"You just ain't about to get no semdy-fi'-dollar watch off'n me for no five measly fuckin' dollars. I'll tell you that right now. And I can shore tell you one thing — you ain't gonna get no more o' my business. And I'm shore gonna tell all the fellers in my outfit not to give you none o' their business neither. It'll be a cold day in hell when anybody from the Hunnerd-and-Semdy-First Ree-con Platoon comes into this stingy little ol' place!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, friend."

"Sonnabitch!" the man growled and stomped out of the shop.

Sloane looked at me and giggled. "I get sonofabitched and motherfuckered more than any eight other businessmen on the block," he said. "Stupid damned rebels! If that shit kicker paid more than fifteen for that piece of junk, then he really got screwed right into the ground."

"Why didn't you tell him?"

"Doesn't do any good. They'd a helluva lot rather believe that I'm trying to cheat them than that somebody else already has. That way they're smart, and I'm the one who's stupid."

"That's a GI for you."

"Yeah. He's got all the makings of a thirty-year man. Chip on his shoulder instead of a head. What can I do for you?"

"I thought I'd look over your guns."

"Sure — right over there in the rack behind the counter. Gonna decide which one to take on the hunt, huh?"

"No, I thought I might buy one, if we can get together."

"Well, now. A real cash customer." He hustled on ahead of me to the rack. "Here's a good-looking .270," he said, handing me a well-polished, scope-mounted job.

"Little rich," I said, looking at the price tag.

"I can knock fifteen off that," he said.

'No. Thanks all the same, Cal, but what I've really got in mind is an old Springfield .30-06 military. That's a good cartridge, and I've got a little time to do some backyard gun-smithing."

"Just a minute," he said, scratching his chin. "I think I might have just the thing." He led me back into the storage room and pulled a beat-up-looking rifle down off the top shelf. He looked at the tag attached to the trigger guard and then ripped it off. "I thought so," he said. "It's two weeks past due. That bastard won't be back." He handed me the gun. "I'll let you have that one for thirty-five dollars. It's a real pig the way it sits, but if you want to take a little time to fix it up, you'll have a good weapon."

I took it out into the shop where the light was better and checked the bore. It looked clean, no corrosion. The stock was a mess. Some guy had cut down the military stock and then had painted it with brown enamel. The barrel still had the lathe marks on it. I glanced at the receiver and saw that it had been tapped and drilled for a scope. The bolt and safety had been modified.

"All right," I said, "I'll take it."

Sloane had been following my eyes, and his smile was a little sick. He hadn't noticed the modifications before he'd quoted me the price. I wrote him a check and tucked the gun under my arm. "Pleasure doing business with you, Calvin," I said.

"I think I just got screwed," he said ruefully.

"Win a few, lose a few, Cal baby," I said, patting his cheek. "See you around. Don't take any semdy-fi'-dollar watches."

A man creates a certain amount of stir walking up the street with a rifle under his arm, but I kind of enjoyed it. I put the gun on the floor in the back seat of my car and went on down a couple blocks to the gunsmith's shop. I bought a walnut stock blank, scope mounts, sling-swivels, a sling, a used four-power scope, some do-it-yourself bluing, and a jar of stock finish. Altogether, it cost me another forty dollars. I figured I'd done a good day's business, so I went into a tavern and had a beer.

About an hour or so later the phone rang and the bartender answered it. He looked up and down the bar. "I don't know him," he said, "just a minute." He raised his voice. "Is Dan Alders here?"

It always gives me a cold chill to be paged in a public place — I don't know why. It took me a moment to answer. "Yeah," I said, "that's me."

It was Jack. "You gonna be there a while?" he asked.

"I suppose."

"Sit tight then. I'll be there in about twenty minutes. I got somebody I want you to meet, OK?"

"Sure," I said. "How'd you find me?"

"I called Sloane. He said he could see your car, so I figured you might be at a water hole. I just called all the joints on the Avenue."

"Figures," I said.

"Say," he said, his voice sounding guarded, "didn't you have a tomato over at your pad last night?"

"Yeah."

"Pick her up at that foreign flick?"

"Sure," I said. I thought I'd rub him a little. "There was one there for you, too — a blonde, about five eight, thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six, I'd say. I threw her back."

"You son of a bitch!" he moaned. "Don't waste 'em, for Chrissake."

"You're the one who doesn't like foreign flicks," I told him.

"Not a word about any other women when I get there with this girl, OK?"

"Sure."

About half an hour later, Jack came in with a tall, very attractive brunette. He waved me over to a booth and ordered a pitcher and three glasses.

"Dan," he said, "this is Sandy. You remember — I told you about her. Sandy, this is my long-lost brother, Dan."

"Hello, Dan," she said quietly, not really looking at me. She seemed frozen, somehow indifferent to everything around her. She concentrated on her cigarette.

"Hey," Jack said, "I hear you broke it off in Sloane."

"He quoted the price," I said a little smugly, "I didn't."

"He claims he could have got fifty bucks for that gun."

"I doubt it," I said. "It's a pretty butchered-up piece."

"What do you want it for if it's such a junker?"

I'm going to rework it. New stock, dress down the barrel, and so forth, and it should be a pretty fair-looking rifle."

"Sounds like a lot of work to me," he said dubiously.

"I've got lots of time." I shrugged.

We went on talking about guns and the hunt. Sandy didn't say much. I glanced at her from time to time. She seemed withdrawn and seldom looked up. She was quite a nice-looking girl. I wondered how she'd gotten tangled up with a son of a bitch like my brother. Her hair was very dark and quite long — almost as long as Clydine's, but neater. She had long lashes which made her eyes seem huge. She seemed to smoke a helluva lot, I noticed. Other than lighting cigarettes, she hardly moved. There was an odd quality of frozen motion about her — as if she had just stopped. She bugged me. When I looked at her, it was like looking into an empty closet. There wasn't anything there. It was like she was already dead.

"Hey," Jack said, "did you pick up that pistol the other day in Seattle?"

"Yeah, it's over at the trailer."

"You know," he said, "I've been thinking maybe I ought to take along a handgun, too. There are bears up there, and you know what Mike was saying."

So we kicked that idea around for a while. We had another pitcher of beer.

Sandy kept smoking, but she still didn't say much.

9

I worked — off and on — at the gun all the next week, and by Saturday it was beginning to take shape. I did most of the work over at Mike's since he had a vise and a workbench in his garage. Also, it was a good place to get away from Clydine's three-hour-long telephone calls. I began to wish that classes would start so she'd have something to keep her busy.

I had the shape of the rifle stock pretty well roughed in, and I was working on the metal. I'd filed off the front sight, and now I was taking the lathe marks off the barrel with emery cloth — a very long and tedious job.

Betty was feeling punk, and I was checking in on her now and then to see if she was OK. She had a recurrent kidney problem that had Mike pretty worried. She'd had to spend a week in the hospital with it that spring, and he was afraid it might crop up again.

I was about ready to start polishing on the barrel with fine-grade emery cloth when Betty called me from the back door. I made it in about two seconds flat.

"Are you OK?" I demanded breathlessly.

"Oh, it's not me" — she laughed —”I'm fine."

"Please," I said, "don't do that anymore. I like to had a coronary."

"You've got a phone call."

"Oh, for God's sake! How did she find the number?" I grabbed up the phone. "Now look, you little clothhead, I'm busy. I can't spend all day —”

"Hey." It was Jack. "What's got you so frazzled?"

"Oh. Sorry, Jack, I thought it was that dizzy little broad again. I swear she spends at least six hours a day on the horn. I'm starting to get a cauliflower ear just listening to her."

"Why don't you do something about it?"

"I am," I said, "I'm hiding."

He laughed. "Could you do me a favor?"

"I suppose. What?"

"I'm over here at Sloane's pawnshop sittin' in for him. He said he was going to be back, but he just called and said he was tied up. I've got some stuff at the cleaners on Thirty-eighth Street — you know the place. They close at noon today, and if I don't get that stuff outta there, I'll be shit out of luck until Monday. You think you could make it over there before they close?"

"Yeah, I think so. I'm about due to take a beer break anyway. Will you be at the shop?"

"Yeah, I'll stick around till you get here. Sloane ought to be back before then, but you can't depend on him."

"OK," I said, "I'll crank up and bag on over there — on Thirty-eighth Street?"

"Yeah — you know the place. Right across from that beer joint with the shuffleboard."

"Oh. OK."

"Thanks a lot, buddy. You saved my bacon."

"Sure. See you in a bit."

I made sure that Betty was feeling OK and then took off. My hands were getting a little sore anyway.

The weather had begun to break, and it was one of those cloudy, windy days we get so often in Tacoma. It's the kind of day I really like — cool, dry, windy, with a kind of pale light and no shadows. I made it to the cleaners in plenty of time and then swung over onto South Tacoma Way.

Sloane still hadn't shown up, and Jack was puttering around in the shop. "Thanks a million, Dan," he said when I came in with his cleaning. "How much was it?"

I told him and he paid me.

"How you comin' with that gun?" he asked me.

"I'm about down to the polishing stage on the barrel," I told him. "I've still got to dress off the receiver and trigger guard. A couple more days and I can blue it. Then I'll finish up the stock."

"You get a kick out of that stuff, don't you?"

"It's kind of fun," I said. "Gives me something to do besides drink beer."

"Let me show you the gun I'm takin'," he said.

We went on into the back of the shop. He took a converted military weapon out of one of the cubbyholes.

"Eight-nun German Mauser," he said.

"Good cartridge," I told him. I looked the piece over.

Somebody'd done a half-assed job of conversion on it, but it had all the essentials. "It'll do the job for you, Jack."

"Oh, hey, look at this." He reached back into another bin and came out with his hand full of .45 automatic. The damned thing looked like a cannon. He stood there grinning, pointing that monster right at my belly. I don't like having people point guns at me — even as a joke. The goddamn things weren't made to play with. I was still holding the Mauser, but I was being careful with the muzzle.

"Let's see it," I said, holding out my left hand.

He pulled back the hammer with the muzzle still pointed at me. His face got a little funny.

Slowly, with just my right hand, I raised the Mauser until it was pointing at him. I thumbed off the safety. It was like being in a dream.

"All right, Jack," I said softly, "let's count to three and then find out which one of these bastards Sloane forgot to unload."

"Christ, Danny," he said, quickly turning the .45 away from me. "I never thought of that."

I lowered the Mauser and slipped the safety back on. Jack hadn't called me Danny since we were very little kids.

"You ain't mad, are you?" he asked, sounding embarrassed.

"Hell, no." I laughed. Even to me it sounded a little hollow.

We checked both guns. They were empty. Still, I think it all took some of the fun out of Jack's day. We put the guns away and went back out into the pawnshop.

"Where the hell is that damned Sloane anyway?" he said to cover the moment.

"Probably visiting Helen What's-her-name," I said. I'd run into Sloane and Helen a few times, and I didn't like her. Maybe it was because of Claudia.

"I wouldn't doubt it a goddamn bit. Say, that reminds me, you want to go on a party?"

"I'm almost always available for a party," I said with more enthusiasm than I really felt. I wanted to get past that moment in the back room as badly as he did.

"It's Sloane's idea really. That's why I kind of wanted to wait for him to show up, but piss on him. He owns this house out in Milton that he rents out — furnished. The people who were livin' there just moved out, and the new people aren't due in until the first of the month — Wednesday."

"What's all this real estate business got to do with a party?" I asked.

"I'm gettin' to it. Anyway, the place needs cleanin' — you know, sweep, mop, vacuum, mow the lawn — that sort of shit."

"That's your idea of a party?"

"Keep your pants on. Now, Sloane'll provide the beer and the booze and some steaks and other stuff."

"And brooms, and mops, and lawnmowers, too, I hope," I said.

"All right, smart ass. Here's where the party comes in. We each bring a tomato — Sloane'll bring Helen, I'll bring Sandy, and you can bring What's-her-name. We'll bag on over there tomorrow afternoon about four, hit the place a lick or two — the girls can get the inside, and we'll do the outside — and then it's party-time. Give me and Sloane a perfect excuse to get away from the wives."

I shrugged. "I'm not sure Clydine would go for the domestic scene," I said. "That's not exactly her bag."

"Ask her," Jack said. "I bet she goes for it. Where else can you stir up a party on Sunday afternoon?"

"I'll ask her," I said. It was easier than arguing with him. "But I'm not making any promises."

"I'll bet she goes for it," he said.

"We'll see."

We batted it around for about half an hour, and then Sloane called. He was still tied up. Jack grumbled a bit but promised to hang on. I wanted to swing on by the trailer court to check my mail, and he asked me to drop the cleaning off at his trailer so Marg could hang it up before it got wrinkled. I took his clothes on out to my car again and drove on up the Avenue toward the court.

That whole business with the guns had been just spooky as hell. "Maybe someday I'll just decide that you're no good, and I'll take my gun and shoot you. Bang! just like that, and you'll be dead, and I'll betcha you wouldn't like that at all." When had I said that to Jack? Somewhere back in the long, shabby morning of our childhood. The words came echoing down to me, along with a picture of a dog rolling over and over in the snow. I tried to shrug it off.

I saw McKlearey's car in the lot at the Green Lantern Tavern about two blocks from the court, and I decided that if he was still there when I came back, I'd haul in and buy him a beer. If we were going to go hunting together, I was going to have to make some kind of effort to get along with him. I still didn't much like him though.

When I drove past Jack's trailer, I saw the two little girls out in their play-yard, and I waved at them. I parked at my place and checked my mail — nothing, as usual. Then I slung Jack's cleaning over my shoulder and hiked on up to his trailer. Maybe I could promote some lunch out of Marg if she didn't have a whole trailerful of gossiping neighbors the way she usually did.

As I came up to the trailer, I glanced through the front window. I saw that mirror back in the hallway I'd noticed the first time I'd visited. I'd meant to tell Jack about it, but I'd forgotten. The angle from where I was standing gave me a view of part of the bedroom. I had visions of Margaret unveiling her monumental breasts to the scrutiny of casual passersby. I straightened up and craned my neck to see just how much of the bedroom you could really see.

Margaret was on the bed with McKlearey. They were both bare-ass naked, and their hands were awfully busy.

I have my faults, God knows, but being a Peeping Tom is not one of them. I think I was actually frozen to the spot. You hear about that, and I've always thought it was pure nonsense, but I honestly couldn't move. Even as I watched, Lou raised up over her and came down between her widely spread thighs. Her huge, dark nippled breasts began to bob rhythmically in a kind of counterpoint to Lou's bouncing, hairy buttocks. Her head rolled back and forth, her face contorted into that expression that is not beautiful unless you are the one who is causing it. I don't think I'd ever fully realized how ugly the mating of humans can look to someone who isn't involved in it. Even dogs manage to bring it off with more dignity.

I turned around and walked on back to my trailer, suppressing a strong urge to vomit. I went inside and closed the door. I laid Jack's clothes carefully on the couch, went to the kitchen and poured myself a stiff blast of whiskey. Then, holding the glass in my hand, I took a good belt out of the bottle. I put the bottle down and drank from the glass. It didn't even burn going down.

The phone rang. It was Clydine.

"I've been trying to get you all morning," she said accusingly. "Where have you been?"

"I was busy," I said shortly.

She started to tell me about some article she'd just read in some New Left journal she was always talking about. I grunted in appropriate places, leaning over the sink to watch Jack's trailer out of the kitchen window. Even from here, I could see the whole damn thing rocking. I'll bet you could walk through any trailer court in town and tell who was going at it at any given moment. Old Lou had staying power though — I had to admit that.

"Are you listening to me?" Clydine demanded.

"Sure, kid," I said. "I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"We've been invited to a party."

"What kind of a party?"

"Probably a sex orgy," I told her bluntly. "My brother and another guy and their girlfriends — it's in a house."

"I thought your brother was married."

"So's the other guy," I said. I told her the details.

"No swapping?" It sounded like a question — or maybe an ultimatum, I don't know.

"I doubt it. I've met the girls — one of them would probably dig that sort of stuff, but I'm pretty sure the other one wouldn't. You want to go?"

"Why not? I've never been to an orgy."

"Come on, Clydine," I said. "It's like being spit on. They're not inviting you to meet their wives — just their mistresses."

"So? I'm your mistress, aren't I? Temporarily at least."

"It's different. I'm not married."

"Danny, honestly. Sometimes you can be the squarest guy in the world. I think I might get a kick out of it. Maybe I can catch some of the vibrations from their sneaky, guilty, sordid, little affairs."

"You're a nut, do you know that? This thing tomorrow has all the makings of a sight-seeing trip through a sewer."

"Boy, you're sure in a foul humor," she said. "What's got you bum-tripped now?"

"My brother pulled a gun on me."

"He what?"

"Just a bad joke. Forget it. Are you sure you want to go on this thing tomorrow?"

"Why not?"

"That may just be the world's stupidest reason for doing anything," I told her. "Hey, let's go to a drive-in movie tonight."

"What the hell for?"

"I want to neck," I said. "No hanky-panky. I just want to sit in the car and eat popcorn and drink root beer and neck — like we were both maybe sixteen or something."

"That's a switch. Well, why not? — I mean, sure." She paused, then said rather tentatively, "you want me to get all gussied up — like it was a real — well — date or something?' She sounded embarrassed to say the word.

"Yeah, why don't you do that? Wear a dress. I'll even put on a tie."

"Far out," she said.

"And wear your contacts. Leave those hideous goggles at home."

"Are you sure we aren't going to — well — I mean, I wouldn't want to lose my contacts." I'd asked her before why she didn't wear contact lenses. She told me she had them but didn't wear them because they popped out when she made love. "I don't know why," she'd said, "they just pop out." I'd laughed for ten minutes, and she'd gotten mad at me.

"They're perfectly safe," I said. "Hang up now so I can call my brother and tell him you want to go to his little clambake tomorrow."

"Bye now." She hung up, then she called right back.

