Riley stood up. “On that note, I’m going down to the lake to wash up before dinner.”
There was no trail to follow, but the slope of the land was gentle. The vegetation was mostly scrub grass and ground cover. She reached the lake and walked a short distance along the shoreline. The sun had disappeared, but the sky was glowing with shades of orange and purple. She dipped her hands into water that was crystal clear and still warm from the afternoon sun. She looked back toward their campsite. It wasn’t visible from the lake, but the location was marked by a stand of birch trees. She could hear the faint sounds of Emerson, Vernon, and Wayan talking around the fire.
Her intention had been to rinse her hands and splash some water on her face, but she realized she was totally alone and could actually wade in and get clean. She could wash the sweat and grime and fear away. Modesty wasn’t an issue for her. She’d done her share of skinny-dipping in Texas.
She stripped and cautiously stepped into the water. Once she adapted to the chill it felt great on her skin. She swam out, floated around a little, and swam back. The moon was low on the horizon. The stand of birches was clearly visible, and Riley could see a small ambient glow from the campfire.
She stepped out of the water and stood for a long moment, air-drying. When she moved toward the rocky outcropping where she’d placed her clothes, something rustled through the tall grasses just in front of her, and Emerson emerged, almost bumping into her.
“Crap on a cracker!” Riley said. “What are you doing here?”
“It was getting dark, and we started to worry, so I came looking for you.”
“Well, you found me.”
“Evidently so,” Emerson said, staring at her breasts. “You look…cold.”
“Stop looking! And turn around so I can get dressed.”
Emerson turned around.
“I saw that,” Riley said. “You’re smiling, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Well, stop!”
“You should be happy I’m not Bigfoot come to have his way with you.”
Riley would have preferred Bigfoot. It would be less embarrassing. She didn’t care if Bigfoot got to see her naked. She didn’t have a professional relationship with Bigfoot, and Bigfoot was always naked. She tugged her jeans on and thought there was nothing worse than being the only one who was naked. Okay, maybe getting thrown into a pit with a couple dead, bloated buffalo was worse. Still, this was uncomfortable.
SIXTEEN
Dinner consisted of freeze-dried beef stew, Thai curry, and M&M’s.
“The fire is nice,” Riley said, “but I could see the glow from the lake. It might not be smart to let it burn all night.”
“There are other precautions we can take to ward off the animals,” Emerson said. “The book suggests that we mark our territory by relieving ourselves around the perimeter of our campsite.”
“Count me out,” Riley said. “I’d rather be eaten by a grizzly.”
“The book also says that you should seal up your food as airtight as possible and hang it from a tree a good distance from your tent,” Emerson said.
“You take care of hanging the food,” Vernon said, “and I’ll take care of peeing the perimeter.”
“It sounds like we have a plan,” Riley said. “We should douse the fire.”
“I will douse the fire,” Wayan Bagus said. “It will be my contribution. I will douse the fire with sand.”
Wayan Bagus went to gather sand and Vernon wandered off to mark his territory.
Emerson had all the food bagged for hanging. “I should be back in ten minutes,” he said to Riley. “If you have a sudden urge to take off all your clothes, just give me a shout-out.”
“And what would you do?”
“I suppose I would have a dilemma. On the one hand I would want to come back to look. On the other hand I would want to be sensitive to your puritanical sense of modesty.”
“Excuse me? Puritanical?”
“Obviously you have a problem with nudity.”
“It’s not a ‘problem.’ ”
“I’m merely stating what I’ve observed,” Emerson said. “You seem bothered by nudity.”
“And you aren’t?”
“Not at all. I’m very secure about my body.”
“Well great. If you’re so secure, you should take your clothes off.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” Riley said. “And the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a great idea. I don’t like that you’ve seen me naked, and I haven’t seen you.”
“That contradicts what you said earlier when I asked if you wanted me to come to bed naked.”
“It’s not at all contradictory. I don’t want you rolling around naked next to me. I simply want to get a good look.”
“That would be awkward,” Emerson said.
“Not at all,” Riley said. “I wouldn’t feel at all awkward. It would be…enlightening.”
“Okay, so if I let you get a good look, would it lead to something?”
“Would you want it to?”
“I believe I would,” Emerson said.
“You’re not sure?”
“There might be things to consider.”
“Such as?”
“Precautions.”
“You didn’t pack any?” Riley asked.
“They weren’t on the essentials list in the guidebook.”
Vernon ambled out of the brush. “I’m empty,” he said. “I got halfway around and ran dry. If I just had a couple beers I could finish the job.”
“Confucius wrote that it does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop,” Wayan Bagus said.
“Yessir, Little Buddy,” Vernon said. “That sure is more sage advice. That’s always been my mode of operandi.”
Wayan Bagus finished smothering the fire and retired to his tent for evening meditation. Emerson trudged off with his bag of food and a coil of rope.
Riley stood close to her tent and crossed her arms to ward off the chill.
“I’m worried,” she said to Vernon. “We’re in bear country, and the crazy Rough Riders are probably after us. How did we get into this mess?”
