High Hunt (29 page)

I
T
drizzled rain all the next day. Miller had told Jack and Lou that there was no point in going out in the morning if it were raining, so we all slept late.

Camping out in the rain is perhaps one of the more disagreeable experiences a man can go through. Even with a good tent, everything gets wet and clammy.

Ragged clouds hung in low over the basin, and the ground turned sodden. Clint and Miller moved around slowly in rain-shiny ponchos, their cowboy hats turning darker and darker as they got wetter and wetter. The rest of us sat in our tents staring out glumly.

The fire smoked and smoldered, and what wind there was always seemed to blow the smoke right into the tents.

“Christ, isn't it
ever
gonna let up?” Jack said about ten
o'clock. It was the fourth time he'd said it. I was pretty sure that if he said it again I was going to punch him right in the mouth.

“Piss on it,” I said. “I'm going fishing.”

“You're outa your tree. You'll get your ass soakin' wet out there.”

I shrugged. “I've got plenty of dry clothes,” I said and went on out.

“Can I use your pole, Clint?” I asked.

“Sure. See if you can get enough for supper.”

“I'll give it a try.” I picked up the pole and went on down to the ponds again. I'd kind of halfway thought I'd alternate between the two ponds, giving the fish time to calm down between catches, but I didn't get the chance. The larger, upper pond was so hot I never got away from it. The top of the water was a leaden gray, roughened up with the rain and the little gusts of wind. Maybe it was just obscured enough that the fish couldn't see me, I don't know for sure, but they were biting so fast I couldn't keep my hook baited. I caught seven the first hour.

It slowed down a little after lunch, about the time the rain slackened off, so I hung it up for a while and went on back up to camp. Jack and Lou took off for the ridge, and Clint, Miller, and I hunched up around the fire.

“Should clear off tonight,” Clint said. “Weather forecast I caught last night down at the place said so anyway.”

“I sure hope so,” I said. “With the other two gone down and the rain, it's so damned gloomy around here you can carve it with a knife.”

“How many fish you get?” he asked me.

“Nine or ten so far,” I said. “I'll go get some more after I dry out a bit.”

“There's no rush, son,” Miller said. “You're right about missin' the other two though—I mean like you said. When a bunch of men start out on somethin' together, it always kinda upsets things if some of 'em don't make it all the way through.” He turned to Clint. “'Member that time the bunch of us went out to log that stretch up by Omak and old Clark got hurt?”

“Yeah,” Clint said.

“I don't think old Clark had said more'n about eight words in two months,” Miller went on, “and he always went to bed early and stayed off by himself, but it just wasn't the same without him there.”

“Yeah, that's right,” Clint said.

They started reminiscing about some of the things they'd done and some of the places they'd gone. They'd covered a helluva lot of ground together, one way or the other—particularly after Miller's wife had died about twenty years or so ago.

I listened for a while, but I kind of felt as if I were intruding on something pretty private. I guess they were willing to share it, or they wouldn't have talked about it, but I've never much enjoyed that kind of thing. I'd a whole lot rather take people as I find them and not know too much about their past lives.

“Well,” I said, standing up, “I guess I'd better get back to work if we're going to have trout for supper.”

“Work?” Clint chuckled. “Who are you tryin' to kid?”

I laughed and went on down to the lower pond.

It was a lot slower now, and the fish seemed sluggish. I let my mind drift. I don't think I intended to. Usually I kept a pretty tight grip on it.

It had been on a day like this that I'd taken off from the Old Lady that time. I could still remember it. I'd gotten a job at one of the canned goods plants when I'd gotten out of high school, and when I came home from work that day, I'd found her in bed with some big slob. I'd yelled at him to get the hell out of the house, but he'd just laughed at me. Then I'd tried to hit him, and he'd beaten the crap out of me.

“Hit the little snot a time or two for me, Fred,” my mother had yelled drunkenly.

After he'd finished with me and gone back into the bedroom, I had packed up a few clothes and taken off. I'd only stopped long enough to paint the word “whore” on the side of the house in green letters about five feet high and swipe the distributor cap off Fred's car. Both of my little revenges had been pretty damned petty, but what the hell else can you be at seventeen?