"What time tonight?"

I told her.

I opened myself a beer and sat down at the kitchen table. What in the hell was I mixed up in anyhow? This whole damned situation had all the makings of a real messy blow-up. Christ Almighty, you needed a damned scoreboard just to keep track of who was screwing who — whom. When they all caught up with each other, it could wind up like World War in with bells on it, and I was going out in the woods with these guys — every one of them armed to the teeth. Shit O'Deare!

I didn't belong in this crowd. But then I didn't belong with a guy like Stan either, with the chic little gatherings and the little drama groups. Nor probably with my little Bolshevik sweetheart with her posters and pamphlets and free love. Nor with the phony artsy crowd with the paste-on beards and the Latvian folk-music records. Maybe for guys like me there just aren't any people to really be with. Maybe if they were really honest, everybody would admit the same — that all this buddy-buddy crap or "interaction" shit was just a dodge to cover up the fact that they're all absolutely alone. Maybe nobody's got anybody, and maybe that's what we're all trying to hide from. Now there's an ugly little possibility to face up to in the middle of a cool day in August.

Finally Lou left. I waited a while longer and then took the cleaning up to Jack's trailer. Marg pulled a real bland face. She'd be a tiger in a poker game. We talked a few minutes, and then I drove back over to Mike's place and went back to work on the rifle. At least that was something I could get my hands on.

10

I picked up Clydine about three thirty the next afternoon, and we drove on out to Milton for the combination GI-party-sex-orgy Sloane had cooked up. I was still a little soured on the whole thing, but Clydine seemed to think it would be a kind of campy gas to watch a couple of Establishment types and what she persisted in calling "their sordid little affairs."

"You're beginning to sound like T. S. Eliot," I told her.

She ignored that.

"What kind of a cat is your brother?" she asked me. "Is he anything like you?"

"Jack? Hell no," I snorted. "He's a couple years older than I am. He was in trouble a lot when he was a kid. Then six years in the Navy right after high school. Married three times. Works in a trailer lot — part-time sales and general flunky. Drinks beer most of the time because he can't afford whiskey. Chases women. Screws a lot. He can charm the birds right out of the trees when he wants to. Something of an egomaniac. I guess that covers it."

"Typical Hard Hat, huh?" she said grimly.

"Look, my little daffodil of the downtrodden, one of the things you'll learn as you grow older is that group labels don't work. You say Hard Hat, and you get a certain picture. Then you close your mind. But you scream bloody murder when some fortyish guy in a suit looks at you and says 'Hippie' and then closes his mind. These goddamn labels and slogans are just a cop-out for people who are too lazy to think or don't have the equipment. Your labels won't work on my brother. He's completely nonpolitical."

"You know," she said quietly, "I wouldn't take that from anybody but you. I think it's because I know you don't care. Sometimes it gives me goose bumps all over — how much you don't care."

"Come on," I said, "don't get dramatic about it. I'm just at loose ends right now, that's all."

"You'd make a terrific revolutionary," she said. "With that attitude of yours, you could do anything. But that's inconsistent, isn't it? To be a revolutionary, you'd have to care about something. Oh, dear." She sighed mightily.

I laughed at her. Sometimes she could be almost adorable.

"I'm serious" she said. "What about the other guys?"

"Sloane? A hustler, Petit-bourgeois type."

"That's a label, too, isn't it?" she demanded.

"Now you're learning. Calvin Sloane is a very complex person. He was probably fat, unloved, and poor as a child. He went right to the root of things — money. He's a pawnbroker, a used-car dealer, a part-owner of several taverns, and God knows what else. Anything that'll turn a buck. He's got it made. He uses his money the way a pretty girl uses her body. As long as Sloane's buying, everything's OK. Maybe he's accepted the fact that nobody's really going to like him unless he pays them for it. He can't accept honest, free friendship or affection — not even from his wife. That's why he takes up with these floozies. They're bought and paid for. He understands them. He can't really accept any other kind of relationship. Don't ever tell him this, but I like him anyway — in spite of his money."

"You sure make it hard to hate the enemy," she said.

"Walt Kelly once said, 'We have met the enemy, and he is us.'"

"Who's Walt Kelly?"

"The guy who draws Pogo."

"Oh. I prefer Peanuts."

"That's because you're politically immature," I told her.

She socked me on the shoulder. I think our popcorn-root-beer-drive-in-movie date the night before had caused us both to revert to adolescence. She'd been almost breathtaking in a skirt, sweater, and ponytail, and without those damned glasses; but I'd stuck to my guns — we'd only necked. Both of us had gone home so worked-up we'd been about ready to climb the walls. She'd made some pretty pointed threats about what she was going to do to me at the orgy.

"What about the women?" she asked. "The concubines?"

"Helen — that Sloane's trollop — is a pig. She's got a mind like a sewer and a mouth to match. Even in the circles she, moves in, she's considered stupid since she does all of her thinking, I'm told, between her legs. Her husband's in the Air Force, and he's maniacally jealous, but she cheats on him anyway. I think she cheats just for the sake of cheating. I've about halfway got a hunch that this little blowout today was her idea. She likes her sex down and dirty, and probably she's been thrilled by orgies in some of the pornography she's always reading — undoubtedly moving her lips while she does — and she figures diddling in groups has just got to be dirtier than doing it in pairs. Maybe she figures to get a bunch-punch out of the deal."

"Bunch-punch?"

"Multiple intercourse — gang-bang."

"Oh. What about the other one?"

"Sandy? You got me, kid. She's good-looking, but she never says anything. You think I'm cool? She's so cool, she's just barely alive — or just recently dead, I haven't decided which. If you can figure her out, let me know."

We drove on across the Puyallup River bridge and on out toward Fife and Milton.

The house Sloane had out in Milton was a little surprising. I'd half-expected one of those run-down rabbit hutches that are described euphemistically as "rental properties" — not good enough to live in yourself, but good enough to house former sharecroppers or ex-galley-slaves — always provided that they can come up with the hundred and a quarter a month.

Sloane's house, on the other hand, was damned nice. It was an older frame place with one of those deep porches all across the front, and it nestled up to its eaves in big, old shrubbery. There was about a half acre of lawn in front and probably more in back. A long driveway went up to the house and along one side of it to the garage behind the house. On the other side of the driveway was a garden plot that had pretty much gone to weeds.

I ran my car on up the driveway and pulled up just behind Sloane's Cadillac.

"Nice place," Clydine said, looking out at the white-picket-fence-enclosed backyard.

"Well, well, well," Jack said, bustling out of the house with a bottle of beer in his hand. "What have we here?"

Clydine and I got out of the car.

"My" — Jack grinned, coming through the gate —”she's a little one, isn't she?" He was giving her the full benefit of the dazzling Jack Alders' smile, guaranteed to melt glaciers and peel paint at a hundred yards.

"Jack," I said, "this is Clydine."

"Clydine? How the hell'd you ever get a name like that, sweetie?"

"I won it in a raffle," she said with a perfectly straight face.

"She won it in a raffle!" Jack chorded with a forced glee. "That's pretty sharp, pretty sharp. Come on in the house, kids. Fuel up." He waved the beer bottle at us and led the way toward the house.

"Far out," Clydine murmured to me.

"Hey, gang," Jack announced as we went in the back door, "you all know my brother Dan, and this is his current steady, Clydine. Isn't that a handle for you?" He pointed to each of the others standing around in the kitchen and repeated their names. "Tell you what, sweetie," he said to Clydine, "I'm never gonna be able to manage that name of yours, so I'm just gonna call you Clyde." He winked broadly at the rest of us.

She smiled sweetly at him, and then said very pleasantly but very distinctly, "If you do, I'll kick you right square in the balls."

Sloane shrieked with laughter, almost collapsing on the floor. Jack looked stunned but covered it well, laughing a little hollowly with the rest of us. His jaws tightened up some though.

We had a couple of beers, got the girls organized, and then Jack, Sloane, and I went outside to tackle the yard work.

I fell heir to a scythe and the chore of leveling the jungle that had been a garden. Once I got into it, I discovered that in spite of the weeds, there was a pretty fair amount of salvageable produce there. By the time I got through, I'd laid a couple bushels of assorted vegetables over on the grass strip between the garden and the driveway — radishes, carrots, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, and so forth. I hauled great armloads of weeds and junk back to a brush pile behind the garage. The place looked a lot better when I was done.

I washed off my produce at an outside faucet and put it on the back porch. Then I grabbed another beer and went to see how Jack and Cal were doing. I found them sitting on the front porch, staring down at the half-mowed lawn.

"Takin' a beer break, hey, Dan?" Sloane said.

"No. I finished up."

"No shit?"

They had to come out and inspect the job. Then they looked at my haul on the back porch, and then we went back to the front porch to sit and stare at the lawnmower some more.

Sloane sighed. "Well," he said, "I guess it's my turn in the barrel." He walked heavily down the front stairs and cranked up the mower.

"That tomato of yours has got kind of a smart mouth, hasn't she?" Jack said sourly, lighting a cigarette.

"She just says what she thinks," I told him.

"If she was with me, I'd slap a few manners into her." He was still stinging from the put-down.

"You'd get your balls kicked off, too," I told him. "She meant what she said about that."

"A tough one, huh?" he said. "Where'd you latch onto her anyway?"

"She's the one I met at that Italian movie, remember?"

"Oh, that one. You sure got a weird taste in women, is all I can say."

"She's a human being," I said, "not just a stray piece of tail. As long as you treat her like a human being, fine. It's when you come on like she was a cocker spaniel that you run into trouble." I knew there wasn't much point in talking to him about it. He wasn't likely to change.

"I'd still slap some manners into her if it was me," he said.

"I don't hit women much," I said, looking out toward the sunset.

He grunted and went down to spell Sloane on the mower.

Sloane came back up the steps, puffing and sweating like a pig. "Man," he gasped, "am I ever out of shape. I'm gonna have to start jogging or something before we go up into the high country."

"You said a mouthful there, buddy," I said. "We probably all should. Otherwise one of us is going to blow a coronary."

"Hey" — he giggled —”I like that little girl of yours. She's cute as a button, isn't she?"

"She's a boot in the butt," I agreed.

"Boy, did she ever get the drop on old Jack. I thought he was gonna fall right on his ear when she threatened to bust his balls for him."

"I think he's still a little sore about it."

"He isn't used to havin' women react that way to his line."

"She just doesn't buy the glad-hand routine," I said, "and Jack doesn't know any other approach."

"How'd you manage to latch onto her?"

"You'd never believe it," I said.

"Try me."

I told him about it.

"No kidding?" he said, laughing. Then a thought flickered across his face. "Say, she isn't a user, is she? I mean, a lot of those kids are. She hasn't got any stuff with her, has she? I can square the beef if the cops come in here because we're makin' too much noise or something, but if they come in and find her stoned out of her mind on something, that could get a little sticky."

"No," I told him. "No sweat — oh, she blows a little grass now and then, but I've told her that I don't particularly care for the stuff, and I don't get much kick out of talking to people when they're stoned. It's like talking into a wet mop. She stays away from it when she's with me. We've got a deal; I tell all her friends I'm an ex-con, and she stays off the grass when I'm around. What she does on her own time is her business."

"Sounds like you two have quite an arrangement going."

"For the most part, we don't try to tell each other what to do, that's all. We get along pretty good that way."

"There, you lazy bastards!" Jack yelled, killing the lawn-mower. "It's all done."

"You do nice work," Sloane said. "Let's go get cleaned up. I brought towels and soap and stuff. I get firsties on the shower."

The girls had finished the inside cleanup and had already bathed and changed clothes. Sloane, Jack, and I all showered and changed while they cooked up the steaks and whipped up a salad out of some of my produce. We all had mixed drinks with dinner and a couple more afterward. Along about sundown things started to loosen up a bit.

"Hey," Helen said, her hard, plastered-on face brightening, "let's play strip poker."

"I didn't bring any cards," Sloane said.

"Oh, darn," she pouted. "How about you, Jack? Dan? Haven't one of you guys maybe got a deck of cards in your car?"

We both shook our heads.

"Maybe the people who lived here —” She jumped to her feet and ran into the kitchen to start rummaging through the various drawers.

"Je-sus Christ!" Clydine said, "if she wants to take her clothes off so goddamn bad, why doesn't she just go ahead and take her clothes off?"

Sandy smiled slightly. It was the first time I'd ever seen her do it.

"Come on, you guys," Helen called, "help me look."

"We cleaned out all those drawers this afternoon," Sandy said, her voice seeming very far away.

"Damn it all, anyway," Helen complained, coming back into the living room. She plunked herself back down on the couch beside Sloane, sulking.

The orgy wasn't getting off the ground too well.

"Jeeze," Helen said, "you'd think somebody'd have a deck of cards. Myron always has a deck of cards with him. All the sergeants do. They play cards all the time."

"At least when they're playing cards, they're not dropping napalm on little kids," Clydine said acidly.

Helen's eyes narrowed. "I don't know about some people, but I think we ought to back up our servicemen all the way."

"So do I," Clydine said. I blinked at her. What the hell? "I think we ought to back them up as far as Hawaii, at least," she finished.

It took Helen a minute or two to figure that one out.

"I'm proud to be the wife of a serviceman," she said finally, not realizing how that remark sounded under the circumstances.

"Let it lay," I muttered to Clydine.

"But —”

"Don't stomp a cripple. It's not sporting."

"Hey," Jack said, moving in quickly to avert a brawl, "I meant to ask you, Cal, are we gonna take pistols with us, too? On the hunt, I mean?"

"Sure," Sloane said. "Why not? If we don't get any deer, we can always sit around and plink beer cans." He giggled.

"You got anything definite out of that other guy yet, Dan?" Jack was pretty obviously dragging things in by the heels to keep Helen and Clydine away from each other's throats. A beef between the women could queer the whole party.

"Carter says the whole deal could hang on him goin'. You better nudge him a little."

"He's gotta make up his own mind," I said. "I can't do it for him."

We kicked that around for a while. We had another drink. I imagine we were all starting to feel them a little, even though we'd been pretty carefully spacing them out. Even Sandy started to get loosened up a bit.

Then we started telling jokes, and they began to get raunchier and raunchier — which isn't unusual, considering what this party was supposed to be. In all of her jokes, Helen kept referring to the male organ as a wiener, which, for some reason, just irritated hell out of me.

I went on out to the kitchen to get a beer, figuring to back off on the whiskey a little to keep from getting completely pie-eyed. I heard the padding of bare feet behind me. Clydine had her shoes off again.

She caught me at the refrigerator. "This is an orgy?" she said. "I don't think these people know how. They're like a bunch of kids sitting around trying to get up nerve enough to play spin the bottle."

"You want some action?" I leered at her.

"Well, after that popcorn and purity routine last night, I'm pretty well primed. When does something happen?"

"Hey, in there," Helen called, "no sneaking off into dark corners. If you're gonna do something, you gotta do it out here where we can all watch." She giggled coarsely.

"That does it!" Clydine said. She grabbed my arm. "Let's go screw — right in the middle of the goddamn rug!"

"Cool it," I said, "I'll get things moving."

"Well, somebody's going to have to. This is worse than a goddamn Girl Scout camp."

I rummaged around until I found a large glass. Then I got a couple more bottles of beer and went back to the living room.

"I'll bet he was copping a feel." Helen snickered. "How was it, honey?"

I ignored that, but Clydine glowered at her.

"I just remembered a game," I announced. "The Germans play it in the beer halls."

"What kinda game?" Helen demanded a little blearily.

"It's a kind of drinking game," I said, pouring beer into the large glass.

"A drinking game," she objected. "That's no goddamn fun, How about a sex game?"

"Just hang tough," I said. "The point of this game is that the person who takes the next to the last drink out of his glass — not the last one, but the next to the last one — has to pay a penalty of some kind."

"What kind of penalty?" Sloane asked.

"Any penalty we decide. Everybody gets to kick him in the butt, or he has to go outside and bay at the moon, or he — or she — has to take off one piece of clothing or —”

"Hey," Helen said, "I like that last one." Some how I knew she would. "That sounds like a swell game."

"That's a pretty big glass," Jack objected.

"That's the point," I explained. "Nobody can just chug-a-lug it down. You can take a big drink or a little one, but remember if the next player finishes it off, you gotta peel off one item of clothing — a sock, your pants, a bra, or whatever."

We haggled a bit about the rules, but finally everybody agreed to them. We all discarded our shoes to get that out of the way. I caught a glimpse of Sandy's face. It seemed completely indifferent. We pulled our seats into a kind of circle and began passing the glass around.

Sloane, of course, polished off the first glass, and Helen, with a great deal of giggling and ostentatious display of leg, peeled off a stocking. I think that mentally she was still at the "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine" stage of development. Then Jack caught Sandy, and she mutely followed Helen's example.

It went several rounds, with Sloane, Jack, and me pretty well able to control it — simply because we could take bigger drinks. I hadn't dropped it on Clydine yet.

"Come on, crumb," she hissed at me. "I'm beginning to feel like a virgin." Helen was down to her panties and bra, and Sandy was in her slip. I'd lost one sock and both Jack and Sloane were down to their slacks and shorts. I was trying not to look at Jack's tattoos.

"How much have you got on under that?" I asked Clydine. She had on a dark jersey and a pair of slacks. No sox.

"Just panties," she said. "I want to beat that dim-witted exhibitionist down to skin." Her competitive spirit was up. It was a silly game, but we were all drunk enough to start taking it a little seriously.

So the next time around, I emptied the glass, Clydine stood up and slowly pulled off the jersey. Her little soldiers snapped to attention. I heard a sharp intake of breath from Jack. Clydine took a deep breath, and Sloane choked a little.

"Come on, come on," Helen snapped, "let's get on with the game. That's not the only set of boobs in the room." What a pig!

