Still, to the Old Man, Yellowstone Park was a disquieting place to do business. Despite unreasonable demands by environmentalists and mismanagement by the federal government, Yellowstone was a special place, in his opinion. It was somehow sacrosanct. It had just felt wrong to be riding through the lodgepole pine with a bound and gagged lawyer on his horse.
They had ridden down the slope to where the trees cleared and the creek wound through a draw with very high eroded banks. They let their horses droop their heads to drink. It was then that they heard a splash upstream, somewhere over the high bank and out of view. The instant they heard the sound, Charlie Tibbs slid his big 308 Remington Model 700 rifle out of his saddle scabbard. The Old Man fumbled for his pistol.
Within two minutes, the water on the stream was covered with floating feathers within a swirl of a dark oily substance. They watched the feathers float by in front of them. It was as if a duck had exploded on the water less than 100 yards away
Both horses had begun to snort and act up. When the Old Man's horse reared and turned back the way they had come, he muscled the horse around to face the water. The Old Man knew well enough that even experienced horses might be uncontrollable this close to bears.
They had quickly retreated back into the trees, tied off the horses, and tried to calm them. Marchand had been thrown to the ground when the Old Man's horse spooked, but as Charlie said, he probably couldn't feel it anyhow. Armed, they walked back down to the stream and cautiously climbed the bank. They heard muffled grunting and woofing even before they actually saw the bears--grizzlies, a sow and her two cubs. The sow was a shimmering light brown color with a pronounced hump on her back. Her snout was buried in the rotting bark of a downed tree, feeding on larvae. The cubs, already over a hundred pounds each, were further down on the tree trunk taking off shards of bark with lazy swipes of their paws. Apparently the duck hadn't been much of a meal.
Rod Marchand was propped against a tree trunk when he regained consciousness. The Old Man and Charlie had carried Marchand across the stream through a swampy meadow and into the timber on the other side of the slope. The bears had remained across the river. The first thing Marchand did when he awoke was pitch over sideways into the grass and throw up. When he was through, the Old Man helped him sit up again with his back against the tree. It took a while for Marchand to seem lucid.
The Old Man studied Marchand, while he waited for him to fully regain his senses. Marchand was, by all accounts, a good-looking man, the Old Man decided: tall, with thick blond hair cut into an expensive, sculpted, swept-back haircut. He was tanned and fit and he looked much younger than his fifty-three years.
The Old Man had, of course, seen his photograph in the newspapers and had watched him several times on television news shows. Tod Marchand was the most successful environmental lawyer in America when it came to winning court decisions. Marchand had been the lead attorney in the five-year case that forced the National Park Service to dismantle several recreational vehicle campgrounds because the area the campgrounds were located in was thought to be prime grizzly bear habitat. The RV campgrounds had, in fact, been within ten miles of where Marchand was camped.
The Old Man distinctly remembered a shot of Marchand standing outside the federal courthouse in Denver talking to reporters after successfully arguing for a halt to a multimillion-dollar gold mine about to be started up in southern Wyoming.
"Gold is a matter of perception," Marchand had told reporters. "Gold for many of us is wildlife running free in untrammeled wilderness."
Marchand had paused for effect and looked straight into a major network's camera (he was so experienced at this sort of thing that he knew by sight which were the network's cameras and which belonged to local stations), Our gold won, Marchand had said, which had since become a rallying cry Tod Marchand looked much different now, the Old Man thought. The lump on his head from Tibbs's rifle butt was hidden under tinted layers of hair, but a single dark red track of blood from his scalp had dried along the side of Marchand's sharp nose.
Tod Marchand also looked different because he was now tied up with a thin horsehair cord. The horsehair cord bit into Marchand's shoulders in several places, and continued down his waist and then was crisscrossed around his legs from his thighs to his ankles.
Horsehair was good, Charlie had said, because the bears would eat every inch of it and leave nothing. To make sure the bears would be attracted, Charlie had bound thick slabs of raw, uncured back-bacon under each of Marchand's arms and between his legs. The pork was pungent.
Now fully awake, Marchand looked slowly at the cord and the bacon. His thoughts were transparent. He was very scared, and not in a noble way the Old Man thought. Marchand was scared out of his wits.
Charlie Tibbs walked past the Old Man and squatted down in front of Tod Marchand. Tibbs tipped his Stetson back on his head, then pulled an envelope with a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it.
"I found this in your pack," Tibbs said, in his low deep drawl. "It says: "Dear Tod: We need your help fast. Run like the fucking wind." It is signed "Stewie.""
Marchand's eyes were white and wide. It reminded the Old Man of the look the horses had when they first smelled the bears.
"Then there are some directions to a cabin. This Stewie wouldn't happen to be Stewie Woods, would it?" Tibbs asked. "How come you're up here camping, if your celebrity client needs you so badly?" Tibbs said, not unkindly Marchand's eyes darted from Tibbs to the Old Man and back.
"I've been planning this long weekend all year," he said.
"Some pal you are." Tibbs snorted. "Unless you're not really sure that Stewie Woods is even alive. Unless you think someone mailed you this as a joke." Marchand quickly broke down and nodded his head yes. "It's Stewie," he said. "I know exactly where he's at. I'll tell you if you'll let me go. I'll never say a word about this to anyone."
The Old Man dropped his eyes and stared at the ground for what became an interminable amount of time. Marchand shook visibly.
Marchand looked to the Old Man for some kind of reassurance or humanity but the Old Man refused eye contact. The Old Man knew Tibbs well enough to know that Tod Marchand had said exactly the wrong thing, and much too fast.
Finally Tibbs swiveled slightly and looked back at the Old Man. "This is going to be a good one," Tibbs said. "Maybe the best one yet."
The Old Man nodded blankly. Charlie Tibbs, he suddenly knew; was a man beyond his own understanding. This would be ugly to watch. He was sure Tod Marchand felt the same way The Old Man decided at that moment that things had gone too far. Maybe so far into evil he could never go back.
"I smell bacon." Tibbs said, turning back around to Tod Marchand. "It makes me kinda hungry D'you suppose those grizzlies over the hill smell it, too?"
Charlie Tibbs was eating piece after piece of beef jerky and drinking from a Thermos of iced tea. Periodically he would lift his binoculars to his eyes. Below them, in the swampy meadow, the grizzlies were eating Tod Marchand.
The sow had found him quickly after Tibbs had dumped the lawyer in the grass between her and her cubs and ridden away on horseback. She had killed Marchand by taking his entire head into her mouth and shaking it violently from side to side, like a puppy with a knotted sock. Marchand's scream stopped so suddenly that it seemed to hang in the air like a lost ghost. A powerful swat from her paw had sent the body flying end over end. The strength of the bear was awesome.
"The cubs are feeding now," Charlie Tibbs said, lowering the binoculars. "It would be a shame if those cubs ate every bit of the lawyer and nobody ever found him out there."