He hardly bothered to go out for wood anymore, just sat there, drinking water, feeling his clothes going slack on him, imagining the dog, him raising the gun, firing, going for it with his knife, and he was some time before he registered that his vision of the dog wasn’t just a vision, that the dog was really before him, standing there, staring at him from the entrance, and he already had the gun up, cocking, thinking, this time if I don’t kill it it’ll come for me, aiming, finger tensing on the trigger as he recognized what it was holding in its mouth, and that second’s hesitation was the difference.
A rabbit.
The dog was holding a rabbit in its mouth, coming forward, dropping it, and he didn’t understand. If the dog had a rabbit, why didn’t the damn thing eat it? Why was the dog dropping the rabbit, backing off, not leaving, just settling down on its stomach like before, and then he realized. Meat. The dog had liked the taste of the roasted meat, and he was grabbing at the rabbit, slitting with his knife, gutting, skinning, spitting it onto a stick, cooking, and he almost forgot to give some to the dog, he was so hungry, but the dog growled at him as he raised it to his mouth, and he ripped off a leg, throwing it, and they were eating. The dog brought him two more rabbits like that in the next few days. Then a squirrel, and in time they shared the burrow.
12
On the first warm day, he came down off the mountain. He had gone up to the cliff wall high above the hollow he was in and pried away rocks and carried them down, taking Sarah out of the burrow and covering her with them. Still not satisfied, he had gone around to the trees below, working down until he reached where he had not yet gone for firewood, breaking off thick dead limbs, digging up fallen timber in the snow, hauling up whatever he could and covering the rocks with them, twisting off rich green fir boughs from the trees nearby and setting them over the timber. Then finally certain that no animals would get to her, he looked once more inside the burrow for what he could save, taking the rusted pot and the three empty cans from the soup and the peas, putting them and the saddle blankets and the thin square of metal inside a sack that he had tied together made from animal fur. He hitched the sack over one shoulder and hitched the rolled-up sleeping bag over his other shoulder, using thongs tied together from the horsehide. Adjusting his snow goggles over his eyes, he set off through the trees. His woolen gloves had long since worn through, replaced by mitts that he had made from fur. His snowshoes were much stronger than he’d hoped, their lacing on occasion snapping, needing to be retied, but not so often that they bothered him, and he made a practice of checking them each night.
He stood on a rim of high ground, looking back toward the hollow he’d just left, staring toward what from this height he could only guess was the mound of rocks and timber and fir boughs that protected Sarah. Promising to come back, he turned, working farther up through the trees toward the pass that led to the corrugated metal shack and the mine. It took him four days getting there, retracing his route as exactly as he could. He and the dog made camp in the sheltering clump of trees where he and Sarah once had slept, making camp the next night among the fallen timber, eating the cooked meat that he had saved from the rabbits and squirrels the dog had been bringing to him. They slept together in the sleeping bag, the saddle blankets under them, him hardly ever speaking, waking and working on through the trees while the dog darted off, and he kept moving, the dog catching up to him with an animal to replenish their supply. They finally made it to the pass, shuffling up through the snow near the tumbled shacks from the miners, reaching the top where the ground was bare enough that he could take off his snowshoes for a time, walking solidly on the floor of rock past the cliff walls on both sides, and there it was, the corrugated metal shack and the mine. They camped in the tunnel just as he and Sarah had done, making a fire, cooking, warming themselves. He looked around for any signs that his hunters had been here searching for him, but there were none, and he woke the next morning, putting on his snowshoes, wading down toward the ruined town.
It was drifted with snow, him passing the hollow where he and Sarah had stopped after Claire had been killed, taking the route down through the trees which as near as he could guess was the way he had gone to look for Claire that night, crossing the snow-blown meadow, coming to where the town was nothing more than dips and rises, apparently from irregularities in the plain as much as anything, occasional burnt-out beams and timbers standing up or showing through, black against the sun-bright drifts to show what once had been. He made a shelter from charred boards, then waded around to find evidence of what had happened here: of the sentry that the old man had knifed, of the old man himself, of the guy that Claire had shotgunned in the stable, but there wasn’t any sign of them, nor of Claire whom he was really looking for. He knew that they would not have taken her with them. Had they found her and buried her, or burned her maybe, but the area was too much, she could have been anywhere, and promising he would come back here as well, he finally gave up.
There were occasional animal tracks in the snow, but nothing he could see to shoot, and the dog came back that night with another squirrel. The next morning, they went to the river, him taking off his boots and tattered woolen socks, tucking them into the sack he had made and wading the ford, carrying the dog, the water numbing cold, him quickly drying his feet on the other side. As he put on his socks, he saw a rabbit and shot it, firing too quickly, hitting it in the shoulders, blowing its front half apart. But there was a little food from it, and after he had skinned and gutted it, wrapping the meat in its fur, stuffing it into his sack, they worked along the river, up through the trees, to the break in the cliff that led to the sheep desert. They were into their sixth day of warm weather now, which was why the ice on the river had broken up and he had been forced to wade. The niche in the cliff was narrow enough that not much snow had collected, and they didn’t have much trouble getting through, climbing over the boulders that he and the old man had tumbled down into it. Once he made a wrong turn and came to a dead end, going back, trying another, finally reaching through to the sheep desert. He could see now the change that the weather was making, the snow melting all around, still deep but rocks showing bare and wet all the same, them rounding the bottom of the canyon, coming to what would have been the dry rocky creek bed if the snow had been gone and he could see it.
