by Herb Hughes
“Good night, Jack. It’s good to see you again,” Mac called from his straw bed. “You're the best. It's an honor to sleep on the same ground with you.”
Jack wanted Crazy Mac to shut up. No sense irritating Greg Bonner – who, no doubt, was listening – any more than necessary. “Thanks. We'll talk more in the morning, old man,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Good-night.”
Crazy Mac didn't say another word.
Greg Bonner was a large, hulking man. Ruthless. He was covered in dark hair like an animal from old Earth. It poured upward from his chest and out the top of his shirt. Hair grew from the back of his neck and, no doubt, covered the rest of his body. Jack had known other men that were hairy, but they were still genuinely good men. Greg was not one of them.
Jack knew that Greg Bonner would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Jack also knew that Greg Bonner would stop at nothing just for the sake of stopping at nothing. There was no trusting the huge Rhino hunter, not even for a second. He rolled over to face where Bonner lay. He would sleep with his eyes closed but pointed in Bonner's direction. One of his senses always stayed awake when he was on a hunt, no matter where he slept. It was an essential survival tool with Rhinos around, and not a bad idea with Bonner around, either.
Crazy Mac, even with his loose hold on sanity – though Jack was not so sure the old man was all that crazy – had enough sense not to trust Bonner. In spite of all his weirdness, Mac was an intelligent man, but he didn't seem to have enough sense to keep his mouth shut. He goaded Bonner every chance he got, called the huge man all sorts of names and did his best to embarrass the hulking Rhino hunter in front of others. And it wasn't all that hard to do. Greg Bonner was no scholar.
Greg would use a laser if he had one, Jack thought. Hell, any Rhino hunter would. As far as he knew, though, he was the only person, outside of the rangers, who had one. And no other living person knew he had it. His father had secretly passed it to him, like his grandfather before. A decade or so after the colonists landed, his father had told him, the leaders confiscated all private laser weapons and issued them to the rangers to protect cities and towns. Jack’s great-grandfather had managed to smuggle this small rifle, along with a few extra battery packs, aboard the freighter. No one knew about it, so it was relatively easy to hide and pass down through the generations.
It was a small rifle, not as powerful as the regulation lasers the rangers carried; but powerful enough to burn all the way through a Rhino if you could hold your aim steady. Jack could. And it still worked. In the last few decades, most of the rangers’ laser rifles had broken down. A hundred and fifty years was a long time. At last count there were only thirty-eight working lasers worldwide, not counting Jack's. The rangers were losing four or five a year. Nobody knew how to fix them or how to make new battery packs. More and more rangers were relying on homebuilts, which accounted for the profession’s shortening life expectancy.
Jack's ancestors had used the small laser only a handful of times. They were farmers and store clerks, not Rhino hunters. They used it to protect their families and hid each use carefully, to keep from having the rifle confiscated. And to avoid going to prison. Hiding a laser from the rangers would not be treated lightly. Jack’s father had used it only once, to kill a Rhino on their farm. Jack helped bury the huge creature and swore to keep the weapon a secret. With the promise of the laser in his future, he kept his word.
Not counting a carefully rationed handful of practice shots in the early years, Jack had used the laser one hundred nine times. One day the rifle would stop working. He had put the last battery pack in a couple of years ago and had no idea how long it would last. Because of the age of the battery packs, you never knew how fresh they were when you put one in the rifle, and the power gauge on the weapon had not worked in decades.
He hoped the laser would not stop working in the middle of a life or death situation, though that was almost inevitable since the only time he ever fired it was at a living, breathing, and quite deadly Rhino. He thought the current battery pack would last for some years to come, but there was no way to know. Nothing lasted forever.
Jack was tired and bone weary. He let his thoughts flow into darkness and, eventually, most of him fell asleep.
Chapter 4
“De de, de do, de da, de doo, de dust. Dusty dust. The square root of thirty-two. Five point six five six eight! The hair of a wandering frooh. De dat… Ah! It is, indeed, you, oh marvelous self. I am so very merry happy to see you. Do you have any idea how lonely I get when you are gone?