“It’s not so bad,” Vernon said. “We’re with a holy man and my genius cousin. And I got my lucky gun. I figure we just go with the flow. Besides, my unagi is real quiet so we don’t have anything to worry about for now.”
A low, guttural growl came from the woods.
“That sounded like a bear,” Riley said.
“I reckon,” Vernon said.
Wayan Bagus came out of his tent. “What was that?”
They heard another growl. Louder this time. More of a roar than a growl.
“Yow,” Vernon said. “That might have been a lion.”
“There aren’t any lions in Yellowstone,” Riley said.
“There might be mountain lions,” Vernon said.
“Emerson!” Riley shouted into the woods. “Are you okay?”
Vernon shone a flashlight in the direction of the roaring. “I don’t see him. What should we do? We can’t just go wandering around in the dark.”
They all stared into the woods. “Well, we can’t just leave him out there either,” Riley said.
“I’m right behind you,” Emerson said. “Wu wei. This is the perfect example of a situation in which the logical course of action is to do nothing and let the universe solve the problem.”
Riley whipped around. “Holy cats, Emerson, you almost gave me a heart attack. What the heck is wrong with you? Haven’t you done enough sneaking up on people for one day?”
Another roar shattered the quiet.
“It turns out that it is not, in fact, possible to sit down and reason with bears. At least not with this particular bear.”
“No kidding,” Riley said.
Emerson nodded. “Surprisingly, it had very little interest in discussing things in a free marketplace of ideas.”
“Are you sure
it wasn’t a Bigfoot?” Vernon asked. “They’re notoriously intolerant.”
“All living things share a fundamental nature and are equally able to achieve enlightenment,” Wayan Bagus said.
“Not Bigfoots.”
Wayan Bagus nodded politely. “That is only true because there is no such thing as a Bigfoot.”
Vernon gasped. “Whoa. Time out. It’s been a long, stressful day, but let’s not talk crazy.”
“It was definitely a very big, very hungry bear,” Emerson said. “The good news is that, in the end, the bear agreed not to eat me. The bad news is that I agreed to give it most of our food in exchange.”
Riley hugged Emerson. “It was a good trade. We’re just happy you’re okay.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Vernon said. “I knew it would. Like I said, I wasn’t getting any unagi warnings.”
“We should take turns standing watch,” Emerson said. “We don’t want to get taken by surprise by bears or rangers.”
“Or a Bigfoot,” Vernon said. “Just ’cause we got a doubter among us don’t mean Bigfoot is any less real.”
—
At first light, the campsite was disassembled, and everyone prepared to set off for Sour Creek Dome. The bear had eaten 90 percent of the food, but Emerson had managed to salvage enough for a meager lunch and breakfast.
“It should be an easier hike today,” Emerson said. “We’re sticking to the valley floor until we reach Sour Creek Dome, so it should be fairly flat.”
Riley looked at the hill. “It looks out of place. It’s just kind of sitting in the middle of the flat expanse.”
“It’s what geologists call a resurgent dome,” Emerson said. “It’s formed by the swelling of a volcano’s caldera floor. There’s a vast supply of underground magma, and it’s literally lifting the ground.”
“Why here and not somewhere else in the caldera?”
Emerson shifted his backpack. “The magma is a lot closer to the surface at the dome, so that’s where the effect is most dramatic. However, more subtle changes are taking place all over the park.”
“Like what?” Riley asked.
“For one, Yellowstone Lake, where we started the hike, used to drain to the north. Today, that’s been completely reversed by the uplift of the dome, and the lake is now tilting and draining south.”
“What do you think we’re going to find at the dome?” Riley asked.
Emerson shrugged. “There are a couple possibilities. Whatever it is, it’s something worth killing to protect.”
“Well, I sure do hope it’s a cheeseburger,” Vernon said. “No offense, but the freeze-dried mush didn’t cut it for me. If I get a chance, I’m going to do a little hunting and see if I can rustle up something that doesn’t taste like tree bark.” Vernon patted the .45 tucked into his jacket. “I never miss with my lucky gun.”
“It is an attachment and bad for your karma,” Wayan Bagus said.
Vernon was last in line, lumbering along behind the monk. “No offense, but starving to death is worse for my karma.”
“I do not take offense,” Wayan Bagus said. “I am just a simple monk. The sun shines on the just and unjust alike. If the sun does not judge, then who am I to do so?”
Vernon looked suspiciously at Wayan Bagus. “Why are you all of a sudden so magnanimous when it comes to my Second Amendment rights?”
“Upon consideration I realized it would be unwise to part with a lucky gun.”
Vernon grinned. “I’m powerful glad to hear it. We need all the luck we can get.”
“Thank you,” Wayan Bagus said. “That is why I threw away the bullets. Bullets are very unlucky.”
Vernon stopped walking. “You didn’t.”
“I did,” Wayan Bagus said.
“What good is a gun without bullets?”
“It’s even better without the bullets. Now it is lucky for both us and for anyone at whom it happens to be pointed.”
Vernon shook his head and muttered to himself that vegetarians know nothing about anything, and that Wayan Bagus wouldn’t be so short if he’d eat a cow once in a while.
