High Hunt

by Eddings, David

  "Cold," Stan said shortly, zipping up his new jacket and getting up close to the fire.

  "Mornin', men," Miller said. "Coffee ready?"

  "In just a minute or so, Cap," Clint said. He looked around, his battered old cowboy hat pushed back from his face. "You fellers are gonna have to step back from the fire if you want any breakfast."

  We all moved obediently back away and he began slapping his pans down on the grill. "Coffee's ready," he said. "Take it over to the table there."

  I carried the heavy pot to the table and started pouring coffee into the cups. Then we all stood back in the bunch in front of the tents watching Clint make breakfast.

  "We'll get up there well before first light, men," Miller said. "I'll ride all the way up to the top with the Kid here, and then I'll come on back down with the horses. They'd just get restless on you and move around and spook the deer. Besides, they might run off if you happen to get off a shot today."

  "It's ready," Clint said. "Come get your plates."

  We lined up, and he filled our plates for us. We sat down to eat. Miller continued with his instructions. "I'll bring the horses down and put 'em out to graze in this meadow out here. I'll be back up to get you about ten or so. Isn't likely there'll be much movin' after that. We'll go out again about three thirty or four this afternoon." He bent his face to his plate and scooped in three or four mouthfuls of scrambled eggs. He stared off into the dark while he chewed, his white mustache twitching with each bite.

  "I don't know as I'd shoot today," he said. "Just kinda get an idea of the size of the deer. Lots of men bust the first one they see with horns. There's a lot of deer on this mountain. A lot of big ones, so take your time."

  He ate some more. By then the rest of us had finished. He looked at his watch. "I guess we'd better saddle up," he said, rising.

  The rest of us followed him on down to the corral. The moon was still high over the shoulder of the peak, and it was very bright out from under the shadow of the spruces. I'd had visions of fumbling around with flashlights and lanterns while we saddled the horses, but the moonlight was bright enough to make it almost as easy as doing it in broad daylight.

  After we'd saddled the horses, we led them back up to the tents and picked up our rifles.

  "How about the signals?" Sloane gasped, patting the butt of his Ruger.

  "Oh, yeah," Miller said. He didn't sound very enthusiastic. "How 'bout this? One shot means a down deer. Two shots for one wounded and running. Three shots if you're in trouble — hurt or sick or hangin' off a cliff by one hand. OK?"

  "Sure," Sloane said. "Anything'll work as long as we all know what it is."

  "You fellers better get movin' if Cap's gonna get them horses back down by shootin' time," Clint said.

  We tied our rifles to the saddles and climbed on. Miller led the way, and we strung out behind him single file.

  By the time we got to his stand, Cal was breathing hard. Even though the horse was doing all the work, he was puffing as if he'd climbed the hill by himself.

  "You OK?" Miller asked him.

  "Fine," Sloane gasped. "You gonna take the horse with you now?"

  "No. Just tie him to that bush there. I'll be back down in about half an hour or so — before shootin' time anyway. You might as well go on over and get settled now though."

  "Right," Cal said, grunting as he slipped off his horse.

  "Good luck, Sloane," Jack said. "Try not to bust anything bigger'n a twelve-point."

  "Sure," Cal grinned. Then he giggled, and I think that made us all feel better. We waved and moved on up the mountainside.

  Jack tied down his horse and faded back into the shadowy bushes with a backward wave.

  Stan dismounted stiffly and stood by his horse, watching us as Miller, McKlearey, and I rode on up the ridge.

  It was darker than hell in McKlearey's notch. His face was nothing more than a pale blur as he reined in his horse.

  "This is as far as I go," he said.

  "I'll be back down in a few minutes, Sarge," Miller said.

  "I'll be here, Cap. Good luck, Danny boy."

  "Same to you, Lou," I answered.

  Then Miller and I went slowly on up the steep trail to my post.

  The moon was just slipping behind the shoulder of the mountain as we came out on the knob at the top of the ridge.

  "Better let my eyes settle into the dark a bit before I start back," Miller said. "Give the horse a rest, too." We both climbed down.