They camped in a small box canyon, hunched in under a lip in the rock, building a fire that was bigger than any he had made so far, seeing that he was down to his last few matches, grateful that he had kept the fire going all the time back at the burrow, keeping it low but going all the same. It didn’t matter if he was down to his last few matches because they were getting closer to people all the time, and if he ran out of matches before then, well he had gone without fire before and he could bear it again. But he needed to start thinking about how he could go back among people, certainly not looking like this. There would be too many questions, too much attention toward him before he was ready for it, and he did what he could to make himself look clean, heating water and bathing near the fire, washing the sores on his face and his arms and his legs, rinsing his hair and his beard, trimming them as best he could with his knife. That was why he had made the fire so big, so he could get out of some of his clothes and clean them without freezing, looking now at his thighs and his chest, something he had not done since the start, stunned by the look of them, flesh used up, bones showing, pustules, sores. He couldn’t clean his clothes very much. If he tried scrubbing them, he was afraid they might turn to rags, which was what they were close to being anyhow, and after he had done what he could, rinsing his woolen underwear and pants and coat, building the fire even larger and drying them, watching them steam, he put them back on, feeling their warmth again, sharing with the dog the last of their meat, crawling into the sleeping bag with the dog, and sleeping.
The next morning he shot another rabbit, this time properly through the head, and after cooking it and eating it, he made his way out of the canyon, trying to decipher the int
ersecting slopes and ridges so they would lead him to the line shack. His contour maps were long since torn and crumbled, his only guide his compass, which without the maps only gave him vague direction, and after a day and a half of searching, he was sure he’d missed it when he came out on a stretch of rock and saw it. Down there in a clearing in the valley, close if he went straight down but a half day away since he needed to work around off the cliff and down through the trees toward it. But he got there before nightfall, and after checking carefully around, certain that no one was near, he came up to the door, looking at where, if they had come to the line shack after him, they had replaced the broken lock the same as he had. He opened the door and stood there a moment, staring at the shelves of food. No sign that anyone had been in, everything the same as he remembered it, and all he could think of was the cans of peaches and corn and beef, the Bisquick he could make bread with, and he spent three days there, cleaning himself further, fattening himself, knowing he was going to need all his strength before this would be finished, never staying too long in the cabin, certainly never sleeping there, camping without fire among trees well up from the line shack, each day watching the snow melt, resting, soaking up the heat.
On the fourth day he left it, feeling better than he had in months, but his newfound luxuries—a fresh thick shirt, a store of bread and canned peaches and meat, a clean pair of socks—only made him feel the privation of the woods more, and he was grateful six days later when he finally came down through the wash of rocks and timber that he and Claire and Sarah had gone up that first day, hiking across the various levels down toward their cabin, always careful to stay inside the trees, reaching the corral and the equipment shed, coming more slowly in on an angle toward the cabin. The snow was thinner now, partly from the season, partly from the change in height, and there were spots of grass showing through as the cabin came in sight, its windows glinting in the sunlight. Exactly as he remembered it, as he had left it. The tower, the stoop at the back, the outhouse to the side. No tracks in the snow, no smoke from the chimney, no sign that anyone had been there for some time. He circled far off, coming in on a different angle toward the front. The well, the porch and door, the rocks around the foundation, the logs above them, they were all as he remembered them, and he camped far off in sight for a day before he felt safe enough to approach them.
He came in through the back, checking the downstairs rooms, the cupboards, leaving the dog below while he went up to the upstairs bedrooms, the closets, finally up to the tower, and there was no one. The window up there was still open, its top panes still shattered from where they had shot at him, snow drifted in, and he left it all just as he had found it. He didn’t understand. Nothing had changed at all. It was as if no one had been here since they had gone. Downstairs he found the lamp on the living room table just where he had left it, its top off, its core out, where he had been putting a new wick in. He found money that he’d hidden, taped under a drawer. Everything was perfectly the same. He didn’t understand it. Surely the owner would have come around, or the real-estate man when the rent wasn’t paid. There was a mirror by one cupboard, and he trimmed his hair and beard even better. He finished the food that he had brought with him from the line shack and started in on the store in the cabin, heating stew and rice and tinned puddings, sharing everything with the dog, bathing, putting on a fresh set of clothes that were in the drawers in the downstairs bedroom. He kept checking outside, fearful of them coming up through the trees the way they had that first time, worrying as he bathed, grateful that the dog was by the front door. He got back up to his campsite in the trees as fast as he could, watching, going back to the cabin the next day to eat some more, and he worked it like that for a week until he thought that he was ready. He had considered shaving off his beard entirely, letting the sun get in at the sores on his face, but he didn’t want to look too different, he wanted to be recognized.
“Hello again, haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I’ve been away.”
“Well, what can I do for you this time?”
