on my chest. “Lola.”
Henry remained resolute. “It is a lovely name.”
Vic shrugged. “She’s my niece, and I vote for Lola. We just better start stocking up on body glitter.”
• • •
Passing Muddy Creek forest station, Henry accelerated into the turn and slowed at the dirt road marked Crazy Woman Canyon, a spot in the Bighorn Mountains where a settler family had been decimated, leaving only the mother who had, reasonably, lost her mind; the incident made famous in the Robert Redford film Jeremiah Johnson. “Did Coon say Crazy Woman Canyon or the campground at Crazy Woman Creek?”
“There is no campground in the canyon, but there is one at the north fork of the creek.” I braced a hand on the dash and again reached around for a seatbelt, even though I knew there were none.
Vic added. “He must’ve been confused.”
Henry hit the gas, the engine wheezed, and we lugged our way up the hill, lashing back onto route 16, flailing the extra quarter of a mile down the pavement.
My undersheriff looked to our left, pointing past Henry up the small valley. “There—I can see a forest service vehicle with the light bar on.”
The Bear spun the wheel, and we flat-tracked our way northwest, sliding to a stop beside a silver Mustang with California plates and a Federal Standard 595 mint-green truck with the driver’s side door hanging open; there was a Porta Potty nearby on top of which were two people who I gathered were trying to get away from a large sow black bear and two adolescents milling around the base of the convenience.
As the Cheyenne Nation slid to a stop from a distance of about sixty feet, he rolled the window down, and Vic called out to the ranger. “Hey Chuck, looks like there’s a line for the john.”
I climbed out the passenger-side window, sat safely on the sill, and looked over the top of Rezdawg’s headache rack as the younger bears, munching on what appeared to be a large amount of popcorn scattered across the ground, glanced at us for a moment before resuming their snuffling around the one-seater. The sow, all six hundred pounds of her, left the snack food and the area around the Porta Potty and ambled two steps our way, grumbling a little and then bouncing up on her hind legs to sniff the air in our direction.
Henry didn’t move, his own elbow still hanging from the driver’s side window. “Looks like she is on-the-fight.”
Vic glanced through the windshield at the two on the roof and then back to the three bears, raising her voice to be heard. “Hey Chuck, what were you doing, looking for a Porta Potty that was just right?”
Maintaining his position, but allowing his legs to drop over the side, he adjusted his campaign hat and glanced at a young woman behind him. “This is Ms. Andrea Napier from Pasadena, and she thought it might be fun to feed the bears a bag of caramel corn.”
I waved at the young woman. “Hi, Andrea.”
She waved back but without much enthusiasm. “Hi.”
I ducked my head down and looked at the Cheyenne Nation. “How attached are you to those fish we caught?”
He sighed, relinquishing the idea that trout was going to be the special at the Red Pony Bar & Grill tonight.
Vic and I watched as the Bear nonchalantly opened the door of the truck, slid his boots onto the gravel of the parking lot, and faced the bear. The sow leaned a little forward and huffed at him again but didn’t take any further aggressive action. Henry slowly raised a hand and spoke in a calming voice. “Hello, little sister; you should not let your young ones eat such things . . .” He reached into Rezdawg’s bed and flipped open the old, metal Coleman cooler, covered with stickers, and pulled out the plastic tray containing all the beautiful cleaned fish.
He tossed one of the brookies to the sow, and she immediately dropped onto all fours, landing a paw on the tail of the fish and pulling it apart, devouring it head first. “That is much better for you; you are going into the winter’s sleep soon and need to eat healthfully.”
The younger bears took notice, but by the time they got to their mother she had already eaten the fish; then all three looked up at the Cheyenne Nation in expectation, Henry slowly creeping forward, calling up to the ranger. “Hey Chuck, I am not sure if these are brownies or brookies and whether we have sixteen apiece of the one and three of the other; do you want to check them?”
Coon called back. “Ha. Ha.”
Henry pulled another trout from the tray and tossed it away from the facility. One of the adolescents ran after it, then he tossed another for the second, and finally another for the sow. Slowly, the Bear led the bears toward Crazy Woman Creek and away from Chuck Coon and Andrea Napier.
After a few moments, I slid back in the window of Rezdawg, climbed out, and held the door open for Vic. We walked around the front of the truck so as not to interrupt Henry’s progress with the three bears and approached the structure, marveling at the effort it must’ve taken to get atop the thing. “Jeez, Chuck, how did you get up there?”
He gestured toward the woman, who was clutching the vent stack that protruded from the roof. “She was first, and then she helped me up.” He stuck out a pant leg with a shredded cuff and a little blood on the sock and hiking boot. “I barely made it; no pun intended.”
I reached up and gestured for Ms. Napier to ease herself off the roof and lowered her to the ground. She was a handsome thing, outdoorsy and athletic looking with red hair and a slight sunburn, just the kind of woman you might want to be stuck on a roof with, actually.
She adjusted her cat’s eye glasses and glanced past me toward the high willows of the creek bed. “Aren’t you worried about your friend?”
“Not really, unless he decides to go off and hibernate with them.”
“What’ll he do when he’s out of fish?”
I smiled. “That’ll take awhile.”
“I can’t believe we were attacked by bears.”
Vic laughed, and I explained. “I don’t think you were really attacked—anyway, you’re in bear country, so you need to wear bear bells and carry pepper spray.”