High Hunt

by Eddings, David

  I booted Ned into a fast lope, my stomach all tied up in knots.

  26

  “DAN," Sloan gasped when I got up to him, "I'm sick. I've got to go down." He looked awful.

  "Your chest again?" I asked, sliding down out of the saddle. Ned was panting from the run uphill.

  Sloan nodded weakly. "It's all I can do to breathe," he said.

  "Here," I said, "you get on the horse."

  "I can't handle that horse," he said.

  "I'll lead him," I said. I tied his rifle and canteen to the saddle and helped him up. Ned didn't care much for being led, but I didn't worry about that.

  "How is he?" Miller asked when I got him down.

  "Bad," I said, "worse than ever."

  "Let's get 'im off the horse."

  We got him down and over to the fire.

  "Do you want a drink, Cal?" I asked him.

  He shook his head. "My goddamn heart's beatin' so fast now it feels like it's gonna jump out of my goddamn chest."

  Miller squatted down in front of him and looked him over carefully. "I hate to say this," he told Cal, "but I'm afraid you're gonna have to go on back down. You're gettin' worse instead of better."

  Cal nodded.

  "I'll refund part of what you paid."

  "No," Cal said. "It's not your fault. You took us on in good faith. You don't owe me a dime."

  Miller shrugged. "I wish to hell it hadn't happened," he said.

  "I was doin' OK there for a while," Cal said, "but it came back this morning worse than ever."

  "Well, let's get you laid down for now. That way you can get rested up for the ride."

  We got Sloane over to his tent and came back to the fire.

  "Somebody's gonna have to go out with him," Miller said. "He ain't gonna be able to drive the way he is."

  I felt a sudden pang — almost a panic. I didn't want to leave yet. Then I was ashamed of myself for it.

  "I'll go," Stan said very quietly. "I rode with him coming over, and besides, I'm all finished up now anyway."

  Miller nodded, not saying anything.

  "I could just as easily go, Stan," I said, not meaning it.

  "There are other reasons, too," he said.

  I looked at him. He really wanted to go. "All right, Stan," I said.

  Miller looked at me. "You want to go fetch the others down for dinner, son?" he said. "I'll help Clint get things together for the trip down."

  "Sure," I said. I went on down to get the horses.

  Neither Jack nor McKlearey seemed particularly upset when I told them that Cal and Stan were leaving.

  "I didn't figure Sloane would be able to hold out much longer," Jack said. "I've been sayin' all along that he wouldn't get it under control."

  That wasn't how I remembered it.

  McKlearey had merely grunted.

  When we got back down though, the camp was pretty quiet. Stan had packed his and Sloane's gear and had it all laid out by the corral.

  After we ate, we all pitched in and helped get things ready.

  Clint skinned out Stan's deer and got it in a game bag. "Ill take yours down, too," he told me. "I'll hang it in the icehouse at the place."

  "Have you got an icehouse?" I asked him. "I didn't think there were any of those left in the world."

  "Well, it ain't really an icehouse. We got a big refrigeration unit in it. We don't keep it set too cold. Works about the same way."

  McKlearey came over and looked Stan's deer over. "Ain't very big, is it?" he said.

  "I don't see yours hangin' up there yet," Clint said.

  McKlearey grunted and walked off.

  "I'm gettin' to where I don't much care for ol' Sarge," Clint said.

  "You're not the only one," I told him.

  "Still," Clint said, squinting at the skinned carcass, "it really ain't much of a deer."

  "Better than nothing," I said.

  Clint, Stan, and Sloane left about two that afternoon. The rest of us stood around and watched them ride out. We'd tried to joke with Cal a little before he left, but he'd been too sick. His face was very pale, framed in the dark fur of his parka hood. The day seemed pretty warm to me, but I guess he felt cold. Just before they left, he gave Miller his tag.

  "If you get a chance" — he gasped —”you might have somebody fill it for me."

  "Sure," Miller said, "we'll get one for you."

  "I think I'll go on up a little early," McKlearey said after they'd disappeared down the trail.

  Jack looked at him narrowly. "Maybe I will, too," he said.

  "Not much point," Miller said.

