Wayan Bagus finished smothering the fire and retired to his tent for evening meditation. Emerson trudged off with his bag of food and a coil of rope.
Riley stood close to her tent and crossed her arms to ward off the chill.
“I’m worried,” she said to Vernon. “We’re in bear country, and the crazy Rough Riders are probably after us. How did we get into this mess?”
“It’s not so bad,” Vernon said. “We’re with a holy man and my genius cousin. And I got my lucky gun. I figure we just go with the flow. Besides, my unagi is real quiet so we don’t have anything to worry about for now.”
A low, guttural growl came from the woods.
“That sounded like a bear,” Riley said.
“I reckon,” Vernon said.
Wayan Bagus came out of his tent. “What was that?”
They heard another growl. Louder this time. More of a roar than a growl.
“Yow,” Vernon said. “That might have been a lion.”
“There aren’t any lions in Yellowstone,” Riley said.
“There might be mountain lions,” Vernon said.
“Emerson!” Riley shouted into the woods. “Are you okay?”
Vernon shone a flashlight in the direction of the roaring. “I don’t see him. What should we do? We can’t just go wandering around in the dark.”
They all stared into the woods. “Well, we can’t just leave him out there either,” Riley said.
“I’m right behind you,” Emerson said. “Wu wei. This is the perfect example of a situation in which the logical course of action is to do nothing and let the universe solve the problem.”
Riley whipped around. “Holy cats, Emerson, you almost gave me a heart attack. What the heck is wrong with you? Haven’t you done enough sneaking up on people for one day?”
Another roar shattered the quiet.
“It turns out that it is not, in fact, possible to sit down and reason with bears. At least not with this particular bear.”
“No kidding,” Riley said.
Emerson nodded. “Surprisingly, it had very little interest in discussing things in a free marketplace of ideas.”
“Are you sure
it wasn’t a Bigfoot?” Vernon asked. “They’re notoriously intolerant.”
“All living things share a fundamental nature and are equally able to achieve enlightenment,” Wayan Bagus said.
“Not Bigfoots.”
Wayan Bagus nodded politely. “That is only true because there is no such thing as a Bigfoot.”
Vernon gasped. “Whoa. Time out. It’s been a long, stressful day, but let’s not talk crazy.”
“It was definitely a very big, very hungry bear,” Emerson said. “The good news is that, in the end, the bear agreed not to eat me. The bad news is that I agreed to give it most of our food in exchange.”
Riley hugged Emerson. “It was a good trade. We’re just happy you’re okay.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Vernon said. “I knew it would. Like I said, I wasn’t getting any unagi warnings.”