  I offered him a cigarette and we squatted down in the darkness, smoking.

  "Clint tells me you went to college," Miller said after a while.

  "Yeah," I said. "Before I went in the Army."

  "Always wished I'd had the chance to go," he said. "Maybe then I wouldn't be finishin' up on a broke-down horse-ranch, scratchin' to make a livin'."

  "From the way I see it," I said, "you're one of the lucky ones. You're doing something you like."

  "There's that, too," he admitted. "I don't know as it all adds up to all that much though. The work's hard and the pay's pretty slim. A man always wonders if maybe he coulda done better."

  "I know a lot of people who'd trade even across with you, Cap," I said.

  He chuckled. "I guess there ain't much point worryin' about it at this stage."

  I untied my rifle and the water bag from my saddle.

  "You got ever'thing, son? All your gear, I mean?"

  "Yeah," I said, "I'm all set."

  He stood up. Then he scuffed his boot in the thin dirt a couple times. Finally he blurted it out. "What's eatin' on old Sarge, anyway?"

  "God, Cap, I don't know. Maybe he's just having trouble reconverting to civilian life. I met him about a month ago, and he's been jumpy as hell all that time. I've about halfway got a hunch he had a pretty rough time in Vietnam — he's out on a medical. Malaria, I think."

  "Mean stuff," he said. "Clint gets a touch of it now and then."

  "Oh?"

  "Puts him flat on his back."

  "Yeah. I've heard it's no joke."

  "I sure wish ol' Sarge would go a little easier on the liquor though. I can sure tell you that."

  "At the rate he's going," I said, "that bottle of his won't last much longer."

  "He's got more'n one," Miller said gloomily. "That sack of his clinks and gurgles like a liquor store. I wonder he had room for spare sox."

  "Oh, brother," I said.

  "Did you talk with the Big Man on the way down yesterday?" he asked, changing the subject.

  "Yeah," I said. "He's going to let me know if he gets really bad."

  "That's a real good idea. Clint can take him back on down if he gets too sick. Most men start to get their wind before this."

  "I think he'll be all right now," I said.

  "I sure hope so." He looked around. "Well, I guess I better be gettin' on down."

  "Yeah," I said. I glanced at my watch. "About half an hour till shooting time."

  "Ought to work out about right, then," he said. "Well, son, good luck."

  "Thanks, Cap."

  I watched him ride on off down the trail with Ned trailing behind him. Then I slung my rifle and walked on up to the top of the knob. I sat down and lit another cigarette. I'd meant to ask him if the smoke would spook off the deer, but I'd forgotten.

  I unslung the rifle and started pulling cartridges for it out of my gun belt and pushing them one by one into the magazine. I eased the last one up the tube with the bolt and then pushed the bolt-handle down. I snapped on the safety and carefully laid the rifle down on a flat rock. Then I loaded the pistol and put it back in the holster. Now what the hell was I supposed to do for the next twenty-five minutes?

  I sat down on the rock beside the rifle again and looked off toward the east. I could just make out the faintest hint of light along toward the horizon out there.

  I remembered a time in Germany when I'd pulled the four-to-six shift on guard duty and had watched the sun slowly rise over one of those tiny lit
tle fanning villages with the stonewalled, red-tile-roofed houses huddled together under a church spire. It's a good time for getting things sorted out in your mind. I wonder how many times other guys have thought the same thing — probably every guy from along about the year one.

  One thing was sure — I was a helluva long way from Germany now. I started to try to figure out what time it would be in Wertheim about now, but I lost track somewhere off the east coast. I wondered what Heidi was doing right now. I still felt bad about that. If only she hadn't been so damn trusting. No matter what I'd told her, she'd gone on hoping and believing. It was a bad deal all the way around. She'd gotten hurt, and I'd picked up big fat guilt feelings out of it.