There was a shot up on the ridge. Then another. Then three more from a different rifle. The echoes bounced around a lot, muffled a little by the still lightly falling rain.

I stood waiting for the pistol-shot signal, but one never came. “Trigger-happy bastards,” I said and went back to fishing.

I caught three more pretty good-sized ones just before the sun went down, and I cleaned the whole bunch and carted them up to the fire. By then the rain had stopped, and the sky was starting to clear.

“Got a mess, huh?” Miller said.

“Best I could do,” I said.

When Lou and Jack came back, they were both soaked and bad-tempered.

“Keep your goddamn shots off my end of the hill, McKlearey,” Jack snarled as soon as Lou came in.

“Fuck ya!” McKlearey snapped back.

“That's about enough of that, men,” Miller said sternly. “Any more of that kinda talk, and we'll break camp and go down right now.”

They both glared at him for a minute, but they shut up.

Clint fried up the trout, and we had venison and beans to go along with them. I was starting to get just a little tired of beans.

McKlearey had taken to sitting off by himself again, and after supper he sat with his back to a stump a ways off from the fire, holding his bandaged hand with the other one and muttering to himself. He hadn't changed the bandage for a couple of days, and it was pretty filthy. Every now and then I'd catch the names “Sullivan” and “Danny,” but I wasn't really listening to him.

We all went to bed fairly early.

“Goddammit, Jack,” I said, “Miller's not kidding. He and Clint have just about had a gutful of you and McKlearey yapping at each other about that damned white deer. Now I know a helluva lot more about what's happening than they do, and I'm starting to get a little sick of it myself. If you're going to hunt, hunt right. If you're not, let's pack it up and go down the hill.”

“Butt out,” he said. “This is between that shithead and me.”

“That's just the point,” I said. “You two are slopping it all over everybody else.”

“If you don't like it, why don't you just pack up and go on down? You're all finished anyway.”

“Then who the goddamn hell would be around to keep you and McKlearey from killing each other?”

“Who asked you to?”

“I invited myself,” I said. “In a lot of ways I don't think much of you, but you're my brother, and I'm a son of a bitch if I want to see you get all shot up or doing about thirty years in the pen for shooting somebody as worthless as McKlearey.” Maybe I came down a little hard. Jack's ego was pretty damned tender.

“As soon as they get those saddles out of there,” he said, “I'll move over to Sloane's old tent.”

“Don't do me any favors,” I said. “I'll be all moved out by noon.”

“Whichever way you want it,” he said.

We both rolled over so our backs were to each other.

A
FTER
he got back from taking Jack and Lou up the hill next morning, Miller came up to where I was sitting by the fire. “Feel like doin' a little huntin', son?” he asked me.

I looked up at him, not understanding what he was talking about.

“Somebody ought to fill the Big Man's tag for him,” he said. I'd forgotten that.

“Sure,” I said, “I'll get my rifle.”

“We'll poke on down the trail a ways and hunt in the timber. That way we won't bother them two up on the hill.”

The sky had lightened, and the pale light was beginning to slide back in under the tree trunks.

“Try not to shoot up the liver this time,” Clint said, faking a grouchy look.

“OK, Clint.” I laughed.

Miller and I got our rifles and went on down to the corral. I saddled Ned and we started on out.

“We'll go on down into the next valley and picket the horses,” he said after a while. “Do us a little Indian huntin'.”

“You'd better field-strip that for me,” I said.

“Put our noses into the wind and walk along kinda slow. See what we can scare up.”

“Good,” I said. “That's my kind of hunting.”

“Get restless sittin' still, is that it, son?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“If I'm not bein' nosy, just how old are you?”

“Twenty-five last April,” I said.

He nodded. “'Bout what I figured. 'Bout the same age as my boy woulda been.”

I didn't push it. He and Clint had said a few things about “the accident” the day before. I hadn't known he'd had any kids.

“Lost him the same time I lost my wife,” he said quietly. Then he didn't say any more for quite a while.

We rode on down into the valley and got into the pine trees.

“Creek there,” he said. “Wind'll be comin' up the draw this time of day.”

“Good little clearing right there for the horses,” I said pointing.

“Should work out about right,” he said.

