For half a century, White Elk had hoped to see among the many in the herd a great white elk like the one that came to him at the stream bank. The animals moving before him in the lustrous ground fog had coats of umber and burnt sienna, but there was no albino creature among them.
Along the murmuring river, a big young bull was badgering a healthy female elk at the start of her estrous. The male kept nuzzling her genitals, raising his head and curling his muzzle, exposing his square scraping teeth in the lower jaw. The bull had resumed nudging the female along when he stopped suddenly and reared his head as a trumpeting whistle from one of the patriarchs of the herd cleaved the morning silence. Now the young bull sounded and volleys of throaty bugling ricocheted off the mountain escarpments. White Elk, watching from his weathered porch, flashed a smile of stained teeth as the piercing trumpets stimulated the hairs on his neck to stand erect and sent a welcome shiver through his every sinew.
Heads high, eyes bulging, the bulls began a slow shuffle, sizing one another up, looking for an advantage, an avenue of attack. The timeless ritual was one the older bull knew well. He had fought successfully for mating rights for more than a dozen years now. White Elk was trembling. He knew that if the bulls engaged in a fight, he would have a front row seat to a great spectacle. The Blackfoot people greatly anticipated the bouts each year, but few people actually witnessed them.
The two massive forms circled cautiously, setting up a head-to-head confrontation. Slowly, so slowly, both bulls contracted the muscles at the back of the neck. Each head rose on recoiling neck, muzzle flaring, mouth wide, disgorging blasts of platinum vapor into the chill. White Elk rubbed his roughened hands together in anticipation. He did not have to wait long. In a rush, the great heads came down, antlers thrust fully forward. Massive muscles in the thighs propelled the elk headlong at one another. The craniums of the two animals closed. Crack! came as an explosive report, antler slamming against antler with Herculean force.
The young bull was vigorous and heavy, almost equal in size and weight of that of his senior. Where the younger had stamina and raw strength, the older bull had inertia and experience. The senior bull meant to hold his ground, giving up none, and simply push his young adversary out of the sparring field. He wanted to be sure to keep the youngster’s antlers engaged and locked in the battle so that the spry animal could not lunge and get his full weight moving. The older bull would wait for the younger bull to exert maximum force. The patriarch knew that he could then simply twist his head quickly left and down. The move could throw the younger elk off balance.
Two minutes into the struggle, the older bull executed the maneuver flawlessly, left and down. The young elk swung its right rear leg out to steady itself but the hoof dropped over the stream bank. The youth lost his footing and stumbled, disengaging from the other bull. The older animal, his blood acid with adrenaline, reared back and charged, striking his adversary with his antlers in the face and neck. The force tipped the young foe backwards, toppling the creature down the bank and into the cold stream. Victory!
Upon his porch, White Elk pranced on bare feet and shook his hands aflutter, thrilled at the sight. The big male lifted his head and sounded a victor’s bugle call into the atmosphere. Seven seconds later, an echo off the high country stone reaffirmed the triumph. The great bull now sought the female that the younger elk had been worrying. He sniffed her out, came alongside and escorted her from the meadows.
Despite the battle for mating rights, the herd kept up its slow, deliberate pace across the Otatso flats. When at last the stragglers ambled by, White Elk stepped off his porch and peered south, watching the yellow rumps waddle away into the ground fog. He turned to Chief Mountain and confronted the sacred peak, guardian of the Blackfoot nation.
“Old Chief,” White Elk called with a laugh, “did you see that? Ha, ha, did you see that? They fight just for you, Old Chief. They fight just to amuse you.”
Chapter Eleven
Perched above the ruin of the research station interior, Liz could see little in the predawn gloom. The bunks had fallen and been swept out of view. To get down, she flopped on her belly, slipped over the trapdoor edge, hung from her hands and dropped onto splintered and soaking floorboards. Seeking any light filtering in from the dying night sky, she pushed her way to where the door had been and looked out. The porch roof was missing, the porch deck a memory.
It was much too dark yet to leave. She’d have to wait an hour, shivering in wet clothing until dawn arrived, then work her way out to the shoreline of the lake. There would be a day-long trek out to Grant Village, unless providence guided her to the leased Park Service boat, now lost, no doubt, and crumpled somewhere in the forest or drowned in the lake.
In limp light oozing into the sopping forest, Liz examined the little meadow where the cabin had stood. Hundreds of trees had come down in the flood. Others were tilted at crazy angles. The cabin had floated forty feet from its useless stone and mortar foundation pilings. She slipped a bottle of water and a dented can of peanuts into her wet pack, donned the carryall and left the ruined building.
The familiar trail north was obliterated. Drifting among the ghosts of trees bathed in ground mist, Liz picked her way cautiously through the shattered forest and uprooted trees that once stood tall at the shoreline margin. In every direction lay debris that had floated with the retreating wave out of the woods and into the lake or onto the rubble-strewn shore. South Arm was choked with logs, branches, and forest floor litter. The pristine lake was now foul, ugly, uninviting and stank of sulfur. The little motorized skiff had vanished.
It would be a slog without the boat, making the long hike on foot out to Grant Village far to the west. Following the shoreline the entire way to habitation meant a full day push. She had little choice but to make the journey.
As anemic sunlight filtered through colorless vapor rising from the waters, a shimmering column of white steam materialized, towering over the northern lake horizon. Liz need not consult a compass to know that the steam rose above a new underwater crater precisely where the inflated plain had been.
The scientist tucked her head down and turned west. She moved a few hundred feet when she noticed a large object spilled on the beach. She recognized it as her grizzly companion, its fur the color of cinnamon. The creature lay sprawled on its back, belly to the sky, motionless. Dropping to one knee beside the huge corpse, the human female reached a hand out and touched the cool dense fur of the leviathan.
Walking with constant shallow tremors underfoot, Liz managed to reach Grant Village by 4 p.m. The little community, with its two stores, ranger station, visitor center, gas station, post office and lodge, was intact. Minor lake debris had washed about the foundations of the near-shore structures, but there was no serious damage. She was relieved. The narrow channel between Pumice and Breeze Points, walling off the West Thumb basin from the main body of the lake, had buffered the force of the steam explosion and blunted the impact of the great waves.
Liz walked to the backcountry office where she had signed out the skiff. The little emergency facility, operated by the Division of Resource Management and open late into the fall, was deserted. She retrieved her rental car, parked alongside the now-closed gas and repair business just off the village. It started.
Gunning the vehicle’s accelerator, Liz raced the lake highway, built tight to the margin of the shoreline. She traced the asphalt around the knob at Pumice Point and opened the throttle on the flats along the lake margin, occasionally swerving into the left lane to avoid wave-wash debris. At the bend at Rock Point, she turned the car north and swept down on picnic area Number 19, only to slam a foot down hard on the brake pedal and skid to a stuttering stop in the lane. She rammed the door open and ran ahead to a jagged gap in the road where fluid teeth had chewed away the macadam.