Have Club Will Travel

by Michael Joy

down on the road were sweeping their gaze along the ridgeline using the telescopic sights. That kind of sight gives you a relatively narrow field of view. It looked as if they were just looking in the wrong place. Suddenly a puff of breeze blew a new scent to me. There was fresh blood ahead.

  I slowed crouching to make myself less visible and continued on, I carried the rifle over my left shoulder by the sling and the .357 pistol in my right hand. Even moving silently there is some noise a twig crunched under my foot and a deep voice called "Hunter"

  "Yes." Was my only response.

  I walked in on a cross bow it was aimed at me from less than twenty feet. The Sasquatch behind it was one I had never seen before. About a dozen feet behind him were two skin heads; one was thrashing around on the ground bound hand and foot with a hood over his head. The other had apparently been aiming a rifle across a low tree branch. In addition to giving a solid rest this would aid him in staying in position for long minutes while waiting for an order to shoot. A crossbow bolt had hit him in the back.

  I wondered whether this death had occurred before I made a break from the restaurant or in the seconds immediately after. Looking over the shoulder of the dead man I could see a good line of sight down to the back window I had come out and for the first ten or twelve strides before I encountered the scrub and seedlings then my progress had been masked by another tree. The man had an excellent knife in a sheath that clipped to his belt I took this. I noted that the car that held the cowboy hats was also visible. It was possible that he had been aiming at them and had never noticed my exit.

  "Thanks, he could have shot at me from here."

  All I got as a reply was a grunt I believe it was pleased.

  Then he spoke in their language, I heard something but was unable to actually distinguish words. Turning back I realized that he was talking into some kind of hand held radio. There was a response that meant nothing to me and then he said "Come". Then he was moving downhill in the screening trees.

  I could now see that the trees were larger here and therefore we could make better time. We encountered another Sasquatch this one was waiting, beside the body of another shooter. He was using a handful of grass to scrub blood off of the head of his club. The smile he gave us was chilling. It seemed apparent that the man who had been bound and hooded had been lucky. I noted that there was a cowboy hat which had been knocked from his head. There was a low guttural communication between the two it sounded like two words from the one with me and a one word response. Both Sasquatch had their guns suspended by a sling from their shoulder.

  "Was he working with the other two shooters or…?"

  Sometimes despite gunshots happening in the vicinity one shot stands out, it is more clear with less to muddy your perception. Usually you remember that sound, it is the sound of a gunshot aimed at you. For some at least they carry that sound with them into the afterlife. The Sasquatch I had been walking with had shuddered and I heard a dull thud while a fast wave of motion disturbed his fur, he sat and exhaled. I had heard the shot just slightly behind the thud of the impact. I went to the ground dropping the pistol and using my grip on the sling I rotated the rifle up with my left hand and while rising to a seated position my eye was focusing through the lens even as my right hand closed the bolt and then I found the trigger.

  Had the shooter spotted me moving crouched through the trees, even though I was a smaller target, I was human and not wearing real camouflage. I heard another two word conversation between the two creatures on either side of me and then I had acquired my target. It was the same marksman who had fired at me at least twice before. He had just fired again and I heard a bullet cut through the leaves easily three feet above my head.

  I had once spent a couple of seasons guiding hunters who wanted to have a big horn sheep as a trophy, at the time the .270 was a preferred choice. I had already test fired the weapon once I allowed for the reduced angle but a greater range by seventy or eighty yards. I was firing at a white patch where a T shirt showed underneath a hunter's jacket.

  There was a burst of fire beside me and I heard a loud hammer, not as quick as an expert with a handgun but faster than you usually hear from a rifle. An instant later as I reacquired my target I saw him slumping to the ground where he had been bracing his rifle along the hood of the pickup I could see where the round had struck and then bounced up slightly to hit him in the shoulder. He would not be shooting again. I was aware of the two other men with assault rifles who were aiming at our group as well, one had been shot and fallen the other had crouched behind the truck bed, at this height you could see only the toes of the shooter below the truck bed but there was at least a full foot of the interior wall exposed.

