C. Box - Savage Run

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.”

Since they had ridden up on him that day, Tibbs always referred to Tod Marchand as “the lawyer.” He had never once spoken his actual name.

The Old Man felt sick. He had waved away the offers of jerky and iced tea by saying he thought he thought he was coming down with the flu.

“If folks just knew that the lawyer vanished and not that he was attacked by the grizzlies he saved, it would be a shame,” Tibbs said.

“I understood the first time,” the Old Man said with irritation.

Tibbs’s face had a way of going dead that had unnerved a lot of people. It unnerved the Old Man now.

“I just don’t like this, Charlie,” the Old Man said.

“It’s nature at work, is all,” Tibbs said, his face assuming life again.

Nature and four pounds of bacon, the Old Man thought.

“Far as I can tell those cubs gobbled that horse hair straight away,” Tibbs said, still peering through the binoculars. “No one’ll ever know he was tied up.”

I wonder who is impersonating Stewie Woods?” Tibbs asked suddenly, lowering the binoculars. It had become so dark that the Old Man could no longer make out the individual forms of the bears in the clearing, but he knew that Tibbs’s glasses gathered what little light there was, so he could still see. Tibbs also had a night-vision scope in his saddlebag. “Whoever he is, he was trying to draw the lawyer into some kind of situation.”

It was so still that the Old Man could hear the bears feeding, hear bones crunching.

“Who would do a thing like that?” the Old Man asked. His mouth was dry and he had trouble speaking. If Tibbs knew what he had been thinking, the Old Man figured he’d be in danger.

“Don’t know,” Tibbs shrugged.

“We couldn’t have screwed up with Stewie Woods, could we?”

Tibbs snorted. The question was beneath him.

From the clearing they could hear the sound of the two cubs fighting over something.

“I like this,” Tibbs said. “Great Grizzly Bear Savior Eaten by Bears in Yellowstone Park.”

“Yup,” the Old Man said, not agreeing, not disagreeing. He slowly stood up.

“Charlie, how much longer you going to wait here?”

“Couple a hours. Just to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

Tibbs didn’t answer. Long enough to make sure you see everything there is to see, the Old Man thought.

“I think I might ride back and get some sleep in the truck. My stomach’s doin’ flip-flops and I think I’m coming down with something.”

Tibbs leveled his gaze on the Old Man. The Old Man was glad it was almost dark, but knew he looked miserable anyway.

“It’s not a good idea to split up,” Tibbs said.

“Yeah, I know,” the Old Man said. “But it’s not a good idea to move in on that pretender tomorrow with me feeling like I do now. I need some rest.”

The Old Man sensed Tibbs giving consideration to the argument. Then without a word, Tibbs turned back to the bears.

“See you in a little while,” the Old Man said. “I’ll just stretch out in the horse trailer in some blankets. Don’t forget to wake me up.”

Tibbs said nothing. They both knew that the Old Man wasn’t going to get away, that he was in this until Charlie let him go. Charlie Tibbs had the keys to the truck, and the Old Man had never had a set. Tibbs didn’t offer them now, and the Old Man didn’t ask. They also knew how unlikely it would be for the Old Man to try to ride the horse away. Charlie was twice the tracker and horseman the Old Man was, and would be upon him within a few hours.

The Old Man mounted after being sure his horse had calmed down and likely wouldn’t bolt because of the bears. The horse was still spooked and white-eyed, but was under control.

Before he left, he looked over his shoulder. He could see Charlie Tibbs’s wide back in the moonlight, his shirt stretched tight between his shoulder blades. For a brief moment, the Old Man thought of how easy it would be right then to put a bullet in Tibbs’s back. Right into his spine, between the shoulder blades. Then he considered the possibility of the horse bolting as he fired, or of simply missing. He knew if either happened, it would be his last act on earth.