"That's a good question," Joan replied. "I don't see why not. Their nervous systems are not so radically different from a dog's or a human's. But every time there's a bear attack, we check and I've never heard of it happening. Probably because of their size. Bats, dogs, skunks-nothing bites bears."
"This bear sounded sure-footed," Anna noted. She was thinking of the staggering gait of animals far enough gone with rabies to exhibit strange behavior patterns.
"Your arm, did he bite you or scratch you?" Joan asked suddenly.
"I was wondering when you'd think of that," Anna said. "I don't know."
"If you start frothing at the mouth, can I shoot you?"
"No gun."
"I'll be creative."
They thought about that for a while, Anna reliving remembered footage from Old Yeller."I wish we'd gotten a look at the bear," she said after a while.
"We may yet," Joan said. Put in the future instead of the past, the concept wasn't nearly so attractive.
They waited through the false dawn in silence. By half past five the light grew strong enough to again think about the boy and the bear.
Both tents were destroyed. Anna and Joan spread them out to assess the damage. The shredding was excessive for any animal not seeking a food reward. Multiple rips two and three feet in length cut down from dome to ground in seven places on Rory's tent and one on theirs.
The ground around the tents had been dug up. A stuff sack containing fencing tools was torn to pieces, the tools scattered in the grass. Rory's day pack, clothes and sleeping bag had been dragged from his tent and littered the clearing.
Having gathered what they could find of the young Earthwatcher's belongings, they took inventory: the clothes he'd worn the previous day, his boots, baseball cap, three and a half pairs of socks, four of underpants, shorts, T-shirts, tennis shoes, water bottle. Everything he would logically have carried was accounted for. The only items missing were the sweat pants and shirt and a pair of soft flat-soled black slippers, the kind for sale in any Chinatown, that he'd worn the night before.
If he had escaped the bear, the wilderness could kill him if they didn't find him fairly soon. Dressed in pajamas and slippers and without food, the nights in the fifties, he would have a rough time of it. Had they been in the desert, his time would be even shorter. Glacier's high country had water. If he was lucky and didn't panic, he wouldn't die of thirst.
Joan radioed park dispatch. In short, efficient sentences she gave them the information they'd need to plan the search for Rory Van Slyke. Radio traffic built in volume as one ranger after another was dragged out of bed by the phone and called in service over the radio. Come sunup, the search was park business as usual. Anna and Joan would begin from the campsite. Six members of the bear team from the frontcountry would start in on horseback. The ranger stationed at the backcountry cabin halfway down to Waterton Lake would head up their direction.
Given the night's events, odds were good Rory was either dead or would be found close to camp in fairly short order. The machinery was set in motion because if he was truly lost or alive and injured, time was the single most important commodity they had to offer.
By six-thirty it was light enough to track. Anna had little confidence in her abilities in lush woodland; the bulk of her experience had been in the desert. But their quarry weighed an estimated four hundred pounds. That would help. Joan Rand was not an experienced tracker in a general sense, but she had been following bears by track and spoor most of her adult life.
In the clear gray light, unencumbered as yet by the shadows of the rising sun, the two women stood by the rock, day packs full of food, water and first-aid supplies.
"There." Joan pointed southwest.
"I see it." Faint elongated depressions, which would vanish as soon as the sun's heat reached the dew, formed an irregular line in the grass between the circle of trees and where they'd packed up the scrapped tents; the bear traveling through high grass.
Moving slowly, one to either side of the ephemeral trail, they walked, eyes to the ground.
"No scat," Joan said.
"Is that odd?"
"Everything about this bear is odd. Pooping-" Anna found comfort in the silly non-scientific word. "-is one of the ways bears let you know they've staked a claim. Often at sights of severe maulings, especially if the bear has fed on the victim, you find a big pile of poop. We solved a bear murder case three years ago. Got DNA samples from the poop and, lo and behold, they matched up with hair samples we'd taken the year before from another bear/human interface. So we knew we had the right bears and weren't just killing them to make the victim's family happy."
"Bears plural?" Anna asked. Could there have been more than one bear in their campsite last night?
"Mother and two two-year-old cubs. We had to kill them all. They had all partaken of the feast." Joan seemed to remember that maybe this time Rory Van Slyke and not some nameless stranger was the main course. She shook her head as if ridding herself of bad thoughts. "Anyway, I thought our bear might have left a mark, is all."
Not conversant with how grizzlies left their calling cards, Anna said nothing.
Items from Rory's tent were dropped along the way as if flung aside by a spoiled child. "Flashlight," Joan said, stooping to pluck the named item out of the grass. She held it up to the first rays of the rising sun. "Teethmarks."
"The bear took a flashlight?" Anna asked stupidly.
"I doubt it."
A bear wouldn't take it, wouldn't carry it. Rory would. The bear would have taken it from Rory. Maybe as the boy batted at him with it. Anna took the plastic cylinder from Joan's hands to see the marks for herself. "No blood," she observed. "That's good news, I guess." The optimism was forced. There wouldn't necessarily be blood. Not at first. She dropped the flashlight back in the grass. There'd be time to police the clearing later. As it fell, a tiny sound escaped Joan's lips as if this tossing aside of Rory's possession was in some way a slight to Rory himself.
In the morning light the woods weren't nearly as formidable as they had been the night before. At the higher elevations the undergrowth wasn't as dense. Trees were tall and widely spaced, the ground between waist-deep in fern.
Hope of tracking the bear or the boy was quickly laid to rest. No scat, no hair, no blood; the big animal had slipped invisibly into its element like Br'er Rabbit into his briar patch. Likewise had Rory Van Slyke disappeared, either carried in the bear's jaws or of his own volition, the soft, slick soles of his Chinese slippers leaving no trace.
Anna did find a peculiar bit of wood, a two-by-two of mahogany or cherry about ten inches long and polished until the edges were rounded. Because it showed no signs of weathering she knew it had come from Rory's tent. No teethmarks scarred the surface, so it was a good guess the bear hadn't carted it into the forest. What it was or why Rory needed to tote it with him on research treks or when fleeing from, or being abducted by, enormous omnivores, Anna hadn't a clue.
They spent two hours searching the woods around the camp. Calling Rory's name repeatedly they hoped to scare off the bear if it was still nearby, or scare up a response from a lost or injured boy.