Threepersons Hunt

by Brian Garfield

  He kept moving. His clothes clung and grew heavy inside the slicker and his feet squelched as he walked. The diminishing rain made a spongy hiss. He began to picture Joe squatting in the cool dripping shadows like a malignant mushroom waiting for Watchman with the big rifle lifted; he stopped in his tracks, afraid.

  Which way now? He couldn’t get this close and then lose Joe again; it was too much to ask.

  Uphill. That would be the instinct: uphill, west, back toward the Reservation. Get off Rand’s property, get back to the sanctuary of the White Mountains.

  He went up, angling left because that was west. The curve of the ground took him over a little hump and he keened the dripping forest all the way, looking for sign that Joe had passed this way. But the matted floor of needles retained nearly nothing by way of impressions.

  The music of water ahead. He crossed the slope and it became a little louder and he kept moving west, drawn by the sound.

  The water came down from the higher reaches; it plunged along like a thick dark tongue, probing its way into cracks and gullies, dividing around tree-trunks and cascading through the creases in the land. As Watchman moved toward it the earth became treacherous with slime because all the run off was sliding down beneath his boots to join the rain-swollen stream.

  There was a distinct line of twigs and debris that ran along parallel to the torrent two or three feet higher than the surface of the water and this meant the level had dropped significantly in the past several minutes. Half an hour ago this had been a flash flood. Now it was subsiding but there was still power in it, a tremendous volume of water cascading down onto the plains somewhere out in the middle of Rand’s acres.

  It meant something important: it meant Joe hadn’t crossed, couldn’t have crossed. Joe was still somewhere on this side of the river.

  And he wouldn’t have gone downstream. Not back into Rand property.

  He was above here. Either running or standing to fight; but he was above here.

  Watchman clawed his way up from the flooding, up to the spine of the razorback, up the slope of the spine through the lodgepole forest. He heard himself wheezing as if he needed oiling: but Joe was in bad shape too, worse shape probably. Watchman pumped the air in and out and ran on up into the rain, not blinking as drops splashed his face.

  He wanted to get to Joe before Joe got beyond the trees because here in the confinement of the pines the range of the big rifle was meaningless; out in the open there’d be no way to get near him.

  He ran past the edge of the storm and then it wasn’t raining any more; an aftermist hung in the air and the smell was thick and strong, the pine resin carrying on the mist.

  A scar of rocks ran across the slope from north to south, clear of trees in a belt a hundred feet wide. It was boulders and loose broken shale and Joe could be staked out behind any rock. Watchman looked both ways but it went on forever, he couldn’t go around it.

  He moved along the fringe of the trees. The water pelted down through the rocks to his left; he moved to the right.

  And found Joe’s spoor: the heel of Joe’s boot had left its impression in the earth.

  It was an indentation that had been made after the rain because its lips weren’t washed in. Within the past fifteen minutes Joe had come this way and the heel-print pointed straight into the rocks, or across them.

  He took it slow and listened to the beat of his pulse. Boulder to boulder; lie up, run, lie up again. Here the shale had been disturbed, the pale dry sides of chips had been overturned. Here the groundwater was still seeping into a depression which therefore couldn’t have been made long ago. Here the side of a boulder had been scraped white, perhaps by the inadvertent scratch of a rifle’s steel buttplate or the buckle of a belt.

  The trail of little signs led him straight across the belt of rocks and into the stunted timber above it. Watchman discarded the rain-slicker and Rand’s hat and jacket. He glanced at the sky: an hour’s light left, and things were clearing up ahead of him, ribbons of blue beginning to show through as the clouds broke apart. Sundown soon.

  The thin high air chilled him through his soaked shirt. He winced now when the trees dislodged moisture onto him; he moved along quickly, watching the ground, watching the forest shadows ahead of him. Joe had passed here, and here, and again here: his track was becoming easier to read because the trees were thinning out and the ground was softer and there was rain to wash away the spoor.

