Beardance

Do you think there could still be any grizzlies in the mountains? Cloyd asked.

Up and out of the yellow pines they rode and into the aspens, their quaky leaves shimmering with the slightest breeze. Out of the blue skies and into the clouds and the rolling thunder. Out of the heat and the stale smell of the low country and into the windblown freshness of the high.

In search of a lost Spanish gold mine.

Up ahead, the old man stroked the white bristles of his beard and rode on without answering. Cloyd knew that the old man was deep in thought. Walter wouldn’t give a quick answer to his question about the grizzlies. Walter knew how important it was.

It was the middle of August, and they were following the Pine River Trail into the mountains. Walter Landis led on the sorrel mare, trailing his four packhorses. Cloyd followed on the blue roan, trailing four more.

Around a bend, the old man had reined in the mare and was waiting for him to draw up alongside.

Dunno about your grizzlies, he said. That one you saw Rusty kill, it really could’ve been the last grizzly in Colorado.

It wasn’t the reply Cloyd had been hoping to hear. He’d kept his dream to himself, that there were others. There had to be. It was too hard, knowing that if he had never talked about seeing the bear, Walter’s old friend would never have tracked it and killed it. It wasn’t something Cloyd could get over. He had boasted to the best hunter, trapper, and tracker in the mountains that he had seen a bear, a huge brown bear.

Cloyd was surprised that Walter had mentioned Rusty’s name. Maybe the old man thought enough time had gone by to blur the memory or ease the hurt. For his part, Cloyd was never going to speak the man’s name. Words had power, and if he never said the outfitter’s name aloud, he wouldn’t be giving even an ounce more power to this man who had so much and deserved so little.

The man who killed the bear.

Of course, Walter continued, nobody’s looked under every tree for grizzes. You’ve got to figure, there’s only one road over these San Juans in a two-hundred-mile swath, and that’s Wolf Creek Pass way over above Pagosa. That’s a lot of wild country—big enough to have hid that bear for twenty-three years. That’s how old the lab in Denver said he was, from the teeth or whatever.

Cloyd regretted that his question had led to talk of the dead bear and the man who killed the bear. He shouldn’t have asked his question.

It seemed the bitter taste would never go away.

The red-haired man seemed to have gone away, but hating him, that had never gone away.

Rusty never came anymore to the farm on the Piedra River to check in on his old friend Walter. Cloyd understood why. It was because Cloyd was living at the farm. Cloyd was the only one who knew what really happened up there, high on the Continental Divide.

Rusty would have known that Cloyd wasn’t living at the Ute group home in Durango anymore, hadn’t returned either to his grandmother over in Utah at White Mesa. He must have heard that Cloyd had stayed at the farm to help the old man get through the winter. But he’d never come by, not even once.

Cloyd still couldn’t help feeling that the bear had showed itself to him on purpose. Because Cloyd was a Ute, because Utes and bears were kin. Because Cloyd had found a turquoise bearstone by the burial of one of the Ancient Ones, and had named himself Lone Bear.

There wasn’t a day that had gone by that the grizzly hadn’t come to mind, almost always as Cloyd had first seen him: standing at the edge of the meadow in the Rincon La Osa with the dark spruce timber behind, and big as a haystack. The bear was standing on two legs, flat on his feet the way people stand, forepaws at his sides, with those enormous claws. The brown bear was just watching him, squinting for a better look, his head swaying slightly back and forth, his forehead wide and dished out a little in the middle.

More than anything, the bear was curious. Alert and intelligent and curious. That’s the way Cloyd liked to remember him.

But sometimes that other scene came to mind, the one burned into his memory forever. Time and again it would return without his bidding. On one of the terraces above Ute Lake, the bear was turning over rocks along a line of brush as the red-haired man nocked his arrow and bent his bow. It was a moment that would never let go of Cloyd. He was hollering with all his might into the wind, and the wind was blowing his warning behind him, up and over the Continental Divide. The bear never heard his warning.