We went on, dismounted, and hooked Ned and Miller's big Morgan to a couple of long picket-ropes. We unhooked our rifles and went on down into the creek-bottom. Miller's rifle was an old, well-used bolt-action of some kind with a scope that had been worn shiny in a couple places from being slid in and out of the case so many times. It had obviously been well taken care of.

“I see you brought that hog-leg along,” he said, nodding at my pistol belt.

“Starting to be a habit,” I said. “Besides, I keep extra rifle cartridges on one side, and my knives are on it,” I said. I still felt a little apologetic about the damned thing.

“Can you hit anything with it?” he asked me.

“Not at any kind of range.”

“You shootin' high or low?”

“Low.”

“You're pushin' into the recoil just before you shoot,” he said. “Clint always used to do the same thing.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just before you fire. You push your hand forward to brace your arm for the kick.” He held out his right forefinger pistol-fashion and showed me.

“Maybe you're right,” I said, trying to remember the last time I'd fired it at a target.

“Get somebody to load it for you and leave a couple empty. Then shoot it. You'll be able to spot it right off. Barrel dips like you was tryin' to dig a well with it when you click down on an empty chamber.”

“How does a guy get over it?”

“Just knowin' what you're doin' oughta take care of most of it.”

I nodded.

“Well, son,” he said, grinning at me, “let's you and me go huntin', shall we?”

“Right, Cap,” I said.

“You take the left side of the creek, and I'll take the right. We'll just take our time.”

I jumped the creek, and we started off down the draw, moving very slowly and looking around.

Miller stopped suddenly, and I froze. Slowly he pointed up the side of the draw and then passed the flat of his hand over the top of his big hat. No horns. Doe.

She stepped out from behind a tree, and I could see her. Miller and I both stood very still until she walked on up out of the draw. Then he motioned, and we went on.

The trees were fairly far apart, and there wasn't much underbrush even this close to the creek. The floor of the forest was thickly covered with pine needles, softened and very quiet after the rain from the day before.

A faint pink glow of sunlight reflected off the snow-fields above began to filter down between the tree trunks. The air was very clean and sharp, cold and pine-scented. I felt good. This was my kind of hunting.

We walked on down the creek-bed for about a half hour or so, spotting seven or eight more deer—all does or small bucks.

We went around a bend, and Miller froze. He poked his chin straight ahead.

I couldn't see the deer. Apparently Cap couldn't either, at least not clearly. He kept moving his head back and forth as if trying to get a clear view between the trees. He lifted his rifle once and then lowered it again. He held out his hand toward me, the fingers fanned out. Five-point.

Then he pointed at me and made a shooting motion with his hand, his forefinger extended and his thumb flipping up and down twice. He wanted me to shoot. Shoot what, for God's sake?

I put my scope on the woods ahead, but I couldn't see a damn thing. Then the buck stepped out into an open spot about a hundred yards away and stood facing me, his ears up and his rack held up proudly. I started doing some quick computations. I leaned the rifle barrel against a tree to be sure it would be steady and drew a very careful aim on a point low in the deer's
chest, just between his front legs. I sure didn't want to mess up this shot with Cap watching me.

I slowly squeezed the trigger. When a shot is good and right on, you get a kind of feeling of connection between you and the animal—almost as if you were reaching out and touching him, very gently, kind of pushing on him with your finger. I don't want to get mystic about it, but it's a sort of three-way union—you, the gun, and the deer, all joined in a frozen instant. It's so perfect that I've always kind of regretted the fact that the deer gets killed in the process. Does that make any sense?

The deer went back on his haunches and his front feet went up in the air. Then he fell heavily on one side, his head downhill. The echoes bounced off among the trees.

“Hot damn!” Cap yelled, his face almost chopped in two with his grin. “Damn good shot, son. Damn good!”

I felt about fifteen feet tall.

I jumped the creek again, and the two of us went on up toward the deer.

“Where'd you aim, son?”

“Low in the chest—between the legs.”

He frowned slightly.

“I'm sighted an inch high at two hundred,” I explained. “I figured it at a hundred yards, so I should have been four to six inches above where I aimed. I wanted to get into the neck above the shoulder line so I wouldn't spoil any meat.”

“Or the liver.” He chuckled.

“Amen to that. I'd get yelled at something awful if I shot out another liver.”