“Me? What the cruzzles do you mean? You are the one who leaves, pathetic self.
“I? It is not I who is going and coming, coming and going, It is you, wondrous self, who leaves me so by myself all alone.
“Hardly true you useless windbag.
“Please, I am so thrilled with your company. Let’s not argue. So why do you leave? Where do you go when you leave me so alone, alone, alone, all alone? Do you know where the dreams have gone? Are you sneaking off to live them?
“Dreams? Ha! There are no dreams anymore. You know that, insignificant self. I go to the same place you go. Nowhere. I’m here with you to contemplate retrospectives on dust. Little piles of dust.
“So we may not be alone at all when we are alone? How comforting, valued self!
“But even when we are apart, we are not alone. No, no, no. Of course not. There are millions, yes? Many millions.
“But they are all piles and piles and piles of dust, wondrous self. Settled little piles of dust. Not a spec moving anywhere. They never move. Except when they become dust, of course. Mush to goop to dust. Down, down, down. How sad. Four times six is twenty-four. Pet the scooty and open the door.
“What is that, oh stupid self? Six times four?”
“Why, you must have the easy ones every once in a while. For the sake of completeness. Lela, lola, lula, lup. Put some sasha in my cup. Intelligent self, I am so scared my time has come. Look around us. The last few are jellied, gushy and dripping down to the floor where they will dry into more little piles of dust. The last of the dust piles. Oh, the horror of my jelly days. They are coming all too soon. All too soon.”
Chapter 5
Morning came, and Jack woke as soon as sun touched his eyes. Greg Bonner was up and gone. Jack stood and turned around slowly, looking at the horizon through the dim light of early sunrise. Nothing in any direction. Bonner had been gone for some time.
The old man, Crazy Mac, was snoring but, thankfully, not too loud. Putting up with the old man’s ranting and raving was bad enough. If he snored loudly the travelers passing through would have long since quit feeding him. Bill Miller was up early as promised; stirring a campfire to rekindle the flames, but everyone else was still asleep. Jack wanted to get an early start so he could pace Killer, the slower the better. The horse had been pushed hard the day before and Killer was too important to be abused.
He dusted the saddle blanket and folded it twice then placed it on Killer’s back before tossing the saddle on and tying it securely. Then he rolled up his bed and tied it behind the saddle. While Killer drank his fill from the small, spring-fed pond, Jack filled one of his skins with water and slung it across the saddle. It was only a day’s ride even at a leisurely pace, so he didn’t go to the trouble to fill the other skins. Less weight for Killer to carry. That was all there was to packing. He traveled light.
When Jack climbed onto his horse, there was an alarmed voice from below.
“Jack!” the old man shrilled. “You're not leaving yet, are you? We were going to talk...”
He was surprised that Crazy Mac even remembered. “Sorry, Mac. Got to go. Got to get this horn in and measured. I'll be back through before long.”
“Oh, okay.” The old man understood a Rhino hunter's urgency for getting a horn measured. He didn't argue. “We’re all pulling for you, Jack. Good luck.”
“You, too, Mac.”
Jack and Killer turned and started away slowly. Bill
Miller was packing to go and briefly turned to wave. Jack nodded, but Bill never saw it. In the brief moment Bill had been waving, he had taken one of his hands off the ‘ornery’ pack mule. The animal jumped quickly to the side in a maneuver that allowed the mail pouches to fall to the ground, letters spilling out onto the sand and rocks. Bill quickly turned around and kicked dust at the mule. Jack couldn’t help a smile as he let Killer saunter out of camp at a leisurely pace.