—
By noon, they had circumnavigated the lake and the marshy grasslands had given way to a thick forest of conifers. “I can’t see a thing through the trees,” Riley said to Emerson. “How do we know if we’re still heading in the right direction?”
“As long as we continue to walk uphill, we’re making progress. Hopefully once we reach a higher elevation, the forest will get a little less dense.”
“How are we doing with the food?” Riley asked.
“There’s not much left. If we budget it, we have enough for lunch and dinner. After that, we’ll have to forage.”
“Do you know how to forage?” Riley asked.
“Yes.”
“Let me rephrase that. Have you ever actually foraged?”
“No, but I’ve watched just about every episode of Naked and Afraid, so I’m pretty much an expert at this point.”
Riley cut her eyes to Emerson. “The people who go on that show mostly just sit around and starve until they go crazy, get sick, or threaten to kill each other.”
“That’s true, but you have to remember they’re disadvantaged in that they are forced to survive naked. Most of us are committed to wearing clothes on this trek,” Emerson said.
Riley looked at Emerson. “Keep it up. Your time is going to come. Live in fear.”
“I believe I’m being challenged,” Emerson said.
“It’s going to happen when you least expect it,” Riley said. “Total nudity. And we won’t need protection because I’ll be completely clothed.”
“We’ll see,” Emerson said. “I have excellent unagi when it comes to nudity.”
They walked in silence for the next two hours, listening to animals rustling in the underbrush, watching for signs that bears might be ahead. Finally the forest opened up into a vast meadow. The lower portions of Sour Creek Dome loomed on the other side, maybe three miles away.
Wayan Bagus pointed into the distance. “What’s that?”
“I don’t see anything,” Vernon said.
Emerson looked through his binoculars. “It’s a fence, but it’s probably a mile away.”
“Is that another one of your siddhi powers?” Riley asked Wayan Bagus. “Being able to see and hear at extreme distances?”
Wayan Bagus shrugged. “I hear and I know. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Vernon kicked a stone off the path. “My phone stopped working, which means my ratings are gonna drop like a rock on Fantasy NASCAR. We have no food. I’m hauling around a three-pound hunk of useless metal that serves no purpose other than being lucky, and I have absolutely no idea what Little Buddy is talking about half the time. Good grief. Holy crap. Somebody give me a Snickers.”
“We ate all the Snickers,” Emerson said, “but I have a couple PowerBars left. Do you want peanut butter or raspberry swirl?”
Vernon took the peanut butter, and the march resumed. A half hour later Emerson pulled up, and everyone stopped behind him. There was a twelve-foot-tall razor wire fence separating them from Sour Creek Dome.
“Looks like somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to keep people out of this area,” Emerson said.
“I don’t know about that,” Vernon said. “That fence looks like something out of Jurassic Park. I’m more concerned about what they’re trying to keep in than what they’re trying to keep out.”
“You think there’s a Tyrannosaurus rex in there?” Riley asked.
“Man-eating genetically engineered dinosaurs, Bigfoots, crazy park rangers,” Vernon said. “Who knows? I don’t know which one is worse.”
Riley looked to the right and then to the left. The fence stretched in both directions with no end in sight. “How do we get across?”
“I reckon up and over,” Vernon said, reaching out and grabbing on to the chain-link. There was a loud snapping sound, an arc of electricity jumped from t
he fence to Vernon, and Vernon went flying in reverse, landing on his back ten feet away.
Riley rushed over to Vernon. “Are you okay?”
Vernon looked up at Riley. His eyes were lazily rolling around from one side to the other, and his boots were smoking.
“Pamela Anderson?” Vernon asked. “Why aren’t you wearing your red bathing suit? Did I almost drown?”
Emerson and Wayan Bagus helped Vernon to his feet. Vernon’s hair was singed, and most of his eyebrows were burned off.
“Snap, crackle, pop,” Vernon said. “Hey, Pam, give me a kiss. Oh yeah, and don’t touch the fence. I think it’s electrocuted.”
“This is bad,” Wayan Bagus said. “I should have removed the gun as well. I fear its luck has moved on.”
Emerson looked Vernon over. “I think he’s okay. He’s a little dazed from the shock, and he has some minor burns on his hands.”
“Burns shmurns,” Vernon said. “I’m good as new. Right, Pam? And by the way, don’t touch the fence.”
Riley looked at Emerson. “Which one of us is Pam?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Emerson said. “And obviously we’re not going over the fence. We’ll have to go around. Sooner or later we’re bound to come to a gate.”
—
Several hours later they straggled to the top of a knoll. They’d been walking parallel to the fence line, pushing through tall grass that alternated with low scrubby brush. Emerson was the first to get to the top of the small hill, and he stared out across a swath of pasture.
“That must be the gate,” he said to Riley, pointing at a little guardhouse about a quarter mile away down the fence line. He raised his binoculars to his eyes. “There’s a crude trail leading to it through a couple hundred feet of open grassland before it disappears into the woods.”
“Well, you found your gate,” Vernon said. “Now what?”
SEVENTEEN
Riley watched a Jeep Wrangler through Emerson’s binoculars as it emerged from the woods and meandered down the barely there trail. It stopped at the little guardhouse before passing through the gate and disappearing into a thicket of trees.