High Hunt (27 page)

S
LOANE
was much worse the next morning. Much as he tried, he couldn't even get out of the sack. Both Stan and I offered to stay with him, but he insisted that we go ahead on up.

Breakfast was kind of quiet, and none of us talked very much on the way up the ridge.

Miller looked down at me from his saddle after I'd dismounted at the top. “If the Big Man don't get no better,” he said, “Clint's gonna have to take him on down. This is the fourth day up here. He just ain't comin' around the way he should.”

“I know,” I said.

“I like the Big Man,” Miller said. “I don't know when I've ever met a better-natured man, but I ain't gonna be doin' him no favors by lettin' him die up here.”

I nodded. “I'll talk with him when we get back down to camp,” I said.

“I'd sure appreciate it, son,” he said. “Good huntin'.” He took Ned's reins and went on back down.

It was chilly up there in the darkness, and the stars were still out. I sat hunched up against the cold and tried not to think too much about things. Every now and then the breeze would gust up the ravine, and I could pick up the faint smell of the pine forest far down below the spruces.

The sky began to pale off to the east and the stars got dimmer.

I kind of let my mind drift back to the time before my father died. Once he and I had gone on out to fish on a rainy Sunday morning. The fish had been biting, and we were both catching them as fast as we could bait up. We both got soaked to the
skin, and I think we both caught cold from it, but it was still one of the best times I could remember. Neither one of us had said very much, but it had been great. I suddenly felt something I hadn't felt for quite a few years—a sharp, almost unbearable pang of grief for my father.

It was lighter, and that strange, cold, colorless light of early morning began to flow down the side of the mountain.

I quite suddenly remembered a guy I hadn't thought about for years. It had been when I was knocking up and down the coast that year after I'd gotten out of high school. I'd been working on a truck farm in the Salinas Valley in California, mostly cultivating between the mile-long lettuce rows. About ten or so one cloudy morning, I'd seen a train go by. About as far as I was going to go that day was eight or ten rows over in the same field. I walked the cultivator back to the farmhouse and picked up my time. That afternoon I'd jumped into an empty boxcar as the train was pulling out of the yard headed north.

There was an old guy in the car. He wasn't too clean, and he smelled kind of bad, but he was somebody to talk to. We sat in the open doorway looking at the open fields and the woods and the grubby houses and garbage dumps—did you know that people live in garbage dumps? Anyway, we'd talked about this and that, and I'd found out that he had a little pension of some kind, and he just moved up and down the coast, working the crops and riding trains, with those pension checks trailing him from post office to post office. He said that he guessed he could go into almost any post office of any size on the coast, and there'd be at least one of his checks there.

He'd said that he was sixty-eight and his heart and lungs were bad. Then he'd kind of looked off toward the sunset. “One of these days,” he'd said, “I'll miss a jump on one of these boxcars and go under the wheels. Or my heart'll give out, or I'll take the pneumonia. They'll find me after I been picked over by a half-dozen other bums. Not much chance there'd be anything left so they could identify me. But I got that all took care of. Look—”

He'd unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his pale, flabby, old man's chest. He had a tattoo.

“My name was Wilmer O. Dugger,” it said. “I was born in Wichita, Kansas, on October 4, 1893. I was a Methodist.” It was like a tombstone, right on his chest.

He'd buttoned his shirt back up. “I got the same thing on
both arms and both legs,” he'd said. “No matter what happens, one of them tattoos is bound to come through it. I used to worry about it—them not bein' able to identify me, I mean. Now I don't worry no more. It's a damn fine thing, you know, not havin' nothin' to worry about.”

I think it had been about then that I'd decided to go to college. I'd caught a quick glimpse of myself fifty years later, riding up and down the coast and waiting to miss my jump on a boxcar or for my heart to quit. About the only difference would have been that I don't think I'd have bothered with the tattoos.

