The bear's ears pricked as his flaring nostrils soaked up familiar scents.  His home valley lay below the craggy outcropping on which he stood.  His native range extended in a rough oval for miles to the west and south.  A sense of contentment settled into his consciousness for the first time in weeks.  He could now stop his hectic flight from the mountains to the northeast, where he had been exiled by park rangers two months previous.  Now he would eat grubs, roots and rodents from the places his mother had taught him.  He would soak in the warm waters of the healing springs to let his stiffened leg become well again.

Little did the young grizzly know that he had arrived home just in time to witness history being made in this part of the world.  This day, known to humans as August 18, 1988, was only twenty-four hours before the day Yellowstone Park burned.  It didn't really happen in a single day.  But the small fires that had been burning on and off in the park for weeks were to become the great flames this day. 

As he stood on the great rocks of the eastern ridge of the Lamar river valley, another scent came to the bear—and this one bothered him.  The smell of smoke was strong.  The air was much hazier than normal.  Still, it was not enough of a warning to cause undue alarm.  He had seen forest fires before.  They had never been a problem.  It was just something to be watchful about.  In fact, they could bring food to him, if he hunted ahead of the flames.

His leg was puffy and sore.  It still wept from both the front and the back, no matter how much time he spent licking and cleaning it.  It hurt when he walked and sometimes he couldn't get comfortable to sleep.  He woke occasionally with a throbbing dull pain, and had slept very little in the days since his feast on the sheep.  Many nights he had spent travelling painfully along his westward trek, eating when he found berries or other edibles.

He knew there were warm mud springs in the valley below.  Limping visibly, he moved back from the precipice and worked his way down through the scattered boulders, pine and occasional spruce thickets.  Pushing through a thick growth of aspen and snow-bush breaks, he found a small stream beginning where water seeped out of the lower reaches of an aspen grove.  It had a dense cover of underbrush along its banks, so he followed its meandering course down the mountain for almost a mile before he noticed an interesting odor.  It came from the edge of a thicket in a flat area just slightly to the side of the direction he was moving.

Cautiously he tested the wind.  He knew that there was a meal of rotted meat waiting for him at the end of the scent stream and in spite of the fiery discomforts from his leg, his hunger would not be denied.  He also knew there was more than just a meal at the edge of the brushy flat.  His keen sense of smell detected another bear.

He was doubly cautious now, as he slowly edged forward.  He wanted no part of another large grizzly, and moving in on the claim was guaranteed to provoke a fight if it was another of his own species.  He noticed, however, a subtle difference in this odor from that of other grizzlies.  It was a black bear—not a grizzly—and he was not fearful of most black bears.

He moved forward with less caution now, following the flowing path of the tantalizing putrid-sweet odor and the gushy sounds of soft flesh tearing.  Pushing forward, he stopped twenty-five feet from the silhouette of a mound that moved in the gloom.  He could see the dark form of what he now knew was a small female black bear hunched over the food that he needed.

With a snarl and a loud growl he charged the small bear.  She hesitated an instant, then with a whimper of disappointment and fear, bolted away from the dead deer in panic.

The grizzly only chased her a few feet, growling and looking in the direction of the swishing brush that marked her retreat.  He wasted no time before turning to limp back and claim his prize.  The deer was almost intact—only part of a haunch had been consumed.

He looked around carefully into the dark forest and scent-checked the breezes for only a minute before dropping beside his prize to begin devouring the sweet, maggot writhing flesh of the old doe.

He neither knew nor cared how the old deer had died.  It was enough to know that this was an easy meal.  In his feasting he avoided the rock-hard, calcified fawn in her belly, the fawn that had refused to be born, that had died within her body, that had made her sick, that had finally been the cause of her death.  He greedily consumed much of everything else from the carcass, then satisfied, rose to lick his paws and rub his face before scratching debris over the remains.

Without a backward look he continued his painful trek down the little mountain stream another half mile, then veered to his left to emerge from the thickets  onto a damp mud flow near the bottom of a secluded barren.

The smell of sulfur pulled him toward the upper edge of the flow.  He stopped to listen for a few minutes.  Low gurgling sounds brought back distant memories of days gone by.  No other sounds or scents were present in a cool night brought to warmth by subterranean heat.