  It kept turning from side to side. Once Joe’s knees had made dents in the earth at the crest of a rise where he had paused to survey his own back trail. How long ago? Had he seen Watchman coming?

  Angling farther to the right the trail went briefly into thicker scrub pine and then the trees became clumps with wide slopes of mud separating them; he could have followed Joe’s track here on a moonless midnight. He had discarded caution; the trail led uphill at an angle across the slope on an almost steadily exact course, west-northwest; these weren’t the splashed-out prints of a man in panic. Joe was making the best time he could and that meant he now had a specific destination in mind.

  Pulse thundered in Watchman’s eyes and breathing was painful. The shirt lay matted against his back and the wet Levi’s rubbed his thighs. The climb got steadily more sheer. At the end he was using his hands as well as his feet and when he reached the top at last he squatted on elbows and knees, just puffing.

  The plateau ran west away from him, spotted here and there with growth. Up here the wind blasted the flats constantly and allowed no forests to take root.

  The figure was out ahead of him, small, maybe a mile ahead, bobbing along at a steady run. When Watchman’s eyes cleared of pressure he could make out the rifle strapped diagonally across the running man’s back, the easy rise and fall of arms and legs.

  Watchman gathered himself and climbed onto the table and put himself into the agony of the run.

  6.

  A Hereford steer was half-decomposed and the passage of the running man disturbed the buzzards from it. Watchman’s passage eight minutes later disturbed them again and they flapped around, talking, circling the eyeless corpse.

  His muscles worked only in spasms. He was running into the setting sun and he missed it when Joe Threepersons stopped.

  By the time the angle widened enough for him to see Joe he had gained a quarter of a mile, which put him something like nine hundred yards away.

  Joe was down on one knee, sighting through the Bushnell ’scope.

  Watchman kept going. Nine hundred yards was a possible shot with that rifle from a benchrest but the wind was gusty and Joe was out of breath and weak and that one-knee position wasn’t the steadiest.

  Half the sun burned, perched on top of the horizon. Joe’s silhouette crouched to the right of it, shimmering against the red-banded sky. Watchman began to tack. Eight strides on a northerly quarter, six on a westerly quarter, seven to the right again. He counted them because he wanted a random pattern to the changes and if he didn’t count he’d fall into a regular rhythm; the body always chose symmetry and you had to reject it consciously.

  Eight hundred yards. He was angling across the line now to put Joe farther to the right of the sun. At this angle of incidence he could almost see the sun’s movement; another fifty strides and it would be down.

  Seven hundred and fifty. He began to zigzag more violently but he didn’t drop the pace. His shoulders were lifted to give him more lung space and sharp pains laced across the collar muscles. He hadn’t much feeling left below the hips. He didn’t credit Joe with a decent shot at more than six hundred yards under Joe’s present circumstances; at that point he’d start ducking from scrub to scrub but in the meantime Joe was giving him a good chance to close up some of the distance and Watchman was taking it.

  Seven hundred. Joe fired.

  Watchman heard the crack. It was startlingly loud for the distance but the wind was at Joe’s back and carried the sound. It was all Watchman heard of the bullet—there was no nearby sonic bang; e
ither the slug had rammed into the earth ahead of him or it had gone far wide of him. He suspected the latter: Joe had fired a warning shot.

  Tack right, tack left. Six hundred and fifty. Joe fired another.

  It was still the amiable warning shot because by now he could have made it come pretty close if he’d wanted to. With luck he could have made a hit.

  Watchman saw why Joe had chosen that spot to stop. The rim of the plateau was just behind Joe.

  Did that mean he was trapped with his back against an open precipice?

  No. Joe’s run had been too purposeful for that. He had a destination in mind: probably the Land Cruiser, parked below the rim somewhere.

  Six hundred, judged by a hunter’s eye. Watchman made an abrupt quarter turn to the left and dodged among the little scattered trees. With the blood slamming in his ears he pounded from clump to clump, zigzagging sharply.

