High Hunt

by David Eddings

  Clint grunted, still pretty steamed.

  Cap shook his head. “I sure misjudged that one,” he said.

  “Somebody oughta take a length of two-by-four to ’im,” Clint said. “That was a damn-fool kid stunt, runnin’ off like that.”

  “Well,” Cap said, “we can’t do anything about it tonight. Let’s unsaddle the stock and get to bed. And you better cool down a mite. You know what the doctor told you about not losin’ your temper so much.”

  “Hell,” Clint said, “I’m all calm and peaceful now. ’Bout time I started up the hill, I was mad enough to bite nails and spit rust.”

  We finally got things squared away and got to bed.

  The next morning I was up before the others, so I got the fire started and got coffee going and then wandered around a bit, kind of getting the last feel of things. I like to do that with the good things. The others I kind of just let slide away.

  It had been a good hunt—in spite of everything—and I’d worked out whatever it was that I’d needed to work out. Some people seem to think that things like that have to be all put down in a set of neatly stated propositions, but it isn’t really that way at all. A lot of times it’s better not to get too specific. If you feel all right about yourself and the world in general where you didn’t before, then you’ve solved your problem—whatever it was. If you don’t, you haven’t. Verbalizing it isn’t going to change anything. One thing I could verbalize, though, was the fact that I had a couple of friends I hadn’t had before. Just that by itself made the whole trip worth everything it had cost.

  “Who’s the damn early bird?” Clint growled, coming out of the tent all rumpled and grouchy-looking.

  “Me.” I grinned at him.

  “Mighta known,” he said. “You been bustin’ your butt to get your hands on the cookware ever since we got up here.”

  “I figured I could ruin a pot of coffee just as well as you could,” I said.

  “Oh-ho! Pretty smart-alecky for so damn early in the mornin’,” he said. “All right, boy, since you went and started it, we’ll just see how much of a camp cook you are. You fix breakfast this mornin’. Anythin’ you wanna fix. There’s the cook tent.”

  “I think I’ve been had,” I said.

  “I guess they don’t teach you not to volunteer in the Army no more,” he said. “Well, I’m goin’ back to bed. You just call us when you got ever-thin’ ready.” He chuckled and went on back into his tent.

  “You’re a dirty old man,” I called after him.

  He stuck his head back out, thumbed his nose at me, and disappeared again.

  I rummaged around in the cook-tent and dragged out everything I could think of. I’d fix a breakfast like they’d never seen before.

  Actually, I went a little off the deep end. A prepared biscuit-flour made biscuits and pancakes pretty easy, but I kind of bogged down in a mixture of chopped-up venison, grated potatoes and onions, and a few other odds and ends of vegetables. I wound up adding a can of corned-beef hash to give the whole mess consistency. I didn’t think I could manage a pie or anything, so I settled for canned peaches.

  “All right, dammit!” I yelled. “Come and get it or I’ll feed it to porky.”

  They stumbled out and we dug into it. I’d fried up a bunch of eggs and bacon to go with it all, and they ate without too many complaints—except Clint, of course.

  “Biscuits are a little underdone,” he said first, mildly.

  “Can’t win ’em all,” I told him.

  “Bacon could be a mite crisper, too,” he said then.

  Cap ducked his head over his plate to keep from laughing out loud. Even Jack grinned.

  “Flapjacks seem a little chewey, wouldn’t you say?” he asked me.

  I was waiting for him to get to that hash. He tried a forkful and chewed meditatively.

  “Now this,” he said, pointing at it with the fork, “is the best whatever-it-is I’ve ever had.” He looked up with a perfectly straight face. “Of course, I ain’t never had none of this whatever-it-is before, so that might account for it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I ain’t gonna ask you what’s in it,” he said, “’cause I don’t really wanna know till I’m done eatin’, but right after breakfast, I am gonna go count the packhorses.”

  Miller suddenly roared with laughter, and pretty soon we were all doing it.

  After breakfast we struck the rest of the tents and began to pack up. It didn’t really take very long to get everything all squared away.

  A camp you’ve lived in for a while always looks so empty when you start to tear it down. We even buried in McKlearey’s slit-trench and covered over Clint’s garbage pit.

  “Well,” Cap said, looking around. “What with that table and all, I guess we’re leavin’ the place better’n we found it.”

  “You bet,” Jack said. He seemed to be getting over it all.

  We loaded up the packhorses, saddled up, and rode on down the trail. I looked back once, just before we went into the trees. I didn’t do it again.

  “Down there is where Cap and I got the deer for Sloane,” I told Jack as we passed the place.

  “That was a nice deer,” Jack said. “You wound up shootin’ the best two deer we got, you know that?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it,” I said.

  “That’s because you were concentratin’ on huntin’ instead of all that other shit like the rest of us.” Coming from Jack, that was a hell of an admission really.

  We didn’t say much the rest of the way down.

  It was a little after noon when we got back down to where the trucks were. It took us a while to get the gear all off the horses and into the stock-truck and the pickup, but by about one we were on our way back to Miller’s ranch. Jack got me off to one side and told me he wanted to ride on down with Cap, if I didn’t mind.