“I want that rifle up there, the six-point-five, and a high-powered scope and two boxes of those shells.”
“Just the thing. How’d you do anyway?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hunting. How many did you get?”
“Not as many as I’d like.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone’s been saying.”
Then he had gone to the real-estate man, and the guy had said the same. “No need to worry, though. Your friends have been coming in, just like you told them, every month to pay the rent.”
Which was what he’d figured. It was the only reason the place would not have been touched. They were very thorough. If he lived, they were thinking that he might come back, and he was telling the guy not to let them know he was back. They’d be coming in just once more to pay the rent, and then they’d go up to check the cabin for him, and he wanted to surprise them. Which meant that, with luck, the guy would let it slip. From the untracked snow around the cabin, they hadn’t been going up to look for him yet. But they obviously were planning to go up once the weather improved. That would be the only reason they kept paying for the place, just to be careful, to keep things neat. The trouble was, the snow was melting slower now than he hoped. They might not come back looking for him until next month, and he didn’t want to wait that long. So they’d either go up on a chance the day they paid, or else the guy would let it slip that he was back, and they’d go up for certain. In any case, in time they’d be there. Sooner or later. In one sense it was all the same. He checked the calendar in the office. April 25. A few more days if everything worked out right. He bought a ground sheet for under the sleeping bag, went back to the cabin, laid up in the woods, and waited for them.
Where he lay was on high ground to the left of the front of the cabin. From his point of view he could see the shed, the side of the house, part of the front porch and the well. He had a good view of the open slope and of the road up through the trees. If they came that way as they had before, he certainly would spot them. The only problem was if they came from his direction through the woods, and he was counting on the dog sensing them before they did. He had taken trouble backtracking, circling far off into the woods, so that his footprints wouldn’t show them where he was. He had made tracks around the cabin as well, but these he didn’t worry about, wanting to advertise he’d returned. He built a fire in the cabin, smoke coming from the chimney, to make it seem that he was in there, and after the moon set each night he went back in, putting more wood on the flames to keep up the smoke.
He counted the days, the twenty-ninth now, going in through the back that night and hearing a sound, a scratch in one corner that made him think that they were there, tensing, lunging behind a chair, but no shots, and he never did know what made the scratch, a small animal perhaps. But his fright made him even more careful, staying near the cabin after dark from then on, wanting to be close enough to hear if they came close, knowing he never would be able to see them from his campsite if they came at night.
The thirtieth and then the first, and he was beginning to think that he’d misjudged. Maybe the real-estate guy had kept the secret after all. Maybe they weren’t going to come. Maybe he would need to wait a few weeks more, or even a month, when something bothered him. Just before sunset on the second. He heard a car far off on the road down there, and then it stopped. It could be nothing. It could be just some people visiting another cabin a mile across over there or visiting the old man with the horses, his place was in that direction too, but it could be them as well, and if they were coming up through the trees at night, he couldn’t go down near the house this time. They might be down there by then, waiting for him. He lay still, listening. No one and no warning from the dog. He remained motionless, even so. He listened for the sound of the car to start up, but it didn’t, although that didn’t mean much either. If the car really was people visiting the old man with the horses, they co
uld have chosen to stay the night. Sometime around three, he guessed, he heard a snap down in the trees. A broken branch settling, an animal moving. It could be anything. Or it could be them, and so he waited.
There were three of them, one in the trees at the back, two others stretched out just below the top of the slope in front. He could see them clearly in the first light of day. They were wearing brown nylon padded jackets and warm-up pants, as near as he could tell not the same three he had seen the fall before in town. He wanted them together. He wanted to see what they were going to do. He waited. They kept checking their watches, and then as if they had all agreed on a time, they started firing shotguns, blowing out the windows, blasts echoing, recoils jerking, except for the guy in back who wasn’t shooting at all, just standing there among the trees, tensed and ready, as if the plan was to scare him from in front and drive him out the back where the guy would be waiting for him. And they kept shooting like that from in front until they needed to reload, and then again, and with still no sign of him in there, they stopped. Undecided, they poked their heads up, one and then the other, checking for any movement in there. And of course there wasn’t any, and the two guys in front had been some distance apart to begin with, but now they moved even farther apart, and as if on signal one jumped up, running toward the front door while the other covered him. When the first guy ducked out of sight against the door, the second guy jumped up then, running as if the other guy were covering him now. The guy in back never moved.
He imagined them bursting through the front door, one going in under cover of the other, then the second guy rushing in, them checking the place. They’d be going through the house upstairs and down and then out the back door to talk to the third guy, and that’s when they would be together, and he crawled back, running with the dog through the trees, slowing as he thought that they might hear him, working toward a spot where he could see down to the back door and the third man. Then he was in position. He was about sixty yards up, the guy’s back to him, the door in sight. He eased down and peered through his scope, the crosshairs focused between the third man’s shoulder blades. Then he shifted his aim toward the back door, and it opened, and the two of them were coming out, talking, shrugging. The third one lowered his shotgun, saying something indistinct, walking toward them on the stoop, and he fired, bringing down the third man easily, shifting quickly to the men on the stoop, firing, bringing down another, and the last of them was gone, ducking back into the house.