  "We can find our way up there," Jack said.

  Miller looked at them. Finally he shrugged. "Just don't stay too late," he said.

  "We both got watches," McKlearey said, nursing his bandaged hand.

  Miller walked away.

  I felt like there'd been a funeral in camp. Jack and Lou went on up the hill, and I sat around watching Miller get things squared away for dinner. I offered to help but he said no.

  "You take care of that fish?" he asked me.

  "Oh, hell." I'd completely forgotten the fish.

  "Why don't you see if you can get a few more?" he said.

  "Sure." I got Clint's pole and went on down to the pond. It was a little slow, but I managed to get three more before the sun went down. I cleaned them and took them back up to camp.

  "Enough to go around." Miller grinned at me. He seemed to be in a better humor now.

  "I guess if I was fishing to eat, I wouldn't starve," I said, "but I don't think I'd gain too much weight."

  "Not many would," he said. "Clint, maybe, but I sure wouldn't. Maybe I just ain't got the patience."

  "Maybe you just can't think like a fish," I told him.

  He didn't answer. He was looking on off toward the mountains.

  "Weather comin' in," he said.

  I looked up. A heavy cloudbank was building up along the tops of the peaks.

  "Bad?" I asked him.

  "Hard to tell. Rain, most likely."

  Lou and Jack came on down about dark, and we ate supper. There weren't enough trout to make a meal of, so we just ate them as a kind of side dish.

  With Clint, Stan, and Sloane gone, the group around the fire seemed very small, and it was a whole lot quieter.

  "I think I seen 'im today," Lou said finally.

  "Where?" Jack asked quickly.

  "Up above me. I think I'll move on up to Danny's spot tomorrow."

  "You'll have to walk that last bit," Miller said. "That horse of yours ain't that good."

  "I can do that, too," Lou told him.

  After that, nobody said much.

  "Clint coming back tonight?" I asked Miller finally.

  "More'n likely," he said. "He'll probably try to beat the weather."

  "Think we'll get snow?" Jack asked him.

  "Could. Rain more likely."

  "What'll that do to the deer?"

  "Hold 'em back at first. They'll have to come out eventually though."

  I sat staring at the fire. I didn't much like the way Lou and Jack were beginning to push on Miller. The whole situation had changed now. With the others out of camp, things were getting pretty tight. Before, Cal and Stan had been around to kind of serve as a buffer between these two, and, of course, Clint's stories had helped, too. It was a lot grimmer now. I almost began to wish I'd gone down with the others. That would have left Miller right in the middle though, and that wouldn't have been any good. He didn't know what was going on.

  "I suppose we might as well bed down," Miller said finally. "I imagine we'll get woke up when Clint comes in."

  We all stood up and went off to our tents.

  "I wish to hell you and McKlearey would get off this damn thing about that stupid deer," I told Jack after we'd crawled in our sacks.

  "You know what's goin' on," he said shortly. "I ain't gonna back away from him like Larkin did."

  "Stan didn't back away," I said. "St
an finally got smart."

  "How do you figure?"

  "Day before yesterday he took a shot at Lou. Sprayed dirt all over him."

  "No shit?" Jack sounded surprised.

  "Scared the piss out of him."

  Jack laughed. "I wish I coulda seen it."

  "It's not really that funny," I said. "That's why Stan left camp. He wasn't sure he could make himself miss next time."

  "I sure wouldn't a missed. So Lou was playin' around with Stan's wife, too, huh? I didn't think he was her type."

  "He isn't. She got stupid, is all."

  "Well, don't get shook. I ain't gonna shoot 'im. I'm just gonna outhunt 'im. I'm gonna get that deer."

  I grunted and rolled over to go to sleep.

  McKlearey had another nightmare that night, screaming for Sullivan and for some guy named Danny — I knew that it wasn't me. It took us quite a while to get him calmed down this time.

  Then about two thirty or so Clint came in, and we all got up again to help him get the horses unsaddled. It had started to drizzle by then, so we had to move all the saddles into the now-empty tent where Stan and Cal had slept.

  All in all it was a pretty hectic night.

  27

  It 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. "Remember 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 do
wn? 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.

  28

  After 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.