  “I’ve got a few things I ought to explain to him,” my brother said. “I think I screwed up pretty bad a few times up there, and I’d kinda like a chance to square things, if I can.”

  “Sure, Jack,” I said. I went over and climbed up into the stock-truck with Clint.

  Maybe there was some hope for Jack after all.

  33

  “I don’t know how the hell we’re gonna get all that stuff in that car of mine,” Jack said when we got to Miller’s.

  “We’ll have to put a couple of those deer in the back seat,” I said. “If we put them all in the trunk, it’s going to overbalance so bad it’ll pull the front wheels right up off the ground.”

  It took some juggling, but we finally managed it all.

  “I’m gonna have to go on into Twisp and pick up a few things,” Miller said, coming back from turning the horses out to pasture. “I’ll call the game warden. He’ll give you a note explainin’ why you got so many deer. That way you won’t have no trouble with any game checks on down the line.”

  “We’d appreciate it, Cap,” I said. I walked with him back up toward the house.

  “Your brother told me a few things on the way down,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he told me he planned to.”

  “I can see where he had a lot workin’ on him,” Cap said, dumping his clothes bag on the back porch.

  “He’s not as bad as he seemed to be up there,” I said.

  “He’s a lot younger’n you,” Cap said.

  “No. He’s two years older.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh. Maybe—in some ways anyhow.”

  “In a lotta ways. I got a feelin’ that in a lotta ways your brother ain’t never gonna grow up. I started off callin’ the wrong man Kid. He’s likable enough; he just ain’t grown-up.”

  “Who really ever grows up all the way, Cap?” I asked him.

  He grinned at me. “If I ever make it, I’ll let you know.”

  I laughed. “Right,” I said.

  “You got my address here?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said.

/>   “Drop me a line once in a while, son. Let me know how you’re makin’ out.”

  “I will, Cap. I really will.” I meant it, too.

  He slapped my shoulder. “We stand here talkin’ all afternoon, and you two’ll never get home.”

  We went on back out to the cars. Miller and Clint climbed in the pickup and led out with Jack and me laboring along behind in the overloaded Plymouth.

  I saw Ned rolling out in the pasture where the colt had run when we’d first come here. The old boy was acting pretty frisky. Maybe he wasn’t really grown-up yet either.

  The game warden met us in Twisp and put all the necessary information down on a piece of paper for us.

  “Nice bunch of deer,” he said. He shook hands around and left.

  “Well, men,” Cap said, “I don’t want to keep you. I know you got a long trip ahead of you.”

  “Cap, Clint,” Jack said, “maybe I didn’t show it much, but I enjoyed the trip, and I appreciate all you did for us up there.” He shook hands with them both and got back in his car.

  I shook hands with Cap and then with Clint.

  “Thanks for everything,” I said.

  “You come back, son,” Miller said, “you hear me? Even if it’s only to borrow money.”

  “And don’t make yourself obnoxious by not writin’ neither,” Clint growled, punching my shoulder.

  We were all getting a little watery-eyed.

  “I’d better go,” I said quickly. “I’ll keep in touch.” I got quickly into the car.

  Jack backed out from the curb, we all waved, and then we drove off.

  We stopped for a case of beer and then got out onto the highway. The sun was bright and warm, and we drove with the windows rolled down, drinking beer.

  “You get all squared away with Cap?” I asked my brother after a few miles.

  “I told him a little about what was goin’ on,” Jack said. “I don’t know how much it squared away.”

  “He probably understood,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said suddenly, “what day is today anyway?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Man, I lost track up there.”

  I laughed.

  We traded off at Cashmere, and I drove on over the pass. The sun went down before we got to the top, and I switched on the headlights.

  “Let’s make a piss-call at the summit,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  We stopped and used the rest rooms and then drove down into the fir trees on the west side.

  “Dan,” he said after a while.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I threw down on you up there.”

  “You didn’t mean it, Jack. I knew that.”

  “You’d have shot though, wouldn’t you?”

  “I only said that to try to jar some sense into you,” I told him.

  “Bullshit,” he said quietly. “You were all squared off and so was I. It came about that close.” He held up his thumb and forefinger about an eighth of an inch apart. “You had me cold, too.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “What the hell was goin’ on up there anyway?” he said suddenly. “I’d cut off my leg before I’d do anything to hurt you, and I think you feel the same way. What in hell got into us?”

  “McKlearey and that goddamned leper of a deer,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s best nobody found the thing,” he said. “God only knows what might have happened.”

  “I did find it,” I told him bluntly.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I found the son of a bitch and buried it before McKlearey got down there.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit. I wasn’t about to get caught in the middle of a pitched gun battle.”

  “You did that just to keep him from puttin’ me down?”

  “You weren’t listening,” I said. “That’s not why I did it. I’d have probably buried the damned thing even if you’d shot it. All I wanted to do was keep somebody from getting killed—probably me. You two were wound so damned tight you were ready to start shooting at anybody who came near you up there. Do you know that I had to back both of you off in the space of less than fifteen minutes?”