  And naturally that got me to thinking about Sue. Oddly enough, it didn't bother me to think about her anymore. For a long time I'd deliberately forced my mind away from it. About the only time I'd thought about her was when I was in the last stages of getting crocked — and that usually wound up getting maudlin. At first, of course, I'd been pretty bitter about it. Now I could see the whole thing in a little better perspective. I'd told a lot of people that it wouldn't have worked out between Sue and me, but that had been a cover-up really. Now I began to see that it was really true — it wouldn't have worked out. It wasn't just her old lady either. Sue and I had looked at the world altogether differently. She'd have probably turned into a Monica on me within the first six months.

  That made me a little less certain about graduate school. Maybe I'd just gone ahead and made those plans to go back to the campus in Seattle with some vague idea in the back of my mind about possibly getting back together with her again. Or maybe I was just looking for a place to hide — or to postpone things. I was awfully good at postponing things.

  The streak of light off along the eastern horizon was spreading now, and the stars were fading. A steel-gray luminosity was beginning to show in the rocks around me. It was still about fifteen minutes until it would be legal to shoot. Once again I found myself wishing my little Bolshevik could see this. Talk about an ambivalent situation, that was really it. I guess I knew she'd been right that night at Sloane's orgy — she and I weren't for keeps. There was no way we could be, but lately I couldn't see anything nice or hear anything or come up with an idea without wanting to share it with her. She was a complete and absolute nut, but I couldn't think of anybody that was more fun to be around.

  A deer crossed the brow of the ridge on the far side of the ravine. I think I looked at it for about thirty seconds before I actually realized it was a deer. It was still too dark to tell if it was a buck or a doe. I began to get that tight excitement I get when I'm hunting — a sort of a double aliveness I only get then. I picked up my rifle and tried to see if I could catch the deer in the scope, but by that time it was down in the brush at the bottom of the ravine. Then I started paying attention to what I was doing. I began scoping the ravine and the ridge carefully.

  It was getting lighter by the minute. I counted three more deer crossing the ridge — three does and a small buck.

  I checked my watch. It was legal to shoot now.

  In the next hour, thirty or forty deer crossed the ridge and another dozen or so drifted across the meadow behind me. Most of them were does, of course, and the bucks were all pretty small. I put the scope on each one and watched them carefully. Deer are funny animals, and I got a kick out of watching them. Some would come out of the brush very cautiously, looking around as if the whole world was out to get them. Others just blundered on out as if they owned the woods.

  The pink sunlight was slipping down the peak above again, and it was broad daylight by now.

  The white deer crossed the ridge above me from the meadow at my back just before the sun got down to the rockfall.

  I caught the flicker of his movement out of the corner of my eye and swung the scope on him. He crossed about seventy yards above me, and he completely filled the scope. I think he looked right straight at me several times. I could see his pale eyelashes fluttering as he blinked nearsightedly in my direction. It never occurred to me to shoot. Maybe if I had, I could have headed off a whole potful of trouble, but it just didn't occur to me — I'm not even sure I could have shot. I just wasn't so hungry that I had to kill something unique.

  21

  "You see any with any size?" Miller asked when he came back up about ten thirty.

  "One pretty good three-point was all," I told him. I'd decided the less I said about the albino, the better.

  "There'll be bigger ones," he said. "The others already went on down." He was looking at me kind of funny.

  "I haven't seen anything in the last hour or so," I told him, walking over to Ned. The damn fool horse reached out and nuzzled at me, almost like a puppy. I scratched his ears for him.

  "You two sure seem to be gettin' along good." Miller chuckled.

  "I think he's all bluff," I said, tying the rifle to the saddle and hooking the water bag over the horn. I climbed on, and we started down the ridge.

  "The Big Man don't seem much better," he said when we got out past McKlearey's notch.

  "He'll hold on," I said. "This is awfully important to him."

  Miller grunted.

  It was close to eleven when we got back down to camp.

  "What the hell's the matter with your eyes Dan?" Jack demanded as I climbed down at the corral. "That big white bastard damn near walked over the top of you up there — couldn't'a been more'n thirty yards from you."

  "Oh?" I said. I saw Miller watching me closely. "I must have been watching another deer."

  "Hell, man, that's the one that counts."

  I unsaddled Ned and ran him into the corral.

