Blood lure

Joan handed out latex gloves, envelopes and pens from where they were cached in her pack. A

Approximately every foot along the wire was a barb. Wearing gloves so as not to contaminate the samples, A

The trap they currently worked had been extremely successful. Nearly every one of the rusted points was tufted with fur. The chore was tedious. The footing uneven. The deerflies hellacious. Still A

"You're good at this," she said to Rory, because she was feeling generous and it was true.

Despite Mother Nature's considerable aggravations, Rory worked with a quiet diligence A

"My dad-Les," he corrected himself, or punished his father, "and I used to put together airplane models when I was in grade school. When he used to do stuff."

"Used to? What does he do now?" A

Rory's coarse blond hair, not yet as sweaty as A

Careful not to lose any, A

"What does your mom do?" she asked, hoping for a little more enthusiasm to pass the time.

"Mom's cool," Rory said as they crabbed over half a yard to the next section of wire. "She's a lawyer."

"Trial lawyer?"

"Divorce. We live in Seattle. Carolyn's my stepmother. My real mom died when I was five. Dad married Carolyn a couple years later. She doesn't take shit off anybody."

Rory meant that as high praise indeed. A

"Speaking of taking shit…" Joan came up behind them. "Got four superb samples. Come look at this one." She had tucked the vials into their padded carrying case so A

Joan had squatted down on her heels, Rory in like posture at her elbow. Content not to toy with gravity any more than need be, A

"Looky," Joan said. "This bear's been into something he oughtn't." Poking through the excreta, she turned up a couple of reddish fragments. "Paper. Maybe he got into a pack. Or an outhouse. It's illegal, but people sometimes still dump their trash down the toilets at the camps rather than carry it out. Bears go after it. Or he might have got into garbage. See this? Probably tinfoil."

Joan pondered that a moment. A

A

"Ah, well," Joan said. "Could have been a backcountry outhouse the rangers haven't checked in a couple of days." She looked worried. One of her four-hundred-pound charges had misbehaved. The concern wasn't misplaced, considering what penalties humankind often extracted from other species for even the slightest infractions.

Joan stirred around in the pile some more. "These lumps, dog food or horse pellets is my guess. Bears don't have what you'd call careful digestion. Food passes through them almost in its original form sometimes. See? You can see the edge of this pellet. Hardly dulled. Grizzlies have a terrific range but it's a safe bet this fella got his ill-gotten gains here in the park. This trap is far enough from any of the borders; for it to be going through his system here, he'd've got it locally, so to speak."

Researchers lived in the details. A

The new trap to be set up in cell sixty-four was plotted on paper just under three miles as the crow would fly from the old trap. Dismantling the traps and setting them up was the work of an hour or two. Getting their decidedly uncrowlike selves to the next destination was the time-and-energy-consuming part of the job.

A

Hidden gardens occasionally appeared with such sudden and unexpected beauty they ratified A

At one such oasis, where they broke for lunch, Joan pointed out an area that had been dug up, the charred soil turned over in a rough square, eight feet on a side.

"Bears digging glacier lilies," she told them.

Glad to be free of her pack with a few minutes to do as she pleased, A

"I think I know what our Geoff Mickleson-Nicholson was up to," she called back. Joan came to join her and A

"Son of a bee," Joan said. "Somebody's sure been digging them up. No proof it's our guy."

"Hah," A

"It happens," Joan said.

A