  “McKlearey, too?”

  “Hell, he was all squared away like Billy the Kid. I had to remind him loud and clear that I could take him if I had to. I got so many guns pointed at me that day I thought somebody had opened season on me.

  “Jesus, Kid, I’m sorry as hell.”

  “Let’s forget it,” I said. “Everybody was all keyed-up.”

  “Man, McKlearey sure fell apart at the end, didn’t he?”

  “His hand was pretty badly infected,” I said. “He might have been picking up some fever or something from that, I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, he was holdin’ it pretty careful all the time. You want another beer?”

  “Yeah. I’m a little tired of whiskey for a while.”

  We had another beer and bored on down through the darkness, following our headlights.

  We grabbed a hamburger and switched off again at Snohomish, and Jack drove on the rest of the way to Tacoma. We pulled into the trailer court about ten thirty.

  Jack called Clem and got an OK to hang the deer in a garage at the end of the court. Then we unloaded all our gear, said good night, and went to our own trailers. I sat on the couch in my filthy hunting clothes with my feet up and a bottle of beer in my hand. I was bone-tired, and I damn near fell asleep a couple times.

  “You look like the wrath of God,” she said, coming in. She was still as cute as ever.

  “How did you get over here, Clydine?” I asked.

  “Joan’s folks bought her a car. I’ve been borrowing it. I’ve been past here a dozen or so times since Wednesday.” She came over and kissed me. “Did you lose your razor?” she asked. Then she sniffed. “And your soap?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “All right,” she ordered. “Strip and get into that bathroom.”

  “The bathroom?” I laughed. “Not in the bathroom!”

  “Move it!” she barked.

  I grunted, sat up, and started to unlace my boots.

  “What a mess,” she said, glaring at the pile of gear on the floor. “Are those things loaded?”

  “The rifle isn’t,” I said. “The pistol is, I guess.”

  She shook her head disgustedly. “What were you doing with a pistol anyway?”

  “Trying to stay alive,” I said, a little more grimly than necessary.

  “Men!” she said.

  By the time I’d finished showering and shaving, she had everything but the guns put away. She wouldn’t touch them. She had fixed me up a big platter of bacon and eggs and toast.

  It felt awfully good just having her around.

  “Well,” she said when I’d finished eating and we’d moved back to the living room, “did you bushwhack Bambi?”

  “Two Bambis,” I told her.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “I feel better, but not because I shot the deer,” I said.

  “Something happened up there, didn’t it?” she asked me. I don’t know how, but she saw right through me.

  “A lot of things happened,” I told her, “some good, some bad.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Do you have to get back home tonight?”

  “Not really,” she said, “but don’t get any ideas—it’s the wrong time of the month.”

  “No idea, my little wisteria of the workers,” I said. “I’m too tired anyway.” I really was.

  “I’ve missed the botanical nick names,” she said, wrinkling her nose at me.

  “I’ve missed you, Rosebud.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She leaned over and kissed me. “Did you unload that damned frog leg?” she asked me.

  “The what?”

  “The frog leg. The pistol—isn’t that what they call it?”

  “That’s hogleg,
love.”

  “Hog-frog, whatever. Get it empty. I’m not going to sleep in a house with a loaded gun.”

  I reached over and took it out. She watched it the way some people watch snakes. I slipped the hammer and dropped the shells out one by one.

  “It’s a hideous thing.” She shuddered.

  “It saved my life a couple times up there,” I told her. I was overdramatizing it, I knew that.

  “That’s the second time you’ve made noises like John Wayne,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”

  “I’ll tell you in bed,” I said. “It’s a very long, very involved story, and we’re both liable to tap out before I get halfway through it.”

  “Did it turn out like a bad Western, after all?” she asked.

  “Pretty close,” I said.

  We went to bed, and I held her very tightly and told her what had happened—all of it.

  I wasn’t sure she was really awake when I finished the story. “… and that’s it,” I said, winding it up.

  “Was he really white?” she asked drowsily.

  “Kind of cream-colored.”

  “He must have been beautiful.”

  “At first he was,” I said. “After a while, though, I got to hate him.”

  “It wasn’t his fault.”

  “No, but I hated him anyway.”

  “You don’t make sense.”

  “I never pretended to make sense.”

  “Danny?”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Do you think Cap and Clint would like me?”

  “I think they’d love you, Blossom.”

  She nuzzled my neck. “You say the nicest things sometimes,” she said, her voice blurry and on the edge of dropping off.

  “Go to sleep, Little Flower,” I said.

  She nestled down obediently and went to sleep quickly, like a child.

  I lay staring into the darkness, and when I did go to sleep, I dreamed of the white deer. It got all mixed up with a dream about a dog until none of it made too much sense, but I guess dreams never really do, do they?

  The Parting

  34

  AFTER she left for class the next morning I called Mike at work to see how Betty was.