  The magnum roared again and this one came closer. He didn’t hear the bullet but he saw it crash through a juniper maybe fifteen feet ahead. Pieces and twigs fell off the plant where the big leaden projectile had severed them.

  Joe’s shot was a five-hundred-yard one now but the target was moving erratically and the field of fire was interrupted by all the clumped junipers and scrub oaks; they dotted the plain like tufts on a bedspread. It made for unlikely shooter’s luck and no hunter would try that shot on a running deer at that range in this terrain.

  Still there was the possibility of luck and if Joe fired enough bullets he’d hit Watchman.

  But Joe wasn’t blazing away. He was taking his time and after a while Watchman began to realize that Joe was not shooting to kill. Joe was still trying to scare him away or at least force him to keep his distance. An earnest kill-try would have come a lot closer than any of Joe’s bullets had.

  Watchman made the circle a little wider because he didn’t want to corner Joe against a panic. For a little while he was actually running away from Joe on a tangent; but the darting vectors of his route were taking him closer to the rim all the time and that was what he wanted, a chance to spot the Land Cruiser and beat Joe to it.

  He was still a quarter of a mile from Joe, making a ragged quarter-circle; he had the sunset spectacle ahead of him.

  A bullet made a spout in the earth ahead of him. He jazzed to the left.

  The ankles were wobbling now and he wasn’t sure how much he had left in him but he wasn’t going to give it up before the legs did. He was fighting for oxygen; the altitude was probably seven thousand feet. The earth began to buckle as it approached the top of the escarpment and he watched for pitfalls. Off to his right Joe’s rifle was stirring; Watchman dodged to the side. He heard the shot but not the bullet. Possibly it had gone behind him.

  Joe had fired seven. Watchman had handled that rifle, he had unloaded it himself, but he couldn’t remember how many the tube-magazine held and that irritated him. Right now it didn’t matter because Joe had had plenty of time to reload between shots but the time might come when that was important.

  His left ankle tipped and he stumbled but he got his footing and went on. Only a hundred yards to the rim now, the length of a football field; he was going to make it that far at least.

  Joe discerned the same thing and when Watchman glanced that way he saw Joe on his feet, turning. Watchman instantly abandoned his tacking and made a straight run for the nearest point on the rim but Joe was already going over, dropping from sight; he’d seen he wasn’t going to dissuade his pursuer so he was taking advantage of what lead he had left.

  Watchman’s legs weren’t going to handle an abrupt stop. He slowed down like a train approaching the yards and when he walked the last two paces to the rim his legs felt absolutely boneless under him.

  He swayed drunkenly and gulped like a landed trout. Blood-haze made a red film over his eyes that turned the sunset colors into a blinding crimson that suffused the world of his vision.

  He willed his eyes to clear: he looked down from the rim into the Reservation.

  7.

  It was nothing like a sheer cliff but it was steep enough to deter a casual stroller. It dropped away to a whorled contour of ridges and hills three miles below.

  He was surprised to see a habitation there, and a dirt road.

  The road was a switchbacking shelf that zigzagged up from the ridge-canyons like a cartoon illustration of a lightning bolt with the hillside dropping away on the open side.

  The earth was mostly grass and the dark spots on it were whiteface cattle grazing. The road came up at least two thirds the height of the escarpment and ended in the yard of a wickiup cluster. Several horses were penned in the corral and a rider in a high-domed black hat was trotting across the hillside toward the wickiups, chousing a calf ahead of him, swinging a rope at his side.

  Joe Threepersons was scrabbling his way down the slope a quarter of a mile to Watchman’s right, angling toward the wickiups.

  The Land Cruiser was parked next to the pickup truck just beside the nearest corral fence.

  The triangle of approach made the distance shorter for Watchman than for Joe. Watchman went over the rim and skittered down the slippery grass on his bootheels.

  He had the better part of a mile to cover and his legs were troublesome and he still didn’t have his wind but Joe was in no better condition and he was lugging twelve pounds of big-game rifle.

  Watchman kept a steady eye on him and when Joe decided to stop and snap a shot at him, Watchman sprawled belly-flat in the grass and Joe lost his target.

