“Take a week to get all that squared away,” Jack said.
“Hour on the outside,” Clint disagreed.
First we put up the tents. They were little six-by-eight jobs that fit neatly over the frames. Miller and Clint showed us how to set them up and pull them tight. We set up five tents and then pilled all the packs in the end one.
“Leave the front of that one open and tied back so’s I can get in and out easy,” Clint said. He showed us where to put the packs to make sure he knew where everything was. Then Miller sent us out to gather moss to pile into the rectangular log bed frames on the ground inside the tents.
“Next to feathers, that’s about the softest bed you’re gonna find.”
“Right now, I could sleep on rocks,” I told him.
“No point in that unless you have to.” He grinned.
It really took a surprisingly short period of time to set up camp. Miller and Clint had it all down pat, and McKlearey was a damned good field soldier. He seemed to be everywhere, checking tent ropes, ditching around the tents, cleaning dead leaves out of the spring. His cut hand didn’t seem to bother him, but the bandage was getting pretty used-looking. Miller took to calling him “Sarge,” and Lou responded with “Cap,” something the rest of us didn’t have guts enough to try yet. Maybe it was that they’d both been in the Marines. Lou seemed to be coming around. He even gave Stan some friendly advice about his bedding, pointing out that the sticks Stan had gathered with the moss he put in his bed frame might be just a touch lumpy.
Sloane grinned at us all as we hauled in our third load of moss and began to blow up an air mattress.
“You goddamn candy-ass,” Jack said.
“Brains,” Sloane said, tapping his forehead. “This ol’ massa ain’t about to sleep on no col’, col’ groun’.” He went on blowing into the mattress. He was sitting on the ground near the fire, and his face kept getting redder and redder. He really didn’t seem to be making much headway with the mattress. Then he got a funny look on his face and sort of sagged over sideways until he was lying facedown in the dirt.
“Christ, Sloane!” Jack said sharply. We all jumped to get him up again.
“Leave ’im be!” Miller barked. He stepped in and rolled Sloane over onto his back. He felt Sloane’s pulse in his throat and then pulled over a chunk of log to put the big man’s feet up on.
“Altitude,” he said shortly. He looked around at us. “His heart OK?”
“He’s never had any trouble I know of,” Jack said, “and I’ve known him for years.”
“That’s a break. Get some whiskey.”
We all dove for our sacks, but Lou beat all of us. He was already out. Miller nodded approvingly. He and McKlearey began working on Sloane, and soon they had him awake.
“Son of a bitch!” Cal said thickly. “That’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
“Better take ’er easy for a bit,” Miller said. “Takes some men a while to get adjusted to it. You come from sea level to better’n eight thousand feet in less’n a day.”
“I just couldn’t seem to get my breath,” Cal said.
I picked up his air mattress and blew it up for him. Toward the end I got a little woozy, too.
“Easy, boy,” Clint growled. “We don’t need two down.”
“Sloane, you dumb shit,” Jack said, “why didn’t you bring a bicycle pump? You like to scared the piss outa me.”
Sloane grinned weakly. “I figured as windy as this bunch is, I wouldn’t have any trouble gettin’ enough hot air to pump up one little old air mattress.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Stan asked.
“I’ll be OK,” Cal said. “Just a little soft is all.”
“If I was carryin’ as much beer as you are,” Jack said, “I’d be pooped, too.”
“For God’s sake, don’t the on us,” Lou said. “You still owe me three days’ pay.”
“You’re all heart, McKlearey,” I said.
He grinned at me. It suddenly occurred to me that he could be a likable son of a bitch when he wanted to be.
We eased Cal onto his air mattress and then stood around watching him breathe.
“We better get to work on the firewood, men,” Miller said. “Ol’ Sarge here can watch the Big Man.” He gathered up the lead-ropes we’d taken off the packhorses. “Slim,” he said to Jack, “you and the Professor and the Kid there take these two axes and that bucksaw and go down into that grove of spruce below the corrals. Bust the stuff up into four-or-five-foot lengths and bundle it up with these. Then haul ’em out in the open. We’ll drag ’em in with a saddle horse.” I guess that was his way. Miller seldom used our names. It was “Sarge” or “Slim” or “Big Man” or “Professor” or “the Kid.” I suppose I should have resented that last one, but I didn’t.