Sandy lost her slip, and then Helen's bra went. She thrust her breasts out as far as she could, but they were pretty sorry-looking in comparison to my two little Mends. It's a funny thing about nudity. Helen looked vulgar, but Clydine didn't. My little Bolshevik was completely natural about the whole thing. After the first shock wore off, her nude breasts were almost an extension of her face — pretty but not vulgar. Helen's face stopped at her neck with the sharp line where her makeup left off. Below that she was obscene.

I lost my other sock, Jack lost his pants, and Sandy's bra went. There was a sort of simplicity, almost purity in the way she numbly exposed herself.

"Break-time," Sloane giggled. "My kidneys are awash." He hustled on back to the can with Jack right behind him. Clydine wandered around a little, looking at the furniture, and Helen sat sulking. She was obviously outclassed; Sandy had a great shape, and Clydine, of course, was out of sight.

"It's not much of a game really," I said apologetically to Sandy.

She lit a cigarette, seemingly oblivious of her own nakedness. "It doesn't matter," she said. "It's only for a little while, so it doesn't make any difference." I was suddenly disgusted with myself for having come up with the whole silly idea. Why does a guy do things like that?

"I'm not being nosey," I said, lying in my teeth, "but why do you hang around with Jack anyway? You know there's no future in it for you."

"Oh, Jack's all right," she said. "If it wasn't him, it would just be somebody else. It's only for a little while anyway."

She kept on saying that. Nobody was that cool. Maybe it was just a way of keeping things from getting to her.

"I like your little friend," she said, suddenly flashing a quick smile toward Clydine. The smile made her face suddenly come alive, and there was something just under the surface that made me look away.

Sloane and Jack came back, and the rest of us trekked back one at a time to use the facilities.

The game continued in a fairly predictable way, with all the girls winding up totally nude, and Sloane, Jack, and me in just our shorts. Despite some fairly obvious suggestions from Helen about where the final penalty should be paid, each couple retired to a separate bedroom for the last stages of the party.

As I said before, Clydine and I had both gotten pretty well worked-up the preceding night, and we went at each other pretty hot and heavy the first time. The booze, however, took its well-known and pretty obvious toll. I wasn't really making much headway the second time around, just sort of trying to entertain a friend, so to speak.

"It's not working, Danny," she said softly. "We're both too tipsy. Let's talk."

I started to roll over.

"No," she said, locking her legs around me, "just stay there. It's kind of nice, and this way I'm sure I've got your attention."

"Oh, gosh, yes," I said, mimicking Carter. "This may add an entirely new dimension to the art of conversation."

"Just relax," she told me. She pulled me down.

"We're not for keeps, Danny," she said after a moment. "You know that, don't you? I'm saying this because I keep having this awful impulse to tell you that I love you."

I started to say something, but she squeezed me sharply with her legs.

"Let me finish," she said, "while I've still got the courage. I know you think it's silly, all this — well — political stuff I'm involved in, but it's awfully important to me. I believe in it. I wish you did, too. Sometimes I just wish you'd believe in something — anything, but you don't."

I started to say something again, and she gave her pelvis a vicious little twist that damned near emasculated me.

"I'm going to do that every time you interrupt me," she said. She had a long memory. I don't think I've ever been so completely helpless before or since. She had me — as they say — at her mercy.

"In about a month," she went on, "you're going back up to the U, and I'll be starting to go to class here in a couple of weeks. You're going to be gone for ten days on this hunting expedition of yours. Between now and the first of October — less than ten days — is all we've really got. Am I getting maudlin?"

I didn't dare answer.

"If you've gone to sleep, damn you, I'll cripple you."

"I'm here," I said, "don't get carried away."

"Have I made any sense?" she asked.

"I'm tempted to argue," I said, "but I think you're probably right. If we try to keep it going after I get to Seattle, it'll just the on us anyway, and we'd both feel guilty about it. It's easy to say that it's only thirty miles, but the distance between Seattle and Tacoma is a lot more man that really."

"It's a damned shame," she said. She rocked her hips a few times under me, gently. "When it comes to this, you're just clear out of sight, but that's not really enough, is it?"

"Not in the end, it isn't," I said sadly. "At first it is."

"Let's give it another try," she said. "I want to say something silly, and I want you to be too distracted to hear me."

This time we made it, and just as we did she said, "I love you," very softly in my ear.

I whispered it back to her, and then she cried.

I held her for a long while, and then we got up and got dressed.

Sandy was standing at the kitchen sink with a cigarette and a glass of whiskey, still nude, looking out the window at the moonlight.

"We have to run, Sandy," I told her softly. "Tell Jack, OK?"

She nodded to me and smiled vaguely at Clydine. "He's asleep now," she said. "He always goes to sleep. Sometimes I'd like to talk, but he always goes to sleep. They all do." She took a drink of whiskey.

"It'll be all right," I said inanely.

"Of course," she said, her voice slurring a bit. "In just a little while."

Clydine and I went on out and got in the car. I backed on out to the road and drove on down toward Fife.

"She kept saying that all night," I said. "'It's only for a little while.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You're not as smart as I thought you were," Clydine said to me. "It's as plain as the nose on your face."

"What?"

"She's going to kill herself."

"Oh, come on," I said.

"She'll be dead before Christmas."

I thought about it. Somehow it fit. "I'd better tell Jack," I said.

"Mind your own business," she told me. "It hasn't got anything to do with him."

"But —”

"Just stay out of it. You couldn't stop it anyway. It's something that happened to her a long time ago. She's just waiting for the right time. Leave her alone."

Women!

"Let's go back to your place," she said. "I want us both to take a good hot bath, and then I want to sleep with you — just sleep. OK?"

"Why not?" I said.

"Seems to me you said that was the worst reason in the world for doing anything."

"I'm always saying things like that," I told her.

11

The following Wednesday, the first of September, we were all going to get together out at Carter's to make sure we had everything all set for the hunt. We were going to be leaving on the ninth, and so we were kind of moving up on it.

Stan had finally committed himself to going along, which surprised me since I figured that Monica would just flat veto the idea. I guess maybe she figured that that would be too obvious — or maybe she'd tried all the tricks in her bag, first the nagging, then the icicles, then crossing her legs, and none of them had worked. Stan was pretty easygoing most of the time, but he could get his back up if the occasion came along. I'd gotten a vague hint or two about the kind of pressure she was putting on him, but he was hanging in there. Then, quite suddenly, she seemed to give in. She got real nice to everybody, and that really worried me.

The other guys had decided to bring their wives on out to Carter's to kind of quiet down the rumblings of discontent which were beginning to crop up as a result of our frequent all-male gatherings and planning sessions. I'd asked Clydine, but there was a meeting of some kind she wanted to attend. Besides which, she told me, she'd about had the establishment types and their antics. I'd wanted her to meet Claudia; but, all things considered, it was probably for the best that she didn't come. Jack and Cal would have been as jumpy as cats with her around after the little orgy on Sunday. I knew she could keep her mouth shut, but they wouldn't have been so sure.

Anyhow I was over at Mike's that afternoon finishing up the rifle. Maybe it was just luck, but the thing was coming out beautifully. I hadn't really taken pride in anything for a long time, and I was really getting a kick out of it. Mike came out when he got home from work and sat on the edge of the workbench with a quart of beer while I put the last coat of stock-finish on the wood. I'd finished bluing the action the day before. All that was left was a last rubdown on the wood, mounting the sling swivels and assembling the gun.

"Man," he said admiringly, "that's gonna be one fine-looking weapon. How much you say you've got into it?"

"About seventy-five bucks altogether," I said, "and about thirty-forty hours of work."

"Beautiful job," he said, handing me the quart. I took a guzzle and gave it back.

"Now I just hope the son of a bitch shoots straight,” I said. "I never fired it before I started on this."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry," he said. "That old Springfield was always a pretty dependable piece of machinery. As long as you can poke one up the spout, she'll shoot."

"I sure hope you're right," I said, carefully leaning the stock against the garage wall to dry. I scoured my hands off with turpentine and began working at them with some paste hand-cleaner.

"Betty says you're staying to dinner." He finished the quart and pitched it into a box in the corner.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll have to start paying board here pretty quick." I had been eating with them pretty often.

"Glad to have you," he said, grinning. "It gives me somebody to swap war stories with." Mike and I got along well.

"Hey," he said. "I hear that was quite a party Sunday."

"It was an orgy," I said. "You ever met Helen — that pig of Sloane's?"

"Once or twice."

"Then you've probably got a pretty good idea of how things went."

"Oh, gosh, yes." He chuckled. "Jack was telling me that little girl you brought has got quite a shape on her."

"You can tell that she's a girl."

"He said he didn't much care for her though."

I laughed about that, and then I told Mike about the little confrontation.

"No kidding?" He laughed. "I'd sure love to have been able to see the expression on his face."

"What face?" I laughed. "It fell right off."

"Was Sandy What's-her-name there with Jack?" he asked.

"Yeah. Quiet as ever."

"She's a strange one, isn't she?"

"Clydine — that's my little girl-chum — says that Sandy's gonna kill herself pretty quick." I probably shouldn't have said anything, but I knew Mike had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.

"What makes her think so?"

"I don't know for sure — maybe they talked or maybe my little agitator is relying on the well-known, but seldom reliable, intuition women are supposed to have."

"Maybe so," Mike said thoughtfully, "but I've heard that girl say awfully weird things sometimes. If that's what she's got in mind, it would sure explain a helluva lot. You tell Jack?"

I shook my head. "He wouldn't believe it in the first place, and what could he do about it?"

"That's true," Mike admitted. He slid down off the bench and looked ruefully at his belly. "Sure is gonna get tiresome carryin' this thing up and down mountains. God damn, a man can get out of shape in a hurry." I think we both wanted to get off the subject of Sandy.

"Beer and home cookin'," I said. "Do it to you every time." I washed my hands at the outside faucet, dried them on my pants, and got my clean clothes out of my car. We went inside, and I changed clothes in the bathroom. After we ate, Mike and I had a couple beers and watched TV while Betty cleaned up in the kitchen. She sang while she was working, and her voice was clear and high, and she hit the notes right on. There's nothing so nice as a woman singing in the kitchen.

Jack and Marg showed up about seven with a case of beer, and we all sat around talking. Marg looked like she'd gotten a head start on the drinking. She was a little glassy-eyed.

"How'd you get tangled up with this Larkin guy, Dan?" Jack asked me. "He seemed a little standoffish when I met him the other day."

"Oh, Stan's OK," I said. "He's just a little formal till he gets to know you. He'll loosen up."

"I sure hope so."

"We shared an apartment for a while when I was up at the U," I said. "We got along pretty well."

"He done much hunting?" Mike asked.

"Birds, mostly," I said. "I've been duck hunting with him a few times. He's awfully damned good with a shotgun." I told them about Stan's triple on ducks.

"That's pretty good, but I'll bet I could still teach him a thing or two about shotgun shootin'," Jack boasted.

"Here we go," Margaret said disgustedly, "the mighty hunter bit." Her words were a little slurred.

"I'm good, sweetie," Jack said. "Why should I lie about it? I am probably one of the world's finest wing shots. Every time I go out, you can count on pure carnage."

"You know what's so damned disgusting about it?" Mike said. "The big-mouth son of a bitch can probably make it stick. I saw him bust four out of five thrown beer bottles one time with a twenty-two rifle."

"Never could figure out how I missed that last one," Jack said. "Must have been a defective cartridge."

"You're impossible." Betty laughed. Nothing bothered Betty.

"Just good," he said, "that's all. Class will tell." Jack smirked at us all.

"When you guys get him out in the woods," Margaret said dryly, "why don't you do the world a favor and shoot him?"

We drank some more beer and sopped up dip with potato chips. Mike and Betty had a comfortable little house with furniture that was nice but not so new as to make you afraid to relax. It was a pleasant place to talk.

Sloane and Claudia drifted in about eight with some more beer and Sloane's ever-present jug of whiskey.

"Hey" — he giggled —”is this where the action is?" He bulked large in the doorway, the case of beer under one arm and his hat shoved onto the back of his head. Claudia pushed him on into the room. They looked odd together. She was so tiny, and he was so goddamn gross. It dawned on me that she was even smaller than my little radical cutie. I wondered how in the hell she'd ever gotten tangled up with Sloane.

With him at the party, of course, any hope of quiet conversation went down the drain. He was a good-natured bastard though.

"Wait till you see what Dan's done with the rifle you unloaded on him," Mike said.

"Get it done, old buddy?" Sloane asked me.

"Not quite," I said.

"Bring it around when you get done with it," he said. "I might just buy it back."

"I believe I'll hang onto this one," I told him.

Stan and Monica came a little later, and I could see the icicles on her face. She clicked that smile on and off rapidly as I introduced them to everybody. Stan seemed ill at ease, and I knew she'd been at him pretty hard again.

"I thought Stanley said there were going to be six of you on this little expedition," she said brightly. "Somebody must be missing."

"McKlearey," Jack said. "He's pretty undependable. Likely he's in jail, drunk, or in bed with somebody's wife — maybe all three."

"Really?" she said with a slightly raised eyebrow. She looked around the room. "What a charming little house," she said, and I saw Betty's eyes narrow slightly at the tone in the voice.

So that was her new gimmick. She was going to put us down as a bunch of slum-type slobs and make Stan feel shitty for having anything to do with us.

"It's a lot more comfortable than the trailer the 'great provider' here has me cooped up in," Marg said, playing right into her hands.

"Oh, do you live in one of those?" Monica asked. "That must be nice — so convenient and everything."

I ground my teeth together. There was nothing I could do to stop her.

"Sometimes I wish we lived in one," Claudia's low voice purred. "When your husband needs a living room the size of a basketball court to keep from knocking things over, you get a bit tired just keeping the clutter picked up."

I knew damned well Claudia wouldn't be caught dead in a trailer, but she wasn't about to let this bitch badmouth Betty and Marg.

"Oh," Monica said, "you have a large house?"

"Like a barn." Sloane giggled.

"I just adore big, old houses," Monica said. "It's such a shame that the neighborhoods where you find them deteriorate so fast."

Jack laughed. "Sloane's neighborhood up in Ruston isn't likely to deteriorate much. He's got two bank presidents, a mill owner, and a retired admiral on his block. The whole street just reeks of money."

Monica faltered. Certain parts of Ruston were about as high class as you were going to get around Tacoma.

Sloane giggled again. "Costs a fortune to live there. They inhale me every year just for taxes."

"Oh, Calvin," Claudia said suavely, "it's not that bad, and the neighbors are nice, they don't feel they have to 'keep up' or put each other down. They don't have this 'status' thing."

Monica's face froze, but that put an end to it. Claudia had real class, the one thing Monica couldn't compete with. The little exchange had backfired, and she was the one who came out looking like a slob. She hadn't figured on Claudia.

Then Lou showed up. He was a little drunk but seemed to be in a good humor. "Hide your women and your liquor," he announced in that raspy voice of his. "I'm here at last." A kind of tension came into the room very suddenly. McKlearey still seemed to carry that air of suppressed violence with him. Maybe it was that stiff Gyrene brace he stood in all the time.

Why in hell couldn't he relax? I still hadn't really bought that quick changeover of his on the night when we'd first started talking about the High Hunt. I'd figured it was a grandstand play and he'd back out, but so far he hadn't. One thing I knew for sure — I'd have sure felt a lot better if he and Jack weren't going up into the woods together. Both of them could get pretty irrational, and there were going to be a lot of guns around.

"Where in hell have you been McKlearey?" Jack demanded. "You're an hour late."

"I got tied up," Lou said.

"Yeah? What's her name?"

"Who bothers with names?" McKlearey jeered.

I saw Margaret glance sharply at Lou, but his face was blank. She was actually jealous of that creepy son of a bitch, for Chrissake!

"Let's all have a belt," Sloane suggested. He hustled into the kitchen and began mixing drinks.

I sat back, relaxing a bit now that all the little interpersonal crises were over for the moment. I think that's why I've always been kind of a loner. When people get at each other and the little tensions start to build, I get just uncomfortable as hell. It's like having your finger in a light socket knowing some guy behind you has his hand on the switch. You're pretty sure he won't really turn it on, but it still makes you jumpy.

I glanced over at Claudia. I liked her more and more. I wished to hell I didn't know about Sloane and his outside hobbies.

Stan caught my eye with a look of strained apology. He, of course, had been on to Monica's little performance even more than I had. I shrugged to him slightly. Hell, it wasn't his fault.

Sloane distributed the drinks and then stood in the archway leading to Mike's dining room. "And now," he announced, "if you ladies will excuse us, we'll adjourn to the dining room here and discuss the forthcoming slaughter." He giggled.

"Right," Jack said, getting up. "We got plans to make." He was a little unsteady on his feet, but I didn't pay much attention just then.

The rest of us got up, and we trooped into the dining room. I saw Monica's face tighten as Stan got up. She didn't want him out of sight, not even for a minute.

"Now," Mike said after we'd pulled up the chairs and sat around the table, "I've made the deal with this guy named Miller in Twisp, so that's all settled."

"Where in hell is Twisp, for Chrissake?" Lou demanded.

Mike got a map, and we located Twisp, a small town in the Methow Valley.

"How'd you get to know a guy way to hell and gone up there?" Sloane asked.

"I've got a cousin who lives up there," Mike said. "He introduced me to Miller when I was up there a year ago."

"What kind of guy is he?" Jack asked.

"Rough, man. He tells you to do something, you damn well better do it."

"He better not try givin' me a bad time," Lou said belligerently.

"He'd have you for breakfast, Lou," Mike said. "I've seen him, and you can take it from me, he's bad."

"Yeah?" Lou said, his jaw tightening.

"Knock it off, McKlearey," Sloane said; he wasn't smiling. Lou grumbled a bit, but he shut up.

"Anyway, this is the deal," Mike went on. "It's fifty bucks each for ten days. He'll buy the food, and we'll pay him for it when we get there. He figures about thirty bucks a man. It would usually be a helluva lot more, but, like I told you, he's just getting into the business, and so he doesn't want to charge full price yet."

