easy so he started stalking them with just a knife.”
Sam shook his head in admiration. “He was still this scrawny kid. He wasn’t that strong, but he was frightfully quick and it was like he could get inside the head of the game.”
“Deer hunting with a knife?”
“I think he could have got an elk, too, if he’d have tried.” Sam said with satisfaction. “You figure a two-hundred pound deer is one thing. A six-hundred or a thousand-pound elk is entirely different. Then, he quit hunting all at once. He said it just wasn’t fair. Instead, he started counting coup.”
“Counting coup?”
“Funny, eh? He’d go out there and get as close as he could and touch them on the head, or slap them or cut off a piece of tail or an ear. Not just elk but cougar and bear.”
“Bear? How did he do that?”
Sam laughed. “That wasn’t easy. He came back one time tore up so bad he looked like the only things holding him together were strings. But he had a piece of a grizzly’s ear.”
This was starting to sound like a tall tale. Pretty soon Sam would have Jack riding a tornado. “Did he count coup on wolves?”
“We didn’t have many wolves back then,” Sam said quietly. “He left them pretty much alone. I don’t know why. Then, he quit counting coup.”
“It got too easy?”
Sam shook his head. “No. This was something else. Something different. He was graduating college by this point and they were just putting Beck-Lewis on the boards.” Sam stopped a moment. “Do you really understand what Beck-Lewis is? It’s a park and a refuge, all right. But it’s bordered on all sides with corporate farms, ranches and gas wells. There are no roads into it. It’s a no-man’s land. It’s the badlands that nobody wanted so the corporations all decided to do something to protect their inside borders and appease the environmentalists. Every couple of years the Sierra Club or the National Geographic or a few scientists come out here and do some work. But to do it they got to get federal permits, state permits and then border permits from each one of the abutting corporations. It’s really hard to do so people go elsewhere, to the Grand Tetons, or Yellowstone or Glacier. Jack and I realized that this place was going to be cheap, underfunded, barely visible. It was perfect. Accidentally, Beck- Lewis was going to slip backwards two hundred years. So we both applied to be rangers and got jobs here. We might have been the only applicants-there sure wasn’t much competition. That was the way of it for ten years.”
Sam stopped and stared at me through the screen, coming back to himself. I didn’t say anything. This was his song, his eulogy. I wouldn’t have broken it for the world. Every word, every gesture was being recorded. It was great background.
“Then, the wolves started coming down from Canada. A few strayed up from Yellowstone. Not many but enough to start a small population. Beck-Lewis wasn’t part of the Wolf Restoration Project but wolves go where they want to go. We wanted the wolves but we didn’t want the WRP-too many strings. Too much visibility. We didn’t want the scientists and the tourist trade. So, we started hunting them, tranquilizing them, and pulling off the radio collars. We left the collars to be found in different places to make the WRP think the wolves had dropped them or been killed. Some we just destroyed-a few collars are lost every year. It was tricky but there weren’t very many wolves. It didn’t take long for Jack to first discard the plane, then the trank gun. Then, he was going out there just by himself. We were only getting one or two collars a year. He would stalk the wolves just like he stalked cougars and elk. But wolves are smarter. They knew who he was and wouldn’t sit still for it. He had to get to know them before they’d let him take the collars. He spent more time out there than anywhere else.”
“Then, he won the lottery,” I prompted.
“Damnedest thing. He stopped in for a six-pack of club soda-he has always had a passion for carbonated water. Go figure. Bought a ticket and a week later he’s a millionaire.” Sam shook his head. “I guess he was already pretty clear in his mind what he was going to do with the money. That was eight years ago. I was against it. I thought it would bring trouble.”
I let that slide. Arguing with him would only get in the way of the story. “What would you have done with the money?”
He snorted. “Same thing I’m doing now. Same thing I’m going to do with the grant money you got for me. Hire some more men. Put in real boundaries. Get ready to defend this place against all comers. Jack thinks Beck-Lewis will last forever. I know better. Beck-Lewis is a holding action, a way of Corporate America getting the rights to public land they knew they could use. Throw the dog a bone and it’s busy while you rob the store. I knew it was only a matter of time before the world found us. Only I figured it would be an economic way of mining the shale or harvesting the buffalo grass or full spectrum solar power or something like that. After all, the only thing that stops capitalism is more capitalism. I didn’t figure on you.”
Two days after Akela came back I only had Sam’s background stories, Goldie’s footage and a limited amount of conversation from Jack to show for it. There was enough here for a feature or two but I wanted more. This story had possibilities. This story had legs. I wanted to see Jack in action. I needed to capture the pack in a real hunt, not wolves living comfortably and easily on rats. Where’s the drama in that?
I tried to pin Jack down. He was lying on his back in the sun. Akela was sitting next to him and Raksha was in her customary curl, snuggled against him with her head on his shoulder. They looked like a couple. It was Akela that looked like a family friend.
Maybe that’s the way it was.
“So,” I began. Jack didn’t move but he tensed suddenly. “Why didn’t you have yourself anatomically altered?”
Jack sat up suddenly. Raksha rolled over, startled. “What do you mean?”
I gestured to Raksha. “It looks like there’s more than paternal affection between you two. Akela is the one that’s the uncle. Not you.”
He looked down. All this time, he had just been a primitive man living with the wolves. But now, he was suddenly brought back into civilization for a moment. The distance between him and the world had narrowed to nothing in a heartbeat. I could see it run through his mind as if he were shouting at me. Broadcasting the interchange between us that had just happened, if done in the right way, would brand him instantly a pervert. It didn’t even have to be true; the allegation would take on a life of its own and any perception of him would be defined by it. People he knew would reconsider all of their memories of him: did the rude gesture on the playground lead to this? Could he have meant that all along? People he didn’t know would make instant and unshakable judgments of him.
I read once that human beings were the only animals that were incapable of domestication. The man who wrote it did not understand people at all. Human beings are the most easily domesticated animal of all; they do it to themselves. Jack had forsaken all that for the love of the pack and now it had come back home to roost. Being thought a pervert mattered to him.
I could see him considering options. Denying it would make no difference. It was the allegation that caught the imagination, not the facts. Baring it all would be better and that was not acceptable. He could kill me-I could see the appraising expression. But he had no idea if the material was on my person. It could be anywhere-it could be broadcast already and then he would have nothing to lose. Besides that, killing someone opened up another whole basket of worms. Could he hush it up? Could he do it at all?
“I don’t work that way,” I said quietly. “I send the material to my home base and edit it later. I don’t do live work.”
He looked up at me with a flicker of hope. “What do I have to do to keep this private?”
“I need to see the pack in action. I need to see a hunt.”
He nodded. “Done. It might take some time to set it up.”
“I can wait.”
He lay back down. He stared into the sky with an absent expression. Before he had been a simple man living a simple life. Now, a secret contorted him. I wondered if he would be able to live here much longer.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” he said suddenly.
“Fair?” I shook my head in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Being anatomically altered. I’m too smart-any human would be in the same position. I could become alpha but I’d be sterile. The pack wouldn’t have any offspring.”