Up ahead, Walter was riding out of the trees, and now Cloyd also rode out into the light and the greenness of the longest meadow on the lower river. Here the Pine ran smooth over gravel beds of ground granite, and on the outside of the turns there were deep pools where the biggest cutthroat trout could be found. Cloyd paused for a moment as bits of color in the bushes lining the banks caught his eye. Walter, he called, hold up.

They tied their horses at the edge of the trees and then they fell upon the raspberry and currant bushes like bears filling their bellies against winter. The berries were juicy and sweet. The boy and the old man were laughing at the sight of the stain all around their mouths, while their fingers kept working as fast as they could go. Can’t recall berries this prime, Walter observed when his stomach was full. Must be all the rain.

Cloyd’s fingers were still flying. He had a bigger stomach to fill, and nothing they’d brought along to eat could compare with this.

Walter’s old eyes had noticed something up the valley. Cloyd looked and saw a string of horses entering the meadow. Behind, toward the peaks, the tall clouds were beginning to turn dark, and thunder was rumbling. Down on this meadow, though, the sun was still shining. He’d be comfortable in his T-shirt awhile.

Cloyd turned back to his berry picking as the old man kept his eyes on the trail, and when Cloyd looked again several minutes later he saw that the packstring was led by a single rider, a big man with a large face framed by a full red beard and red hair spilling from under a dark felt Stetson. A rifle was scabbarded under one leg. Cloyd’s hands stopped their work, and his dark eyes locked on the face almost coming into focus down the trail.

Could it be? the old man wondered aloud.

Cloyd was wondering the same thing, and he was hoping the old man was mistaken. The red-haired man had never had a beard before.

The horseman rode closer and closer, close enough that recognition showed in the old man’s face. Walter was smiling and shaking his head, surprised to see his old friend looking so different, pleased to be seeing him after so long even if there was reason not to be pleased. Speak of the devil, the old man said in greeting. He said it in such a way that it was friendly and it wasn’t, both at the same time.

Rusty’s eyes were on Cloyd, not on his old friend Walter. He nodded to Cloyd, and then he broke out in a big smile all surrounded by the deep red of his beard and mustache.

Long time … Rusty said in that unmistakable gravelly voice, as he lifted his hat and ran his hand through his wavy hair. You’re the last two people I expected to run into on this trail.

The old man played dumb. Now why’s that?

The red-haired man’s eyes ran to the picks and shovels sticking out of the gear. He was shaking his head and grinning. Walter, don’t I recall you blowing yourself up last summer? Don’t tell me you’re going to have another go at the Pride of the West!

Just out for a ride, Walter replied with a glint in his eye. Never know when you might have to dig a hole in the ground.

So what’s the long gizmo all wrapped in black on top of that third horse?

Broom, the old man quickly replied, with his tongue in his cheek. We keep a tidy camp.

Got to be gold you’re after, the outfitter said confidently. With another glance at Cloyd, he said, Sorry I never came by the farm. No excuses, I guess. Glad I saw you two, though—I’m leaving for Alaska real soon.

The red-haired man tied his horses, and then he came back and sat on the edge of the stream bank with the old man. Cloyd stayed well out of the reach of Rusty’s crushing handshake and kept to his berry picking. He could stay near, close enough to hear. The red-haired man kept glancing his way, but he seemed to know not to try to speak to him. Walter would know why. There was something between Cloyd and Rusty, and it was because of the lie. The bear hadn’t attacked the big man, as Rusty had told the game wardens and the newspapers. Rusty was the one who had surprised the bear, and he’d known it was a grizzly he was tracking.

Cloyd knew now—he’d known for a long time—that he should have told what he saw. He should have told how the bear really died. This man would have lost his outfitting license, would have had to pay a huge fine, and maybe would have even gone to jail for killing an animal that was endangered. But no one else had been there. It would have been his word against Rusty’s. Would they have believed him, an Indian kid from Utah who didn’t have a father or a mother? Now he would never know if they would have believed him or not.