The bear moved ahead to the bubbling pool and eased into the warm, almost hot, mud oozing from the pool.  The soothing surry coated his hair and warmed the skin beneath.  It flowed against the fevered flesh where his hair had been preened away from open, running wounds.  At first it brought a stinging and burning sensation almost too painful to tolerate, then gradual relief.

He turned his rear end into the deeper part of the pool and sat in it, his front paws resting on the edge of the solidified cake at the edge.  He sat still a few minutes, then lay flat in the bubbling yellow ooze, finally resting his head on outstretched paws.  The mud gradually filled the depression made by his body, slowly worked its way up his back and neck to just behind his ears.  Little by little it soaked into his fur all the way to the skin, tingling with a soothing comfort he hadn't known for months.

He lay in that position for several hours, rolling occasionally to one side or the other, watching the strange glowing of the summer sky with no sense of danger.   His nose auto-tested the night air for scents other than the sulfur smell; his ears instantly turned toward any nongurgling sounds in the area.  And he drifted into a deep, restful sleep.

A thoroughly mud soaked and coated bruin awoke abruptly, hours into the next day, to an eerie haze filled world.  A foreign sound pierced his consciousness from across the wooded valley below.  His sense of hearing had failed to warn him because the increase in sound had been gradual.  But now he was aware of the sound of a hundred rainstorms rushing upon him at once.  A fierce, extremely hot wind suddenly made it hard to breathe and smoking embers began falling.

The bear scrambled out of the mud bath, his leg no longer aching, or no longer noticed.  He was quickly away from the small barren of the mud flow.  His instincts told him it was not the place to hide from the awful conflagration racing up the valley.

He did not know that superheated air with temperatures up to five hundred degrees would quickly be enveloping the mud flow.  His lungs would sear.  He would be baked in his mud coat if he stayed.  There would be no air to breathe, only thick, acrid, resin laden smoke.

He did know a deep fear of what he saw, heard and smelled.  Panic set in like something physically devouring him, taking his shrewd animal cunning away in one great wrenching gulp.  All that remained was the instinct to run away from the terror of the onrushing wall of flame.

He bolted with mud globs flying, up the same side of the mountain that he had so carefully descended the night before.  Now he took a roughly northeasterly path, riding down small trees and bushes in his path.  He desperately charged up the steep hillside, bound after bound. 

Other animals were fleeing in the same general direction.  Several elk crashed along parallel to him and the same small black bear that only the night before had bolted in panic from his ill-tempered charge ran across his path nearly under his nose.  Each gave the other no heed as they almost collided and continued their mad dash.

A pine just ahead to his left burst into flame.  The sudden flare caused him to veer southward along the contour of the mountain for a few yards before reaching a great rocky precipice.  He had to slow to work his way down from foothold to foothold.  He was almost to the bottom when the wall of flame roared out into the open air as it engulfed the trees growing on the ridge where he had only just left seconds before.

Scrambling the remainder of the way to the bottom of the gulch, he dashed into a small creek that tumbled over its rocky bed toward the valley.  Turning to his left, he raced up the side of the creek, climbing past a small waterfall.  He then scrambled his way up the opposite side of the steep little timbered valley, climbing almost blindly in his haste to be away from the raging death to the rear.  He gained a few hundred feet on the wall of fire as he reached the crest of the ridge.

Bursting through thick briars and stubby brush, he rushed into an open fire trail.  To the left it curved north into the imminent path of the flames and directly into the path of two motorized vehicles that roared toward him.  He didn't understand that the men in the tanker and the personnel carrier were almost as panicked as he.  In his understanding, this was just more of the plan the hated men and their stinking machine creatures had concocted to harm him.

To the right the road opened along the edge of a thin, alpine meadow.   With no hesitation, the terrified bear continued his tortured flight, turning into the road to the right, ahead of the straining vehicles.  He ran before the vehicles a few yards then veered sharply to his left.

As he raced into the meadow at the left of the road, the vehicles roared past and raced screaming on down the little road.  Again he had temporarily escaped his tormentors.  He quartered across and down the length of the meadow as the bouncing vehicles disappeared around a curve to his right.  The thick forest on the east side of the meadow swallowed him as the flame wall reached the place where he had entered the meadow.