"How the hell is he gonna feed us on three bucks a day each?" Jack demanded, taking a straight belt of whiskey from Sloane's bottle.

"We'll eat beans mostly, I expect," Mike said. "I told him we weren't exactly rolling in money, and not to get fancy on the chow. He said we could get by with a little camp meat to tide us over."

"Camp meat? What the hell's mat?" Lou asked. He was being deliberately dense.

"He'll knock over a doe once we get up into the high country," Mike explained. "We'll eat that up before we come out. All the guides up there do it. I guess the game wardens don't much care as long as you don't bring any of the meat out — or if they do, there's not a helluva lot they can do about it."

"Good deal," I said, lighting a cigarette.

"Now," Mike went on, "he said we'll each need a rifle, one box of shells, a pair of good boots, a good warm coat, several pair of heavy sox, a couple changes of clothes, and a good sleeping bag. Oh, one other thing — he wants us to put our clothes and stuff in some kind of sack so we can hang them here and there on the packhorses."

"Hell," Lou said, "why don't we just roll 'em up in our sleeping bags?"

"Then what do you do with them at night, you dumb shit?" Jack demanded.

"Hang 'em on a fuckin' tree," Lou said.

"They'd be soaking wet by morning," I told him.

"Can everybody get all the stuff I just read off together?" Mike asked.

"Shouldn't be much trick to that," Jack said. "The clothes shouldn't be any problem, and Cal's bringin' most of the guns. Sleeping bag's about the only big thing, if a guy can't borrow one." He took another drink of whiskey.

"Miller says its colder'n hell up there in the high country," Mike said, "and we damn well better be ready for it. I wouldn't recommend skimping on the sleeping bag. He says he's got the tents and cookware, so we won't have to worry about that."

"Oh, hey," I said, "I was down at that surplus store downtown. I got a pretty good bag — army job — for about ten bucks. Some of you guys might want to check them out."

"That sure beats the twenty or thirty they cost at the department stores," Jack said. His voice sounded a little thick. He'd been hitting the jug pretty hard.

"I'd have to take a look at them," Lou said, his voice surly. By God! He was still fighting this thing, even now. If he didn't want to go, why the hell didn't he just say so and quit bugging the rest of us?

"I guess that's about everything then," Mike said, looking at the list. "We get together at Sloane's on the evening of the eighth for a final check-through on all the gear, and then we leave at midnight on the ninth."

"One thing," Jack said. "Are we gonna take pistols or not?"

"What did Miller say about it?" I asked Mike. I hoped to hell that he'd vetoed the idea. A guy might stop and think with a rifle, but a damned pistol is just too easy to use.

"He didn't say, one way or the other," Mike said.

"Well," Jack persisted, "are we gonna take 'em or not?" He'd been pushing the handgun business from the very start, but he'd never told me way.

"All right," Sloane said, "let's take 'em." There went my last hope. Most of the guns that were going were Sloane's, from the pawnshop. If he'd said no, that would have been it.

"I'll take that .45 automatic," Jack said. The gun he'd pulled on me that day. That just brightened hell out of my whole evening.

"Say," Stan said, coming into the conversation for the first time, "while you're all here maybe I can get a question answered. I've shot a lot of birds, but I've never shot at a big animal. This may sound a little silly, but where exactly are you supposed to aim for?" Stan was trying to be one of the guys, but he still seemed a little stiff.

"Right through the neck," Lou said, poking at Stan's windpipe with his finger. It was supposed to look like a demonstration, but like always, Lou poked a little harder than necessary.

"Depends on how far away you are," I said. "I wouldn't try for a neck shot at two hundred and fifty yards. Best bet all around is right behind the front shoulder."

"Right through the boiler factory," Jack agreed. "I'll go along with Dan on that. You've got heart, lungs, and liver all in the same place. You're bound to hit something fatal." He sounded drunk.

"And you don't spoil much meat," I said. "A few spareribs is about all."

"But for God's sake, don't gut-shoot," Mike said. "A gut-shot deer can run five miles back into the brush. You've got to track for hours to find him."

Stan shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "When it gets right down to it, I wonder if I could really pull the trigger. I went out once after deer, but I didn't see anything. I thought about it that time, too. A bird is one thing, but a deer is — well, a lot more like we are. It might be a little hard to shoot if you think about it too much." Oh, God, I thought, the Bambi syndrome.

"Shit!" McKlearey exploded. "You make more fuss about a damn deer than I ever did about shootin' people! It's the same thing — just point and pull and down they go." McKlearey had taken an instant dislike to Stan — just like I had to him.

Stan looked at him. "I guess it's what you're used to," he said. These two were about as far apart as two guys are likely to get.

"If you feel that way about it, why are you comin' along?" Lou said belligerently.

"Lou, why don't you shut up?" Mike said. "You're getting obnoxious."

"Well, he gives me a pain."

Stan stood up. His face was set. He looked like he was getting ready to paste McKlearey in the mouth. I was a little surprised to see him take offense so easily — maybe Monica's chipping was putting him on edge.

"Sit down, Stan," I said. "He's drunk."

"What if I am?" Lou said. "What if I am?"

"That's enough, Lou," Sloane said. His voice was rather quiet, but you could tell he meant what he said. Sloane could surprise you. He was such a clown most of the time that you forgot sometimes just how much weight he could swing. Not only was he big enough to dismantle Lou with one hand, but he could fire him when he got done.

Lou sat back and shut up.

We talked about it a little more, and then went back into the living room with the girls. I had a couple more beers and sat back on the couch, watching. Margaret seemed to be pretty well loaded. Her voice was loud, and she seemed to be hanging around McKlearey. I thought that she'd have had better sense. I hadn't been counting drinks on her, but she was flying high.

Claudia came over and sat beside me. "You boys get everything all squared away in there?" she asked, her deep, soft voice sending the usual shiver up my back.

I nodded. "I think everything's all lined up."

"Sounded like there might have been a bit of an argument."

"McKlearey," I said. "I wish to hell he'd show up someplace sober some time."

"He's rotten when he's drunk," she agreed, "but he's not much better sober."

"He's a real creep," I said.

"I wish Calvin would get rid of him," she said. "I just hate to have him around." She paused for a moment. "Dan," she said finally, "what's the problem with Mrs. Larkin? She had no reason to talk to Margaret and Betty the way she did."

"I don't know, Claudia. I think what it boils down to is that she doesn't want Stan to go on this trip, and she's doing her level best to make things miserable for him."

"Oh, that's sad," she said. "Is she that unsure of herself with him?"

"I thought it was the other way around," I said. "She seems to have him on a pretty short leash."

"That's what I mean," she said. "A woman doesn't do that unless she's not sure of herself."

"Never thought of it that way," I said. Suddenly it all clicked into place. Claudia knew about her husband and his affairs, and it wasn't that she didn't care — as Jack had said that first night. She probably cared a great deal, but she knew Cal and the squirming insecurity that kept driving him back to the gutter for reassurance. She could live with it — maybe not accept it entirely — but live with it. But why Sloane, for God's sake?

"Oh-oh," Claudia said, "trouble." She nodded her head toward the dining room. I saw Jack and Margaret standing in there talking to each other intensely. Margaret's face was flushed, and she looked mad as hell. They were both drunk.

Her voice rose a little higher. "I'll drink as much as I damn well please, Mister Alders," she said.

"You're gettin' bombed, stupid," Jack said. Loaded with charm, my brother.

"So what?" she demanded.

"You're makin' a damn fool of yourself," he said, his voice mushy. "You been crawlin' all over Lou like a bitch in heat."

"What if I have?" she said. "What's it to you?"

"Grow up," Jack said.

"He doesn't seem to mind," she said.

"He's just bein' polite."

"That's all you know, Mister Big Shot!" Margaret said, her voice getting shrill.

"Shut up," he told her.

"Don't tell me to shut up, Big Mouth," she said loudly. "There's a few things you don't know, and maybe it's time I wised you up."

"Oh, boy," I muttered, "here we go." I glanced over at Lou and saw him easing toward the door. I shifted, getting ready to move. If anybody was going to get a piece of McKlearey, it was going to be me. If this blew, I'd stack him up in a coiner if I could possibly manage it.

"Will you shut your goddamn stupid mouth?" Jack demanded.

"No, I won't," she said. "I'm gonna tell you something, and you're gonna —”

Then he hit her. It was an open-handed slap across the face but a good solid shot, not just a pat. She rocked back, her eyes a little glazed. I came up moving fast and got hold of him. Claudia and Betty got Margaret and led her off toward the bathroom. She seemed a little wobbly, and she hadn't started hollering yet.

"Let's get some air, buddy," I said to Jack and took him on out through the kitchen door into the backyard.

"That stupid big-mouth bitch!" he said when I got him outside. "She was gonna blab it all over the whole damn room about her and McKlearey. I shoulda had my head examined when I married her."

He knew about it. He'd known about it all along.

"That was a pretty hefty clout you gave her, wasn't it?" I said.

"Only way to get her attention," he said, trying to focus his eyes on me. "Got to hit her hard enough to shut her up."

"Maybe," I said. There's no point in arguing with a drunk.

"Sure. Only way to handle 'em. Couldn't let her shoot her mouth off like that in front of everybody, could I?"

I could sure see why he didn't stay married for very long at a time. I took his car keys out of his pocket and sat him on Mike's lawn couch. I didn't want him getting any wild ideas about trying to drive anyplace.

"Why don't you cool off a bit?" I suggested.

"Good idea," he said, leaning back. "It was gettin' pretty hot in there."

"Yeah."

"God damn, I'm glad you came back home, little brother," he said. "You're OK, you know that?" He patted my arm clumsily. "Never knew how good it'd be to have you around." His eyes weren't focusing at all now.

I stood there for a few minutes, and then I heard a snore. I decided it was warm enough. I'd pour him in the back seat of my car later. I went back inside.

"Really? That sounds terribly exciting," Monica was saying. She was sitting on the couch with Lou, and he was telling her war stories. She was up to something else now, and I thought I knew what. Lou, of course, was just stupid enough to go along with her. Somebody was going to have to shoot that son of a bitch yet.

I glanced at Stan, and his face made me want to hide. "Or maybe her," I said to myself. Her little tactic was pretty obvious.

Mike came over to me. "Jack OK?" he asked quietly.

"He's asleep on that couch thing in the backyard," I said. "We'll have to wring him out to get him home."

"Yeah," Mike said, "he gets drunk pretty easy sometimes." He stopped a minute. "Come on out in the kitchen," he said, jerking his head. I followed him. "Dan," he said hesitantly, "is something going on between Margaret and Lou?" I looked quickly at him. I'd thought that he was about half in the bag. He was a shrewd bastard and no more drunk than I was.

"Yeah," I said shortly. Again I knew I could trust him. "Jack knows about it, too," I added.

He whistled. "Son of a bitch! This could get a little intense. And the way that Larkin broad is throwin' her ass at him, Lou's likely to get a piece of her before too long, too. You know, Dan, this has the makings of a real fun trip."

"You know it, buddy," I said. "We may have to haul that Jarhead son of a bitch out of the woods in a sack."

"He's pure trouble. I wish to hell he was out of this little hunt."

"You and me both," I agreed. "Mike, you're not screwing anybody's wife, are you? I don't think my nerves could take any more of this crap."

He laughed. "Betty would castrate me," he said. "You got no more worries."

"God" — I chuckled —”what a relief." I looked on into the living room. Monica was really snuggling up to old Lou, and he was lapping it up. "We'd better get McKlearey away from her before he throws the blocks to her right there on the couch," I said. "She doesn't know what she's messing with, I don't think. Or maybe she does — anyway, she can diddle with King Kong for all of me, but I'd rather not have Stan watching."

"Right," he said. "I'll get him to help me with Jack. You want us to put him in your car?"

"Yeah," I said, "you'd better. Here are the keys. Why don't you drive him on over and take McKlearey and Sloane with you? I'll bring Marg along in Jack's car when the girls get her straightened out. Then I can run you guys back here. That ought to break up the action a little."

"We can hope," Mike said and went to get McKlearey and Cal.

This whole damned thing was getting wormier and wormier. We'd be damn lucky if any of us got out of the woods alive. I went on back to the bedroom to see how the girls were doing with Margaret.

12

By the next Saturday we were all getting things pretty well in shape. I had decided that I could find enough doming in my duffle bag to keep me warm and dry in the woods. All I needed was a good warm jacket and a red hat. There was no trick to locating those.

It took a little more scrounging, but I found a guy — a GI out at the Fort, I think — who sold me a whole bucketful of .30-06 military ammunition at five cents a round. I suspect that he'd stolen it, but I didn't ask.

That morning I took my guns to the police range and began the tedious business of sighting in the rifle. It was cool and cloudy, with no wind — a perfect day for shooting. I finally got it honed into a good tight group about an inch high at two hundred yards and decided that would do it. Then I went over to the pistol range and pumped a few through that old single action .45.I came to the conclusion that if I ever had to shoot anything with it, I'd better be pretty damn close.

I was supposed to pick up Clydine about three thirty, but I still had plenty of time, so I swung on by Stan's place on the way back from the range. I knew he was having a real bad time, and he needed all the support he could get. Monica was making life miserable for him, if her behavior at the party was any indication. For some reason this hunt had become a major issue between them. I figured that if he could just win this one, it might change the whole picture.

"How's it going, old buddy?" I asked with false cheerfulness when he answered the door. The place was still uncomfortably neat.

"Not too well," he said with a gloomy face. "Sometimes I think this was all a mistake."

"Oh, come on now," I said. "You've just got the pre-season jitters."

"No. Monica isn't really very happy about my going. She said some pretty nasty things about you and the others when we got home Wednesday."

"I'll bet," I said. "Wednesday night was kind of a bummer anyway. Don't let it shake you — her being against it, I mean."

"Still," he said dubiously, "it's the first really serious disagreement we've ever had. I don't know if it's worth it." She just about had him on the ropes. I was goddamned if I'd let her win now.

"Look, Stan," I said, "no woman has ever been that excited about her man's wanting to hunt and fish. It's in the blood — you know, basic functions, cave-keeping and bringing home the meat. Modern women have got us cave-broken, and they hate to see us reverting. But a man needs to bust out now and then. Give him a chance to get duty and smelly and unhousebroke. It's good for the soul. Deep down, women really don't mind all that much. Oh, they put up a fight, but they don't really mind. It puts things back in perspective for them." It was crackpot anthropology, but he bought it. I kind of thought he would. He wanted to win this one, too.

"Are you sure?" he asked, wanting to believe.

"Of course," I told him, "you're dealing with primitive instincts, Stan. Monica doesn't even know why she's fighting it. You can be damn sure, though, that she really wants you to stand up to her. She's testing you, that's all." That ought to throw some reverse English on the ball.

"Maybe you're right," he said.

"Sure," I told him, "that's what hunting is really all about. God knows we don't need the meat. You can buy better meat a helluva lot cheaper at the supermarket. Deer meat is going to average about five dollars a pound — that's for something that tastes like rancid mutton." I was laying it on pretty thick, and he was buying every bit of it. He really wanted to go, and convincing him wasn't all that hard.

"You get that rifle you were going to borrow?" I asked him, wanting to change the subject before he caught me up a tree.

I'd planted enough, though, I thought. At least he wouldn't roll over and play dead for her.

"Yes," he said, "I picked it up this morning. It belongs to a fellow at the school, but he had a heart attack and can't hunt anymore. He said that if I like the way it shoots on this trip, he'll sell it to me."

He fetched the gun, and I looked it over. It was one of those Remington pumps in .30-06 caliber, scope-mounted and with a sissy-pad on the butt. I felt my shoulder gingerly. Maybe a recoil pad would be a good investment if a man planned to do a lot of shooting.

"Good-looking piece," I said. "You sighted it in yet?"

"The fellow said that it was right on at two hundred yards."

"Probably wouldn't hurt to poke a few through it just to make sure," I told him. "Sometimes they get knocked around a little and won't hit where you're aiming. I'll give you a fistful of military rounds so you can make sure." I told him where the police range was, but he already knew. So I showed him how to adjust the sights, gave him about fifteen rounds and took off. I didn't want to be around if Monica came back. He'd told me she'd been gone since early that morning on some land of errand, and he didn't expect her back until evening, but I didn't want to take any chances. I might just have trouble being civil to her.

I wanted to swing on by Sloane's pawnshop to see how things were shaping up with the other guys, so I buzzed right on over there. My ears were still ringing and I could have used a beer, but I figured that could wait.

Sloane was in the place alone when I got there.

"Hey, Dan," he said, "how'd it shoot?"

"Dead on at two hundred," I said.

"Good deal. Say, you hear about Betty?"

"What? No. What's up?"

"That damned kidney of hers went sour again. Mike had to put her in the hospital again last night."

"Oh, no," I said, "that's a damned shame."

"Yeah. I'm afraid Mike won't be able to go with us, poor bastard. He wouldn't dare leave now."

"Christ, Cal," I said, "that'll wash out the whole deal then, won't it?" I felt sick.

"No, I don't think so," Sloane said. "I called Miller this morning as soon as I heard about it. He wasn't any too happy, but he'll still take us. It's too late for him to get another party."

"It's still a damn shame," I said. "Poor Betty was just getting back on her feet from last spring, and Mike's really been counting on this trip. I was looking forward to getting out with him."

"It's a lousy break," Sloane said. "It's a good thing we included Larkin in. Miller wouldn't have held still for just four guys."

"I had to give Stan a shot of high life just a little while ago," I said. "His wife's giving him a whole bunch of crap about the trip."

"She's a real bitch, isn't she?"

"They'd have been ahead to have drowned her and raised a puppy," I agreed.

"She was really out to raise hell last Wednesday," Sloane said. "Hey, could you use a blast? I've got a jug in the back, and it's about time for my early afternoon vitamin shot."

