Stepping Stones

by Steve Gannon

  Anyhow, now that the corn was cut, the birds had been forced to move to new cover in the irrigation ditches, fence lines, and brush bordering the field—areas two guys with good dogs could hunt effectively. Enter Rob and Matt.

  “How do you want to do this?” asked Rob.

  I finished my coffee and thought a moment. “Normally I’d say we should hunt into the wind,” I answered. “But something tells me there are birds in that ditch at the west end. Let’s try that first.”

  Rob nodded. “Right. We can work the fences later.”

  We took a dirt access road to the northwest corner, parking a hundred yards from the main drainage ditch. By then the dogs knew the hunt was on. When I walked to the back of the truck for my gun and orange hunting vest, their eyes never left my face. I let the tension build a few moments. Then I grinned. “Let’s go!”

  I didn’t have to tell them twice. Tails wagging, they leaped the tailgate and hit the ground, wrestling with each other like pups—one on top, then the other. Thinking that they looked more like twins than mother and son, I let them go at it awhile, venting some steam before the hunt.

  “Ready, Matt?”

  “Yep,” I answered, shrugging on my vest and stuffing a handful of twelve-gauge shotgun shells into my pocket. “Soon as you get that rowdy dog of yours under control, we can do it.”

  Rob laughed. “It’s that frisky bitch of yours causing all the trouble,” he countered. “Let’s go find some birds, Max.”

  At that, both dogs stopped playing. They knew it was time.

  Rob cracked his over-and-under and shoved in two twenty-gauge shells. I headed toward the nearest drainage ditch, feeding ammo into my Browning automatic as I went.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Rob asked.

  “Oh. Right.” I returned and closed my hand, meshed my knuckles with Rob’s extended fist, then withdrew slightly and punched, fist to fist. It was a stupid ritual, but we had been doing it for years. Customary fist-bump completed, we set out. Soon we reached the weed-filled ditch, with our dogs out front. Rob took one side; I took the other. Not expecting much to happen for a while, I wasn’t paying attention. It cost me.

  One of the first things you learn about hunting upland birds is to always be ready. Game birds, especially pheasants, can hide in the most measly cover imaginable, flushing when you least expect it. It’s precisely this unpredictable element that makes pheasant hunting so much fun. Just when you think you have everything figured out, something unexpected happens. I had learned that lesson the hard way many times, so naturally when Sammy flushed a big rooster to my side of the ditch, I wasn’t ready. I’d barely flipped off the safety and shouldered my gun when the bird disappeared behind a stand of Russian olive trees.

  “Why didn’t you shoot?” Rob called from the other side.

  “Wasn’t ready,” I replied sheepishly.

  “Damn,” Rob muttered, giving me a disgusted look. I think Sammy gave me a similar look as well.

  Not off to a good start, I thought. Nonetheless, we still had the whole farm to hunt, and now we knew for certain that there were birds around. We headed down the drainage ditch once more. It was a good-sized wash, dry now in the fall, narrow in spots and wide in others. Clumps of willows guarded its banks, with plenty of cover in between. Although at times I couldn’t see Rob, I could hear him crashing through the undergrowth on the other side, and we managed to stay abreast. Sammy was down in the gully hunting in close, just as I’d taught her. It was a pleasure to watch her work.

  We tramped along for a quarter hour without seeing any more birds. The air was crisp, but the sun had begun to warm things a bit, slanting through the willows and cattails choking the gully and melting the frost on the exposed ground in between.

  “Get ready, Matt,” Rob warned as we approached a bend in the canal. “Max is on scent.”

  “Sammy is birdy, too,” I called back, my pulse quickening. Sammy was definitely hot, her tail rotating in tight circles as her nose dragged her on an erratic path through the cover.

  Walking quickly, I proceeded down the ditch. Before long I realized the bird was probably running. It wasn’t going to hold. We needed to push it hard or it would just keep running and not flush. I picked up my pace, stumbling after Sammy, trying to keep up. The end of the ditch was quickly approaching. Suddenly a thicket ahead exploded with a rush of wings. I had been poking my safety ever since Sammy had gone on scent, so this time I was ready.