The breeze dropped, and it got very still. I straightened up suddenly and picked up my rifle. It felt very smooth and comfortable. Something was going to happen. I eased the bolt back very gently and checked to make sure there was one in the tube. I closed it and slipped the safety back on. I could feel an excitement growing, a kind of quivering tension in the pit of my stomach and down my arms and legs, but my hands were steady. I wasn't shaking or anything.

A doe came out on the far side of the ravine. Very slowly, so as not to startle her, I sprawled out across the rock and got my elbows settled in so I could be absolutely sure of my shot.

The doe sniffed a time or two, looked back once, and then went on down into the ravine.

Another doe came out of the same place. After a minute or so she went on down, too.

Then another doe.

It was absolutely quiet. I could hear the faint
toc-toc-toc
of their hooves moving slowly on down the rocky bottom of the ravine.

I waited. I knew he was there. A minute went by. Then another.

Then there was a very faint movement in the brush, and he stepped softly out into the open.

I didn't really count him until later. I just saw the flaring rack and the calm, almost arrogant look on his face, and I knew that he was the one I wanted. He was big and heavily muscled. He was wary but not frightened or timid. It was his mountain.

He stood broadside to me and seemed to be looking straight across at me, though I don't really think he saw me. Maybe he just knew that I was there, as I had known that he would be.

I put the cross hairs of the scope just behind his front shoulder and slipped off the safety. His ears flicked.

I slowly squeezed the trigger.

I didn't hear the shot or feel the recoil of the rifle. The deer jerked and fell awkwardly. Then he stumbled to his feet and fell again. He got up again slowly and kind of walked on back over the other side of the ridge, his head down. It didn't occur to me to shoot again. I knew it wasn't necessary.

I stood up, listening now to the echo of the shot rolling off down the side of the mountain. I jacked out the empty shell, slipped the safety back on and slung the rifle. Then I started down into the ravine. I could hear the three does scrambling up through the brush on the far side.

The going was pretty rough, and it took me about ten minutes to get to where he'd been standing. I looked around on the ground until I found a blood spot. Then another. I followed them down the other side.

He'd gone about a hundred yards down the easy slope of the far side of the ridge and was lying on his side in a little clump of brush. His head was still raised but wobbling, as I walked carefully up to him. His eyes were not panicky or anything. I stepped behind him, out of range of his hooves, and took out my pistol. I thumbed back the hammer and put the muzzle to the side of his head between his eye and ear. His eye watched me calmly.

“Sorry I took so long to get here, buddy,” I said.

Then I pulled the trigger.

The gun made a muffled kind of pop—without any echo to it, and the deer's head dropped heavily, and the life went out of his eye. I knelt beside him and ran my hand over his heavy shoulder. The fur felt coarse but very slick, and it was a kind of dark gray with little white tips shot through it. He smelled musky but not rank or anything.

I stood up, pointed the pistol up toward the top of the mountain, and fired it again. Then I began to wonder if maybe I'd given the wrong signal. I put the pistol back in the holster and slipped the hammer-thong back on. Then I leaned my rifle against a large rock and hauled the deer out in the open. I walked back on up to the ridge and hung my jacket over a bush to mark the spot for whoever came up with a horse.

I went back to the deer and started gutting him out. I wasn't nearly as fast as Clint was, but I managed to get the job done
finally. I did seem to get a helluva lot of blood on my clothes though, but that didn't really matter.

I was trying to get him rolled over to drain out when Clint came riding down the ridge, leading Ned and a packhorse.

“Damn nice deer,” he said, grinning. “Six-pointer, huh?”

“I didn't count him,” I said. I checked the deer. “Yeah, it's six points, all right.”

“Have any trouble?” He climbed down.

“No. He came out on the ridge, I shot him, and he kind of staggered down here and fell down. I'm afraid I busted up the liver pretty bad though.” I pointed at the shredded organ lying on top of the steaming gut-pile.

“Where'd you take him?” he asked.

“Right behind the shoulder.”

“That's dependable,” he said. “Here, lemme help you dump 'im out.”

We rolled the deer over.

“Heavy bugger, ain't he?” Clint chuckled.

“We're gonna get a rupture getting him on the horse,” I said. “Say, how'd you get above me anyway?”

