High Hunt

by Eddings, David

  Miller had insisted that Jack take Sloane's old spot, the lowest on the hill, and that Lou take the very top one. I guess he wanted to get as much distance between the two of them as possible.

  As soon as Cap dropped us off, Jack went over to the edge of the ravine. I stayed with the horses until Cap came back from dropping off Lou.

  "I sure hope they both fill today," he said. "All the fun's gone out of it now."

  "Yeah," I said. "I'll remind Jack that there's only three more days. Maybe that'll bring him to his senses."

  "Somethin' is gonna have to. See you about noon, son."

  "Right, Cap."

  He rode off down into the darkness, and I went over to find Jack.

  "See anything?" I asked.

  "Still too goddamn dark," he said, and then, "I don't know why I had to get stuck with the bottom of the hill like this."

  "Man," I told him, "I got a five-point yesterday four miles below here. They're all over the side of the mountain."

  "Not the one / want," he said.

  "Are you still hung up on that damn thing?"

  "I said I was gonna get that white one, and I meant it."

  "Goddamn it, Jack, there are only three days left after today. You're going to wind up going down empty."

  "Don't worry about it," he said, "I know what I'm doin'."

  We sat waiting for it to get light.

  The sky paled and the shadowy forms of the rocks and bushes began to appear around us. Several does and a couple small bucks went down the ravine below our post.

  "They're starting to move," I said.

  "Yeah."

  I looked at the thin, dark man beside me with the wiry stubble smudging his cheeks and chin. Jack's eyes were hollow, with dark circles under them. The red baseball cap he was wearing was pulled low over his eyebrows, and he was staring fixedly up the gorge. I tried to make out the shadow of the boy I'd grown up with in his face, but it wasn't there anymore. Jack was a stranger to me. I guess I'd been kidding myself all along. He always had been a stranger. The whole business when I'd gotten back to Tacoma had been a fake. I suppose we both knew it, but neither one of us had had the guts or the honesty to admit it.

  When the white deer came out, he was on top of that bluff that was opposite Jack's old post. The rock face dropped about forty or fifty feet onto a jumble of rocks and gravel and then fell again into the wash at the bottom of the hill. Maybe Jack wouldn't see him.

  "There he is!" Jack hissed.

  Damn it!

  "What is it?" he demanded, his hands trembling violently. "Two hundred yards?"

  "It's pretty far," I said, "and he's right on top of that cliff."

  The deer looked around uncertainly, as if he were lost. Somehow he looked more helpless man ever.

  Jack was getting squared away for a shot.

  "Wait, for Chrissake!" I said. "Let him get away from that goddamn cliff."

  "I can't wait. McKlearey'll spot him." His hands were shaking so badly that the end of his gun-barrel looked like the tip of a fishing rod.

  "Calm down," I snapped. "You'll never get off a shot that way."

  "Shut up!" he snapped and yanked the trigger.

  His Mauser barked hollowly. The deer looked around, startled. "Run, you son of a bitch," I muttered under my breath.

  Jack was feverishly trying to work the bolt of his gun, his shaking hands unable to handle the simple operation.

  "Calm down," I said again.

  "He'll get away," Jack said. "Oh, Jesus, he'll get away!" He rammed another shell up the tube. He fired again, not even bothering to aim.

  McKlearey's gun barked from up the ridge. He must have been at least six hundred yards from the deer.

  "Oh, Jesus!" Jack said, fighting with the bolt again. He stumbled to his feet.

  "Jack, for Christ's sake, calm down! You'll never hit anything this way!" I put my hand on his arm.

  "Get away from me, you bastard!" he screamed. He spun on me, pointing the rifle at me and still fighting with the bolt.

  It was happening — it wasn't exactly the way it had been that day in the pawnshop, but it was close enough.

  I thumbed off the hammer-thong and left my hand hanging over my pistol-butt. "Don't close that bolt with that thing pointed at me, Jack," I told him.

  Maybe some day you'll be no good, and then I'll shoot you. There it was again.

