Page 50 of Three-Inch Teeth

Joe squinted at the distance between the cliff and the campground. Clay Hutmacher looked like an ant from that distance. Could Nate actually make a kill shot from there?

“I’ve done it before,” Nate said, as if he’d heard Joe’s thought.

As Joe turned toward his pickup, Nate said, “Come by my house when this is all over, Joe. I’ll pour you a bourbon. I have a theory about this bear you’re chasing.”

“Is it different from your last theory?”

“It’s more nuanced.”

Joe couldn’t dismiss his friend. Nate often had insights into wild predators and prey that were unique to him and him alone. He’d also shown the ability to summon certain creatures at certain times that Joe couldn’t explain using logic.

“I’ll come by,” Joe said.

Nate chinned toward the campground situation below and said, “Don’t do anything stupid, Joe.”

*

“HOLD ON,” JOE said to Daisy as he shot down the slope. She braced herself by placing her front paws on the dashboard.

There was no way to drive directly to the Staghorn Creek campground except to backtrack and take the Forest Service road that skirted the mountain. Other older roads through the national forest had also been blocked by felled logs and dirt berms to deny easy access.

The old logging road was rougher going down than it had been coming up, and Joe cursed as he cut a turn in the timber too tightly and a pine branch smacked his passenger mirror and flattened it to the side of his pickup. He tapped on the brakes to regain control. Time, he thought, wasn’t on his side.

Finally, he shot past the upended NO ACCESS signs and fishtailed onto the Forest Service road toward the campground.

“Take it easy, Clay,” he whispered as he drove. “Take it easy …”

Bouncing in and out of ruts that had been created since the fall rains, Joe cleared a hill and plummeted down the other side. Ahead of him, through densely packed lodgepole pine trees, he caught glimpses of the white Range Rover, the F-350, and the blond-brick outhouse in the center of the clearing.

Clay Hutmacher stood facing the metal door of the women’s toilet. He was bent forward at the waist and shouting. Hutmacher turned when he heard Joe’s pickup enter the clearing and squinted at the unwanted encroachment. Joe registered both pain and anger in his face. He looked exhausted and desperate.

Joe parked behind a large wooden sign posted with campsite rules and regulations and swung out of his pickup. He envisioned the scenario that had likely developed in front of him:

The Mama Bears had been chased into the campsite, had exited their vehicle, and fled to the sanctity of the outdoor toilet with Hutmacher in pursuit. The women had scampered to the facility in such a hurry that they hadn’t even closed the doors of the Range Rover. Hutmacher had likely found the toilet door locked when he tried to open it, and he’d circled the facility, yelling at them to come out.

Joe stepped cautiously around the campground sign with his hands up, palms showing. “Clay, what’s going on here?”

“Joe, I don’t need your help.”

Hutmacher, who never appeared outside without his hat, was hatless. His hair was matted and wild and his eyes were rimmed with red. He held the Winchester down at his right side with the muzzle pointing toward the gravel between him and Joe.

Then Hutmacher swung the rifle toward the outhouse and pointed at it with the barrel. “They’ve been bushwhacking me,” he said. His words slurred and Joe recognized that Clay had been drinking hard—probably for days. “They’ve been fucking around with me, torturing me until I finally snapped. Now it’s their turn.”

“Slow down,” Joe said, approaching with caution. “Slow down and tell me what the problem is.”

“These two rich ladies have no business here,” Hutmacher said. “I’ve been hunting the bear that killed my boy, since you folks can’t seem to do it. Every night I set traps, and every morning I find them sprung. The sticks they use to trip them are still in the jaws. My trail cams are all disabled, and when I’m stalking that grizzly on the Double D, they shoot fireworks in the air to scare him off. Two nights ago, they let the air out of the tires on my truck so I couldn’t get off the place when I wanted to.

“Not only that, but my phone won’t stop ringing from assholes all over the country calling me to tell me to forgive the bear. Someone posted my profile and private number online! I don’t even look at my phone or email anymore, because it’s full of messages and emails from these fucking environmentalists telling me what to do.

“So I laid a trap for them last night,” Hutmacher said, his eyes growing wild. “I set some snares down by the river and camped out all night in the trees to see what would happen. And what do you suppose happened?”

“You tell me,” Joe said.

Hutmacher pumped the rifle toward the outhouse for emphasis and said, “I wake up and see these two old lunatics tiptoeing through the trees to trip the snares. One of them does it while the other one records it on her phone so they can show their social media followers what big heroes they are.”

“They were trespassing on the Double D?” Joe asked.

“Damned right,” Hutmacher said. “And I chased them all the way here. Now they’re barricaded in this shitter and it’s time to face the music. I want them to come out.”

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