Yellowstone Standoff. Scott Graham
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that’s in the desert,” Carmelita said. “It should be warm.”
“The water in the Colorado comes out of the bottom of Glen Canyon Dam, upstream from the canyon, so it’s ice cold.”
“Just like here,” Rosie said, eyeing the bay water lapping against the boat. “Can I feel it?”
Without waiting for an answer, she set off for the center of the boat’s stern, where a break in the railing allowed for easy loading and unloading of gear and passengers. Chuck chased her down before she could plunge her hand into the water that showed in the gap between the dock and the rear of the rocking boat.
“Maybe when we get to the other side,” he told her. “There’s sure to be some sort of a beach there.”
He sat her beside him on one of the bench seats while the pilot entered the wheelhouse and started the engine. Janelle and Carmelita settled next to Rosie. Keith sat a few seats away, Chance tucked between his legs.
Chuck rested his elbows on the gunwale behind him as Clarence took a seat on the opposite side of the boat, still in an animated exchange with Kaifong. The second Drone Team member, Randall, sat with them. He joined their conversation, throwing his head back in a full-throated guffaw at something Clarence said.
Martha freed the ropes securing the boat to the dock and tossed them into the stern. The pilot engaged the throttle and the boat accelerated across the smooth water of the bay, the noisy cough of the engine forcing the researchers around Chuck to speak directly into one another’s ears to continue their conversations.
Clarence rested a hand on Kaifong’s knee and said something to her with an accompanying grin. Clarence’s comment brought a smile to Kaifong’s lips. She turned to Randall and, still smiling, spoke into his ear, obviously repeating what Clarence had said. Randall leaned around Kaifong and bumped Clarence’s fist with his own.
The three settled back in their seats as the boat left the bay and headed out onto the open water of the lake. The boat pitched and rolled, rising and falling with the windswept swells. The pilot spun the spoked wheel, setting course across the broad body of water toward the lake’s distant southeast shoreline.
The pilot leaned out of the open back of the vessel’s tiny wheelhouse, her hand on the boat’s wheel behind her, and faced her passengers. She pointed at a black spot making its way across the sky, trailing the boat. “Osprey,” she called out, yelling to make herself heard above the engine noise and rhythmic slaps of spray arcing from the sides of the hull as the boat cut through the swells. “It’s tracking us, waiting to see what we send its way.”
The osprey tucked its wings and plummeted toward the water behind the boat. Just before the bird rocketed into the lake, it spread its wings, slowing itself. It skimmed along the boat’s wake for an instant before plunging its clawed feet into the water. With powerful flaps of its wings, the bird rose from the surface grasping a shiny, silver fish in its talons. The fish struggled, flinging water from its tail, as the osprey flew back toward shore.
“Never fails,” the pilot hollered to her passengers. “Bessie gets the fish moving, and the osprey take advantage. We’re doing our part to help the park service get rid of the non-native lake trout so the native cutthroat can return.” She smiled and turned back to the wheel.
As the marina receded into the distance, Chuck and Janelle wrapped their arms around the girls, who bent forward to avoid the brisk breeze curling past the wheelhouse.
Ahead, the Absarokas drew nearer. To the southeast, the snow-covered summit of Trident Peak reared highest above the lake’s shoreline. After twenty minutes of plowing through the waves, the pilot again adjusted course, aiming the boat toward the opening into the lake’s southeast arm, a two-mile-long, finger-shaped bay extending south from the lake’s most remote reach. The upper Yellowstone River emptied into the head of the narrow bay, where the trail to Turret Cabin and on into the heart of the Thorofare region began.
Ahead, the gear boat exited the southeast arm on its return trip to Bridge Bay. The pilots exchanged waves as the boats passed one another. The stern of the gear boat was empty, the teams’ duffles and cases waiting at the trailhead landing.
Opposite Chuck, Randall spun and knelt on his seat. Facing the open water of the lake, he trailed his fingers in the bursts of spray flying from the boat’s hull. He lifted his hand from the water and shook it, then turned to Kaifong and Clarence and gritted his teeth. The pair twisted and knelt on their seats beside him, taking turns diving their hands into the spray.
Rosie turned to reach for the spray on her side of the boat. Chuck pressed her back into place. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said in her ear.
“But they get to,” she shouted over the roar of the engine.
“Sorry,” Chuck told her. “They’re bigger than you.”
She crossed her arms over her PFD and thrust out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout.
Randall stood up. Grinning and beckoning Kaifong and Clarence to follow, he crossed the boat’s white, fiberglass deck. “Come on,” he encouraged them, his voice carrying above the engine noise. “We’ll really be able to tell how cold the water is.”
He hammed it up as he walked to the back railing, staggering like a drunk across the rising and falling deck. “Whoa!” he cried out, waving his arms for balance, as Kaifong and Clarence approached behind him.
He bent at the opening in the railing and stuck his hand into the lake water. He straightened as Kaifong and Clarence reached him at the back of the boat. “Ow, ow, ow,” he cried, laughing and shaking his hand, his red halo of hair pressed back from his forehead by the wind. “That’s what I call freezin’!”
He shook his hand once more and stepped aside, allowing Kaifong to take his place at the back of the boat. He gave a playful clap to her life jacket, slung over one of her shoulders, as she passed him. At the same instant his hand met her PFD, the bow of the boat climbed through a wave while the stern remained low in the wave’s trough, causing the deck of the vessel to cant sharply upward. Randall’s clap and the sudden upward pitch of the boat threw Kaifong off balance. She tripped over the coils of rope on the stern’s floor and teetered, windmilling her arms.
Randall’s eyes widened as he shot out his hand, reaching for her. Clarence grabbed for her, too. Their fingers closed on air. Kaifong’s unfastened PFD swung free from her shoulder as she tumbled, screaming, into the lake.
Chuck scrambled to his feet and charged toward the stern of the boat between the stunned, seated researchers.
“Hey!” he yelled over his shoulder to the pilot.
“Overboard!” one of the scientists yelled.
Kaifong surfaced behind the boat. The wind blew her PFD, floating atop the water, away from her. She thrashed in the water while Clarence worked frantically to buckle the straps of his PFD. Randall stared at Kaifong, shock etched on his face, his own PFD hanging unfastened over one shoulder.
The wind would propel Kaifong’s PFD away from her faster than she would be able to swim after it. There was no way she’d be able to tread water in her heavy clothing long enough for the boat to circle around and return to her; she would sink into the freezing lake well before the pilot completed the turn.
Chuck did not pause. He rushed past Clarence and Randall and dove from the stern into the lake. The cold poleaxed his head and chest as he entered the water. Pain exploded in his frontal lobes. The icy water slammed his chest, forcing his lungs to contract. He closed his mouth, fighting the panicked urge to inhale and take in a lungful of liquid.
His PFD, strapped tight around his torso, propelled him to the surface. He swam hard for Kaifong, fifty feet away from him, stroking his arms and kicking his booted feet. Behind him, the sound of the boat’s engine deepened as the pilot cut the vessel into its turn.
Kaifong’s