  I realized that the Sasquatch who had been hit was also firing and that the rounds were hitting high on the metal possibly head high after all it is easier to shoot through one side of a truck bed than two sides. The man in the distance fell some blood began pooling.

  I looked to where the Sasquatch sat; one was firing in what I would call a standard two handed seated stance using a knee as a brace. The other was using a complicated balance on his back whereby both hands and one back foot were gripping the weapon.

  There had been other shots in the distance from what sounded like the same kind of weapon. As I took a quick look towards the road I saw that the men close to the SUV were also down.

  Then the Sasquatch uphill called out some kind of command and the other one began to retreat downhill, crouched rather than running on all fours. Meanwhile the one uphill began to fire rapidly at the ridge line. I could see some movement up there at a distance of only a hundred the yards. The bullets would keep their heads down. Then Sasquatch below us began to fire in turn and I retreated along with the other whose weapon had run out of shells.

  I was watching when he detached the large clip; I had recognized the shell casings which were littered on the ground behind us. I still owned a Winchester .45 70 rifle but getting ammunition for it had become a problem I assumed that the Sasquatch probably load their own ammo.

  I considered whether there was a significance to the calibre. My first thought was that the US Army had used the Springfield rifle in that calibre for at least twenty years in different parts of the country. For that matter there had been a fair number of those weapons available to Indians after events like the Little Big Horn.

  The clip which the Sasquatch was loading into his rifle was wide enough that I had considered that it might be chambered for either a 30-30 or possibly even a modern assault weapon like the .223. What confused me was the fact that they would choose such an older cartridge and then pair it with a frame that looked like a sten gun.

  I had asked a gun smith I knew about this weeks ago, after I first saw one holstered to the hip of a Sasquatch the hinged shoulder stock had been folded. "Possibly the most adaptable gun system ever designed" he had told me. "They gave themselves plenty of extra space and it was incredibly rugged. Ugly as sin because they didn't want to waste time on elegance it might look like a bunch of plumbing supplies but if I wanted to chose a frame that I could adapt to different calibres it would work. There are few moving parts and you can even assemble it when it's so cold that you want to wear gloves. If you want to fire you said a 30-30 bullet then it will be hard as hell to keep on target even if you weight over 200lbs. But if it has a long barrel then at least the first shot would be accurate."

  As the Sasquatch beside me dropped and began to fire again I aimed the .270 at the ridge. We were now over 150 yards away and closing in on the road. I fired one round into a stone poised near the ridge top which I knew would create a ricochet when it bounced. The deformed metal of the bullet going from aerodynamic to a ugly shard of metal which shrieks as it whips through the air. The fact that it will no longer fly in a straight line adds to the instinctive fear that men who understand firearms flinch from.

  Then we were up and running again. While the other one laid down fire. As soon as we
passed his shooting position which was almost screened from the ridge by the wide branches of a tree he followed. Turning to the right we ran parallel to the road. We were concealed at least partially from the road below which was likely empty. There was well over a hundred yards of brush between the ridge and the route we were taking. We ran about half a mile, I could hear no sounds of pursuit. Finally we angled towards a small overgrown road there was a heavy truck with blacked out windows parked pointing towards the road, it looked like only rust was holding it together. The second Sasquatch climbed into the truck bed and yanked a tarp up to cover everything but his eyes, with his back to the cabin he could watch for any pursuers the other one climbed into the front seat. The engine turned over immediately and I just managed to get into the passenger seat before we started to roll.

  "I didn't ask if you drive a standard." The driver said.

  Somehow the comment seemed so mundane that it bordered on ludicrous as if I was going to be offended by not being given a chance to drive.

  "So now they know that they have been dealing with Sasquatch." I stated. I was only guessing but there were plenty of shooter back there who had gotten at least a quick glimpse of