“I come up through the meadows and then across the upper end of the ravine at the foot of the rockslide. Gimme your knife a minute.”

I handed it to him.

“Better get these offa here.” He cut away two dark, oily-looking patches on the inside of the deer's hind legs, just about the knees. “Musk-glands,” he said. “Some fellers say they taint the meat—I don't know about that for sure, but I always cut 'em off on a buck, just to be safe.” Then he reached inside the cut I'd made in the deer's throat and sliced one on each side. “Let's turn him so's his head's downhill,” he said.

We turned the deer and blood slowly drained out, running in long trickles down over the rocks. There really wasn't very much.

Clint held out his hand. I wiped mine off on my pants, and we shook hands.

“Damn good job, Dan. I figure that you'll do.”

It was a little embarrassing. “Hey,” I said. “I damn near forgot my coat.” I went on up to the ridge-top and got it. The sun was just coming up. I felt good, damned good. I ran back down to where Clint was standing.

“Easy, boy,”—he laughed—“you stumble over somethin' and you'll bounce all the way to Twisp.”

“OK,” I said, “now, how do we get him on the horse?”

“I got a little trick I'll show you,” he said, winking. He took a coil of rope off his saddle and dropped a loop over the deer's horns. We rolled him over onto his back, and Clint towed him over to a huge flat boulder with his horse. The uphill side of the boulder was level with the rest of the hill and the downhill side was about six feet above the slope. Then he led the packhorse over and positioned him below the rock. I held the pack-horse's head, and Clint slowly pulled the deer out over the edge.

“Get his front feet on out past the saddle, if you can, Dan,” Clint said.

I reached on out and pulled the legs over. When the deer reached the point where he was just balanced, Clint got off his horse and came back up.

“You're taller'n me,” he said. “I'll hold the horse, and you just ease the carcass down onto the saddle.”

I went around onto the top of the rock and carefully pushed the deer off, holding him back so he wouldn't fall on over. It was really very simple. Once the deer was in place we tied him down and it was all done.

“Pretty clever,” I said.

“I don't lift no more'n I absolutely have to.” He grinned. “Fastest way I know to get old in a hurry is to start liftin' stuff.”

“I'll buy that,” I said. “Which way we going back down?”

“Same way I come up,” he said. “That way we don't spook the deer for the others. You 'bout ready?”

“Soon as I tie on my rifle,” I said. I went back and got it and tied it to the saddle. Ned shied from me a little—the blood-smell, probably.

“Steady, there, knothead,” I said. He gave me a hurt look. I climbed on and we rode on up to the top of the ridge. We cut on across the foot of the rockfall and out into the meadows.

“Cap was gonna come up,” Clint said, “but somebody oughta stay with the Big Man, and I know these packhorses better'n he does.”

I nodded.

We rode on slowly down through the meadows toward camp. I could see the others over on the ridge, standing and watching. I waved a couple times.

“God damn, boy,” Miller said, “you got yourself a good
one.” He was chuckling, his brown face creased with a big grin.

“Had it all gutted out and ever-thin',” Clint told him.

Sloan came out of his tent. He was still breathing hard, but he looked a little better.

“Hot damn!” he coughed. “That's a beauty.”

I climbed down off Ned.

“I fixed up a crossbar,” Miller said. “Let's get 'im up to drain out good.”

Clint slit the hocks and we slipped a heavy stick through. Then we led the packhorse over to the crossbeam stretched between two trees behind the cook-tent. Miller had hooked up a pulley on the beam. We pulled the deer up by his hind legs and fastened him in place with baling wire.

“Damn,” Miller said, “that's one helluva heavy deer. Three hundred pounds or better. Somebody in the bunch might get more horns, but I pretty much doubt if anybody'll get more meat.”

We stood around and looked at the deer for a while.

“How 'bout some coffee?” Clint said.

“How 'bout some whiskey?” Cal giggled and then coughed.

“How 'bout some of both?” Miller chuckled. “I think this calls for a little bendin' of the rules, don't you?”