Hunters (9 page)

The hunter's mouth fell open. His jaw waggled
for a moment, and then he said, just loud enough for Chuck to hear
him, "Hey, you want it, you can have it."

"Asshole," Chuck whispered as he pulled the
trigger.

The man jerked once, and continued to stand
for three seconds as the blood started to pour from the hole in his
stomach. Then he sat down hard with what Chuck thought was a
satisfying
whop
as his buttocks smacked the dead vegetation.
Chuck held the image of the man in his sight picture for a moment,
relishing the surprised look on his face. He waited just long
enough for the expression to change to one of pain, and for the
hunter to start his first wailing cry, which sounded pathetic with
no diaphragm to support it.

Chuck worked the bolt again, noting where the
empty shell had fallen. Then he centered the whimpering mouth in
the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger for a third time. The lower
half of the hunter's head came apart like a melon smashed by a
sledgehammer, and Chuck couldn't help but think of the last time he
had seen Gallagher at the Comedy Club.

There was no need to work the bolt again. A
second shot was not required. The man was deader than O. J.
Simpson's movie career.

Chuck picked up the two bullet cases,
scuttled down the side of the ravine, and made the agreed upon mark
on the corpse. Then he climbed back the way he had come and walked
to the east, away from the ravine and the two dead animals. He had
done what he had needed to do, and now it was time to get the hell
away before anybody stumbled across the scene. Besides, the man was
dead. There was no more fun to be had here.

Tomorrow, however, he would have one helluva
time, as long as the others didn't wussie out. He wondered how they
all were doing. He was especially curious about Jean and the
warden. Had she taken the guy out yet? He didn't know if she had
the stones to do it, but thought she probably did. She'd been
pretty crazy about old Andy, and Chuck had to admit the guy had
been a looker.

With bitches as shallow as Jean, that was all
it took sometimes. They pretended that they were looking for
something deeper—one of those "meaningful" relationships with a
"sensitive" guy—when all they were really after was a handsome mug
and a solid dick that didn't give out too soon.

He had shown her last night that he had at
least one of the requirements, though he doubted he would take
Andrew's place in her life. In her bed, maybe. She had liked it in
spite of that act with the gun afterwards. But would Jean Catlett
ever be seen in public arm in arm with a crude and
straight-to-the-point guy like Chuck knew himself to be? Hell, not
on your life.

It didn't matter, though. There were a whole
lot of reasons why Chuck Marriner couldn't afford to be seen by a
wide,
paparazzi
-served public. Too many people were looking
for him who had less than good wishes for his future health and
liberty. But he was content in his present role. He'd be happy to
keep on banging Jean Catlett, and use that bottomless pile of
Catlett money to have a lot more fun than that dry and
unimaginative sex would provide. And maybe when it was time to walk
away, Chuck could do so with a lot of that green filling out his
pockets. Hell, he thought as he made his way through the woods back
to where he'd parked the Bronco, weirder things could happen. They
might even be able to rain down this shitstorm and get away with
it.

And Jean Catlett might even be able to whack that
boyfriend killing Boy Scout without help.

N
ed Craig thought he
had made the right decision. It was good to be out in the woods.
The alternative had been hanging around the house, and if he had
done that, he would only have thought about the still unidentified
dead man who lay in the medical center's morgue.

Instead, he had gotten up long before Megan
had even stirred, and, for the second morning in a row, had had a
real hunter's breakfast, this time at Sally's Restaurant. It was
loaded with saturated fats and cholesterol, and he enjoyed every
greasy bite of it. A couple of hunters Ned knew asked him what
exactly had happened the day before, but all he had said about it
was, "It was bad, but it's over." It wasn't the detailed recitation
they had been looking for, but Ned didn't feel he owed the story to
anyone who wasn't wearing a badge.