He slowed his breakneck pace to a fast trot down the mountain, his bursting lungs allowing no more.  The flames were now moving down the mountain, consequently with less up-draft.  They were denied the ready availability of ever more fuel and as a result, moved at a slower rate.  The bear finally began to gain oxygen in the smoky air.  A familliar, and dreaded, pulsing chop, chop, chop broke into his consciousness over the roar of the following fire.

A flood of foul-smelling liquid fell into the trees about him in a drenching, eye-stinging deluge.  Almost blinded, the panicked bear plunged headlong down the mountain, stumbling over rocks and brush in his path.  He could have easily come to his end on this mad rush, but as his luck would have it, no cliffs were in his path.  Even so, he barely managed to avoid killing himself on the rocky outcroppings that reached greedily for his terrorized flying body.

At the bottom of the drainage, he slowed to a more deliberate speed, loping a meandering path around the many natural obstacles.  His eyes cleared somewhat and were not stinging as much.   The fire was far enough behind that it no longer was the only thing in his consciousness.

The coating of mud on his fur had been covered by the wetness from the helicopter, leaving a top layer of additional stickiness.  It didn't have an overpowering odor, but it was not pleasant to the bear; just another of the torments he had endured these last days.  The irritated bear stopped in a patch of open woods to try to remove the source of his latest torture.  Large lodgepole pines stood at almost military attention in a blanket of thick needles and other forest duff.

He couldn't lick the stickiness off, the taste was very bitter and burned his tongue.  Dropping to his chest, the bear scooted around in the pine needles and twigs.  Then flopping on his side, he rolled over and over, squirming this way and that, trying to rid himself of the unwanted odor.  He succeeded admirably in attaching a coating of pine needles and debris to the sticky mud.   He smeared and rubbed on the trees at hand, managing to imbed more loose litter into the mix of fur, mud, small sticks, bark and pine needles.

Feeling better after the good rub, but with his eyes still smarting, the bear again set off in a fast trot down the valley, heading generally east.  This direction brought him into a valley of northerly flowing water.  It was shallow and he crossed to the east side before continuing his southward trek.  South was where he wanted to be.  Away from this place.  Far away.

Something had died in the young grizzly that day.  There had been too many back-to-back traumatic events for his inexperienced psyche to absorb.  The strong homing instinct had brought him back to his birthplace from the land to which the great throbbing air creature had taken him.  But it was something he could no longer feel.  The home range was no longer his.  He would hunt away from this place, to somewhere that the man-animal and his great roaring creatures would not be.  To the north and east and west were fire, man and his terrible creatures that smelled of  the putrid tar pits.  Somewhere to the south he would hunt, wandering wherever food and cover drew him.  He would never return to this place.

------------------------------

Bruce McSwain's vision cleared again after having doubled and blanked out for more times than he cared to think about.  He couldn't keep this up.  Sooner or later he would be straightening out a curve and drop the Ford over one of these narrow shoulders into the nothing below.

He had been pushing steadily for the last hour and a half, all the way from Cody, Wyoming.  Highway 16 was no Interstate and the continuous curves and going up and down the mountains had absorbed most of his alertness.  He could only determine uphill-downhill by listening to the varying strain of the motor.  Of course, the three beers he'd downed in the little Cody tavern weren't helping his driving.

His companions had elected him to stay sober for the drive, so they could imbibe freely.  They had all decided the afternoon before that life was too tame in the park campground.  They wanted to get away from the smoke and haze if they could.  When they returned from their hike that morning, they loaded into the pickup and set off on the sixty-five mile run to Cody for some "hootin' an' hollerin,'"—what "good ol' boys" from Tennessee needed from time to time.  They had reminded each other of that fact many times on the way to Cody.

"Hey, Marty.  Wake up an' talk to me.  I'm gettin' too sleepy."  Success at rousing his near comatose friends wouldn't be guaranteed.

Nothing but a snore came from Marty, slouched in the middle of the bench seat of the F150.  Bruce vigorously shook a seemingly unconnected shoulder.  "Hey Marty, wake up Will.  I need some help here!"  This time there was irritation and much more urgency.

"Whatza time?"  Marty Gorgan's slurred question gave Bruce a little more hope.  Maybe he would get some motion from his groggy friends after all.