"Oh, I guess I could choke some down," I said. "Might take some of the sting out of my shoulder."

"That old aught-six steps back pretty hard, doesn't it?" he said, leading me into the back room.

"You know she's there when you touch 'er off," I agreed.

He took a fifth of good bourbon down from one of the shelves. "I stick it up high," he said, "so Claudia doesn't find it. She's sudden death on drinking on the job. I wouldn't want to get fired." He giggled.

"Hadn't you better sit where you can keep an eye out front?" I asked.

"What the hell for? On the fourth of the month the GI's are fat city — rollin' in money. Everybody's already redeemed last month's pawns, and nobody looks for pawnshop bargains on Saturday afternoon. Their neighbors might see them and mink they were hurting for money. Here." He passed me the jug.

I took a long pull. "Good whiskey," I said as soon as I got my breath.

"Fair," he agreed, taking a drink. "Oh, hey. I wanted to show you the pistol I'm taking along." He rummaged around and came up with a .357 Ruger, frontier style.

"Christ, Sloane," I said, "isn't that a little beefy?"

"It shoots .38 special as well," he said. "I'll probably take those."

"It's got a good helf to it," I said, holding the pistol.

"Got a holster too," he said, pulling a fancy Western-type cartridge belt and holster out of one of his bins.

"Man," I said, "Pancho Villa rides again. We're going to go into the woods with more armament than a light infantry platoon."

"Jack's got that Army .45 auto, and McKlearey's taking a Smith and Wesson .38 Military and Police," he said.

"I don't know if Stan's got a handgun," I said. "When you get right down to it, they're not really necessary." I wanted to say something more about that, but I figured it was too late now.

"It just kind of goes with the trip," Sloane said, almost apologetically. "If it's the land of thing you only do once, you might as well go all the way."

"Sure, Cal," I said, looking at my watch. "Say, I've got to run."

"O.K. Here, have one for the road." He handed me the jug again. I took another belt, and we walked on back out into the shop again.

"Keep in touch," he said.

"Right." I waved and went on out to the street. Goddamn Sloane was just a big kid. I began to understand Claudia even a little better now. God knows he needed somebody to take care of him.

I dropped the guns and clothes off at the trailer and buzzed on out to the Patio for a few beers. I still had a couple hours before I was supposed to pick up Clydine. It was still cloudy, but no rain. It was the kind of day that's always made me feel good. Even the news about Betty hadn't been able to change that. I parked the car and went inside whistling.

McKlearey was there at the pinball machine — as usual — still standing at attention. He saw me before I could back out.

"Hey, Danny," he said, "come have a beer." I hate having people I don't like call me Danny. My day went sour right about then.

"Sure," I said. I followed him to the bar and ordered a draft.

"Hey, old buddy," he said, slapping me on the shoulder with a false joviality that stuck out like a sore thumb. "How you fixed for cash money?"

"Oh," I said cautiously, "I've still got a couple bucks."

"Can you see your way clear to loan me five till payday?"

I couldn't think up an excuse in a hurry. I reached for my wallet before I even stopped to mink. You get that reflex in the Army, I don't know why.

"I get paid on Wednesday," he said, watching me, "and I'll get it right back to you then."

I pulled out a five and handed it to him.

"Got to pick up some stuff, Lou," I said. "I don't think I'd better cut it any tighter."

"Sure," he said, "that's OK. This'll get me by. I'll be sure to get it right back to you on Wednesday."

"No sweat, Lou," I said.

"No," he said, "a guy ought to stay on top of his obligations."

There was five bucks down the tube.

"You hear about Carter's wife?" he asked, settling back down at the bar.

"Yeah," I said, "I just stopped by the pawnshop. Sloane told me."

"Damn shame," he said indifferently. "Oh, well, there's enough of us to make the trip OK." He seemed almost glad that Mike wasn't going. He was a rotten son of a bitch.

"Sure," I said, "we'll be able to swing it."

"I just got here a few minutes ago," he said. "You was lucky to catch me. I just had a real high-class broad in the sack at my place."

"Oh?" I had a picture of what he'd call a "high-class broad."

"Yeah. I only met her a few days ago, but it don't take a guy long to make out if he knows the score. You know her, but I ain't gonna tell you who she is. Nice set of jugs on her and a real wild ass."

McKlearey was about as subtle as a brick. What in hell was Monica up to? If she wanted a little strange stuff, she sure as hell could have done better man this creep.

McKlearey chuckled obscenely. "You should have seen it, Danny boy. She comes to my fuckin' pad about ten this morning, see. Some dumb routine about something she'd 'misplaced' at a party we was both at, and had I seen it. At first I thought she was tryin to say I'd stole it, see, so I was a little hot about it — you know, cut her right off. Well, she hung around and hung around, smilin' and givin' me the glad eye and stickin' her tits out at me, see, so I ask her if she wants a beer, see. She says she don't mind, and we have a beer and start to get friendly."

I could just picture Monica gagging down a beer at ten in the morning.

"Well, I make my move, see," he went on, "and all of a sudden she gets cold feet, see. Comes on with this 'I don't know what you think I came here for, but it certainly wasn't that!'" He mimicked her voice fairly well. "But I know women, see, and she was just pantin' for it. I figure she wanted it rough, see — them high-class broads always like it like that — so I says, 'Come here, you bitch,' and I yanks off her clothes and throws her on the bed, and I poke it to her, right up to the hilt. At first she kind of half-ass tries to fight me off, but pretty soon she gets with it, see. Wild piece of tail, man!" He chuckled again and ordered another beer.

I began to hope he'd get hit by a truck before we ever went into the woods. This was going to be a bum trip, and now I was out five bucks. I told him I had to run, and I took off. The whole business with Monica had me a little confused though. Why McKlearey, for Chrissake?

I asked Clydine about it that evening at my place, explaining the situation and describing the people and what had happened.

"Now, why in God's name would she want to have anything to do with that creepy Jarhead?" I asked her.

Clydine sighed and shook her head. "Oh, Danny," she said in a long-suffering tone. "You're so smart about some things and so hopeless when it comes to women."

"I manage to get by," I said, slipping my hand up under her sweatshirt and grinning at her.

"Do you want to play or do you want to listen?" she asked tartly. "Somehow I've never been able to believe a man's seriously listening to what I'm saying if he's fondling me at the same time."

I pulled my hand out. "OK," I said, "all serious now. No fondling. Shoot."

"All right. One: Wifey doesn't want Hubby to go out and shoot Bambi — right?"

"No — Wifey doesn't want Hubby to get off the leash."

"Whatever. Two: Hubby is jealous of Wifey's good-looking round bottom, right?"

"OK," I said.

"Three: Wifey knows there's bad blood between Hubby and Creepy Jarhead, right?"

"Go on."

"Four: Wifey figures that if Creepy Jarhead makes big pass at Wifey's good-looking round bottom, Hubby will blow his cool, punch Creepy Jarhead in the snot-locker and stay home and hold Wifey's hand instead of going out with the bad old hairy-chested types to dry-gulch poor little Bambi, right?"

"Wrong," I said. "Creepy Jarhead did not just make pass. Creepy Jarhead threw the blocks to Wifey's little round bottom. It shoots your theory all to hell."

She shook her head stubbornly. "Not at all," she said. "Wifey moves in those circles where when a lady says no, the men are polite enough to stop. Poor little Wifey underestimated the Creepy Jarhead, and that's why she got blocks in her bottom."

I blinked. By God, she had it! "You are an absolute doll," I told her. "Now tell me, since this went gunnysack on her, what position is Wifey in now?"

"Little Wifey's got her tit in the wringer," Clydine said sweetly. "She can't scream rape — it's too late for that, and besides, Hubby might go to the Fuzz and then the Creepy Jarhead would spill his guts about her being the one who made the first move. She is, if she's a normal Establishment woman, feeling guilty as hell about now for having committed adultery with a man she doesn't even like. I'd say she screwed herself right out of action — literally. Hubby can go out and exterminate the whole deer population and she won't be able to raise a finger. End of analysis. Satisfied?"

"It all fits together perfectly," I said. "You know, my little pansy of the proletariat, you are absolutely beautiful."

"I'm glad you noticed," she said, snuggling up to me. "Now you may fondle, if you like."

13

On Tuesday night we gathered at Sloane's with all our gear. Jack and I got there a little late, and the others were already sitting around the kitchen waiting for us. Stan's face looked grim, and McKlearey was already a little drunk. Sloane seemed relieved to see us, so I imagine things had been getting a bit strained.

"There they are," Sloane said as we walked in. "Where in hell have you guys been?"

"I had to get cleaned up," Jack said. "I've been crawlin' around under a fuckin' trailer down at the lot all day."

"Have a beer, men," Sloane said, diving into the refrigerator. He came up with a fistful of beer cans and began popping tops. "You guys bring your gear?"

"Yeah," I said, "it's out in the car."

"Why don't you go ahead and bring it on in," he said. "I've got the list of all the stuff we'll each need, so I'll check everybody off." It was sort of funny really. Sloane was such a clown most of the time that you hardly took him seriously, but when Mike had dropped out, he'd taken charge, and nobody questioned him about it.

"What we'll do," he went on, "is get everything all packed up, and then we'll store it all here. That way nobody forgets anything, OK?"

We all agreed to that.

"Then tomorrow night, we all take off from here. Stan is going to ride with me, right Stan?"

Stan nodded.

"We can swap off driving that way," Sloane said. "Dan, you and Jack are going in his car, right?"

"Yeah."

"And Lou wants to take his own car, I guess. Damned if I know why, Lou. There'd be plenty of room in either of the other cars."

"I just want to take my own car," Lou said. "Does anybody have any objections to me takin' my own fuckin' car?" He was sitting off by himself like he had that first night, and his eyes looked a little odd. I thought maybe he was drunker than I'd figured at first.

"It just seems a little unnecessary, that's all," Sloane said placatingly.

"Does anybody have any objections to me takin' my own fuckin' car?" Lou repeated. He really had a bag on.

“Take the motherfucker," Jack said. "Nobody gives a shit."

"All right, then," Lou said. "AU right, then." His voice was a little shrill.

"All right, calm down, you guys," Sloane said. "If we start chipping at each other, we'll never get done here." Everybody seemed to be in a foul humor.

Jack and I went back out to the car to pick up our gear. "That fuckin' McKlearey is gettin' to be a big pain in the ass," Jack said as he hauled out his sack. "I wish to Christ we'd included him out."

"We needed the extra guy to make the deal with Miller," I said.

"We could have found a dozen buys that would have been better."

"He's a first-class shitheel, all right," I agreed, lifting out my rifle. "He tapped me for five bucks the other day."

"Oh, no shit?" Jack said. "Didn't I warn you about that? Well, you can kiss that five good-bye."

We went on inside with the gear.

"Let's take it all into the living room," Sloane said. "We've got room to spread out in there, but for Chrissake don't spill any beer on Claudia's carpet! She'll hang all our scalps to the lodge-pole if somebody messes up."

"We're all housebroke," Jack said. "Quit worryin' about the goddamn carpeting." He was in a particularly lousy mood tonight for some reason.

"OK, you guys, spread out and dump out your gear," Sloane said. For some reason he reminded me of a scoutmaster with a bunch of city kids.

"Sleeping bag," Sloane said.

Each of us pushed his sleeping bag forward.

"Gear-bag — or clothes bag, or whatever the hell you want to call it." He looked around. We each held up a sack of some kind. Looky, gang, Daddy's going to take me camping. "OK, now as we check off the items of clothing and what-not, stow them in your sack, OK?"

He went down through the list of items — clothing, soap, towels, everything.

"OK," he said, "that takes care of all that shit. You'll each be wearing your jackets and boots and all that crap, so we're all set there. Now, have you all got your licenses and deer-tags?"

"I'll pick up mine tomorrow," Lou said.

"McKlearey," Jack said angrily, "can't you do one fuckin' thing right? We were all supposed to have that taken care of by now."

"Don't worry about me," Lou said. "Just don't worry about me, Alders. I'll have the fuckin' license and tag."

"But why in hell didn't you take care of it before now, you dumb shit?" Jack shouted. "You've had as much time as the rest of us."

"All right," I said. "It's no big deal. So he forgot. Let's not make a federal case out of it."

"Dan's right," Sloane said. "You guys are touchy as hell tonight. If we start off this way, the whole thing's gonna be a bust." He could feel it, too.

"Let's get on with this," Stan said. "I've got to get home before too late."

"Keepin' tabs on that high-class wife of yours, huh?" Lou snickered.

"I don't really see where that's any of your business," Stan said with surprising heat. I guess that McKlearey had been at him before Jack and I got there.

"McKlearey," I said, trying to keep my cool and keep the whole thing from blowing up, "you're about half in the bag. You'd be way out in front to back off a little, don't you think?"

"You countin' my fuckin' drinks?" he demanded. "First your shithead brother, and now you, huh? Well, I can get my own fuckin' license, and I sure as hell don't need nobody to count my fuckin' drinks for me."

"That's enough," Sloane said sharply, and he wasn't smiling. "You guys all got your rifles with you?"

We hauled out the hardware. Sloane had the .270 he'd tried to sell me, Stan had the Remington, Jack had that Mauser, Lou had a converted Springfield, and I had the gun I'd been working on. All the rifles had scopes.

"Two boxes of ammunition?" Sloane asked. We each piled up the boxes beside our rifles.

"Hunting knives?"

We waved our cutlery at him.

"I guess that's about it then."

"Say," Jack said, "how about the handguns?"

"God damn" — Sloane giggled —”I almost forgot. I've got them in the closet. Let's see. Dan, you and Stan each have your own, don't you?"

Stan nodded. "I have," he said quietly. He reached into one end of his rolled sleeping bag and after some effort took out a snub-nosed revolver. He fished in again and came out with a belt holster and a box of shells. Somehow the gun seemed completely out of character. I could see Stan with a target pistol maybe, but not a people-eater like that. And he handled it like he knew what he was doing.

"Christ," I said, "that's an ugly-looking little bastard."

"We had a burglar scare last year," he said, seeming a little embarrassed.

"What the hell can you hit with that fuckin' little popgun?" Lou sneered.

"It's a .38 special," Stan said levelly. "That's hardly a popgun. And I've had it out to the range a few times, and I cm hit what I shoot at." He gave Lou a hard look that was even more out of character.

Lou grunted, but he looked at Stan with an odd expression. Maybe the son of a bitch was thinking about how close he'd come to getting a gutful of soft lead bullets for playing silly games with Monica. I hoped he'd get a few nervous minutes out of it.

"You got yours, haven't you, Dan?" Sloane asked.

I nodded. I'd rolled up the gun belt, holster, and pistol and brought them over in a paper sack. I pulled the rig out and laid it across the sleeping bag. The curve of the butt and the flare of the hammer protruding from the black leather holster looked a little dramatic, but what the hell?

"Jesus," Sloane said, almost reverently, "look at that big bastard."

Nothing would do but to pass the guns around and let everybody fondle them.

"You got ours here, Cal?" Jack asked. He sure seemed jumpy about it — like he wasn't going to relax until he got his hands on that pistol.

Sloane got up and went out of the room for a minute. He came back with three belts and holsters. The .357 Ruger of his was almost a carbon copy of my old .45, a little heavier in the frame maybe. His holster and belt were fancier, but the leather was new and squeaked a lot. McKlearey's .38 M & P had a fairly conventional police holster and belt, but Jack's .45 auto was in a real odd lash-up. It looked like somebody had rigged up a quick-draw outfit for that pig. I don't know how anyone could figure to get an Army .45 into operation in under five minutes, but there it was.

We sat around in a circle, passing the guns back and forth. My .30-06 got a lot of attention. Sloane particularly seemed quite taken with it.

"I'll give you a hundred and a half for it," he said suddenly.

"Come on, Cal," I said. "You can get a brand-new gun, scope and all, for that. You couldn't get more than a hundred and a quarter for that piece of mine, even if you were selling it to a halfwit."

"I don't want to sell it," he said. "I just like the gun." He swung the piece to his shoulder a couple more times. "Damn, that's a sweet gun," he said.

Stan took the gun from him. "You did a nice job, Dan," he said.

"Poor Calvin figures he got royally screwed on that deal," Jack said, laughing.

"No," Sloane said, "it was my business to look at the merchandise before I set the price. I screwed myself, so I've got no bitch coming."

Lou went out and got another beer.

Jack held up his rifle. "This thing's a pig, but it shoots where you aim it, so what the hell?"

"That's all that counts," Stan said.

McKlearey came back.

"We're all pretty well set up," I said. "I was about half afraid somebody'd show up with a .30-30. That beast's got the ballistic pattern of a tossed brick. About all its good for is heavy brush. Out past a hundred yards, you might as well throw rocks."

"And we're not likely to be in brush," Jack said. "You get up around the timberline and it opens up to where you're gettin' two- and three-hundred-yard shots."

"Miller says we'll be camping just below the timberline," Sloane said, "and we'll be riding on up to where we'll hunt, so it'll likely be pretty soon."

"Good deal," Lou grunted. "I've about had a gutful of fuckin' jungle."

"Air gets pretty skimpy up there, doesn't it?" Jack asked.

"At six to eight thousand feet?" Sloane giggled. "You damn betcha. Some of you flatlanders'll probably turn pretty blue for the first couple days."

We carried the gear into Sloane's utility room and piled it all in a corner and then went back into the breakfast room just off the kitchen. Sloane opened another round of beers, and we sat looking at a map, tracing out our route.

"We'll go on up to Everett and men across Stevens Pass," Sloane said. "Then, just this side of Wenatchee, we'll swing north on up past Lake Chelan and up into the Methow Valley to Twisp."

"I thought that was Mee-thow," Lou said.

"No," Sloane answered. "Miller calls it Met-how."

Lou shrugged.

"Anyhow," Cal went on, "if we leave here at midnight, we ought to be able to get over there by eight thirty or nine. Some of those roads ain't too pure, so we'll have to take it easy."