  "I mean it, Jack," I said. "Point that gun-muzzle away from me." I felt very cold inside. I knew he could never close that bolt and get his finger onto the trigger before I got one off. I was only about five feet away from him. There was no way I could miss. I was going to kin my brother. It hung there, an absolute certainty — no fuss, no dramatics, nothing but a mechanical reflex action. I felt disconnected from myself, as if I were standing back, watching something I had no control over. I even began to mourn for my dead brother.

  Then his face kind of sank in on itself. He knew it, too.

  Then McKlearey fired again.

  Jack spun back around and fired at the deer three times in a row from a standing position, his hand very smooth on the bolt now.

  The deer had frozen up. I thought I could see him flinch with the sound of each shot.

  McKlearey fired.

  Jack fired his last round. His hand dove into his jacket pocket and came out jerkily with a handful of shells. He started feverishly shoving them down into the magazine.

  McKlearey fired again.

  The deer lurched and fell on his side, his sticklike legs scrabbling at the rocks and bushes.

  "Aw, no!" Jack said in an agonized voice.

  The deer stumbled to his feet, staggered a step or two and, with what looked almost like a deliberate lunge, fell off the cliff.

  "Aw, God damn it!" Jack said, his voice breaking oddly.

  The deer hit the rock-pile below and bounced high in the air. I could hear his antlers snap off when he hit. His white body plunged into the brush like a leaping trout reentering the water. I heard him bounce again and tumble on down the ravine.

  "Aw, goddamn son of a bitch!" Jack sobbed, slamming his rifle down on the ground. He sat down heavily and buried his face in his hands. He was crying.

  Up the ridge McKlearey gave a wild yell of triumph followed by a barrage of shots from his pistol. He must have emptied the thing. Maybe, with any kind of luck, one of them would drop back in on him.

  31

  I went straight on down into the ravine, leaving Jack on the ridge to get himself straightened out. The brush was a little tough at first, but I got the hang of it in a couple minutes. I just bulled on through, hanging onto the limbs to keep from falling — kind of like going down hand over hand.

  I could still hear McKlearey screaming and yelling up on the knob at the top of the ridge.

  I'd marked the last place where I'd seen the deer, and I hit the bottom a good ways below where that had been. I was pretty sure I was below the carcass.

  The wash at the bottom of the ravine was about fifteen feet wide and six to ten feet deep. I imagined that when the snow melted, it was probably a boiling river, but it was bone-dry right now. Most of the sides were steep gravel banks with large rocks jutting out here and there. I finally found a place where I could get down into the wash. I seemed to remember hearing some gravel sliding after the deer had stopped bouncing. I started up the ravine.

  The deer was about a hundred yards from where I'd come down. He was lying huddled at the foot of a gravel bank in a place where the wash made a sharp turn. He was dead, of course.

  Only one of his legs was sticking out; the others were all kind of tucked up under him. The protruding leg was at an odd angle.

  His head was twisted around as if he were staring back over his shoulder, and a couple of his ribs were poked out through his skin. His fur wasn't really white but rather a cream color. It had smudges and grass stains on it — either from his normal activity or from the fall through the brush.

  His antlers were shattered off close to hi
s head, and the one red eye I could see was about half open. There was dirt in it.

  A thin dribble of gravel slithered down the steep bank and spilled down across his shoulder. A heavy stick protruded from the bank just above him.

  "You poor bastard," I said softly. I nudged at his side with my toe, and I could hear broken bones grating together inside. He was like a sack full of marbles.

  "Probably broke every bone in his body," I muttered. I took hold of the leg. It was loose and flopping. I tucked it back up beside the rest of him. Folded up the way he was, he didn't take up much more room than a sack of potatoes. I squatted down beside him.

  "Well," I said, "you did it. God knows we ran you off this hill often enough. You just had to keep coming back, didn't you?" I reached over and brushed some of the dirt off his face. The eye with the dirt in it looked at me calmly.

  "I sure wish I knew what the hell to do now, old buddy," I said. "You're Lou's deer, and I suppose I ought to make him keep you, no matter what shape you're in. Christ only knows, though, what that'll lead to."