It was late fall, and the desert was at its best. Temperatures were bearable. White and yellow wildflowers dotted the mostly brown landscape. Still, it was a harsh environment. The cool of night lingered well beyond sunrise, but by midday the sun made the air hot and still. Once the sun was down, the evening cooled quickly. This caused winds to stir every morning and evening. Sometimes the bedroll he carried would not be enough to keep the night’s chill away, even with the saddle blanket on top, but better that than to suffer the blistering heat of a desert summer. That's why Jack hunted the forests to the east and north of Borderton during the hottest months and the desert to the west the rest of the year. Though Rhinos were uncommon everywhere, they could be found anywhere. No one knew where, when, or why the creatures would explode from the ground. But, for some strange reason, they did tend to be slightly more common where there were more people. That’s why the rangers stayed in the cities and towns. The Rhino hunters took care of the sparsely populated forest, fields, and desert, most of the planet.
Jack had gone in search of Rhinos at the age of sixteen. His father protested loudly, but Jack ignored his old man’s scratchy-voiced demands. Through the early years, he had managed to stay alive – though it had not always been easy – long enough to learn all the tricks of tracking a Rhino. Without the laser, he likely would not have survived. Now, he was the best living hunter in the world. Not quite the legend the great Hal Stamp was. Not yet. But better than Greg Bonner and Sam Crusher and all the others who were still breathing, still riding, and still hunting.
When he started all those years ago, it was the money. Hunting, if you survived, paid much better than farming. But while the money was nice, it quickly changed to something else, a compulsion that drove him day in and day out, through long miserable hunts in freezing cold or searing heat, through days on end without a bath and with little food. Although he had answers he gave to those who asked, he was no longer sure what drove him, what the compulsion was. He supposed it was chasing the record. He had only seen one hundred and nine Rhinos in his twenty-one years of hunting, but he killed every one. Hal Stamp killed one hundred forty-six. While it would be years yet, Jack was getting closer, only thirty-seven more to go.
Was the chance to break the record what kept him going year after year? He knew if he passed Hal Stamp, the record would no longer seem as important as it had while he was reaching for it. That was the way things worked. Everyone expected him to break it, though. Some even talked as though it were a foregone conclusion. Well, maybe he would. And maybe that was what drove him after all, not the record but the people of Agrilot, the millions of strangers around the world who were pulling for him.
Hal Stamp, though still alive at last news, was from a former time. Perhaps older than Crazy Mac. The people wanted a new hero, someone from their era. Jack knew he couldn’t let them down. In reality, it was no longer in his hands, no longer a decision he could make. The only choice he had was to continue the legend that was Jack Wheat. His audience would tolerate nothing less. He had to keep going, keep hunting, keep killing.
The day wore on raggedly. Still tired from pushing hard for two straight days, Jack swayed gently side-to-side with the rhythmic movement of the saddle and the animal below. He didn’t want to waste strength trying to keep steady. Instead, he relaxed and let the movement massage his body, releasing the weariness and the anxiety of the three-week hunting trip. He knew it would make him more beat up and sore later, but perhaps he could sleep through it when later arrived.
If there were more Rhinos, he thought, it would be easier. But thoughts of more Rhinos brought images of Joe Riley’s children and Brian Pickney’s grieving young widow. Record or not, he was thankful Rhinos were infrequent. He was also thankful they were always alone. He shuddered to think what they could do if they ran in packs.
He threw the thought away and tried to get his mind to change the subject. It was hard to do. Had a Rhino eaten Brian Pickney? He didn’t believe it. Besides, Brian Pickney’s house was a long way from Joe Riley’s cabin. As large as they were, a Rhino could not have traveled from one to the other without being seen. But perhaps Brian had ridden close by the Riley’s cabin. Perhaps he had been near the cabin during the attack. There was no way to know with someone who had gone missing without so much as a thread of clothing or a drop of blood behind to tell a story.
Hour after hour, kilometer after kilometer passed. There was no one else in the desert. He was hungry but had nothing to eat. The water skin was now empty as Jack had given the last drink to Killer some time back. At this leisurely pace, he was going to have to start filling a second skin for the trip between the oasis and Borderton. He hadn’t needed that much water before. Was he getting old?