  Two birds came out on my side. I swung through the lead bird. A hen pheasant. I switched to the second. Another hen. Lowering my gun without shooting, I watched them sail off into the sage. An instant later I heard Rob fire once.

  “Get one?” I called.

  “Yeah. Must’ve led that sucker by ten feet. God, I’m good! Nothing came out on your side?”

  “Hens.”

  “Well, the day is young,” Rob called back, his tone saying I’d had my chance earlier and blown it.

  In the excitement I had lost track of Sammy. When I didn’t see her, I figured she had gone over to make Rob’s retrieve. “Sammy over there?”

  “Nope.”

  At that point I realized she still had to be in the ditch, and if so, there was probably a reason. Taking off at a fast jog, I’d covered half the distance to the bend in the canal when another rooster got up forty yards out, Sammy snapping at his tail feathers.

  The bird turned downwind, his large size making his speed deceptive. I missed with my first shot, as usual not giving it enough lead. Knowing I would only get one more try, I doubled my lead on the bird, forced myself to keep the gun swinging, and pulled the trigger. This time I was right on target.

  Flushed and out of breath, Rob joined me, smiling as he noticed Max racing out to beat Sammy to my rooster. The dogs wouldn’t fight over a bird once it had been picked up, but until then both considered it fair game. Nonetheless, Max was faster, and I wanted Sammy to get the bird. I hit one long blast on my whistle. Both dogs stopped dead in their tracks, turned as one, and sat—eyeing me expectantly.

  “Sam!” I yelled, releasing her. With that, Sammy took off at a full run and made the retrieve. Max stayed put. I swear Sammy flaunted that pheasant as she pranced past Max on the return trip.

  “Poor Maxie,” said Rob as Sammy sat beside me and delivered the bird to hand.

  “Poor Max, my eye. He already got to retrieve your bird.”

  Rob blew one long, then two short blasts on his whistle, signaling Max to come in. “I know, but he wants to get them all.”

  “Tough,” I laughed. “It’s about time he showed his mother a little respect.”

  We set out once more, working a fence line downwind, then back to the northeast corner. Though we hunted the area thoroughly, we only scared up a couple more hens, possibly the ones we had seen earlier. After giving the dogs water, we tried the west edge of the cornfield, following an overgrown irrigation ditch bordering the stubble. A half hour later two roosters got up together—one to the left, one to the right—a perfect shooting situation. Rob fired first and dumped his into the fallow. The dogs immediately raced to retrieve it. I took my bird a split second later with a long going-away shot, but the rooster locked his wings and glided another sixty yards before falling dead in the stubble.

  Max and Sammy returned, Rob’s bird in Max’s mouth. Rob stuffed the pheasant into his vest pouch. “Get the other one?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It’s out in the stubble.”

  “Did Sam see it fall?”

  “Nope.”

  “See if you can handle her to it.”

  “Okay,” I replied. “It’s been a while. She could use the practice.”

  I called Sammy to heel and lined her up on the fallen bird, my hand positioned just above her head, indicating the direction I wanted her to take. “Dead bird,” I said. She stared ahead intently, focused and ready.

  “Back!” I said.

  Sammy took off like a shot. She ran straight for close to fifty
yards before drifting to the right. I hit the whistle and stopped her. She turned and sat, waiting for directions. Using hand and whistle commands, I sent her left, then back again, straight to the downed pheasant. A field-trial champion couldn’t have done better.

  “Impressive,” said Rob as Sammy returned with the rooster.

  “You know it,” I agreed with a grin. I had trained Sam, starting her at seven weeks, but the truth was, she deserved most of the credit. She had always been more than willing, wanting to please with all her heart. When she brought that bird back to heel, I thought I was going to burst with pride. As for Sammy—well, she simply delivered the pheasant to hand and started hunting anew. No big deal. As I shoved the rooster into my vest, I realized, not for the first time, that of all the things I liked about hunting, I most enjoyed working the fields with my dog. Without her it wouldn’t have been the same.