  Jack shook his head disgustedly and stalked back up to the fire. I followed him.

  "I'm not shittin' you," he told the others. "Just goddamn near ran right over him. I was watchin' the whole time through my scope."

  "Why didn't you shoot?" McKlearey demanded.

  "Christ, Lou, he was almost a mile away, and Stan, you, and Dan were all between me and him. I ain't about to get trigger-happy."

  "Are you sure it was the same deer?" Stan asked.

  "Ain't very likely there's more than one like that on the whole mountain," Jack said. "I still can't see how you missed spottin' him, Dan."

  "Coulda been brush or a rise of ground between the Kid and that deer," Miller said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "That ground can be damn tricky when you get at a different angle."

  "Now that's sure the truth," Clint said. "I seen a nine-pointer walk no more'n ten yards in front of ol' Cap here one time. From where I was sittin' it looked like they were right in each other's laps, but when I got down there I seen that deer had been in a kind of shallow draw."

  Miller chuckled. "Biggest deer we seen all that year, too."

  "I guess that explains it then," Jack said dubiously.

  "Where's Sloane?" I asked.

  "He's lying down in the tent," Stan said. "He's still not feeling too well."

  "Is he asleep?"

  "I think he was going to try to sleep a little."

  "I won't pester him then," I said. "Any of you guys see any good ones?"

  "I seen a four-point," McKlearey said, "but I figure it's early yet."

  "That's playin' it smart, Sarge," Miller said. "We got plenty of time left."

  "What time you think we oughta go back up?" Jack asked him.

  "Oh, 'bout three thirty or so," Miller said. "Evenin' huntin' ain't all that productive this time of year. Deer'll move in the evening, but not near as much as in the mornin'."

  We loafed around until lunchtime and then ate some more venison and beans. We tried to get Sloane to eat, but he said he didn't feel much like it, so we left him alone.

  The rest of the guys sacked out after we'd eaten, but I wasn't really sleepy. I was feeling kind of sticky and grimy and thought a bit about maybe trying to swim in the beaver pond, but one hand stuck in there convinced me that it would be an awful mistake. I think th
at water came right out of a glacier somewhere. I settled for a stand-up bath out of the washbasin and called it good. Then I washed out my shirt and underwear and hung them on limbs to dry. I felt better in clean clothes and with at least the top layer of dirt off.

  At three thirty we went down to the corral. Sloane was still feeling pretty rough, and Miller suggested that maybe he ought to just stay in bed so he'd be better tomorrow. Cal didn't give him much of an argument.

  "Horses'll be OK to stay with you men," Miller said. "They're a whole lot quieter come evenin'. I'll just ride on up to the top with the Kid here, and we'll come on down end of shootin' time."

  We all got on our horses and started up the ridge. It felt a little funny not having Cal along. Each of the others peeled off at their regular stands, and Miller and I scrambled on up to my knob at the top.

  We got down and tied the horses securely and went on up to the rock where I'd sat that morning.

  Miller lit a cigarette. "Sun's still pretty warm, ain't it?" he said.

  "Yeah," I agreed. I could see that something was bothering him.

  After a long while he said it. "How come you didn't shoot this mornin'?"

  "I didn't see anything I wanted to shoot," I said.

  "I was down below watchin' you with my field glasses," he said. "I saw you follow that freak deer with your scope all the way across the ridge. I don't think your brother saw you."

  "I don't know, Cap," I said. "I just didn't feel like shooting him."

  He nodded. "Maybe I'd feel the same way," he said. "I've seen a few of 'em and I've never shot one."

  "I just watched him," I said. "I don't think I even considered pulling the trigger on him."

  "In a way I almost wish you had. It woulda put an end to it. Your brother and ol' Sarge are startin' to get at each other about it."

  "I know," I said. "I wish the damn deer would get the hell off this side of the mountain."

  "Ain't very likely."

  I had a cigarette.

  "Doe," Miller said, nodding at the other ridge.

  We watched her step daintily down into the ravine. Then something spooked her. She snorted and bounded up the side of the ravine and on over the ridge.