Blood lure

Since her promotion and move to Mississippi, district ranger was the position A

"He any good?" A

"Harry Ruick? He's good," Joan said. "Sides with the bears when the public isn't clamoring."

"And when they are?"

"Pours experts on them."

"Does he usually go out on searches?" Some chiefs stayed active in the field, but more often than not they didn't. Several times a year they'd make some sort of publicized trek of the brass into the backwoods for management reasons but, particularly in the bigger parks, chief ranger had become an administrative position.

"Not usually," Joan admitted.

The search wasn't three hours old and already the big guns were rolling out. Harry Ruick was guessing Van Slyke was dead.

By eight o'clock a light rain began to fall. August's warmth was co-opted by weather and altitude. It had yet to reach sixty degrees. The low ceiling of clouds would keep out any assistance by air. Rain was light and the wind calm, but visibility on Flattop had dwindled to nothing.

Joan radioed Ruick, who headed up the team, and told him they had nothing. He advised them to eat, rest, stay warm and meet the team on West Flattop Trail around noon, when horses and searchers should be arriving.

"Rory's father and stepmother are camped at Fifty Mountain," Joan said into the radio. "Has anybody been sent to inform them?"

"We'll work on it," Ruick promised and Joan left it at that.

They followed directions, eating as much as they could, resting, then hiking down to the trail. The day shared its misery, cool and rainy: warm enough that rain gear left one overheated and sweating, cold enough to give a severe chill if one got thoroughly wet. A day without a whole hell of a lot to recommend it, as far as A

Shortly before noon they met up with the search party and led them the three quarters of a mile back to their camp.

Ruick hadn't wasted his time in the saddle. On the ride up he'd worked out the search area and the pattern to be used. The area around the clearing from where Rory'd disappeared was divided into quadrants. The search pattern, A

A

Ruick set a brutal pace and showed A

Drizzle turned to rain and back to drizzle half a dozen times. The three of them ran rivers of sweat. Rain gear was pulled off and stuffed in packs. Rain washed sweat away and water streamed off their faces and arms. The woods dripped, their silence moving from mysterious to oppressive. Ruick led them down ragged slopes toward McDonald Creek through thickets of alder ten and fifteen feet high and so dense they crawled on hands and knees till mud caked their undersides.

They found no trace of Rory Van Slyke or the bear.

Radio traffic from the other three quadrants, two east into the burn, the other northwest across West Flattop Trail, let them know the hunting had been no better for the other team members.

Just after six that evening, they took a break and ate the sandwiches the team had packed in on the horses. Ruick was as wet and dirty as A

Joan didn't suffer A

Harry Ruick radioed the rest of the team with the quitting time, then they pushed themselves up for another hour of calling and crawling and swearing at the dogged weeping sky.

The last hour did not pass quickly. Time was slowed by a compulsion that had developed in A

When they were nearly to the clearing, the rain stopped.

Clouds were thi

Joan was not similarly cheered. She wasn't sufficiently self-centered for rescue work, A

"One-oh-two, two-one-four." Joan and the chief ranger's radios came to life in stereo. Two-one-four was Gary Bradley, one of the frontcountry bear-team guys. A

Ruick drew his hand-held from its cordovan leather holster on his belt. A

"Go ahead, Gary," the chief ranger was saying into his radio.

"We got something here you better come look at."

"What have you found?"

"We're up near Kootnai Pass, off West Glacier Trail half a mile. How far away are you?"

"Maybe three miles. We can get there before dark."

"I'll have Vic wait on the trail."

Ruick replaced the radio on his belt and picked up the pace.

Gary Bradley wouldn't say what they'd found over the public air waves. The only thing that made people that circumspect was a corpse.

A