He’d said that he was sixty-eight and his heart and lungs were bad. Then he’d kind of looked off toward the sunset. “One of these days,” he’d said, “I’ll miss a jump on one of these boxcars and go under the wheels. Or my heart’ll give out, or I’ll take the pneumonia. They’ll find me after I been picked over by a half-dozen other bums. Not much chance there’d be anything left so they could identify me. But I got that all took care of. Look—”
He’d unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his pale, flabby, old man’s chest. He had a tattoo.
“My name was Wilmer O. Dugger,” it said. “I was born in Wichita, Kansas, on October 4, 1893. I was a Methodist.” It was like a tombstone, right on his chest.
He’d buttoned his shirt back up. “I got the same thing on both arms and both legs,” he’d said. “No matter what happens, one of them tattoos is bound to come through it. I used to worry about it—them not bein’ able to identify me, I mean. Now I don’t worry no more. It’s a damn fine thing, you know, not havin’ nothin’ to worry about.”
I think it had been about then that I’d decided to go to college. I’d caught a quick glimpse of myself fifty years later, riding up and down the coast and waiting to miss my jump on a boxcar or for my heart to quit. About the only difference would have been that I don’t think I’d have bothered with the tattoos.
The breeze dropped, and it got very still. I straightened up suddenly and picked up my rifle. It felt very smooth and comfortable. Something was going to happen. I eased the bolt back very gently and checked to make sure there was one in the tube. I closed it and slipped the safety back on. I could feel an excitement growing, a kind of quivering tension in the pit of my stomach and down my arms and legs, but my hands were steady. I wasn’t shaking or anything.
A doe came out on the far side of the ravine. Very slowly, so as not to startle her, I sprawled out across the rock and got my elbows settled in so I could be absolutely sure of my shot.
The doe sniffed a time or two, looked back once, and then went on down into the ravine.
Another doe came out of the same place. After a minute or so she went on down, too.
Then another doe.
It was absolutely quiet. I could hear the faint toc-toc-toc of their hooves moving slowly on down the rocky bottom of the ravine.
I waited. I knew he was there. A minute went by. Then another.
Then there was a very faint movement in the brush, and he stepped softly out into the open.
I didn’t really count him until later. I just saw the flaring rack and the calm, almost arrogant look on his face, and I knew that he was the one I wanted. He was big and heavily muscled. He was wary but not frightened or timid. It was his mountain.
He stood broadside to me and seemed to be looking straight across at me, though I don’t really think he saw me. Maybe he just knew that I was there, as I had known that he would be.
I put the cross hairs of the scope just behind his front shoulder and slipped off the safety. His ears flicked.
I slowly squeezed the trigger.
I didn’t hear the shot or feel the recoil of the rifle. The deer jerked and fell awkwardly. Then he stumbled to his feet and fell again. He got up again slowly and kind of walked on back over the other side of the ridge, his head down. It didn’t occur to me to shoot again. I knew it wasn’t necessary.
I stood up, listening now to the echo of the shot rolling off down the side of the mountain. I jacked out the empty shell, slipped the safety back on and slung the rifle. Then I started down into the ravine. I could hear the three does scrambling up through the brush on the far side.
The going was pretty rough, and it took me about ten minutes to get to where he’d been standing. I looked around on the ground until I found a blood spot. Then another. I followed them down the other side.
He’d gone about a hundred yards down the easy slope of the far side of the ridge and was lying on his side in a little clump of brush. His head was still raised but wobbling, as I walked carefully up to him. His eyes were not panicky or anything. I stepped behind him, out of range of his hooves, and took out my pistol. I thumbed back the hammer and put the muzzle to the side of his head between his eye and ear. His eye watched me calmly.
“Sorry I took so long to get here, buddy,” I said.
Then I pulled the trigger.
The gun made a muffled kind of pop—without any echo to it, and the deer’s head dropped heavily, and the life went out of his eye. I knelt beside him and ran my hand over his heavy shoulder. The fur felt coarse but very slick, and it was a kind of dark gray with little white tips shot through it. He smelled musky but not rank or anything.
I stood up, pointed the pistol up toward the top of the mountain, and fired it again. Then I began to wonder if maybe I’d given the wrong signal. I put the pistol back in the holster and slipped the hammer-thong back on. Then I leaned my rifle against a large rock and hauled the deer out in the open. I walked back on up to the ridge and hung my jacket over a bush to mark the spot for whoever came up with a horse.
I went back to the deer and started gutting him out. I wasn’t nearly as fast as Clint was, but I managed to get the job done finally. I did seem to get a helluva lot of blood on my clothes though, but that didn’t really matter.
I was trying to get him rolled over to drain out when Clint came riding down the ridge, leading Ned and a packhorse.
“Damn nice deer,” he said, grinning. “Six-pointer, huh?”
“I didn’t count him,” I said. I checked the deer. “Yeah, it’s six points, all right.”
“Have any trouble?” He climbed down.
“No. He came out on the ridge, I shot him, and he kind of staggered down here and fell down. I’m afraid I busted up the liver pretty bad though.” I pointed at the shredded organ lying on top of the steaming gut-pile.
