PART 3: He Hid a Living Bigfoot for 40 Years, Then the Feds Found Out. What They Did… – Sasquatch Story

Part 3: The Price of Revelation and The Hidden War

2025: The Blowback

The lithium mine legal battle was a hollow victory. We had bought the Olympic family time, but the legal chaos merely confirmed the existence of other Sasquatch populations to the wrong people. The international scientific community heralded our team as heroes, yet every accolade felt like a spotlight turned onto the remaining creatures. The true cost of revelation wasn’t my time or freedom; it was the intense pressure we had inflicted on the very species we were trying to save.

My initial anger at Agent Thornton’s bureaucratic secrecy had curdled into a heavy, critical understanding of the impossible tightrope they walked. Their forty years of “protection” through denial was despicable, but it was also undeniably effective at one thing: maintaining global ignorance. Once that ignorance was shattered by Samuel’s story, the world didn’t rush to save them; it rushed to exploit them.

The government, embarrassed by our successful intervention in the Olympics, doubled down on their official program, cloaking their operations under a new, highly funded “Sasquatch Recovery and Conservation Initiative.” They presented a facade of ethical concern, but David, now deeply embedded as a high-level “consultant,” confirmed the cynical truth: the initiative was less about conservation and more about securing control over the species’ known habitats. They were replacing the old prison of silence with a new, well-funded surveillance system.

The Rift and The Sanctuary

The stress fractured our small team. David, trapped inside the government bureaucracy, was forced to leak critical information under extreme psychological duress, constantly battling his conscience. Emily, exhausted by the legal wrangling, began to question the ethics of forcing a new species into the political consciousness.

“We saved them from the miners, Henry,” she told me during a tense call, “but we condemned them to constant surveillance and political games. Was Samuel’s dignity worth the risk to the entire species?”

“Samuel’s dignity required the truth,” I retorted, the old carpenter’s certainty still strong. “The problem isn’t the truth, Emily. The problem is the world’s pathological inability to accept anything extraordinary without trying to monetize or dominate it.”

But I heard her fear. I decided we needed a permanent solution, not just a series of reactionary battles. I needed to create an absolute sanctuary, a place beyond the reach of both the greedy private sector and the self-serving government.

Lisa Chen, still running DNA analysis on our secret samples, provided the key. She discovered a genetic marker in Samuel’s tissue that suggested a deep, ancient migratory pattern tied to high-altitude geothermal activity. This wasn’t about the rain forests; this was about the earth’s hidden heat.

We zeroed in on the most inhospitable, legally complex terrain in the continental U.S.: a deep caldera region straddling a national park boundary and a massive, federally owned missile test site in the Rockies. It was land nobody wanted and nobody was supposed to enter. It was the perfect, terrifying sanctuary.

2026: The Migration and The Betrayal

I initiated Phase Two: Covert Relocation. It was lunacy. I, a seventy-year-old carpenter, planned to shepherd a family of elusive, eight-foot hominids hundreds of miles to a mountain fortress.

David, risking his career and potential imprisonment, provided the highly sensitive satellite maps detailing the government’s surveillance gaps and planned movements—their very predictable patterns of hypocrisy. Emily secured a massive, untraceable amount of long-range provisions, while Lisa prepared custom tranquilizer darts and telemetry tracking equipment, should we lose them.

The journey with the Olympic family in the fall of 2026 was the hardest thing I had ever done. It took six weeks of grueling, silent, nighttime movement through the backwoods, relying on Samuel’s documented communication signals and Emily’s advanced ecological mapping. We managed to gain the family’s trust by providing massive food caches and neutralizing three private drone surveillance teams before the creatures ever saw them.

But the final stretch, the border of the missile test site, was the bottleneck. Agent Thornton and her team were waiting.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist, Henry,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion, her team fanning out behind her. “You broke the law to hide one, and you’re breaking federal statutes to move three. We offered you immunity and partnership, and you spit in our faces.”

“You offered a different kind of cage,” I countered, standing between her armed team and the dark, forested pass. “Samuel deserved to be free. So do they. Your job is to maintain order. Mine is to maintain life.”

The standoff was brief. As I distracted Thornton, David executed his final, devastating act of betrayal against the state: he triggered a small, controlled electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a device he’d salvaged from the test site plans. All of Thornton’s communications, drones, and telemetry equipment instantly went dead.

In the ensuing darkness and confusion, I gave the quiet, sharp distress vocalization Samuel and I had perfected. The three creatures disappeared into the high mountain pass, toward the caldera. They were finally safe.

2027: The End of The Watch

David was arrested and charged with espionage and federal property sabotage. I faced charges too, but the public outcry—fueled by my memoir, now a global bestseller—and the sheer weight of Samuel’s documented life, forced the government’s hand into a plea deal. David received three years. I received a lifetime ban from all national park lands, a hollow threat given my new focus.

I lost my physical freedom to walk the woods, but I gained the profound knowledge that I had saved a lineage.

Today, in 2027, I live in a modest cabin near the edge of the Rockies, running ‘The Samuel Project’ remotely. We don’t track the Olympics family. We let them be free. Our new mission is to use our unique knowledge to misdirect all future government and private searches, painting false ecological trails and feeding misinformation into the channels David created. I am the guardian of the myth once more, but this time, I’m hiding the truth in plain sight.

I never regretted saving Samuel. I regret the forty years of fear the government forced him to live. I regret the price David is paying. But I look out at those high peaks, the sanctuary where Homo sapiens silvanus is finally free, and I know the old man in the barn fulfilled his final, most dangerous promise.

I still keep Samuel’s card, two figures, a heart between them. The heart is bigger now, encompassing an entire, hidden family. I’m just waiting, watching, and making sure the world keeps looking in the wrong direction.

Would you like me to create an outline for a potential fourth installment, focusing on Henry dealing with David’s imprisonment and the rise of a new corporate threat?