TOOK A deep breath and rose from the seat in the outer office of the USFS superintendent’s office. The assistant smiled and gestured for her to go through the closed door for her first interview with Charlotte Hastings, her new boss. At her side was Bella, in her work uniform and harness as a working dog. She wore a lightweight nylon jacket that said Tracking Dog on it. Dev had placed the black nylon martingale harness across Bella’s broad chest and over her shoulders. Not liking a chain collar around her dog’s neck, Dev used a leather one that hung comfortably around Bella instead. She gripped the nylon leash and nodded her thanks to the assistant. Bella walked calmly at her side, alert.
She got her first look at her new boss. The fifty-year-old blond-haired woman in her Forest Service uniform sat at her large maple desk. The office was located on the second floor of the building, in a corner where large windows allowed in a lot of light. It was a beautiful place for an office, Dev thought as she closed the door and turned around to greet Charlotte.
“Come on in,” the woman called, smiling and standing. She moved from behind her desk and shook hands with Dev. “I’m Charlotte,” she said. “And this must be your tracking dog, Bella?” She reached down and patted the dog’s head.
“Yes, ma’am, it is,” Dev said.
Charlotte straightened and gestured to a chair at one corner of her desk. “Have a seat, Ranger McGuire.”
Dev took her seat and Bella sat down next to her. The HQ was parallel to the main highway that led into the park. A lot of cars moved slowly past the building because they’d just come out of paying the fee to enter the park. Across the way, Dev could see the newly built three-story visitor’s center opposite of the HQ. She pushed her left palm down her green trousers, getting rid of the dampness. Hastings sat down at her leather chair. Supervisors, she’d found over the years, came in many different stripes. It was rare that a woman was at the top post at a park. She didn’t know what the woman’s agenda would be, but she’d find out shortly. Her supervisor seemed efficient because there were a number of stacks of files on her desk. They weren’t messy, but rather organized.
“Ranger McGuire,” she said, folding her hands over Dev’s opened file, “you come to us highly recommended. We’ve been needing a tracker and tracking dog here for this park for some time now, so I’m personally glad to see you here.”
Dev felt some relief. At least she wasn’t going to get stuck in some office, away from the outdoors. Which could have happened. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, “I’m happy to be here, too.”
“Every year between May and October, we get at least fifty calls for lost children, elders or adults here in the Tetons.” Charlotte scowled. “And it takes a lot of my personnel halting their jobs to go off looking for these individuals.” Looking at Dev’s file, she said, “You and Bella have an excellent record of finding lost souls in the Smoky Mountains region. I see no reason why you won’t do as well here.”
“I anticipate we’ll be able to do the same here,” Dev said.
“Well,” Charlotte said, raising her head, “we have grizzly bears out here and the Smoky Mountains only have small black bears. There’s a huge difference between them. A dog barking at a black bear will send it running away.” She pointed at Bella. “If she barks here, the grizzly will take it as a challenge and go after your dog.”
It was a grim warning. “Bella doesn’t bark.”
“Not even when faced with an elk? A deer? Or a black bear?”
“No, ma’am.” Dev saw some relief in the superintendent’s blue eyes.
“Well,” she muttered, “I hope that’s true because grizzly bears hate dogs. They see them as a certified threat. That means if one sees you and the dog, they could stalk you or just outright charge you, Ranger McGuire.”
“I need to get up on grizzly behavior before I go out to track,” Dev agreed.
“You will carry the following on you whenever you’re tracking, Ranger. A rifle, a pistol, a quart of bear spray and a radio. We keep constant monitoring of the bears in this park for good reason. But there’s always new ones wandering into the area we don’t know about. On a given search for a lost person, you’re going to work closely with our bear-tracking unit. That way, you’re on top of where the bruins might be located. But on any given day, a grizzly can travel twenty miles to find food.” She wrote down a name on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk to Dev. “This is the ranger you want to talk to about grizzly behavior. I’d suggest the next time he’s on watch, you introduce yourself to him if you can?”
Dev picked up the paper. The name scrawled across it was Sloan Rankin. Her heart pounded, underscoring her feminine reaction to him. “I’ll make a point of finding his schedule and talking to him, ma’am.”
“Good. Because it could save you and your dog’s lives. We ban dogs from this park for the very reason that the grizzly hate ’em. They interpret a dog as a wolf. And wolves are their natural enemy.”
“Got it,” Dev said, tucking the paper into the breast pocket of her long-sleeved uniform shirt.
“For the next two weeks, I’m putting you over at our newly built visitor’s center. You need to get acquainted with the tourists. We get them from around the world. Most are completely ignorant of the grizzly bears that populate the Tetons.”
Dev’s heart sank. She hated office duty. But Hastings was right: she had to see the type of people coming to the park, get to know them and understand the general lay of the land.
“Ranger Rankin is our farrier. He’s also been here for two years and knows every trail in the Tetons. I’m going to keep you on an abbreviated schedule at the visitor’s center. You’ll spend four hours over there on your shift, the other four hours working with Ranger Rankin. I’m paralleling his schedule with yours so that the other four hours you two can ride the trails. You need to get acquainted with them as soon as possible. I’ve already talked to him about being your mentor and helping you, earlier today. Before you were assigned here, he always headed up any searches via horseback, to look for lost tourists. Now I want him shadowing you on every tracking assignment for the next few months.”
Dev frowned. “Is this because of the grizzly threat?”
“Precisely. You will go nowhere without a partner on any of these assignments. Ranger Rankin will be carrying weapons also. He will be your guard should you encounter a grizzly. He’s your chief defense because I want you tracking and paying attention to your dog. You’ll be distracted if you have to divide your awareness between watching for a grizzly and trying to track a lost tourist.”
“That sounds like good common sense,” Dev agreed. She was glad it was Sloan. She liked him more than she should. He was someone who was calm and didn’t appear easily shaken up in a dangerous situation. Even though she wondered how Sloan had taken this assignment, Dev was sure she’d find out sooner or later. Did he feel like a glorified babysitter for her? Probably.
Charlotte pushed a paper toward Dev that had her next two weeks of shifts on it. “Now, since Ranger Rankin is our shoer, he’s usually pretty busy. We’ve gone over a trail planning session already and he knows where he has to take you. There are some areas where we have lost more tourists than others. So, he’ll be with you in those primary locations first. His office, if you can call it that, is over at the main barn. You might try to catch him there now, and make introductions.”
“Yes,