"We'll be leaving for camp as soon as we get to Miller's?" Stan asked.

"Right. He said he'd feed us breakfast and then we'd bit the trail."

"Gonna be a little thin on sleep," I said.

"I'm gonna sack out for a few hours after work," Jack said.

"Probably wouldn't be a bad idea for all of us," Sloane agreed.

We had a few more beers and began to feel pretty good. The grouchy snapping at each other eased off. It even seemed like the hunt might turn out OK after all. We sat in the brightly lighted kitchen in a clutter of beer cans and maps with a fog of cigarette smoke around us and talked about it.

"Hey, Danny," Lou said suddenly, "you pretty fast with that old .45?"

"Oh, I played with it some when I first got it," I said. "I guess everybody wants to be Wyatt Earp once in his Me."

"How fast are you?" he insisted.

"God, Lou, I don't know. I never had any way to time it. I could beat that guy on Gunsmoke — Matt Dillon — you know how he used to draw at the start of the program? I'd let him reach first, and then I'd beat him."

"Pretty fast," he said, "pretty fast. Let's see you draw." He wasn't going to let it go.

"Aw, hell, Lou, I haven't handled that thing for two years. I probably couldn't even find the gun butt."

"Go ahead, Dan," Jack said. "Show us how it's done. You a gun-fanner?"

I shook my head. "I tried fanning just once — out at the range — and I splattered lead all over the country. That might be all right across a card table, but at any land of range, forget it."

"Let's see you draw," Lou said again, prodding me with his elbow. Once again it was a little harder than necessary.

"Sure, Dan," Sloane said, "let's see the old pro in action."

Now don't ask me, for Chrissake, why I gave in. I don't know why. The whole idea of having pistols along had spooked me right from the start, and the more that things had built up between these guys, the less I liked it. In the second place, I don't like to see a bunch of guys messing around with guns. It's too easy for somebody to get hurt. What makes it even worse is that this quick-draw shit starts too many people's minds working in the wrong direction. All things considered, the whole damned business may just have been one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life. I suppose when you get right down to it, it was because that goddamn McKlearey rubbed me the wrong way. He acted like he didn't believe I knew how to handle the damned gun. The fact that I didn't like McKlearey was pushing me into a whole lot of decisions lately, it occurred to me.

Anyway, I got up and went back into the utility room and got my gun belt. I pulled the wide belt around my waist and buckled it. I was a notch bigger around the belly than I'd been before I went in the Army. Too much beer. I tied the rawhide thong at the bottom of the holster around my thigh and checked the position of the holster. I made a couple of quick passes to be sure I could still find the hammer with my thumb. It seemed to be where I'd left it. I took the gun out of the holster and went back out to the kitchen.

"Hey," Jack said, "there's the gunfighter. God damn, that gun belt sure looks evil strapped on like that." Jack was getting a little high again.

"If you start with the gun already out of the holster," Lou said, "I can see how you could beat Matt Dillon."

"You want to take a chance on my having forgotten to unload this thing?" I asked him flatly.

"God, no," Sloane yelped. "For Chrissake don't shoot out my French doors."

I opened the loading gate, slipped the hammer and rolled the cylinder along my arm at eye level, checking it carefully. I figured I might as well give them the whole show. I snapped the gate shut and spun the gun experimentally a couple times to get the feel of the weight again. Frankly, I felt a little silly.

"Fancy," Sloane said.

"Just limbering up," I told him.

"Let's see how it's done," Lou insisted.

I slipped the pistol into the holster and positioned my hand on the belt buckle.

"Draw!" Lou barked suddenly.

As luck would have it, I was ready, and I found the hammer with my thumb on the first grab. The gun cleared smoothly, and I snapped it about waist high and a little out. It was a fair draw.

"Jesus!" Sloane said blinking.

"God damn!" Jack said. "Just like a strikin' snake." He was getting a kick out of it.

"Lucky," I said.

Even Lou looked impressed. Stan grinned. He'd seen this before. God knows how many hours he'd watched me practice when we'd been roommates.

"Do that again," Jack demanded.

"Why don't I quit while I'm ahead," I said. "Next time I might not even be able to find the damn thing."

"No," he insisted, "I mean do it slow, so we can see how it's done."

I holstered. "Look," I said. "You spread out your hand and come back, see? You catch the curve of the hammer on the neck of your thumb, like this. As soon as you hit it, you close in your hand — you cock the gun and grab onto the butt at the same time. Then you pull up and out, putting your trigger finger inside the guard as the gun comes out. You're ready to shoot when it comes up on line. The idea is to make it all one motion." Silly as it sounds, I was getting a kick out of it. The sullen scowl on McKlearey's face made it all worthwhile.

"You did all that just now?" Jack said incredulously. "Shit, if a man was to blink, he'd miss the whole thing."

"It took a few hours to get it down pat," I said, doing the tie-down. I'd grabbed a little hard, and my thumb was stinging like hell. I could feel it clear to the elbow. I'd done it OK though, so I figured it was a good time to quit. No point in making a complete ass of myself.

"Here," Sloane said, getting up, "give me some lessons." He went into the utility room and came out with the Ruger and the new belt and holster. He cinched the belt around his middle.

"Lower," I said, sitting back down.

He pushed down on the belt. "Won't go no lower," he complained.

"Loosen it."

He backed it off a couple of notches. "That's the last hole," he said.

"It'll do."

"He looks like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle." Jack laughed.

"Just keep mouthin' off, Alders," Sloane threatened, "and I'll drill you before you can blink." He took on a menacing stance, his hand over the gun butt.

"OK," I said, "tie it down."

He grunted as he bent over and lashed the thong around his leg.

"Let's see the gun," I said. He handed it to me and I opened the loading gate. The pale twinkle of brass stared back at me. I felt a sudden cold hand twist in the pit of my stomach. He must have reloaded it when he put it back in the utility room after we'd been looking them over out in the living room. I should have known this was a mistake. I tipped up the gun, slipped the hammer, and dropped the shells out of the cylinder onto the table, one by one, slowly. They sounded very loud as they hit the table and bounced.

"Shit, man!" Lou said in a strangled whisper.

I picked up one of the shells and looked at the base, ".357 magnum," I observed in a voice as calm and mild as I could make it. "You could blow me refrigerator right through the wall with one of these."

Sloane blushed, I swear he did. "I forgot," he mumbled.

"Or you could knock McKlearey's head halfway down to the bay — beer can and all."

"All right, I forgot. Don't make a federal case out of it." Sloane was getting pissed off.

"Well, that's lesson number one," I said, handing him back the gun. He holstered it.

"Lesson number two. Don't trust anybody when he says a gun is empty. Always check it yourself." I palmed the shell I was holding.

"But I saw you unload it," he protested.

"How many bullets on the table?"

He counted and his eyes bulged. He snatched out the gun and checked the cylinder. I dropped the last one on the table.

"Smart ass!" He snorted.

"Never hurts to be sure. Guns are made to kill with. If you're going to play with them, you damn well better be sure they understand. A gun's got a real limited mentality, so you've got to do most of the dunking." Maybe if I could shake them up a little, they'd stop and give the whole business a little thought.

"All right, don't rub it in. What do I do now?"

"Hold your hand about waist high and spread out your fingers."

"You started from over here," he objected putting his hand on his belly.

"You can get fancy once you get the hang of it," I told him.

I talked him through the draw a couple of times. Then he tried it fast and naturally he dropped it on his foot.

"God damn!" he bellowed, hopping around holding the foot.

"Heavy, aren't they?" I asked him pleasantly. "And somehow they always seem to land on your foot."

He gingerly put his weight on his foot and limped heavily around the room.

"That's called gunfighter's gimp," I told the others. "Next to the Dodge City Complaint, that's the most common ailment in the business."

"What's the Dodge City Complaint, for God's sake?' Sloane demanded.

"That's when you start practicing with a loaded gun and blow off your own kneecap."

"Bullshit, too!" He winced. "Not this little black duck." He started unstrapping the belt. "I'll stick to Indian wrestling. These goddamn things are just as dangerous from the back as from the front." That's what I'd been trying to tell them.

"Let's see that fuckin' thing," Lou demanded, getting up. He strapped it on. It hung a little low, but it looked a lot more businesslike on him than it had on Sloane. He went through it slowly a couple times and then began to pick up speed. He was pretty good and not quite as drunk as I'd thought.

"Come on, Alders," he said to Jack, "I'll take you." He snapped the gun at Jack's head.

God damn it, I hate to see somebody do that!

"Come on, shithead," Jack told him, waving his hand. "Don't point that fuckin' thing at me."

"Strap on your iron, hen-shit," Lou said.

"Give me your gun, Dan," Jack said suddenly. He was about half-drunk, too.

I saw that there was no point in trying to talk them out of it. I stood up, stripped off the belt and handed it to Jack. He strapped it on and tied it down.

"You've got to give me a couple minutes to practice," he said.

"Sure," Lou said. "Take as long as you want."

Jack hooked and drew a few times. He picked it up fairly fast, but I knew he was no match for McKlearey. As I watched him, I noticed for the first time how small my brother's hands were. That .45 looked like a cannon when he pulled it.

"All right, you big-mouth son of a bitch," he said to Lou. "Somebody call it."

They squared off about ten feet apart.

"On three," I said. It might as well be me. I was hoping Jack would win by some fluke. That might quiet things down.

I counted it off, and Lou won by a considerable margin.

"Now I guess we know who's the best man." He laughed.

"Big deal," Jack said disgustedly.

Lou snapped the gun at him again. "Back in the old days, you'd be buzzard-bait right now, Alders," he said. "Well, who's next? Who wants to take on the fastest fuckin' gun in Tacoma?" He stood at a stiff brace, his face fixed in a belligerent leer.

Jack dropped the gun belt back on the table. He was grinding his teem together. He was really pissed. I knew I should have just let it die, but I couldn't let that bastard get away with it. Goddamn McKlearey rubbed me the wrong way, and I didn't like the way he'd put down my brother. I figured it was time he learned that he wasn't King Shit. I stood up and strapped on the gun.

"Well, well," he said, "the last of the Alders. I beat you and I'm top gun, huh?"

"That'll be the day," Stan said quietly.

"You don't think I can?" Lou demanded.

I finished tying down the gun.

"Who's gonna count?" Lou said.

"Never mind the count," I said. "Just go ahead when you're ready." I wanted to rub his face in it, and I'd noticed that Lou always squinted when he started to draw. I figured that was about all the edge I'd need.

It was. I had him cold before he got the gun clear. I didn't snap the trigger but just held the gun leveled at his face. He froze and gawked at the awful hole in the muzzle of that .45. I guess Lou'd had enough guns pointed at him for real to know what it was all about. I waited about ten seconds and then slowly squeezed the trigger. The snap of the hammer was very loud.

I spun the gun back into the holster, grinding nun a little more. He was still standing there, frozen in the same place. He was actually sweating, and his eyes had a weird look in them.

"And that about takes care of the fastest gun in Tacoma," I said, and I took off my gun belt.

Lou tried to get Sloane or Stan to draw with him, but they weren't having any. Sloane and I put our guns away, and I figured we'd gotten past that little shit-pile. These guys weren't kidding, empty guns or no. I think we were all starting to slip a few gears.

"I can still outhunt you bastards," Lou said, his voice getting shrill again.

"You'll have to prove that, too," Jack said.

"Don't worry, I'll prove it," Lou said. "Any bet you want. First deer, biggest deer, longest shot. You name it, and I'll beat you at it." He was pissed off now. He'd been put down, and no Marine can ever take that. What was worse, he knew I could do it again, any time I felt like it. Even that might help keep things under control. If he knew I'd be there and I could take him if I had to, it might just keep his mind off the goddamn guns.

"Hey, there's an idea," Sloane said. "Best deer — using Boone and Crockett points — the other guys pitch in and buy him a fifth of his favorite booze."

"Why not a jug from each guy?" Lou said. "I can drink one jug in an afternoon."

"All right," Jack said. "One jug of Black Label from each guy, OK?"

"Why not?" Stan said.

"Sure," I agreed.

Sloane shrugged. Money didn't mean that much to him.

"And a little side bet, too," Jack said. "Just between you and me, Lou. Ten bucks says I get a better deer man you do." I don't think he'd have made the bet if he'd been sober.

"You got it," Lou said. "Anybody else want a piece of the action?" He looked around.

"I'll cover you," Stan said. I looked at him quickly. His face was expressionless. "Ten dollars. Same bet." What the hell was this? I suddenly didn't like the smell of it. Stan didn't make bets — ever. How much did he know anyhow?

"You got it," Lou said. "Anybody else." He looked at me. I looked back at him and didn't say anything. I didn't have anything to prove — I didn't have a wife.

Sloane opened another round of beer, and we drifted off into talking about the trip and hunting in general.

"I think I'd better go," Stan said. "I've got classes tomorrow, and it's going to be a long night tomorrow night."

"You got a point, Stan," Jack said.

"Don't forget our fuckin' bet, Larkin," Lou said. He went into the utility room and came back with that M & P .38 strapped on. He stood in the kitchen, snatching the gun out of the holster and putting it back. "Take that, you motherfucker," he muttered, jerking out the pistol and snapping it. I had a vague feeling it was me he was talking to.

Sloane, Jack, and I went with Stan to the front door.

"That McKlearey and I don't get along too well," he said as he went out.

"Don't feel like the Lone Ranger, Stan," Jack said. "I got a gutful of that bastard already, and we ain't even left yet."

"Maybe we can push him off a cliff," I said.

"After he's paid his share of the guide fee." Sloane giggled.

Stan went on out to his car, and the rest of us went back into the house.

"Son of a bitch!" Lou's voice came from the kitchen. We trooped in, and he stood there with blood dripping onto the tiles from a gash in his left hand. The stupid bastard had been trying to fan that double-action .38.

Hot-diggety-damn, this was going to be a fun trip!

14

It rained all the next day. The sky sagged and dripped, and the trailer court was gloomy and sad. I tried sleeping, but after about eleven or so it was useless. I visited with Margaret, but she was drying clothes on a rack in the living room, and the place was steamy and smelled of wet clothes so badly that it made me even more miserable. Then a couple of her coffee-drinking friends came in and started the usual woman talk. There was nothing after that but to go to a tavern and drink beer. Clydine was busy registering for classes until about three or so.

The inside of my car felt damp and clammy as I fired it up, and the windshield fogged over immediately. I drove up the street to the Patio, listening to the hiss of my tires on the wet pavement. The parking lot was sodden and full of puddles. I ran inside to get out of the rain as quickly as possible, and sat down on a stool at the bar and ordered a beer. There were four other guys in the place, all about as dispirited as I was.

I sat at the bar, hunched over, watching the cars whoosh by with the spray flying and the windshield wipers slapping back and forth. By three I was so goddamn depressed I couldn't stand myself. I called Mike from the bar and found out that Betty was better. He sounded pretty bitter about not being able to go with us as well as half-sick with worry over Betty, so I cut it pretty short.

I was still depressed when I got to Clydine's place. She lived in a shabby little second-floor apartment with Joan — the usual stuff — old sofa cushions on the floor to sit on, posters on the wall, bricks and boards for bookcases. Joan had gone home right after she'd finished registering, probably to keep on the good side of her folks, so Clydine and I had the place to ourselves.

She'd been standing around in the rain, and her hair was soaked. She looked very young, sitting cross-legged on a sofa cushion as she dried her hair with a big towel — very young and very vulnerable.

"What's the matter, Danny?" she asked me, looking up. I was slouched in their ruptured armchair with a sour look on my face, looking out the steamy window.

"The rain, I guess," I said shortly.

"You're living in the wrong part of the country if the rain bothers you that much," she said.

"I don't know, Clydine," I said, "maybe it's not really the rain."

"You're worried about this trip, aren't you?" she said.

"I suppose that's it," I said. "Things got a little hairy last night." I told her about it.

"Wow!" she said. "It sounds like a bad Western."

"Maybe that's the point," I said glumly. "The only way a bad Western can end is with a big shoot-out. You ever seen a Western yet that didn't have a shoot-out?"

"Why don't you just back out?" she asked.

I shook my head. "It's too late for that. Besides, I really want to go; I really do."

She shivered.

"Are you cold?" I asked her.

"I'll warm up in a little," she said.

"You little clobberhead," I said. I went over, knelt down beside her, and felt her bare foot. It was like a dead fish. I ran my hand up her leg. Her Levis were soaked.

"Watch it," she murmured.

I ignored that and slid my hand up under her sweatshirt. The little soldiers were clammy. "You knucklehead," I said angrily. "You're going to get pneumonia."

"I'll be all right," she said, shivering again. "You're just a worrier."

I stood up and went into her dinky little bathroom. I dumped all the dirty clothes out of the bathtub and started to fill it with hot water. I went back into the living room and snapped my fingers at her. "Up," I said.

"What?"

"Up. Up. On your feet." I wasn't about to take any crap from her about it. She grumbled a bit but she got up. "Now march," I ordered, pointing at the bathroom.

"This is silly," she said.

I swatted her on the fanny. Not too hard.

"But the bathroom is such a mess," she wailed.

I pushed her on inside. The tub was almost full. I turned it off and checked it out. It was hot but not scalding.

"Strip," I said.

"What?"

"Strip! Peel. Take it off."

"Danny!" She sounded horribly shocked.

"Oh, for Christ's sake! Look, Rosebud, you've been running around my place wearing nothing but your sunny smile for weeks now. This is no time to come down with a case of false modesty."

"But not in the bathroom!" she objected, still in that shocked tone of voice.

Women! I reached out and very firmly pulled off her sweatshirt.

"Danny," she said plaintively, "please." She crossed her arms in front of her breasts. She was blushing furiously. I sat down on the toilet seat and hauled off her soggy Levis.

"Danny." Her complaining voice was very small.

Then I took off her panties. They were wet, too. She went into the "September Morn" crouch.