He had decided not to go back to State Game
Lands 25, where the shootings had occurred, so Larry assigned him
instead to 293, a much smaller tract of land northeast of St.
Mary's. Ned saw only a few cars at the dirt road that led back to
the hunting grounds, and thought that the hunters here were
probably locals who knew what they were doing. Game Lands 293 was
loaded with buck, but because it was not as expansive, most hunters
alien to the area thought it would be overcrowded, and went to the
larger tracts, leaving 293's rich harvest of game to those who knew
better.

Ned felt lighter today as he walked through
the woods in the early morning haze, and then he realized why. He
had left his pistol with the St. Mary's police, who needed it for
evidence at the upcoming hearing. He could have taken another of
his three handguns, but had not.

It must have been his subconscious at work,
he thought, since he remembered making no decision whether or not
to take one, and it was the first time he could recall that he had
gone without it. They had told him he would get the gun back, but
he wondered if he would ever feel comfortable carrying it again.
Maybe he could sell it to someone who didn't know or care about its
history. Or maybe he'd just throw the damned thing away. He
normally didn't believe in such things as curses, but as he trod
through the leaves, he couldn't help but feel that the gun was
unlucky.

Or was it? After all, it had saved his life.
If he hadn't been carrying it, or if it wouldn't have shot true, he
wouldn't be walking through the woods this morning.

"Bullshit," he mumbled to himself. Luck,
curses, all of it. It was just the way things were, it was what had
happened, that was all. It was stupid to think
what if
. Just
accept what had happened, and then do what you felt you should
do.

Ned jammed his hands in his pockets and
trudged on, stopping every now and then when he heard the faraway
sound of gunfire. He came across a hunter he recognized. The man
was in a tree stand, and gave Ned a short wave. Ned waved back, but
did not call out, and walked past him, then behind him so that he
would not scare off any deer that might be moving in the hunter's
direction. The man in the stand smiled and nodded in thanks, and
Ned moved on.

Just before noon, Ned met a hunter field
dressing his kill. He complimented the man on the buck's rack, a
wide eight points, and then asked to see his hunting license. The
hunter responded happily, and Ned found that everything was in
order. He chatted with the man for a few minutes, then moved on,
ate his lunch seated on a large, flat rock, and turned back toward
the south, where his Blazer was parked several miles away.

It was getting colder now, and the sky looked
threatening. The weather radio out of State College had called for
snow in its three-day forecast, possibly starting as early as
Wednesday night. They weren't predicting amounts yet, but said the
possibility was there for heavy snowfall. That could mean bad news
for Ned and the other wardens.

Ned hadn't been a WCO back in 1978, but Larry
had told him about the snowstorm that year. It broke Monday
evening, the first day of buck season, and although the radios had
warned that it could be a whopper, and state officials told people
to get out while they could, a lot of hunters hadn't believed it
and stayed in their camps. The smart and lucky ones left that
evening before or just after the snow began, and some were able to
get out the next morning.

But a lot of them walked through the two feet
of snow that had accumulated by dawn, only to find that their
vehicles weren't going anywhere because they and the access roads
were covered with a wet, heavy snow. It had been at the height of
the CB radio mania, and the local WCO's got dozens of calls from
pissed off, stranded hunters demanding that the Game Commission or
the Forest Service open the roads immediately, something that was
impossible. Most of the WCO's and deputies were snowed in
themselves, and the county's plows were already losing the struggle
just to keep the main and secondary roads plowed.

By the time the snow ended early Wednesday
morning, it measured three feet deep over most of north central
Pennsylvania, and that meant three feet worth of bad news. During
the next four days, volunteer snowmobilers drove back through the
woods to cabins that were believed to be still occupied, and took
the hunters out one at a time. Amazingly enough, though there were
several cases of frostbite, there had been only six fatalities, two
of which were heart attacks suffered when overweight and under fit
men tried to walk out of their camps through the heavy snow. The
other four men were found dead in their isolated Moshannon State
Forest cabin. Propane from their stove had leaked during the night,
and they had all been asphyxiated, something that might have
occurred even without the heavy snow.