  At that point Rob and I needed one more bird apiece to fill our limits, but over the past hour the wind had continued to rise. We were getting cold. We decided to speed things up by hunting the final irrigation ditch separately, beginning at opposite ends and working toward each other, pinching any runners between us. I don’t normally like knowing someone’s approaching with a gun pointed in my direction, but Rob and I had worked ditches that way in the past and I trusted him. Plus, it was an effective strategy.

  Sammy and I hunted for the next twenty minutes without success. As I approached a right-angle bend in the ditch, I noticed Rob approaching from the left, still a few hundred yards out. Sammy was ahead of me, rounding the bend. I lost sight of her as she entered a thick clump of thistle, but let her go and took a shortcut across the stubble, planning to catch up with her on the other side.

  I’ve mentally replayed what happened next at least a thousand times. It’s always the same. For some reason I see it in slow motion: A bird gets up in front of Rob. It veers down the ditch, flying low. Rob’s gun comes up. The bird falls. I hear Sammy yelp, then the shot.

  I ran. I knew she was hurt. Even as a pup, she never cried. Never.

  My heart was pounding when I reached her. By then she had crawled from the ditch and was lying on the ground licking her flank. I knelt beside her. She’d taken pellets in her hind leg, some in her side below her ribs, another near her shoulder.

  Rob arrived moments later. “What happened?”

  “Rob, you shot her.”

  “Jesus. I . . . I didn’t see her.”

  “Why didn’t you wait till you saw sky before shooting?”

  Rob’s face turned ashen. “I . . . I had to be at least seventy yards away. Those pellets couldn’t have penetrated.

  “I hope you’re right,” I said, examining Sammy’s wounds. The worst bleeders were on her leg. They had already slowed considerably. Teasing back the fur, I checked her side. I found several round holes in her skin, wet red tissue glistening beneath. I couldn’t tell whether the pellets had gone any deeper. Seventy yards is a long way. Maybe they had just bounced off.

  Abruptly, Sammy rose to her feet.

  “She’s fine,” said Rob, clearly relieved. “I told you she was okay.”

  “Let’s go, girl,” I said, praying Rob was right. I started walking, watching Sammy carefully. As usual, she took her position out front, glancing back to see which direction I wanted to take. She was moving well, not even limping.

  “She’s fine,” Rob repeated.

  “Thank God,” I said, calling Sammy back and ruffling her ears. At my touch, she pulled away impatiently. She didn’t want to be petted; she wanted to hunt.

  Rob had limited with his last bird. I still needed another, so we split up again. I headed toward a stand of willows that we had skipped earlier. Rob decided to work the northern fence line, hoping to scare up a few quail.

  A quarter hour later Sammy began to lag behind me.

  I turned back to see what was wrong. I wanted it to be her leg. But as much as I hoped to see her limping, I knew that wasn’t it. She was still moving all right, but slowly—tail down, head drooping. I hurried toward her, my thoughts racing. The nearest vet was an hour north. Could she make it? I kept remembering those pellet wounds in her side . . . and the other one higher up on her shoulder.

  When I got to Sammy, she settled to the ground. She looked up at me, her eyes filled with confusion. She thumped the dirt with her tail, then lay still. She was having trouble breathing. Worse, her belly appeared swollen. Gently, I ran my hand over it. It felt hot and tight and full. I looked around for Rob, spotting his orange vest three quarters of a mile away. Too far to call. Pointing my gun in the air, I discharged a round. Then another. Seconds later he turned.

  I waved my arm. After a slight hesitation, he started toward me.

  I slung my gun, picked up Sammy, and headed back toward the farm. I know it hurt her to be held, but she didn’t make a sound. When Rob saw me carrying Sammy, he stopped. Then he turned and began running for the truck.

  Now that I knew that Rob understood the situation, I found a spot out of the wind behind some farm equipment. I laid Sammy on the ground and sat beside her, waiting for Rob to arrive. Sammy’s breathing got worse. She started to shiver. I couldn’t tell whether she was cold or just scared. I took off my coat and wrapped it around her. Across the field I could see Rob racing back toward the road. He was still a long way from the truck.

  Sammy and I waited. The wind blew harder, cold and biting. Far to the north I could make out the snow-covered peaks of the Pioneers—Hyndman and Standhope Peaks rising against the horizon—tearing at the sky like giant white teeth.