  How did I always get into these boxes? All I wanted to do was just look out for myself. I had enough trouble doing that without taking on responsibilities for other people as well. I had to try to figure out, very fast, what would be the consequences of about three different courses of action open to me right now, and no matter what I decided to do, I had no guarantees that the whole damn mess wouldn't blow up in my face. I sure wished that Miller were here.

  I could hear McKlearey yelling, but he sounded like he was coming down the hill now. Whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to make up my mind in a hurry.

  I put my hand on the deer's shoulder. He was still warm. A kind of muscle spasm or reflex made his eyelid flutter at me.

  "You're a lot of help," I said to the deer. I stood up.

  I could hear McKlearey crashing around in the brush several hundred yards up the ravine.

  "Well, piss on it!" I said and pulled on the limb sticking out of the gravel bank. The whole bank gave way, and I had to jump back out of the way to keep from getting half-buried myself. The slide completely covered the carcass. I stood holding the stick for a moment, then I pitched it off into the brush. I turned around and went on back downstream.

  Lou crossed the wash and came down over the rock-pile at the foot of the cliff. He stopped yelling when he started finding pieces of antler. He was there for quite awhile, gathering up all the chunks and fragments he could find. Then he came on down. I had climbed up out of the wash and was standing up on the bank when he got to where I was.

  "You find 'im, Danny?" he asked me from down in the wash. His face was shiny with sweat, and his eyes were feverish.

  "I came up from down that way," I said. "He must be above here somewhere." It wasn't exactly a lie.

  "No, I came down this creek-bed. He ain't up there."

  I shrugged. "Maybe in the brush somewhere —”

  "The bastard busted his horns," he said, holding out both hands full of dark fragments.

  "Damn shame," I said.

  He began stuffing the pieces into various pockets. "A good taxidermist oughta be able to glue 'em all back together, don't you think?"

  "I don't know, Lou. I've never heard of anybody doing it before."

  "Sure they can," he said. "But where the hell is the goddamn deer?"

  "It's got to be up above," I said. "Did you get any kind of Mood-trail?"

  "Shit! The way that fucker was bouncin'?"

  "Maybe if we find one of the places where he hit —”

  He'd finally finished stuffing chunks of horn in his pockets, and suddenly his eyes narrowed and he squinted up at me. His face was very cold and hard looking.

  "Oh, now I get it," he said. "You and your brother, huh? You two are tryin' to keep my deer."

  "You couldn't give me that deer after you knocked it off that cliff," I told him flatly.

  "That's my goddamn deer," he said angrily.

  "I never said it wasn't."

  "Where the hell is it? Where the hell have you got my deer?" His voice was getting shrill.

  "Come on, Lou, get serious."

  "Don't do this to me, Danny." His eyes were bulging now.

  "Settle down, Lou. Let's go back up and check out the brush."

  "Danny? Is that you, Danny?" His face was twitching, and his voice was kind of crooning.

  "Come on, Lou," I said, "let's go back up to where he hit."

  "You know what I did to Sullivan, don't you, Danny?"

  "Come on, Lou," I said.

  Now what the hell was going on?

  "It wasn't my fault, Danny. It was so fuckin' dark, and Charlie was all around us."

  "Lou, snap out of it!"

  "It wasn't my fault, Danny. He come sneakin' up on me. He didn't give me no password or nothin'."

  "Lou!"

  "Nobody knows where he is, Danny. I hid 'im real good. Nobody'll ever know."

  I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

  "Don't tell the lieutenant, Danny. Everything will be OK if you just keep your mouth shut about it." His eyes were wild now.

  "Come on, Lou, snap out of it. That's all over now." I was starting to get a little jumpy about this. It could get bad in a minute. And I still wasn't over the little session with Jack up on the ridge.

  "I'll pay you, Danny. I got five hundred or so saved up for a big R and R. It's all yours. Just for Chrissake, don't say nothin'."

  Very slowly I eased off the hammer-thong again. How many times was this going to happen in one day?