“Where’d you take him?” he asked.
“Right behind the shoulder.”
“That’s dependable,” he said. “Here, lemme help you dump ’im out.”
We rolled the deer over.
“Heavy bugger, ain’t he?” Clint chuckled.
“We’re gonna get a rupture getting him on the horse,” I said. “Say, how’d you get above me anyway?”
“I come up through the meadows and then across the upper end of the ravine at the foot of the rockslide. Gimme your knife a minute.”
I handed it to him.
“Better get these offa here.” He cut away two dark, oily-looking patches on the inside of the deer’s hind legs, just about the knees. “Musk-glands,” he said. “Some fellers say they taint the meat—I don’t know about that for sure, but I always cut ’em off on a buck, just to be safe.” Then he reached inside the cut I’d made in the deer’s throat and sliced one on each side. “Let’s turn him so’s his head’s downhill,” he said.
We turned the deer and blood slowly drained out, running in long trickles down over the rocks. There really wasn’t very much.
Clint held out his hand. I wiped mine off on my pants, and we shook hands.
“Damn good job, Dan. I figure that you’ll do.”
It was a little embarrassing. “Hey,” I said. “I damn near forgot my coat.” I went on up to the ridge-top and got it. The sun was just coming up. I felt good, damned good. I ran back down to where Clint was standing.
“Easy, boy,”—he laughed—“you stumble over somethin’ and you’ll bounce all the way to Twisp.”
“OK,” I said, “now, how do we get him on the horse?”
“I got a little trick I’ll show you,” he said, winking. He took a coil of rope off his saddle and dropped a loop over the deer’s horns. We rolled him over onto his back, and Clint towed him over to a huge flat boulder with his horse. The uphill side of the boulder was level with the rest of the hill and the downhill side was about six feet above the slope. Then he led the packhorse over and positioned him below the rock. I held the pack-horse’s head, and Clint slowly pulled the deer out over the edge.
“Get his front feet on out past the saddle, if you can, Dan,” Clint said.
I reached on out and pulled the legs over. When the deer reached the point where he was just balanced, Clint got off his horse and came back up.
“You’re taller’n me,” he said. “I’ll hold the horse, and you just ease the carcass down onto the saddle.”
I went around onto the top of the rock and carefully pushed the deer off, holding him back so he wouldn’t fall on over. It was really very simple. Once the deer was in place we tied him down and it was all done.
“Pretty clever,” I said.
“I don’t lift no more’n I absolutely have to.” He grinned. “Fastest way I know to get old in a hurry is to start liftin’ stuff.”
“I’ll buy that,” I said. “Which way we going back down?”
“Same way I come up,” he said. “That way we don’t spook the deer for the others. You ’bout ready?”
“Soon as I tie on my rifle,” I said. I went back and got it and tied it to the saddle. Ned shied from me a little—the blood-smell, probably.
“Steady, there, knothead,” I said. He gave me a hurt look. I climbed on and we rode on up to the top of the ridge. We cut on across the foot of the rockfall and out into the meadows.
“Cap was gonna come up,” Clint said, “but somebody oughta stay with the Big Man, and I know these packhorses better’n he does.”
I nodded.
We rode on slowly down through the meadows toward camp. I could see the others over on the ridge, standing and watching. I waved a couple times.
“God damn, boy,” Miller said, “you got yourself a good one.” He was chuckling, his brown face creased with a big grin.
“Had it all gutted out and ever-thin’,” Clint told him.
Sloan came out of his tent. He was still breathing hard, but he looked a little better.
“Hot damn!” he coughed. “That’s a beauty.”
I climbed down off Ned.
“I fixed up a crossbar,” Miller said. “Let’s get ’im up to drain out good.”
Clint slit the hocks and we slipped a heavy stick through. Then we led the packhorse over to the crossbeam stretched between two trees behind the cook-tent. Miller had hooked up a pulley on the beam. We pulled the deer up by his hind legs and fastened him in place with baling wire.
“Damn,” Miller said, “that’s one helluva heavy deer. Three hundred pounds or better. Somebody in the bunch might get more horns, but I pretty much doubt if anybody’ll get more meat.”
We stood around and looked at the deer for a while.
“How ’bout some coffee?” Clint said.
“How ’bout some whiskey?” Cal giggled and then coughed.
“How ’bout some of both?” Miller chuckled. “I think this calls for a little bendin’ of the rules, don’t you?”
“Soon as I see to my horse.” I grinned at them. I walked over toward Ned, and my feet felt like they weren’t even touching the ground, I felt so good.
25
I got up at the usual time the next morning and had breakfast with the others. I felt a little left out now. The night before had been fine, with everyone going back to look at the deer and all. Even with the skin off and the carcass in a large mesh game bag to keep the bugs off, it looked pretty impressive. Clint and I had salted the hide and rolled it into a bundle with the head on top. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, but this way I’d be able to make the decision later. After the big spiel I’d given Clydine the day I’d left about not being a trophy hunter, I was about half-ashamed to keep the head and all, but I knew I’d have to have it in case of a game check. I thought maybe I could have the hide tanned and made into a vest or gloves or something—maybe a purse for her.