  He watched until Joe gave it up. It gave him a chance to catch his breath. As soon as Joe moved, Watchman moved.

  There was a crease of ground that would give some cover. Once inside it there was no more of him than his bobbing head for Joe to see. The crease ran down, fanning wider and getting shallower until it bled itself flat into the slope but it afforded him two hundred yards of protection and he went through it fast, half running and half sliding. When the shoulder faded away at his right Joe was windmilling desperately, running too fast for the slope, trying to get ahead of him. Watchman just kept moving, concentrating on his balance.

  Now he was less than a hundred yards from the wickiups and the rider in the black hat had stopped, dismounted, and was standing by the corral watching all this with baffled interest. Joe was still three hundred yards out, upslope a little way, coming along awkwardly.

  Then Joe settled down to shoot and this time he meant it. Watchman skidded prone into the grass and the bullet whacked the air overhead.

  He gave it ten seconds before he even lifted his head to look.

  Joe had used the time to get closer to the wickiups. As soon as Watchman’s head appeared Joe whipped up the rifle and Watchman slid back down into the grass.

  Joe was moving but still watching; this close to escape he wasn’t going to let Watchman stop him even if it meant a killing. Watchman put himself forward on his elbows and knees, sculling through the wet grass but Joe was getting there ahead of him.

  Watchman scoured the automatic out of the holster. It was a two-hundred-yard shot and conceivably you could make that kind of shot with a pistol if you held it in both hands with your elbows braced but neither his eyes nor his nerves were in good enough shape to make it count and anyhow he wasn’t ready to kill Joe. That wasn’t the point of all this.

  He put his eyes up high enough to catch the vague movement of Joe’s shadow against the farther hills; he poked the pistol out in front of him and snapped off the safety and pumped two bullets off, shooting well behind Joe.

  It only made Joe run faster. Watchman scrabbled forward.

  Joe was in line with the wickiups now and he quit shooting. He had the inside track to the Land Cruiser and it was all he had wanted. He ran straight down toward it while Watchman got up clumsily, wavered on rubber knees and then stumbled downhill after him.

  Joe dodged past the wickiups and Watchman pumped his protesting legs. He knew he wasn’t going to make it but there was always the chanc
e that the starter wouldn’t catch on the first push.…

  The Indian in the hat made a motion toward Joe but Joe waved him back, waggling his free hand; Joe yanked the Land Cruiser door open, threw the rifle inside and climbed in.

  Watchman was close enough to see Joe’s terror. The starter was grinding and Joe’s shoulders moved with stress, willing it to turn over. Watchman reached the side of the wickiup and panted along it.

  The engine caught. There was the grind of gears and the Land Cruiser lurched, almost stalled, revved up with the clutch in; it bucked and pitched and got itself rolling and when Watchman reached the road it was gathering speed away from him.

  8.

  Watchman jerked the door of the pickup truck open. Then he wheeled toward the black-hatted Indian.

  “Where’s the keys to this thing?”

  The Indian only watched him gravely.

  Watchman strode to him and plucked the reins right out of the man’s hand. “I’ll bring him back.” He hauled himself into the saddle, using his arms because his legs wouldn’t lift him any more, and he put his heels to the horse’s flanks and neckreined savagely around.

  The Land Cruiser had reached the first switchback and was coming back across below him. Watchman had wasted too much time getting on the horse and the Land Cruiser beat him to the point where their paths intersected: the road zigzagged along half-mile loops and Watchman was cutting straight across; he had to cover only a fraction of the Land Cruiser’s distance to reach the same points. There was a chance to intercept Joe on the third switchback unless the horse broke a leg first.

  The Land Cruiser was four-wheel-drive. Joe could get off the road and make a straight run for it but his speed would be cut down both by the gearing and by the terrain, and on humpy slopes like this a horse could outrun the Land Cruiser. So Joe had to stick to the road where he could do fifty on the straightaways and hope to beat the horse to the bottom.