“Old Clint can get just like an old woman about some things.” He laughed.

The deer was lying on his side with blood pumping out of his throat. His eyes blinked slowly. I reached for my pistol.

“You cut the big artery,” Cap said. “You could just as easy let 'im bleed out.”

“I'd rather not,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said.

I shot the deer through the head. The blood stopped pumping like someone had turned off a faucet.

“You always do that, don't you, son?” he said.

I nodded, holstering the pistol. “I figure I owe it to them.”

“Maybe you're right,” he said thoughtfully.

We stood looking at the deer. He had a perfectly symmetrical five-point rack, and his body was heavy and well-fed.

“Beautiful deer,” he said, grinning again. “Let's see how close you figured it. Where'd you aim?”

“About here,” I said, pointing.

“Looks like you were about eight inches high,” he said. “You took him just under the chin.”

“I must have miscalculated,” I said. “I'd figured to go about six high.”

He nodded. “You was shootin' uphill,” he said. “You forgot to allow for that. It was a hundred yards measured flat along the ground—only about seventy yards trajectory though.”

“I never thought of that.”

He laughed and slapped my shoulder. “I don't think we'll revoke your license over two inches,” he said.

“Tell me, Cap,” I said, “why didn't
you
shoot 'im?”

“Couldn't get a clear shot,” he lied with a perfectly straight face.

“Oh,” I said.

“Well, son, let's gut 'im.”

“Right.”

With two of us working on it, it took only a few minutes to do the job.

“Why don't you go get the horses while I rig up a drag?” Cap said.

“Sure.” I leaned my rifle against a tree and took off. We were only a short distance from the horses really, and it took me less than ten minutes to get them. I rode on back, leading Miller's big walnut-colored Morgan.

“You move right out, don't you, son?” Cap said as I rode up.

“Long legs,” I said.

“I'm just about done here,” he said. He was sawing at a huckleberry bush with his hunting knife. I got off and handed him the big knife. He chopped the bush off close to the ground.

“That's sure a handy thing,” he said. “Almost like an ax.”

“That's what I figured when I got the set,” I said.

He'd rigged up a kind of sled of six or eight of the bushes packed close, side by side, and lashed to a big dead limb across the butts and another holding them together about three feet or so up the trunks. He doubled over a lead-rope and tied it to the limb across the butts. Then we lifted the deer carcass onto the platform and tied it securely with another lead-rope. He
tied a long rope to the doubled lead-rope at the front of the drag and fastened it to his saddle horn.

“You want me to hook on, too, Cap?” I asked him.

“Naw,” he said. “Trail's too narrow, and old Sam here's big enough to pull the bottom out of a well if you want 'im to.”

We stood for a moment beside the place where the deer had fallen.

“Good hunt,” he said finally, patting me on the shoulder once. “We'll have to do 'er again some time.”

I nodded. “This is the way it ought to be,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “let's get on back, shall we?”

We mounted and cut across up to the trail.

“Damn nice deer.” Clint grinned when we got back to camp.

“Look at that shot,” Miller said. “Right under the chin at about seventy or eighty yards uphill. The Kid there could drive nails all day with that rifle of his at about two hundred yards. Made the gun himself, too. Restocked one of them old Spring-fields.”

“He fishes OK, too,” Clint said, “and it don't seem to me he snores too loud. Reckon we oughta let 'im stay in camp?”

Miller looked at me for a minute. “He'll do,” he said. We all grinned at each other.

“How 'bout us all havin' a drink?” Miller said. “I'll buy.” He went into his tent and came out with a fifth of Old Granddad. He poured liberally into three cups and we stood around sipping at the whiskey.

“I ain't had so much fun in years,” Cap said. “It was a real fine hunt.”

“I ain't too much for all that walkin' you're partial to,” Clint said, slapping one of his crooked legs.

Cap chuckled. “I told you that rodeoin' would catch up to you someday. Any action up there on the hill this mornin'?”

“Heard a couple shots earlier,” Clint said. “No signals though.”

“Probably missed,” Cap said sourly. “Them two are each so worried that the other one's gonna get that damn freak that they can't even shoot anymore.”

Just thinking about Jack and Lou almost spoiled the whole thing for me. I tried not to think about them. The morning had been too good for me to let that happen.