I came up to the corral about the time Lou was getting off his horse. Jack was waiting for him.
“Now look, you son of a bitch,” he started. “I told you to do your goddamn shootin’ in your own territory.”
“Fuck ya!”
“I mean it, goddammit! That goddamn deer came out right in front of me, and you were at least five hundred yards away. You didn’t have a fuckin’ chance of hittin’ ’im. You shot just to run ’im off so I couldn’t get a clear shot.”
“Tough titty, Alders. Don’t tell me how to hunt.”
“All right, motherfucker, I can see the whole hillside, too, remember. I can play the same game. And even if you dumbluck out and hit ’im, I’ll shoot the son of a bitch to pieces before you can get to ’im. You won’t have enough left to be worth bringin’ out.”
McKlearey glared at Jack, his face white. They were standing about ten feet apart and they were both holding their rifles. Jack’s hand was inching toward the butt of his automatic.
“That’s just damn well enough of that kinda talk,” Miller’s voice cracked from behind them.
“This is between him and me,” Jack said.
“Not up here, it ain’t,” Miller said. “Now I don’t know what kinda trouble you two got goin’ between yourselves back in town, but I told you the first day to leave all that stuff down there. I meant what I said, too.”
“We paid you to bring us up here,” McKlearey said, “not to wet-nurse us.” His eyes were kind of wild, and he was holding his rifle with the muzzle pointed about halfway between Jack and Cap.
I’m still not sure why I did it, but I slipped the hammer-thong off my pistol. I think Lou saw me do it because he slowly shifted his rifle until it was tucked up under his right arm so there was no way he could use either of his guns.
Miller had thought over what Lou had said. “I guess maybe we better just pack up and go on back down,” he said. He turned his back on them and walked back up to the fire.
“We paid for ten goddamn days!” McKlearey yelled after him.
I hawked and spit on the ground, right between them.
“He can’t do that,” Jack said.
“Don’t make any bets,” I said flatly. “You guys made a verbal contract with him that first day. He told you that if there was any trouble in camp, we’d all come out. You agreed to it.”
“That wouldn’t stand up in court, would it?” Lou asked.
I nodded. “You bet it would. Particularly around here. If you were going to take him to court, it’d be in this county, and the jury’d all be his neighbors.” I wasn’t that sure, but it sounded pretty good.
“Well, what the hell do we do now?” Jack demanded.
“You might as well go pack your gear,” I said. “He meant it about going back down.”
“Who needs ’im?” Lou said. “Let ’im go.”
“It’s twelve miles back to the road, McKlearey,” I said, “and he’ll take the horses, the tents, and all the cooking equipment with him. Even if you got that damned freak deer, how would you get him out of the woods?”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“You sound like you’re on his side,” Jack accused me.
“How ’bout that?” I said. I walked off down toward the pond. It was a helluva goddamn way to wind up the trip.
I guess both Jack and Lou did a lot of crawfishing, but Miller finally relented. I suppose he really didn’t want his first trip as a guide to wind up that way. Anyway, they managed to talk him out of it.
Much as I wanted to stay up there, I still thought Miller was making a mistake. I went back to camp and moved all my gear into the empty tent.
“You don’t have to do that, Dan,” Jack said quietly as I started to roll up my sleeping bag.
“We’ll both have more room this way,” I said.
“Christ, Dan, you know how McKlearey can rub a guy raw.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but you’re grown-up now, Jack. You’re not some runny-nosed kid playing cowboys and Indians.” I stopped in the doorway of the tent. “One other thing, old buddy,” I said, “keep your goddamn hand away from that pistol from now on. There’s not gonna be any of that shit up here.” I went on out of the tent. McKlearey was standing outside. I guess he’d been listening.
“That goes for you, too, shithead,” I told him.
Christ! I was right in the middle again. How the hell do I always get myself in that spot?
It took me about fifteen minutes to get settled in, and then we ate lunch. Nobody talked much. Both Jack and Lou went back to their tents after we finished.
“I probably shouldn’t have changed my mind,” Cap said quietly. “I got a feelin’ it was a mistake.”
“They’ve quieted down a bit,” I said. “I’ll go on up with my brother from now on—maybe I can keep him from getting so hot about things.”
“What’s got them two at each other that way?” Clint asked me.
“They just don’t get along,” I said. I knew that if I told them the real story, it would blow the whole trip. “This has been building for quite a while now. I thought they could forget about it while they were up here, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Sure makes things jumpy in camp,” Miller said shortly.
“It sure does,” I agreed.
Jack wasn’t too happy about my going up the hill with him, but I don’t think he dared to say much about it in front of Miller.
When we got up there, he wouldn’t talk to me, so I just let it go.
A good-looking five-point came out just about sunset, but he ignored it. No matter what he might have told Miller, he was still after that freak. After shooting time, we rode back to camp without waiting for Lou.
“That was a nice deer you got for Sloane,” Jack said finally. I guess he wanted to make peace.
“Fair.” I said. “It was a lot of fun hunting that way.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Miller and I just pussyfooted through the woods until we spotted him.”
“Sloane’ll be pretty tickled with him.”
That seemed to exhaust that topic of conversation pretty much.
Supper was lugubrious. Nobody talked to anybody else. Jack stared fixedly into the fire, and McKlearey sat with his back to a stump, watching everybody and holding that filthy bandage out in front of him so he wouldn’t bump his hand. I wondered how bad the cut was by now.
I fixed myself a drink and settled back down by the fire.
“Watch yourself, Danny,” Lou said suddenly, his eyes very bright. “Same thing might happen to you as happened to Sullivan.”
It didn’t make any sense, so I didn’t answer him. I noticed, though, that after that he concentrated on me. He seemed to flinch just a little bit every time I moved. Did the silly bastard actually think I was going to shoot him?
“Bedtime,” he finally said. He got up and went to his tent. Jack waited a few minutes, and then he went to his tent, too.
I talked quietly with Cap and Clint for a while, trying to stir up the good feeling we’d had going that morning, but it didn’t quite come off. I think we were all too worried.
I went on back to the latrine. On my way back to my tent I heard a funny slapping kind of noise over in the woods. I stopped and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark a little more. Then I saw a movement.
It was McKlearey. I guess he’d rolled out under the back of his tent or something, and he was back in the trees practicing his draw.
He was getting pretty good at it.
30
CLINT woke me the next morning, and I rolled out of the sack quickly. It was chilly, and for some reason it seemed darker that morning than usual. Then it dawned on me. The moon had already set. It had been going down earlier and earlier every morning, and now it was setting before we even got up.
Breakfast was as quiet as supper the night before, and we had to take the lantern down to the corral with us when we went to saddle the horses. Miller seemed particularly
grim. We mounted up and rode on up the ridge. It was a damned good thing the horses knew the way by now because it was blacker than hell out there.
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 I 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 than 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 kill 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 prot
ruding 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 his 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.