The three of us grabbed up the tools and headed off down into the spruce grove.
“You think Cal’s going to be OK?” I asked Jack.
“Oh, he’ll snap out of it.” Jack said. “Sloane’s a tough bastard.”
“I didn’t much like the way his eyes rolled back when he passed out,” Stan said.
“Did look a little spooky, didn’t it?” Jack said. “But don’t worry. Soon as he gets his wind back, Sloane’ll run the ass off the whole bunch of us.”
We spread out, knocking off dead limbs and dragging downed timber out into the open. We started to bundle the stuff up, tying it with the lead-ropes.
“Say, Dan,” Stan said after a while, “give me a hand here with that ax.”
I went over to where be was working on a pile of dead limbs.
“It’ll take me all night with this saw,” he said.
I grunted and started knocking limbs off. I could hear Jack chopping away back in the brush.
“It’s beautiful up here, isn’t it?” Stan said when I stopped to take a breather. I looked around. The sun had just slid down behind the peaks, and deep blue shadows seemed to be rising out of the ground.
“Good country,” I said, echoing Miller.
“I wish Monica could see it,” he said, zipping up that bright orange jacket. “Maybe she’d understand then.”
I sat down and lit a cigarette. “She gave you a pretty rough time about it, didn’t she?”
“It wasn’t pleasant,” he said. “You have to understand Monica though. She’s an only child, and her parents were in their forties when she was bom. I guess they spoiled her—you know how that could happen under the circumstances. She’s always been a strong-willed girl, and nobody’s ever done anything she didn’t want them to before.”
“She’s got to learn sometime,” I said.
“I’ve tried to protect her,” he went on. “I know she’s not much of a wife really. She’s spoiled and willful and sometimes spiteful—but that’s not her fault, really, is it? When you consider how she was raised?”
“I can see how it could happen,” I said.
“But this trip got to be such an issue,” he said, “that I just had to do it. I couldn’t let it go any longer.”
“You’ve got to draw the tine someplace, Stan.”
“Exactly,” he said. “She just had to realize that I was important, too.” He was rubbing his hands together, staring at the ground. “I know she’d do anything to get her own way, and I’m just afraid she might have done something stupid.”
“Oh?” I got very careful again. Damn it, I hate this walking on eggshells all the time!
“Some of the things McKlearey’s been saying the last few days—I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t pay too much attention to McKlearey,” I said.
“If I thought there was anything—I’d kill him—I swear it. So help me God, I’d kill him.” He meant it. I knew be meant it. Stan didn’t say things like that. His hands were clenched tightly into fists, and he was still staring down at the ground. I knew that one wrong word here would blow the whole thing.
“McKlearey and Monica? Get serious. She wouldn’t touch t
hat crude bastard with a ten-foot pole. McKlearey?” I laughed as hard as I could. It may have sounded a little forced, but I had to get him backed off it. It wouldn’t take too much for his mind to start ticking off the little series of items as Clydine had done in her little breakdown of the “Hubby-Wifey-Creepy-Jarhead” caper. Once he did, somebody was liable to get killed.
Stan looked off into the distance, not saying anything. I don’t think I’d been very convincing. Then Jack came up, dragging a big bundle of limbs.
“Hey, you guys,” he said, puffing hard, “I hit a bonanza back in there. I got enough wood to last a month, but I’m gonna need help gettin’ it out.”
“Sure, buddy,” I said with a false heartiness. “Come on, Stan, let’s give him a hand.” I hoped to get Stan’s mind off what he was thinking.
We spent the next half hour dragging piles of wood out from under the trees. The light faded more and more, and it was almost dark when Miller rode down to where we were working.
“I got them other piles you left farther up the line,” he said. “Looks like you got into a pretty good batch here.”