Everyone said it was a miracle that no one
froze to death, but the State Forest Service and Game Commission
sharply criticized those hunters who had not heeded the warnings to
leave their camps, and so made the costly and dangerous rescues
necessary.

There hadn't been an incident like it since,
but looking up at the gray, glowering sky, Ned wondered if there
could be a recurrence this week. He hoped not. Most hunters liked a
little snow, since it was easier to spot dark deer against
whiteness than against the camouflaging trees. But too much snow
would turn a hunter's dream into a WCO's nightmare.

Ned walked until he came to the two ruts that
the Forest Service called a road, and began to follow them south
until the woods began to grow less dense. Another half hour of
walking brought him to a point he knew to be only a few hundred
yards from where his Blazer was parked, along with the cars of the
hunters.

He started to whistle a few notes, then
stopped. Even though he was close to the road, some might be
still-hunting, that cat-and-mouse method of looking for deer by
slowly walking through the woods, then waiting for a long time,
walking again, waiting, walking, and waiting. It was a tedious
method, but one that many hunters swore by, and though it was
likely that the deer had been driven deeper into the forest by the
sound of gunshots, there was always the possibility of a hunter
who, for health or safety reasons, wanted to stay near civilization
badly enough to plant in probably barren ground. Ned would not make
their odds even longer by making noise.

The silence that he wished to grant to others
was abruptly scarred by a shrill whistling, like an incredibly fast
hornet that whizzed past his head, followed an infinitesimal moment
later by the sound of a gunshot. He froze instantly, then realized
that he had been shot at, and that he might be shot at again.

He went down on one knee, teeth clenched,
eyes narrowed against the anticipated second shot, but it did not
come. A hundred thoughts crowded his mind, most of them having to
do with his own death. At any other time, he would have considered
the shot accidental, an unavoidable hazard of being in the woods
with over a million hunters, a small minority of whom would shoot
at anything they saw moving.

But today, he heard the bark of the shot and
felt the angry wake of its passing as revenge for what he had done
the day before. He knew with all his pounding heart that he had not
been mistaken for a deer, but that he had been targeted. He had
become prey.

Ned also knew that he should hug the dirt and
scurry into whatever protecting brush he could find, but a reckless
pride would not let him. He had no weapon, and if he were to die,
he would die facing his killer, not trying to dig a hole into earth
that could not hide him. So he waited and tried to pray.

But only silence followed. The sound of the
shot that had rung so clearly through the forest died away like the
sounds of a great buck running fast and far. Ned listened in the
growing silence, but heard nothing, not the crackle of boots on
dead leaves, nor the apologetic cry of a hunter. There was only the
memory of the gunshot ringing in his ears, and the thudding of his
heart.

Ned took a deep breath, stood up in one quick
motion, looked to right and left, in front and behind him. There
was not a glimpse of movement, of blaze orange flitting through the
trees. "Hey," he called, and found the word caught in his throat.
He called again, "
Hey!
," loud enough this time to be heard
by someone within range. There was no answer.

Ned stood for a long time, listening and waiting.
But he heard only one shot, and that was from miles away.

J
umpin' hell
,
Sheldon Lake thought as he ran almost silently through the woods,
clutching his daddy's old .30-06.
I almost had him
. Ned
Craig's head had been lined up perfectly in Sheldon's crosshairs,
but he had missed him. On purpose.

At the last split-second before his finger
tightened on the trigger, Sheldon knew that this wasn't the way to
do it. It was too late to stop the shot, but it wasn't too late to
pull just a bit to the right so that the bullet zinged past Craig's
head.

Craig had gone down so fast that at first
Sheldon thought that he had hit him. But then he realized it had
been instinct rather than his bullet that had dropped the man, and
he knew he had to run. He hadn't seen a sidearm, but WCO's wore
their pieces under their coats, and Sheldon didn't want a
showdown.