Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen Read Free Book Online

seemed to hit the bear’s foot, but the animal showed neither pain nor panic. It backed down the stairs, stood up on its hind feet and snorted once or twice, then dropped down and walked slowly into the brush.
    Once again, the party was resumed, but only a few minutes had passed when Teet heard screams from the south end of the camp. Someone was hollering, “Get a gun!”
    Teet went to his cabin and picked up his old lever-action .25-.35 and hurried toward the noises. On the way, he met his 9 year-old grandson and a girl of about 14 walking rapidly along the dirt road. Just as they reached Teet, the boy said in a loud whisper, “Don’t run, but walk as fast as you can!” Teet looked down the road and saw the bear coming toward them at a range of about sixty feet. While the children rushed toward a cabin, Teet levered a cartridge into the chamber, clicked off the safety, and drew a bead on the hurrying animal, and when it was clear to him that the grizzly was not going to slow down, he fired a warning shot into the dirt about three feet from the bear. The animal stopped short and then rose to its hind feet in the classic position of attack. Teet cocked the gun again and raised it to his shoulder, and as he did he said to himself, “Well, he’s fixin’ to come now. I’ll just have to get him.”
    He held the grizzly’s head square in his sights, and he was about to begin a slow squeeze on the trigger when the animal dropped down and circled around the back of a cabin. Teet waited, and a short time later he heard a scream from the big house, where the Kelly descendants stayed. He rushed over with his rifle cocked, but the bear had dashed to another part of the camp. Teet ran to his telephone and called park headquarters for help. An hour and four phone calls later, the bear was still foraging around the camp, and no ranger had arrived. It was almost dark when the frightened citizens of Kelly’s Camp heard the sound of a vehicle driving up and two armed rangers got out. They explained that they were sorry it had taken them so long to arrive, but they had been attending a first-aid course. They told the people not to worry, that they had seen the bear scurrying up the ridge toward Trout Lake as they had driven toward the camp.
    “I don’t claim to be an authority on bears,” Teet Hammond spoke up, “but I’ll tell you one thing for sure. That bear wasn’t acting right. No, sir, that was no normal bear.”
    The rangers said they would check into the matter, but for the time being they felt that there was no danger. After all, the bear was running away when they spotted it. An animal that ran away could not be considered much of a menace to human life. Teet Hammond said he hoped that they were right, but that it had taken the bear an awful long time to make up its mind to run away.
    A few days later, a ranger executive arrived in Kelly’s Camp on a routine visit, and Joan Berry, who had been away from the camp on the bear’s most recent intrusion, took him to one side and said, “We’ve got a sick bear, a crazy-acting bear around, and I wish you’d do something about it.”
    The official asked for a description of the animal, and Mrs. Berry told him that it was a dark grizzly with a big, emaciated frame and a thin, elongated head. “I’m sure that he’s dangerous and somebody’s going to get hurt,” the schoolteacher said.
    The ranger executive chuckled at the remark. “Oh, Joan,” he said casually, “is it really that bad?” Mrs. Berry was annoyed and repeated emphatically that the bear was acting abnormally and must be considered a menace. The ranger official said, “Well, when his illness makes him go berserk, we’ll do something about him,” and made it plain that the matter was closed. His attitude made Mrs. Berry seethe inside. In all the decades since her family had homesteaded on the north shore of Lake McDonald, they had almost never reported a troublesome bear; they preferred taking their