“There’s plenty more back in there,” Jack said, “but it’s gettin’ too goddamn dark to be climbin’ over all that stuff.”
“We can haul out some more tomorrow,” Miller said. ‘This’ll last a while.”
He had a rope knotted around his saddle horn with a long end trailing on each side of the horse. We lashed several bundles of the limbs to each end of the rope and followed his horse back toward the campfire and the greenish glow of the Coleman lantern hanging from a tree limb in front of the storage tent. The grass and moss felt springy underfoot, the air was sharp, and the stars had started to come out.
I think we’d all figured that we’d be able to just sit around the fire now that it was dark, but Miller kept us busy. McKlearey was just finishing up a table. It was the damnedest thing I’d ever seen—crossed legs, like a picnic table and a top of five-foot poles laid side by side. The whole thing was lashed together with baling wire. At first glance it looked rickety as hell, but Lou had buried about two feet of the bottom of each leg in the ground. It was solid as a rock.
“Hey, Professor,” Lou said to Stan as we came into camp, “you want to bring that bucksaw over here and square off the ends of this thing?” Lou had immediately picked up Miller’s nicknames. Stan gritted his teeth a little, but he did as Lou asked.
“Damn!” Clint said, grinning, “this’ll make things as easy as workin’ in the kitchen back at the ranch.” He had pots and pans spread out on the table even before Stan had finished sawing the ends square.
Miller put Jack and me to work chopping the limbs we’d hauled in into foot-and-a-half lengths and piling them up along one side of the storage tent.
“Latrine’s over there, men,” Lou said importantly, coming up to us and pointing to a trail leading off into the trees. “I dug a slit-trench and put up a kind of a stool.” He was getting a kick out of all of this.
“How’s Sloane?” Jack asked him.
“Better, better,” McKlearey said. “He’ll be fine by morning. It was just blowin’ up that goddamn air mattress that laid him out.”
Jack grunted and went back to chopping wood. We kept at it for about another half hour, and my stomach was starting to talk to me pretty loud.
“Chow,” Clint hollered, and we all homed in on the fire and the food.
“Plates and silverware there on the table,” Clint said. “Grab ’em and line up.”
We had venison steaks from Miller’s freezer at the ranch, pork and beans and corn on the cob.
“Better enjoy that corn, men,” Clint said. “That’s all I brought. I figured we could spread out a little, first night out.”
We took our plates back to the logs and stumps on the far side of the fire and began to eat. Sloane was up and about now and seemed to be a little better.
“Damn good,” Jack said with his mourn full.
“Yeah, man,” Lou said, shoveling food into his mouth.
It took me a little while to get the hang of holding the plate on my knees, but as soon as I got the idea that there was nothing wrong with picking up a steak in my fingers, I had it whipped.
After we finished eating and had cleaned up the dishes, we finally got a chance to sit down and relax. We all had a drink—whiskey and that icy-cold springwater—and sat, staring into the fire.
“Sure is quiet up here,” Jack said finally. He’d be the one to notice that.
“Long ways from the roads,” Miller said.
We sat quietly again.
Then we heard the horses snort and start to stir around, and a few minutes later a kind of grumbling, muttering chatter and a funny sort of dragging noise came from the woods.
“What’s that?” Stan demanded nervously.
“Damn porkypine,” Clint said. “Probably comin’ over to see what we’re up to.”
McKlearey stood up, his eyes and teeth glowing sort of red in the reflected light of the fire. He pulled out his pistol.
“What you figgerin’ on Sarge?” Miller asked, his voice a little sharp.
“I’ll go kill ’im,” McKlearey said. “Don’t want ‘im gettin’ into the goddamn chow, do we?”
“No need to do that,” Miller said. “He ain’t gonna come in here while we’re around. Long as we don’t figure on eatin’ ‘im, there’s no point in killin’ ‘im. I’m pretty sure the woods is big enough for us and one porky, more or less.” He looked steadily at McKlearey until Lou began to get a little embarrassed.