At breakfast I watched Cal carefully. He was coughing pretty badly, but he insisted on going down. I noticed that he didn’t eat much breakfast.
We all walked on down to the corral, and I watched the others saddle up. Ned came over and nuzzled at me. I guess he couldn’t quite figure out why we weren’t going along. I patted him a few times and told him to go back to sleep—that’s what I more or less had in mind.
“Go ahead and loaf, you lazy bastard,” Jack said.
Miller chuckled. “Don’t begrudge him the rest—he’s earned it.”
“Right,” I said, rubbing it in a little bit. “If you guys would get off the dime, you could lay around camp and loaf a little bit, too.”
“Of course, all the fun’s over for you, Dan,” Sloane gasped.
I’d thought of that, too. We went back up to the tents so they could pick up their rifles.
I stood with my back to the campfire watching them ride off into the darkness. The sound of splashing came back as they crossed the little creek down below the beaver dam.
“More coffee, boy?” Clint asked me.
“Yeah, Clint. I think I could stand another cup.”
We hunkered down by the fire with our coffee cups.
“Now that you’ve shown them fellers how, I expect we’ll be gettin’ a few more deer in camp.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “If they’ll just get off that damn nonsense about that white deer.”
“Oh, I expect they will. I got about half a hunch that all you fellers shootin’ at ’im the other day spooked ’im clear outa the territory.”
“I sure as hell hope so,” I said.
“Knew a feller killed one once,” he said. “He gave me some steaks off it. I dunno, but to me they just didn’t taste right. The feller give up huntin’ a couple years later. I always wondered if maybe that didn’t have somethin’ to do with it—’course he was gettin’ along in years.”
I wasn’t really sure how much Clint knew about what had happened that day, so I didn’t say much.
“What you plannin’ on doin’ today?” he asked me.
“Oh, I thought I’d give you a hand around camp after a bit,” I said.
“You’d just be under foot,” he said bluntly.
“We can always use more firewood.” He grinned.
“Then I might ride old Ned around a little, too. I wouldn’t want him to be getting so much rest that he’s got the time to be inventing new tricks.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry none about that. I think you and him got things about all straightened out.”
“But the first thing I’m gonna do is go back to bed for a while,” I said, grinning at him. “This getting up while it’s still dark is plain unhealthy.”
“It’s good for you.” He chuckled. “Kinda gets you back in tune with the sun.”
The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. Whatever the reason, when I went back to bed, I rolled and tossed in my sleeping bag for about an hour and a half and then gave it up as a bad job. I got up, had another cup of coffee, and watched the sunrise creep down the side of the mountain.
I finally wound up down by the beaver pond, watching the trout swim by.
“You wanna give ’em a try?” Clint hollered from camp.
“You got any gear?” I yelled back.
“Has a duck got feathers? Come up here, boy.”
Miller was sitting by the fire mending a torn place on the skirt of one of the saddles. “Old Clint never goes no place without his fishpole,” he said. “He’d pack it along on a trip into a desert—probably come back with fish, too.”
The little guy came back out of his tent putting together a jointed, fiber-glass rod. He tossed me a leather reel case. I opened it and took out a beautiful Garcia spinning reel.
“Man,” I said, “that’s a fine piece of equipment.”
“Should be,” he growled, “after what I paid for it.”
Somehow I’d pictured him as the willow-stick, bent-pin-and-worm kind of fisherman.
“How you wanna fish ’em?” he asked me.
“What do you think’ll work best? You know a helluva lot more about this kind of water than I do.”
He squinted at the sky. “Wait till abou
t ten or so,” he said. “Sun gets on the water good, you might try a real small spoon—Meppes or Colorado spinner.”
“What bait?”
“Single eggs. Or you might try corn.”
“Corn?”
“Whole kernel. I’ll give you a can of it.”
“I’ve never used it before,” I admitted.
“Knocks ’em dead sometimes. Give it a try.”
We got the pole rigged up, and I carted it and the gear down to the pond. I’d never used corn before, and it took me a while to figure out how to get it threaded on the hook, but I finally got it down pat. After about ten minutes or so I hooked into a pretty nice one. He tailwalked across the pond and threw the hook. I figured that would spook the others, so I moved on down to the lower pond, down by the corrals.
The lower pond was smaller, deeper, and had more limbs and junk in it. It was trickier fishing.
On about the fourth or fifth cast, a lunker about sixteen inches or so flashed out from under a half-buried limb and grabbed the corn before it even got a chance to sink all the way to the bottom. I set the hook and felt the solid jolt clear to my shoulder. He came up out of the water like an explosion.
I held the rod-tip up and worked him away from the brush. It was tricky playing a fish in there, and it took me a good five minutes to work him over to the edge.
“Does nice work, don’t he?” Clint said from right behind me. I damn near jumped across the pond. I hadn’t known he was there. When I turned around, they were both there, grinning.
“He’ll do,” Miller said.
I lifted out the fish and unhooked him.
“Want to try one?” I asked, offering the pole to Clint.
I saw his hands twitch a few times, but he firmly shook his head. “I get started on that,” he said, “and nobody’d get no dinner.”
High Hunt Page 29