"It's two thirty in th' mornin'.  I can't keep my eyes open.  Need you guys to talk to me.  I've rolled the window down ever' mile or so and sung myself blue in th' face.  I'm puttin' myself to sleep with that.  Shake ol' Will over there.  We're still about twelve—fifteen miles from camp."

"Okay, come on Will, let's keep ol' Bruce 'wake."  Marty shook his loose jointed companion, Will Starrett.

"Whasamatter?"  Will harumped as he struggled to sit upright.  He rolled the window down to spit into the passing darkness.  "We 'bout ta camp?"

"Naw, we're still twelve—fifteen miles out.  Just comin' down th' big grade 'fore th' park.  I just can't keep m'self awake any more," Bruce repeated for his other companion.

"Hell, I'm glad ya woke me up.  I 'uz havin' a dream.  A bad dream.  That ol' Indian we met in th' bar was runnin' from a hoodoo an' come right by me.  I had ta tear out too, ta keep th' thing from gettin' me!  An' th' more I run, th' closter it wuz comin'."

Bruce peered across at his older friend.  "I reckon ya do look a little peaked under th' edge o' yer beard, there man.  What'd this hoodoo look like, anyway?"

"Well, ya know he said it was 'bear spirits' in th' mountain.  Th' 'mountain that never sleeps', his granma said... kind o' like my old granny usta say 'bout them ha'nts.  Hell, it'sa same thang.  They's kind o' like dead folks long gone, come back like wierd things."  Will shuddered a little.

"Aw, Will, you soun' like you believe that silly stuff.  You know it's just Indian superstition an' mumbo jumbo.  I heard 'im say that stuff 'bout when it's real quiet, that you could hear them spirits movin' in th' ground.  Why, hell, they ain't nothin' in these hills but hot lava an' stuff that makes 'em make noises an such.  Wha'd this hoodoo look like, anyhow?"

"Well, like th' Indian said.  Said down south a ways they just stands around and don't do much.  But here in this country they's like a big bear, only differnt.  Had fiery eyes an' stuff.  An' he was talking 'bout how th' white man was gonna pay fer movin' in on th' Indians an' takin' most everthin' an' ruinin' th' rest.  Th' bear spirit was gonna visit th' white man an' get revenge."

"I think that ol' Indian's got th' Indian sign on you, that's what I think.  Ain't no spirits ever bothered you afore, have they?"  I wouldn't let some old Sho-shony spook me, I'd just take it fer th' nonsense it wus...

"Don't you have anythin' else ta talk about?  I'd a let ya keep a sleepin' if I'd a knowd all ya had ta say wus this kind o' trash.  Beats anythin' I ever heard of!"  Bruce moved his hands on the wheel to ten and two, and reared back to stretch his shoulders.

Marty chimed in.  He started his support of Will with a whine, then levelled off into his normal voice.  "Wal, now I heard my ol' granny talk 'bout them ha'nts, too, now.  Yessiree, I don' know ifn its true 'r not, but she shore bleeved it."

"My aunt even claimed to've seen my uncle in ther bedroom afore an that 'uz after he 'uz dead fer five year.  You can't jus' push it aside, now Bruce,"  Marty ended his defense with another whine.

"You too, Marty?... Well, I deeclare!  I thought I had myself a couple o' brave friends.  I guess your old granmammies done ruint you two real good.  Hell, why don't y'all jes' get on back ta sleep!  I'll take this ol pickup on down th' road 'thout 'ny more trouble, 'r he'p from ninnies don't know nuthin' 'bout th' world.  Gee-ee whiz!"  Bruce feigned great shame at his companions.

No one said more for a few minutes.  Bruce slowed the truck for the tiny town of Pahaska, then resumed his speed.  They rounded a curve and crossed a bridge over a stream at the bottom of the hill when Marty's whine mocked, "Ninnies, huh?  Well, what's that up ahead there?  You reckon them red things ain't th' eyes 'v a hoodoo comin' right at us?  Them blazin' eyes is like coals o' fire, sure 'nuff.  Slow down some, Bruce.  Don't run into it, now."  His whine was now octaves higher, almost a scream.

Will sat bolt upright.  "What th' hell is that thing, anyhow?  You reckin it's a hoodoo, Marty?  It looks like a bear, but it don' look like no bear.  It's a gettin' in th' road right in th' way.  I don' think it's a bear!"