“Anything you say, Cap,” he said finally, holstering the pistol and sitting back down.
“Knew a feller sat on a porky once—” Clint chuckled suddenly.
“No kiddin’?” Jack laughed.
“Never did it again,” Clint said. “Matter of fact, he didn’t sit on nothin’ for about three weeks afterward.”
“How did he manage to sit on a porcupine?” Stan asked, amused.
“Well sir, me’n him’d been huntin’, see,” Clint started, “just kinda pokin’ through the woods, havin’ a little look over the top of the next ridge, like a feller will, and along about ten or so we got tuckered. We found what looked to be a couple old mossy stumps and just set down on ’em. Now the one I set on was a real stump, but his stump wasn’t no stump—it was a big ol’ boar porky—”
The story went on, and then there were others. The fire burned lower, popping once in a while as it settled into bright red coals.
McKlearey had several more drinks; but the rest of us had hung it up after the first one.
“I’d go a little easy on that, if it was me, Sarge,” Miller said finally, after McKlearey had made his fourth trip back to the spring for cold water. “It’ll have to last you the whole time. It’s a pretty fair hike back to the liquor store.”
We all laughed at that.
“Sure thing, Cap,” McKlearey said agreeably and put his bottle away.
“Well,” Sloane said finally, “I don’t know about the rest of you mighty hunters, but I’m about ready to tap out. Last night was a little shallow on sleep.” He was looking a lot better now but tired. I think we all were.
“Might not be a bad idea if we was all to turn in,” Miller said. “Not really a whole lot to do in camp after dark, and we might as well get used to rollin’ out before daybreak.”
We got up, feeling the stiffness already settling in our overworked muscles. We all said good night and went off to our tents. Miller and Clint were in the one right by the storage tent, Sloane and Stan in the next one, then Jack and I, and finally, in the farthest one up the line, McKlearey in one by himself—it just worked out that way.
Jack and I stripped down to our underwear and hurriedly crawled into our sleeping bags. It was damned chilly in the tent. I fumbled around and got out my flashlight and put it on the ground beside the gun belt near the top of my bed.
“You suppose we oughta close the flap?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Let’s see how it works out leaving it open,” I said. I was looking out the front of the tent at the dying fire.
“Well”—he chuckled—“I sure wouldn’t want to roll over on that porky.”
“I don’t think that tent-flap would ready stop him,” I said.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “Man, I’m tired. I feel like I’ve been up for a week.”
“You and me both, buddy,” I said.
“It’s great up here, huh?”
“The greatest.”
There was a long silence. The fire popped once.
“Good night, Danny,” he said drowsily.
“Night, Jack,” I said.
I lay awake staring at the fire, thinking the long thoughts a man can think alone at night when there are no noises to distract him. Once again I wished that somehow my little Bolshevik could be here to see all of this. Maybe then she’d understand. For some reason it was important to me that she did.
I guess I must have drifted off to sleep, because the fire was completely out when the first scream brought me up fighting.
“What the goddamn hell?” Jack said.
There was another scream. It was a man—right in camp.
I grabbed up the flashlight in one hand and the .45 in the other. I was out the front of the tent when the next scream came. I stubbed my toe on a rock and swore. I could see heads popping out of all the other tents except one. The screams were coming from McKlearey’s tent.
I whipped open the front flap of his tent and put the beam of the flash full on him. “Lou! What the hell is it?”
He rolled over quickly and came up, that damned .38 in his right hand. Son of a bitch, he moved fast! “Who’s there?” he barked.
“Easy, man,” I said. “It’s me—Dan.”
“Danny? What’s up?”
“That’s what I just asked you. You were yelling like somebody was castrating you with a dull knife.”
“Oh,” he said, rubbing at his face and lowering his gun, “musta been a nightmare.”
“What’s wrong?” I heard Miller’s voice call.
I pulled my head out of the tent. “It’s OK,” I called back. “Lou just had a nightmare, that’s all. He’s OK.” I stuck my head back in the tent. “You are OK, aren’t you, Lou?”
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