  "Please, Danny, I'm beggin' ya. They'll hang me for God's sake." His rifle was slung over his left shoulder, and his right hand was on his belt, real close to that damned .38. I wondered if he'd remembered to reload it. Knowing McKlearey, he probably had.

  "OK, Kid," he said, "if that's the way you want it." The pleading note had gone out of his voice, and his face was pale and very set.

  "McKlearey," I said as calmly as I could, "if you make one twitch toward that goddamn pistol, I'll shoot you down in your tracks and you damn well know I can do it. You know I can take you any time I feel like it. Now straighten up and let's go find that deer." I sure hoped that I sounded more convincing than I felt. Frankly, I was scared to death.

  "I been practicin'," he said, his face crafty.

  "Not enough to make that much difference, Lou," I said.

  He stood there looking up at me. I guess it got through to him — even through what had happened on the Delta — that I had him cold. At least I had him cold enough to make the whole thing a bad gamble for him. Finally he shook his head as though coming out of a bad dream.

  "You say you came up the creek-bed?" he asked as if nothing had happened.

  "Yeah," I said. "The deer's gotta be above us somewhere — maybe off in the brush."

  "Maybe if we each took one side," he said. "It sure as hell ain't down in here." He turned and clambered up out of the wash on the other side.

  "Danny?" he said from the other side of the wash.

  "Yeah?"

  "Sullivan and the other Danny are both dead, did you know that? Charlie got 'em. They been dead a long time now."

  "Sorry to hear that, Lou."

  "Yeah. It was a bad deal. They was my buddies — but Charlie got "em."

  I didn't want to get started on that again. "Work your way up to where you found those pieces of horn, Lou," I said. "I'll go up this side."

  "Sure. Fuckin' deer has gotta be here someplace."

  I let him lead out. I wasn't about to let him get behind me.

  "You find 'im?" Miller called from the ridge.

  "Not yet, Cap," I called back.

  "Any sign?"

  "Lou found some pieces of horn," I said.

  "And some fur," Lou called to me. "Tell 'im I found some white fur, too."

  "He got some fur, too," I relayed.

  "He's gotta be down there then."

  "Yeah. I know."

  "Did he go off tha
t bluff?"

  "Yeah. I saw him fall."

  Cap shook his head disgustedly and started to come down into the ravine.

  The three of us combed the bottom for about an hour and a half. We passed the collapsed gravel bank about a half dozen times, but neither of them seemed to notice anything peculiar about it.

  "It's no good," Miller said finally.

  "But he's down here," Lou said. "We all seen 'im fall. I got 'im. I got 'im from way up there." He pointed wildly.

  "I ain't doubtin' you shot him," Cap said, "but we ain't gonna find 'im."

  "He's gotta be here," Lou said frenziedly. "Let's go back just one more time. He's here. He's gotta be here."

  Miller shook his head. "Face it, Sarge," he said. "He's under a rockslide." He nudged the bank of the wash with the tow of his cowboy boot. A small avalanche resulted. "This whole gully is like this. One little bump brings it right down. There's two dozen places in this stretch we been workin' where the bank has give way just recently. He could be under any one of 'em. Only way you're gonna find that deer is with a shovel — and even then you wouldn't get him till the snow came."

  "Maybe he's under a bush," Lou said. "Did we look over there?" He pointed desperately toward a place we'd all checked a half dozen times.

  "We ain't gonna find 'im," Miller said.

  "I gotta find 'im!" Lou screamed. "I gotta!" Then his face fell apart, and he started to cry like a little kid.

  Miller stepped up to him and slapped nun sharply in the face.

  "Come out of that, now, Sergeant!" he barked. "That's an order."

  Lou's eyes snapped open. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry, sir. I — I guess I lost my head."

  "Let's get on Up to the ridge," Miller commanded. We started climbing. McKlearey coughed now and then — or maybe he was sobbing, I'm not sure. I still didn't let him get behind me.

  32

  I don't think either Jack or Lou said more than ten words the rest of that day. Miller, Clint, and I were so busy watching them that we didn't say much either, so it was awfully quiet in camp. Neither one of them went out that evening, and we all sat around staring at each other. At least McKlearey had quit talking to himself.