It had been a mistake to leave it up to the red-haired man to tell the truth. People knew only the lie, and people believed the worst of the bear. No one would ever know what really happened.

Rusty liked to stroke his new beard, long and shaggy like a mountain man’s. Cloyd hated him for his vanity.

So you’re leaving for Alaska, the old man was saying.

You know how much I like it up there…. The way I feel, Colorado’s just not big enough for me anymore. I might even stay up there one of these times.

As he looked from Walter to Cloyd and back, the red-haired man had a curious expression on his face. You really haven’t heard what I’ve been doing all summer up in the mountains, have you? Or what I saw back in May?

Matter-of-factly, the old man replied, Sure haven’t.

The red-haired man seemed a little surprised. The game wardens and the forest service have been keeping a pretty tight lid on it, but there was one short article in the Durango paper—thought you might have seen it.

Don’t always get the paper, Walter said.

With a quick glance at Cloyd, who for a moment met the man’s blue eyes before looking away, Rusty said, I found a grizzly and three cubs back in May, up in the Rincon La Vaca.

Cloyd felt the breath go out of him, and his throat went tight, and he couldn’t breathe. Was it true? Or was it another lie?

The wind was starting to blow. Cloyd realized that the sun hadn’t been shining for some time, and he was cold. But he wouldn’t go to his saddlebags for his jacket, not now.

I spent three weeks looking in May, Rusty was saying. On snowshoes mostly. The animals aren’t used to seeing people up there in May—I thought it would give me an advantage. I knew, if there were any grizzlies still around, they had to be uncommon wary even for grizzlies.

The old man’s eyebrows were arched high. Get any pictures?

The camera was in my pack at the time. I never had a chance to take a picture. But I know grizzlies, and I know what I saw. The sow was a silvertip, and the cubs were brown, gray-black, and one sort of cocoa-colored. Chances are they were sired by that male I killed last summer….

The old man turned and addressed Cloyd. There’s your answer, Cloyd. There’s not only one grizzly left in Colorado, there’s at least four.

With the red-haired man’s sharp eyes waiting for his response, Cloyd shrugged and said nothing. His shrug said, Why should I believe you?

It pained the trophy hunter not to be believed by a kid, an Indian kid, and it showed. He went back to talking to the old man, and now all three were keeping an eye on the weather, which was building fast. So this summer that’s just about all I’ve been doing, Rusty was saying. TYying for another glimpse of that grizzly and her cubs. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is all excited. They want proof, and they’ve had teams of government people and all sorts of grizzly experts combing the mountains this summer. With not a bit of luck. That grizzly’s keeping herself and her cubs well hidden.

Up the valley, the rain was already falling. The old man stood up to go to his horse, and then the red-haired man stood up too. Keep your eye out for those grizzlies when you’re up there, he said. Walter, I guess Cloyd’s lost his voice completely over the winter … it’s a shame. Just in case he’s deaf too, tell him I heard how he kept your place open all winter, how he put up two haycrops this summer. I may not have come around, but I’ve been trying to keep in touch after a fashion.

Walter grinned and said, I’ll tell him.

How old is he this summer?

Fourteen or fifteen—no records.

Tell him he’s looking lean and mean—lost his baby fat, I guess.

Cloyd grinned a little too, despite himself.

One more thing, the red-haired man said over his shoulder. Tell him I didn’t kill the last grizzly in Colorado after all.

They were climbing, climbing all the time. Cloyd could feel Blueboy’s excitement beneath him. Blueboy was a smart one, and he remembered this trail by heart. It seemed the horses knew they were heading tonight for the tall grass in the meadows of the Pine, a horse heaven above these plunging mountainsides, this cascading whitewater.

Grizzlies in the mountains! A mother and three cubs!

Maybe Rusty hadn’t lied