"All right," I said, "in the tub."

"But —”

"In the tub!"

"Turn your head," she insisted.

"Oh, for God's sake!" I turned my head.

"Well," she said defensively, "it's in the bathroom. Ouch! That's hot!"

I looked at her quickly.

"You turn your goddamn head back where it was, you goddamn Peeping Tom!"

I looked away again.

"All right," she said finally in that small voice, "I'm in now." She was all scrunched up in the tub, hiding all her vital areas.

"Sit tight," I told her. "I'll be back in a minute."

"Where are you going?" she yelled after me as I hurried out. I didn't answer. I clumped on down the steps and went out in the rain to my car. I had a pint of whiskey in the glove compartment, and it was about half full. I got it and went on back up to her apartment.

"Is that you?" she called.

"No, it's me," I said. Let her figure that one out. It'd give her something to do. "Not in the bathroom" — for Chrissake! I heard a lot of splashing.

"Stay in the damn tub!" I yelled in to her.

"I am," she yelled back. "I don't know why you got so bossy all of a sudden."

I mixed her a good stiff hot toddy. As an afterthought, I mixed myself one as well. I carried them into the bathroom.

She'd poured about a quart of bubble bath in the water and had stirred it all up. She was in suds up to her chin.

"Well," she said in that same defensive tone, "if you're going to insist on this 'Big Brother is washing you' business, at least I'm going to be decent." She sounded outraged.

"Drink this," I said, handing her one of the cups.

"What is it?"

"Medicine. Drink it." I sat back down on the john.

"Boy, are you ever a bear," she said, sipping at the toddy. "Hey, I like this. What is it?"

I told her.

Somehow in the interim she'd tied her hair up into a damp tumble on top of her head. She looked so damned appealing that I got a sudden sharp ache in the pit of my stomach just looking at her.

We sat in silence, drinking our toddies.

"Oooo," she finally said with a long, shuddering sigh, "I was cold."

"I don't know why you gave me so much static about it," I said.

"But, Danny," she said, "it's the bathroom. Don't you understand?"

"Never in a million years." I laughed. "And don't try to explain it to me. It would just give me a headache."

We sat in silence again.

"Danny," she said tentatively, studying the sudsy toe she'd thrust up out of the water.

"Yes, Blossom?"

"What we were talking about before — this hunting thing. You said you really wanted to go."

"Yeah," I said, "I really do."

"It just doesn't fit," she said. "You aren't the type. I mean, you're not some fat forty out to assert his manhood by killing things." She'd never talked about it before, but I guess it had been bothering her.

"You're labeling again," I said. "Oh sure, I've seen the type you're talking about — probably more of them than you have, but that's not the only kind of guy who hunts. For one thing, I eat everything I kill. That kind either gives it away or throws it in the garbage can. I don't give game away either. If I don't like the taste of an animal, I won't hunt it — I won't butcher for somebody else. And I don't collect trophies — not even horns. People who do that are disgusting. They have contempt for the animal they kill. They want a stuffed head around to prove to their friends that they're smarter than the deer was. Well, big goddamn deal!" Suddenly I was pretty hot about it.

"Well, don't get mad at me," she said.

"I'm not mad at you, kid," I said. "It's just that it burns me to think about it. The beery blowhard with the broad ass and the big mouth is the picture everybody's got of the guy who hunts — probably because he's so obnoxious. He's the shithead who Utters the woods with beer cans and poaches a big buck before shooting time, and wastes game, and hangs mounted heads all over his wall, and pays his dues to the NRA, and calls himself a 'sportsman,' for God's sake — like hunting was some kind of far-out football game."

"And he probably belongs to the John Birch Society, too," she added.

I let that go by.

"Well, I know why he's trying to be a mighty hunter," she said, splashing her feet under the slowly dissolving suds, "but you still haven't told me why you are."

I shrugged. "I have to," I said. "It's something I have to do. That's the thing the Bambi-lovers can't understand. They simper about 'immaturity,' and 'man doesn't need violence toward his fellow creatures,' and 'let's have a reverence for life and keep our forests and wild life just to look at — as nature intended.' I get so goddamn sick of the intentional fallacy. Whatever the hell some half wit decides is right is automatically what nature or God intended. Bullshit! Preserve the pheasant from the bad old hunter so that the fox can tear him to pieces with his teeth. Preserve the cute little bunny so the hawk can fly him up about a thousand feet and drop him screaming to the ground. You ever hear a rabbit scream? He sounds just like a baby. Preserve the pretty deer — Bambi — so he can over-multiply, overgraze, and then starve to death — or get so weak that the coyotes can ran him down and start eating on his guts while he's still alive and bleating.

"Nature isn't some well-trimmed little park, Flower Child. It's very savage. These idiots get all mushy and sentimental about our little furry friends, and they get upset when a grizzly in the Yellowstone chews up a couple kids."

"You sound like you hate animals," she said. "Is that it?"

"I love animals," I said. "Nobody who hates animals hunts. But I respect the animal for what he is — wild. I don't try to make a pet out of him. When I go into the woods, I'm going into his territory. I respect his rights. Am I making any sense?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "But you still haven't told me why you like to go out and kill things."

I shrugged again. "It's something I have to do — every so often I have to go out. It's not the killing — that's really a very small part of it. It's the woods, and being alone, and — well — the hunting. That word gets misused. Actually, it's going out, finding the animal you want in his own territory, and then getting close enough to him to do a clean job. He deserves that much from you. Call it respect, if you like. Anybody who gets all his kicks out of the killing has got some loose marbles."

"I don't understand," she objected, "I don't understand it at all."

"You're not a hunter," I said. "Very few people really are."

"Of course not," she said sarcastically, "after all, I'm a woman."

"I've met women who were hunters," I said, "and damn good ones, too."

"Is it — well — now don't get mad — sexual?"

"You've been reading too much Hemingway." I laughed. "People use sexual terms to describe it because that's about as close as you can get to it in everyday language that nonhunters would understand. Hemingway knew the difference, and he knew other hunters would, too, and he knew they'd excuse him."

"You make it all sound awfully exotic," she said doubtfully.

"It's not," I said, "actually, it's very simple. You just can't explain it to people, that's all."

"Are you a good hunter?" she asked.

"I try," I said, "and I keep on learning. I guess that's about all any guy can do."

"You know," she said, looking straight at me. "I don't think this conversation is really happening. It's surrealistic — me in the bathtub and you sitting on the john trying to eff the ineffable to me."

"What makes it even more psychedelic" — I grinned at her — "is the fact that you're convinced that you're concealed up to the neck when in reality your suds melted about five minutes ago."

She blinked and looked down at herself. Then she squealed, suddenly contorting herself into a knot. She glared at me, her face flaming. "You get out of here!" she said. "You get out of my bathroom, right now!"

I laughed and went on out to the living room. I could hear her perking and grumbling like a small pot behind me. I mixed myself another drink. I felt better. She made me feel good just being around her. I sat down in the chair and looked out at the soggy tail end of the afternoon in a much better humor.

"Hey, you!" She was standing in the doorway. Her hair was still tucked on top of her head. Except for the hair ribbon she was stark naked. She pitched her damp towel back through the bathroom door and snapped her fingers at me. "Up!" she said. "On your feet, Buster!"

I got up. "Now, what —”

"March," she said, pointing imperiously at the bedroom.

"I don't think you ought to get too overheated," I started. "I mean, you got a bad chill and —”

"Bullshit! Nobody — and I mean nobody — is going to yank my panties off like you did just now and then tip his hat and walk away. Now you get into that bedroom!"

I went into the bedroom.

After she finished her revenge, or whatever you want to call it, we talked some more. About ten o'clock that evening I kissed her good-bye and went out to my car. "Not in the bathroom!" For Christ's own private sake! I laughed all the way back across town.

I took a shower, dressed in my hunting clothes, and then clumped on up to Jack's trailer, wincing as the rain spotted my Army boots. I'd spent a lot of hours polishing them.

Jack was a little groggy from his nap, but he dressed quickly, and we drove on over to Sloane's house through the rain-swept streets. We didn't say much except to complain about the weather.

"Sure as hell hope it isn't rainin' on the other side of the mountains," Jack said. I grunted agreement. We stopped by a liquor store and each bought a fifth of bourbon.

"God knows if we'd be able to find a store open later on," Jack said.

We got to Sloane's place about a quarter to twelve and sat down and had a beer with Calvin after we'd stowed our gear in the car. Stan and Lou both showed up about five to twelve, and they loaded up. All of us had a good stiff belt of Cal's whiskey, and we took off.

We stopped at a roadhouse tavern just before we got to Seattle and laid in a supply of beer, about a case in each car. It was one of those overchromed joints, all fancy and new. The only guy in there besides the bartender was a drunk in the back booth, snoring for all he was worth. The bartender had a solitaire game laid out on the bar. Real swinging joint. We bought our beer, pried Lou away from the pinball machine, and took off again, blasting along in the wake of Sloane's Cadillac. We didn't get to Everett until almost two, and we stopped for gas. Once we got past Snohomish, we were about the only cars on the road. The flat farmland of the Snohomish River Valley stretched on back into the mist and darkness on either side of us, and the fences with the bottom strand of wire snarled in weeds sprayed out on either hand as we passed. Now and then we'd see a house and barn — all dark — near the road. Once in a while a car would pass, going the other way like a bat oat of hell and spraying muddy water on the windshield.

Jack and I switched off, and I drove for a while. There's something about driving late at night in the rain. It's almost as if the world has stopped. The rain sheets down in tatters, and the road unrolls out in front of your headlights. We went up through the small silent, mountain towns, always climbing. Each town seemed emptier than the last, with the rain washing the fronts of the dark old buildings, and the streetlights swinging in the wind. We kept the radio going, and neither one of us said much until we got on past Gold Bar, the last town before we really started to climb. Once we got up into the mountains, the radio faded, and after about ten miles of static, I switched it off.

"Bust me open another beer, Jack," I said, breaking the silence.

"Sure." He cracked one and handed it to me.

"Damn. I hope this weather breaks at the summit," I said.

"Didn't you hear that last weather report?" he asked. "It's pretty much all on this side."

"That's a break."

"Yeah." We lapsed into silence again, watching the headlights spear on out in front of the car and the windshield wipers flopping back and forth. I turned up the heater.

"God damn," he said suddenly, "I wish to hell Mike could have made it. It's a damn shame, you know that? He's been tryin' to get away for the for the last four years now, and some damn thing always comes up so he can't make it."

"Yeah," I said, "and Mike's a good head. He'd have been fun to have along."

Jack nodded gloomily. "You want a belt?" he said suddenly.

I wasn't really sure I did, but I saw that he needed one. "Why not?"

He fished his bottle out from under the seat and cracked the seal. He took a long pull and handed it to me. I took a short blast and handed it back.

"I guess we'd better go easy on this stuff," he said. "We show up drunk and Miller's liable to send us back down the mountain." He put the jug away.

"Right."

"You know, Dan," he said after a while. "I'm damn glad we got the chance to do this together. We never got to know each other much when we were kids, what with one damn thing and another — the Old Lady and all. Maybe it's time we got acquainted."

"I've had a pretty good time the last few weeks," I said.

"I'm not sorry I got in touch with you." It was more or less true.

"It'd all be great if it wasn't for that son-of-a-bitchin' McKlearey," he said bitterly.

"Yeah. What the hell's got him off on the prod so bad, anyway?"

"Aw shit! He was the big-ass gunnery sergeant in the Corps — you know, a hundred guys jumped every time he farted. He was a big shot. Now he's low man on the totem pole at Sloane's used-car lot — a big plate of fried ratshit. He's not in charge anymore. Some guys just can't hack mat."

"Institutional mentality," I said.

"What the hell's that?"

"It's like the ex-con who gets busted for sticking up a police station two days after he gets out of the pen. He really wants to go back. They take care of him, do his thinking for nun. He's safe inside. Guys in the military get the same way."

"Maybe that's it, Jack said.”When I knew him in the service, he was a different guy. Now he's drunk all the time and shacked-up with a half dozen women and a real first-class prick. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been throwin' the wood to Marg every time my back's turned."

I was suddenly very wide awake. Christ, had he been so drunk that night he couldn't remember what he'd said? "Oh?" I said carefully.

"It wouldn't be the first time she's played around. Maybe I've given her reason enough. She was pretty young and simple when I married her, and I'm not one to pass up some occasional strange stuff. Maybe she figures she's entitled. I don't give a shit. Me and her are about ready to split the sheets anyway." He slumped lower in the seat and lit a cigarette.

"Sorry to hear that," I said. I meant it.

"I've been through it a couple of times already. I know the signs. I don't really give a rat's ass; I'm about ready to go the single route myself anyway. Marriage is fine for a while — steady ass and home cookin' — but it gets to be a drag."

"I'm still sorry to hear it."

"But no matter what, I'm a blue-balls son of a bitch if I want to get cut out by that fuckin' McKlearey while I'm still payin' the bills. That's one of the reasons I'm gonna outhunt that motherfucker if it kills me. Maybe if I rub his nose in it hard enough, he'll get the idea and move on." Jack's voice was harsh.

"I don't know," I said. "As stupid as he is, getting an idea through his head might take some doing."

"I suppose I could always shoot the bastard."

"Not worth it." I was about half-afraid he meant it.

"I suppose not, but he could sure use shootin'."

"You know it, buddy."

"Another beer?"

"Sure."

The moon was slipping in and out of the clouds as we climbed higher, and the drops that hit the windshield were getting smaller. The rain was slacking off. The big fir trees at the side of the road caught briefly in our headlights had their trunks wreathed in tendrils of mist. I leaned forward and looked up through the windshield at the slowly emerging stars.

"Looks like it's going to quit," I said.

"That's what I told you," he said.

The High Hunt

15

Sloane’s Cadillac was still leading, and at the summit he signaled for a left.

"Where the hell's he going?" I asked. "Off into the timber?"

"Naw. He probably wants to use the can. McKlearey's been droppin' back for the last ten miles anyway, so we better let the son of a bitch catch up."

I turned Jack's car into the lot at the summit behind Sloane, stopping beside his car and switching off the engine.

Sloane stuck his head out the window on the driver's side and yelled, "Piss call!" The echoes bounced off down the gorge we'd just come up.

"Christ, Sloane," Jack hissed, "keep it down. There's people livin' over in the lodge there."

"Oooops," Sloane said. He and Jack hotfooted it over to the rest room while Stan and I stood out in the sprinkling rain waiting to flag down McKlearey. It was so quiet you could hear the pattering drops back in the timber.

"Pretty chilly up here," Stan said. His voice was hushed, and his breath steamed. He had his hands jammed down into the pockets of his new bright-orange hunting jacket. The jacket clashed horribly with his old red duck-hunting cap.

"It's damned high," I said.

"What time is it?"

"About three thirty," I said.

"You think Lou's car has broken down?"

"About right now I wouldn't give a damn if that bastard had driven off into the gorge somewhere. I've had a gutful of him, and a steering post through the belly might civilize him some."

"I've met people I've liked a lot more," Stan agreed. That's Stan for you. Never say what you mean.

"How are you and Sloane getting along?"

"Just fine. He's a strange one, you know? He plays the fool, but he's really very serious. He was telling me that he hates that pawnshop and all the sad little people who come in wanting just a couple of dollars for a piece of worthless trash — they know it's not worth anything, but it's all they have — but he can't get his money back out of the place right now, so he has to stay there."

"Yeah," I said, "Sloane's a really odd duck."

"And he's really very intelligent — well-read, aware of what's going on in the world — all of this foolishness is just an act."

"I wouldn't want to try to outsmart him," I agreed.

Cal and Jack came back. "Hasn't that shithead made it yet?" Jack demanded. "Oh, hell, yes," he imitated McKlearey's voice, "I'm gonna drive my car. It's a real goin' machine. Cost me sixty-five bucks. I'd feel perfectly safe drivin' from here to the end of the block in that car."

"I think that's his car now," Stan said. He pointed far off down the mountain we'd just climbed. We saw a flash of headlights sweeping out across the gorge, flaring out in a sudden bright swipe through the mist.

Stan and I went to the rest room, came back, and joined the others watching Lou's old car labor up the highway.

"Is this the fuckin' top?" he demanded as he pulled up alongside, his radiator hissing ominously.

"This is her," Sloane said. "Car heat up on you?"

"Aw, this cripple," Lou said in disgust. "Is there any water here?"

"Over by the latrine," I said, pointing.

He pulled over to the side of the rest-room building and popped the hood. He got out and threw a beer bottle off into the trees. The bandage on his left hand gleamed whitely in the darkness. He eased off the radiator cap, and the steam boiled out, drifting pale and low downwind. He poured water into the radiator, and pretty soon it stopped steaming. Then he fished out a can of oil from the trunk and punched holes in the top with an old beer opener. He dumped the oil into the engine and then threw the can after the beer bottle. He slammed the hood, unzipped his pants, and pissed on the front tire.

"Christ, McKlearey!" Jack said, "there's the latrine right there."

"Fuck it!" Lou said. "What time is it?"

"Nearly four," I told him.

"Let's go huntin', men," he said and climbed back in his car. The rest of us went to our cars, and we started down the other side.

Jack was driving again, and I slumped down in the seat. The sky was clear on this side, and the stars were very bright. I picked one out and watched it as we drifted down the mountain.

What in the goddamn hell was I doing here anyway? I was running off into the high mountains with a bunch of guys I didn't really know, to do something I didn't really know all that much about, despite what I'd told Clydine. Maybe I was still running and this was just someplace else to run to. But I had a strange feeling that whatever I'd been running after — or away from — was going to be up there. Maybe Stan was right. When you strip it all away, and it's just you and the big lonely out there, you can get down to what counts.