The tires squalled with full brake pressure as the truck slowed and Bruce flipped the lights up and down on the large animal barely ahead of them.  It moved to the left to the shoulder with a great leap as the trio passed at arm's length, the pickup's lights glaring on the lumpy, stickery backside of the retreating creature.  Three necks craned to the left as they passed; three pairs of eyes strained to see the details of glaring eyes and a disappearing ghostly form in the night.

"Oh, God, its comin' fer us.  It almost got us.  It's a goin up river to th' camp.  Let's go back to Cody, Bruce.  Let's don go to th' camp. We gonna be first ones it gets, we seen it first, its jus' scarin' us ta make us suffer more."  Will's voice rose at the end as he turned to peer out the dingy back window through the cluttered camper shell.

Bruce was stern.  "Will you shut your trap?  I don' know what that thing was, but it warn't no hoodoo.  Got ta be some kind o' bear I ain't never seen afore."  He tried to sort the memory of the fleeing image with his formerly trusted pattern recognition facilities.

"But I seen its eyes.  They ain't real.  An' it had armor on it.  I think I heard it clankin' while it was gettin' off th' road."  By the time he had it said, Will was sure.  He turned back to the front now, searching for more evidence of perdition ahead.

Marty didn't need convincing.  "You seen them stickers on it, Bruce.  It 'uz a bear outta hell 'r a cross with a porky-pine.  I ain't never heard o' nothin' in these hills it could be 'cept a hoodoo.  "I don' wanna go down ta no camp neither.  It might get all 'em people.  We better go on back ta Cody.  We c'n find som'ers ta sleep till tamorra 'n then ifn nothin's on th' radio we c'n come back an' get th' tent n' stuff."

Bruce had to gain control again.  "Why hell, it'll be tomorra afore you c'n drive back ta Cody, man.  An anyhow, ifn it is  a hoodoo, maybe it's goin back t'ward Cody right now.  We might be jus' gonna run right into th' thing ag'in."  He thought for a moment.  "Naw, It won't bother us none in th' camp."

After a short pause he repeated more forcefully, "It won't bother us none in camp."  Another short pause.  He still didn't get a response.  "Now, how you think I know that?"  His voice had a  triumphant flourish to it.  The glow from the dash lights showed a green Cheshire grin as he waited for an answer a pregnant minute.

Will broke first, his voice a strained stage whisper.  "Awright, dammit, how you know that, Mr. Knowitall?" 

"Yeah, how you know that?"  Marty had his doubts too.

"Well, I heard th' Indian give th' secret.  An' you did too.  An' I bet ifn ya think about it good, you'll remember it too,"  Bruce led them on gently.

"But he said they wasn't no he'p fer ya ifn it wuz after ya."  Will's ray of hope began dimming again.

Marty just sat there expectantly staring at Bruce, not saying anything.

"Why, that's when you're by your only lonesome self, dummy!  Hoodoos jus' gets folks when they's alone, out in th' dark.  That's what he said.  I heard 'im, clear as day!  Hoodoos only gets people when they's by themselves in th' dark.  Why, man, they's twenty thousand folks down in that camp.  You think that Hoodoo's gonna show up there?  Why, hell, no!  He ain't gonna never come near that place, man.  They don' like lots o' people.  That ol' Indian tol' it fer real.  They like it when it's quiet an' ya think everthin's peaceful like."

Bruce had talked himself into a happy frame of mind now.  "Let's jus' get on down there an' get some sleep in amongst everbody.  An' don' worry no more 'bout no hoodoo," he half commanded, half begged.

Several minutes passed quietly with the truck working its way into the park and along the campground road.  "I reckin' it's th' bes' thing ta do, ain't it Marty?  Don't ya think we'll be awright?"  Will's relief was almost visible even in the dark side of the cab.

"I reckon you 'member hearin' that damn'd ol' Indian, jus' like we did."  Marty said with a sigh.

A few minutes later the pickup pulled into their designated parking spot in the quarter mile line of vehicles in the fifth row from the front.  Three tired but sober men crawled into a bright yellow tent for some much needed sleep.

And a few miles away a mud-caked, trash covered, yellow-faced grizzly moved steadily southward through the timber, convinced now more than ever that men and their bright-eyed tar-pit machines were truly his worst mortal enemy.