He looked around and, after some minutes, found a patch of rugbies; short, squatty, roughly spherical plants that had a bitter taste but were wet and nourishing inside their tough, greenish blue hide. He stopped, stepped down, and carefully carved away the six-centimeter-long, stiff, razor-edged leaves protruding from the rugby’s fat center. You didn’t want to slip when carving a rugby’s leaves or you would be the carvee instead of the carver.
With the leaves gone, the plant was defenseless. He plucked it out of the earth and cut it open, offering the wet inside to Killer. The horse’s eyes opened wide, showing a large white arc at the edge as he neighed loudly and backed away.
Jack laughed. “Not thirsty enough for a rugby, eh?” They were bitter, sure, but maybe it was the razor leaves. Horses quickly learned to avoid rugbys when traveling the marginal areas between sand desert and arable land, the only place they grew. After considerable effort, Jack had finally gotten Killer to try one several years back. Once was enough. Killer would die of thirst before tasting another one. Jack suffered through the bitterness as he chewed on the lining. When he could no longer stand the taste, he slung the plant carcass across the desert and returned to the trip.
By early afternoon, the bitterness of the rugby still lingering in his mouth, he could see the tops of the mountains on the horizon, stretched into the distance like irregular spikes thrusting out of the earth. The mountains formed a familiar landmark but, at almost two days the other side of Borderton, were still a great distance away.
As he moved along, the few scrub bushes that grew in the desert became more numerous, taller, and less twisted by the wind. Some time later he could see a few scattered trees silhouetted against the distant mountains. Gradually, as afternoon tumbled toward evening, the trees turned into a thin forest. Borderton was close. There was a farm house or two along the edge of the forest with a few scraggly crops creeping out onto the desert floor. He could see the tops of homemade windmills dotted along the horizon, some close, some further away.
Wanting to wash out the lingering bitterness of the rugby, Jack asked the first farmer he saw for a drink. The man led them to a trough for Killer and handed Jack a full skin, still cool, telling the Rhino hunter to keep it. After a long drink, Jack tried to give the skin back, but the farmer insisted, so Jack slung it around the saddle horn on top of his empty skins. But Jack did refuse when the farmer pulled out a skin filled with moonshine. He smiled and said he had a long way to go yet. He mounted Killer and the pair rode on, Jack waving as he left.
Several people, working late in their fields, waved as Jack rode by. Others came out of their cabins to wave. A few were close to the road and wanted to talk. Everyone who lived in and around Borderton was proud that the world’s most noted active Rhino hunter was a resident of their own community. The short time he wasn�
��t hunting, of course.
Jack stopped now and then to chat briefly, but didn’t linger. He was tired and hungry and ready to be home. And home was now close.
As Jack rounded a curve, he saw Rose Wesley leaning against a fence in front of her home as though she had been waiting for him. There was no way news of his arrival could have passed him, he thought. Still, she stood there in a low cut blouse that showed off her ample chest, doing nothing more than smiling at him. Rose, who was single, worked at the bank but preferred to live in the countryside.
“Hello, Jack. Hadn’t seen you in a while. Welcome back.”
Jack touched the front tip of his hat and nodded. “Thanks, Rose. You doing okay?”
“Just fine. Been on a hunt, eh? I bet you’re hungry. I’ve got some fresh baked bread. Come on in and get some.”
Ready to be home notwithstanding, fresh baked bread sounded too good to pass up. “That would be great, Rose.” He dismounted and followed her to the front of her small log home. The doorway was framed with thick boards, hand fashioned with an ax. The smell of fresh, hot bread danced lazily through as he got near. The aroma almost lifted his feet for him as he stepped inside.
Rose led Jack into the kitchen of her modest three-room cabin and removed a towel from the freshly cooked loaf that rested on the dining table. When she did, smoke curled around the edges of the towel and quickly wafted through the room. The bread was a perfect light brown on the outside. Jack was trying to act cool, but it smelled so good he was almost salivating on himself. He was hungry!