  We waited there together for what seemed forever. When Rob finally arrived, Sammy was dead.

  Rob and I rode home in silence. I didn’t want to talk; I didn’t have anything to say. I felt numb, and angry, and sad. But mostly, I just felt empty.

  When I got home, I placed Sammy on her rug by the stove and covered her with a blanket. She looked small lying there in the corner. My wife, Cynthia, put her arm around my shoulders and led me from the kitchen. Over the years I’ve noticed that when the chips are down, most people generally face their losses bravely and with dry eyes. With dry eyes, that is, until someone shows a little sympathy, gives them a kind word. I was no exception.

  That night I left Cyn sleeping in bed. After dressing, I descended to the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, and tried not to look in the corner. The clock over the stove said the sun wouldn’t rise for hours. I sat at the kitchen table, not thinking about anything in particular, just letting my mind drift. Partway through my third cup of coffee I heard a soft rapping at the front door. At first I thought I’d imagined it. Moments later I heard it again. Someone was there.

  I found Rob on the porch, Max on a leash beside him. It was the first time in years that I had seen Max on a leash. “I was outside in my truck,” Rob said quietly, lowering his gaze. “I couldn’t sleep. I planned on waiting till morning to talk with you. Then I saw your light.”

  I remained silent.

  “I’m so sorry about Sammy, Matt,” he went on, his eyes still not meeting mine. “More than I can say.” He handed me the leash. “I . . . I want you to have Max.”

  I knelt and took Max’s face in my hands, once more struck by how much he resembled his mother. His head was broader, but his eyes were the same. I slipped the leash from his neck. He licked my hand, then trotted into the warmth of the house. As I rose, Rob started to leave.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Rob turned.

  “Max is your dog, Rob. I can’t take him.” Rob started to protest but I cut him off. “Let me finish.”

  Rob gazed at me uncertainly. I could see he was afraid to hear my words, but I continued, telling him what had been in my heart all along but that until then I had been unable to say. “It was an accident, Rob. An accident. I know you didn’t mean it.”

  “Matt, I . . .”

  I shook my head. “You don’t have to say anything. I know how you feel. Let’s just put this behind us.”
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br />   Rob looked at me and saw that I meant it. Tension seeped from his face, but a deep sadness still remained in his eyes. He took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded.

  We stood facing each other awkwardly for a long moment. Finally I lifted my hand and closed it, making a fist. Numbly, Rob raised his fist to mine, just as we’d done a hundred times before. We locked knuckles and punched. In one respect, the gesture didn’t seem enough. But in another, it felt . . . right.

  Dropping my hand to my side, I glanced into the house. “C’mon, Rob,” I said. “Let’s go find Max.”

  * * *

  Later that morning I set out at first light. Rob offered to accompany me, but for what I had to do, I wanted to be alone. I headed up the East Fork of the Wood River, taking an old mining road into the mountains. When snow made the going too tough for my Jeep, I proceeded a good distance farther on foot.

  I left her high on the pine-covered slopes of Mount Hyndman, burying her deep and piling rocks atop her grave so the critters couldn’t get her. Afterward I sat in the cold morning air thinking back on the times we had spent together. I remained there for hours. Finally, when the sun was well up over the valley, I started home.

  I don’t know whether there’s anything left of us when we die. It would be comforting to believe so, but somehow I’m not so sure. But if there is, if there is a place where part of us winds up after we’re gone, then surely there’s room for dogs there, too. So if you’re up there, Sammy, maybe I’ll see you again someday, and we’ll hunt the fields together one more time. Till then, take care, pup . . . and may your skies always be blue.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to express my appreciation to a number of people who provided their assistance and expertise while I was writing Stepping Stones. Any errors, exaggerations, or just plain bending of facts to suit the story are attributable to me alone.

  To Susan Dunning, my muse with a sharp eye for detail, to my friends and family for their support and encouragement, to my eBook editor Karen Oswalt, to Karen Waters for her work on the cover, and especially to my core group of readers—all of whom made critical suggestions for improvements—my sincere thanks.