Maybe it was more than that, too. Up until Dad died, I'd heard hunting stories — about him and Uncle Charles, about Granddad and Great-Uncle Beale — all of them. And I'd started going out as soon as I was old enough — alone most of the time. It was something where you couldn't work the angles or unload a quick snow job or any of the crap I'd somehow gotten so good at in the last few years. There was no way to fake it; it had to be real. If you didn't kill the damned deer, he wouldn't fall down. You couldn't talk to him and tell him that he was statistically dead and convince him to take a dive. He had too much integrity. He knew what it was all about, and if you didn't really nail him down, he'd go over the nearest mountain before you could get off a second shot. He knew he was real. It was up to you to find out if you were.

"Hey, Jack," I said.

"Yeah?"

"You remember Dad?"

"Sure."

"He liked to hunt, didn't he?"

"Whenever he could. The Old Lady was pretty much down on it. About all he could do by the time you were growin' up was to go out for ducks now and then. He used to sneak out of the house in the morning before she woke up. She wouldn't let him go out for deer anymore."

"Whatever happened to that old .45-70 Granddad left him?"

"She sold it. Spent the money on booze."

"Shit! You know, I've got a hunch we'd have been raised better by a bitch wolf."

"You're just bitter," he said.

"You're goddamn right I am," I said. "I wouldn't walk across the street for her if she was dying."

"She calls once in a while," he said. "I try to keep her away from the kids. You never know when she's gonna show up drunk."

"How's she paying her way?"

"Who knows? Workin' in a whorehouse for all I know."

"I wonder why the Old Man didn't kick her ass out into the street."

"You and me, that's why," my brother said.

"Yeah, there's that, too, I suppose."

We passed through Cashmere about five and swung north toward Lake Chelan. The sky began to get pale off to the east.

"God damn, that's nice, isn't it?" Jack said, pointing at the sky.

"Dawn the rosy-fingered," I said, misquoting Homer, "caressing the hair of night."

"Say, that's pretty good. You make it up?"

I shook my head.

"You read too goddamn much, you know that? When I say something, you can be pretty goddamn sure it's right out of my own head." He belched.

We drove on, watching the sky grow lighter and lighter. As the light grew stronger, the poplar leaves began to emerge in all their brilliant yellow along the river bottoms. The pines swelled black behind them.

"Pretty country," Jack said.

"Hey," I said, "look at that."

A doe with twin fawns was standing hock-deep in a clear stream, drinking, the ripples sliding downstream from where she stood. She raised her head, her ears flicking nervously as we passed.

"Pretty, isn't she?" he said.

We got to Twisp about eight and hauled into a gas station. Sloane went in and called Miller while we got our gas tanks filled.

"He's got everything all ready," he said when he came back out. "He told me how to get there."

"How far is it?" Lou asked. "This bucket is gettin' pretty fuckin' tuckered." He slapped the fender of his car with his bandaged hand.

"About fifteen miles," Sloane said. "Road's good all the way."

We paid for the gas and drove on out of town. Twisp is one of those places with one paved street and the rest dirt. It squats in the valley with the mountains hulking over it threateningly, green-black rising to blue-black, and then the looming white summits.

The road out to Miller's wasn't the best, but we managed. The sun was up now, and the poplar leaves gleamed pure gold. The morning air was so clear that every rock and limb and leaf stood out. The fences were straight lines along the road and on out across the mowed hayfields. The mountains swelled up out of the poplar-gold bottoms. It was so pretty it made your throat ache. I felt good, really good, maybe for the first time in years.

Sloane slowed up, then went on, then slowed again. He was reading mailboxes. Finally he signaled, the blinker on his Caddy looking very ostentatious out here.

We wheeled into a long driveway and drove on up toward a group of white painted buildings and log fences. A young colt galloped along beside us as we drove to the house. He was all sleek, and his muscles rolled under his skin as he ran. He acted like he was running just for the fun of it.

"Little bastard's going to outrun us," Jack said, laughing.

We pulled up in the yard in front of the barn and parked where a stumpy little old guy with white hair and a two-week stubble directed us to. He was wearing cowboy boots and a beat-up old cowboy hat, and he walked like his legs had been broken a half dozen times. If that was Miller, I was damn sure going to be disappointed.

It wasn't.

Miller came out of the house, and I swear he had a face like a hunk of rock. With that big, old-fashioned white mustache, he looked just a little bit like God himself. He wore cowboy boots and had a big hat like the little white-haired man, and neither of them looked out of place in that kind of gear. Some guides dress up for the customers, but you could tell that these two were for real. I took a good look at Miller and decided that I'd go way out of my way to keep from crossing him. He was far and away the meanest-looking man I've ever seen in my life. I understood what Mike had meant about him.

We turned off the motors, and the silence seemed suddenly very solid. We got out, and he looked at us — hard — sizing each one of us up.

"Men," he said. It was a sort of greeting, I guess — or maybe a question. His voice was deep and very quiet — no louder than it absolutely had to be.

Even Sloane's exuberance was a little dampened. He stepped forward. "Mr. Miller," he said, "I'm Cal Sloane." They shook hands.

"I'll get to know the rest of you in good time," he said. "Right now breakfast's ready. Give Clint there your personal gear and sleepin' bags, and we'll go in and eat." I never learned Clint's last name or Miller's first one.

We unloaded the cars and then followed Miller on up to the house. He led us through a linoleumed kitchen with small windows and an old-fashioned sink and wood stove, and on into the dining room, where we sat down at the table. The room had dark wood paneling and the china was very old, white with a fine-line blue Japanese print on it. The room smelled musty, and I suspected it wasn't used much. There was a wood-burning heating stove in the comer that popped now and men. Miller came back out of the kitchen with a huge enameled coffee pot and filled all our cups.

The coffee was hot and black and strong enough to eat the fillings out of your teeth. The stumpy little guy came in and started carting food out of the kitchen. First he brought out a platter of steaks.

"Venison," Miller said. "Figured we'd better clean up what's left over from last winter."

Then there were biscuits and honey, then eggs and fried potatoes. There were several pitchers of milk on the table. We all ate everything Miller ate; I think we were afraid not to.

But when the little guy hauled out a couple of pies, I had to call a halt.

"Sorry," I said. "I'll have to admit that you guys can out eat me." I pushed myself back from the table.

"The Kid just can't keep up." Jack laughed.

"Well, you don't have to eat it all," Miller said. "We just figured you might be a little hungry."

"Hungry, yes," I said, grinning, "but I couldn't eat all that if I was starving."

"Better eat," the man Miller had called Clint growled. "Be four hours in the saddle before you feed again."

"I think I'm good for twelve," I said. I lit a cigarette and poured myself another cup of coffee.

"After a few hours in the high country," Clint warned, "your belly's gonna think your th'oat's been cut." He sounded like he meant it.

The others finished eating, and Clint poured more coffee all around. Miller fished out a sheet of paper from one of his shirt pockets and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses out of another.

"Guess we might as well get all this settled right now," he said, putting on the glasses. "That way we won't have it hangin' fire."

We all took out our wallets. Clint went out and came back with a beat-up old green metal box. Miller opened it and took out a receipt book.

"Ten days," Miller said, "fifty dollars a man." We all started counting money out on the table. He looked around and nodded in approval. He started filling out receipts laboriously, licking the stub of the pencil now and then. He asked each of us our names and filled them in on the receipts. Clint took our money and put it away in the tin box.

"Now," Miller said, squinting at the paper, "the grub come to a hundred and fifty dollars. I got a list here and the price of ever-thing if you want to check it. I already took off for me and Clint. Your share come to a hundred and fifty and a few odd dollars, but call it a hundred and fifty. I figured it out, and its thirty dollars a man. You can check my figures if you want. I kept it down as much as I could. We won't eat fancy, but it'll stick with us." He looked around, offering the paper. We all shook our heads.

"I'll give you the hundred and a half," Sloane said. "The others can settle up with me." The receipt-writing had obviously bugged him.

"Thanks anyway," Miller said, "but if it's all the same to you men, I'd a whole lot rather get it from each man myself. Then I know its right, and there's no arguments later."

Sloane shrugged, and we each counted out another thirty dollars. Miller struggled through another five receipts and then took off his glasses. I noticed the sweat running down the outer edges of his mustache.

"There," he said with obvious relief. "Well, men, this ain't gettin' us up into the high country. Let's go pick out some horses and get 'em loaded up in the truck. We got a ways to drive before we get to the horse trail."

We all got up and followed him on out of the house. Clint began picking up the dishes as we left. It was still chilly outside, and the morning sun was very bright. Miller stopped out in the yard and waited for us all to gather around. He looked up into the mountains and cleared his throat.

"Just a few more things I want to get straight before we leave, men," he said, and I could see that he'd have preferred not to say it. "I've been known to take a drink now and men myself, but you men are goin' to be up there with loaded guns, and it's damn high where you'll be huntin'. You might be able to drink like a fish down here, but two drinks up there and you'll be fallin' over your own feet. I know you've got liquor with you, and I'll probably take a bottle along myself, but I don't want any of us takin' a drink before the sun goes down and the guns are all hung up. I sure don't want nobody shootin' hisself — or me. OK?"

We all nodded again. He wasn't the kind of man you argued with.

"And if any of you got any quarrels with each other, leave 'em down here. Any trouble up there, and we'll all come out, and no refunds. We all straight on that?" He looked around at us, and his face was stern.

We all nodded again.

"Good," he said, and he looked relieved. "Last thing. I know that country up there and you men don't. If I tell you to do somethin', you'd better do 'er. I ain't gonna be tellin' you 'cause I like bossin' men around. I'll have a damn good reason, so don't give me no hard times about it. OK, now I've said my piece, all right?"

We nodded again. What else could we do?

"Well then, I guess that takes care of all the unpleasantness. Let's go on down to the corral and pick out some horses. Sooner we get that done, the sooner we can go hunt deer." He started off, and we fell in behind him. He took damn big steps.

I began to feel better about this. Miller knew his business, and there wouldn't be any horseshit nonsense with him around. I looked up at the mountains, blue in the morning light.

God damn, it might just be a good trip after all.

16

It took us the better part of an hour to cut out horses from the herd in the corral down by the big log bam. Miller and Clint leaned across the top rail, pointing out this horse, then that one, calling them by name and telling us their good points — almost like they were selling them. I picked a big gray they called Ned. He looked pretty good at first, but then I caught a glimpse of his other eye and wasn't so sure. We herded them up into the back of a big stock-truck along with some pack-horses and then began hauling saddles out to a battered pickup.

"Some of you men'll have to ride in the back of the pickup," Miller said, squinting into the tangle of saddles, straps, and ropes we'd piled in there. "Might be a bit uncomfortable, but it ain't too far."

"I'll take my car," Lou said shortly.

"Here we go again," Jack muttered to me disgustedly, yanking his red baseball cap down over his forehead.

"Road's pretty rough," Clint warned.

Miller shrugged, "Suit yourself," he said. "Couple of you can go with me in the pickup, then, and one of you with Clint in the stock-truck, and one other man in the car with this man here, all right?"

We all nodded and started pitching the sleeping bags and clothing sacks that Clint had hauled down here earlier into the back of the pickup.

"I'll go with McKlearey," Sloane told the rest of us, "and we can pile the guns in his back seat." Sloane was dunking ahead. He was probably the only one of us who could ride five miles with Lou without getting into a fight.

"Good idea," Miller said. "Guns could get banged around some in the pickup." He turned to Clint. "You lock up?" he asked.

"Right, Cap," Clint said, "and I got it all squared away with Matthews. His oldest boy's comin' by to feed the stock while we're gone."

"Good," Miller said. "Well, men, let's get goin'." He led the way over to the trucks. I hung back a little, letting Jack and Stan go ahead. They both got into the pickup with Miller, so I climbed up into the cab of the stock-truck with Clint. Sloane and McKlearey rode along with us, hanging onto the outside of the cab as far as the main yard where our cars were parked. Then we all got out, put our guns in the back seat of McKlearey's car, and climbed back in.

We drove on out of the yard and on down the long driveway, the pickup leading, then McKlearey's weary Chevy, and Clint and I bringing up the rear in the stock-truck. The colt ran along beside us again as we drove on down to the highway.

"Little fella sure likes to run, doesn't he?" I ventured to Clint.

"Young horse ain't got much damn sense," Clint growled. "Just like a damn kid. About all he wants to do is run and play. Older horse rests ever' chance he gets."

"Looks like he's going to be pretty fast," I said.

"Sure as hell ought to be," Clint said, "considerin' what ol' Cap paid for stud fee. We got this quarter-horse mare — that's her standin' over there in the shade. Got good blood-lines, so he goes all out on gettin' her bred." He cranked the wheel around, swinging wide out onto the highway. I could hear a thump or two from the back as the horses stumbled around with the sudden shift in direction.

"Sure as hell hope that fella can keep up with ol' Cap's pickup," Clint said, thrusting his stubbled chin toward the blue fog coming out of the tailpipe of McKlearey's car.

"I wouldn't bet on it," I said sourly. "He's been lagging behind all night. That car of his is a cripple. We have any big hills to climb?"

"Nothin' too bad," Clint said, "and we got good gravel all the way after we turn off the tar."

"That's a break," I said.

"What'd he do to his hand?" he asked. I'd seen both him and Miller eyeing McKlearey's bandage.

"He cut it. It isn't bad."

"That's good."

We drove on up the highway for a few miles.

"I didn't catch your name," he said finally.

"Dan," I said, "Dan Alders."

He stuck out a knobby hand without looking away from the road, and we shook. "Just call me Clint," he said. "Ever'body else does."

"Right, Clint," I said.

We wound along the paved road that hugged the bottom of the valley, crossing the narrow bridges that stepped back and forth across the twisting little stream that sparkled in the midmorning sun. I suddenly wished that Clydine were along so that she could see this.

"Many fish in here, Clint?" I asked, looking down into the water.

"I can usually pick up a few," he said. "I got a hole I work pretty often. Some pretty nice cutthroat in there."

I glanced down at the water as we crossed the stream again. "Looks pretty shallow," I said, watching the clear water slide over the smooth brown pebbles.

"It backs up behind rocks and downed trees," he told me. "Fish'll hole up in there. Hit 'em with a small spoon or bait, and they'll go for it ever' time."

"Any size?" I asked.

"Lifted a three-pounder this spring," he said.

"That could get pretty wild and woolly in that fast water," I said.

"It was sorta fun." He grinned. "You fish much?"

"When I get the chance," I said.

He grunted approvingly, and we drove on a ways in silence.

I slid a little lower in the sea, sliding my tail to the edge of the cushion. "Getting a little butt-sprung," I said, explaining.

"Wait'll later," he said, grinning again. "That car seat's soft compared to a saddle."

"I don't suppose anybody's ever figured out a way to ride standing up."

"Not so's you'd notice it."

"Oh, well," I said.

"You done much ridin'?" he asked me tentatively after a long pause.

"I know which end of the horse is which is about all."

He scratched his stubbled chin. "I'd kinda watch old Ned then if I was you." He squinted into the morning sunlight as we swung off the pavement onto a graveled road. "He ain't been rode for a few weeks, and he's had time to build up a good head of steam. He could be pretty green, so you might have to iron a few of the kinks out of him."

My stomach lurched. "You figure he'll buck?" I asked nervously.

"Oh, nothin' fancy. He'll probably rear a couple times and maybe hump up a little. Just be ready for him. Keep kinda loose, is all, and haul him up tight. That's the main thing — don't let him get his head down between his front legs. If he gets too persnickety, just slap him across the ears with the end of the reins. That'll bring him around."

"I'd hate to start off the trip getting dumped on my butt in the gravel," I said.

He chuckled. "I didn't mean to spook you none. You'll be OK if you're ready for him."

"I sure hope so," I said doubtfully.

We had begun to climb up out of the valley. The white trunks and golden leaves of the poplar trees that had bordered the little stream gave way to dark pines. The gravel road was splotched with alternate patches of shadow and bright sunlight. It looked cool and damp back in under the trees. Every so often a red squirrel scampered across the road in front of us, his tail fluting arrogantly.

"Pushy little guys, aren't they?" I said to Clint.

"I think they do that just for the fun of it," he agreed.

We came around a comer, and I could suddenly see all the way up to the summit of the surrounding mountains. The sun sparkled on the snowfields outlined against the deep blue of the sky.

"God damn!" I said, almost reverently.

"Pretty, ain't it?" Clint agreed.

"Are we going up there?" I asked, pointing up toward the snow.

"Not quite," he said. "Pretty close, though."

We drove on, twisting up along the gravel road. There's a kind of bluish color to the woods in the morning that makes things look unreal. An eagle or hawk of some kind turned big wide circles way up, hunting, or just flying for the hell of it.

"Where 'bouts is it you work?" Clint asked after another mile or so.

"I just got out of the service," I told him. "I'll be going back to school pretty soon."

"Which branch you in?" he asked.

"Army."

"Me and Cap was in the Horse-Marines when we was younger."

"Oh? Lou up there — guy who's driving his own car — was a Marine."

"I kinda figured he mighta been. Tell by the way he walks."

We drove on up the gravel road for about an hour, climbing gradually but steadily. The road grew narrower and narrower but was still in pretty good shape. It was close to ten thirty when Miller pulled out into a wide place beside the road. The rest of us pulled off and stopped.

"This is where we saddle up," Clint said, pulling on the hand brake. "Road goes on about another hundred yards and then gives up."

We climbed down from the truck and went over to where the others had gathered at the back of the pickup. It was quite a bit colder up here than it had been in the valley. Lou's radiator was steaming again.

"We'll unload the horses one at a time," Miller said. "They stay calmer that way."

Clint and I went to the back of the stock-truck and pulled out the unloading ramp.

"Packhorses first, Clint," Miller said.

Clint grunted and went up the ramp. He unhooked the gate and swung it back. There was a thumping and several snorts as he disappeared inside the truck. He came to the door leading a somewhat discouraged-looking horse by the halter. Miller passed him up the snap-end of a lead-rope, and he fastened it to the halter. Then Miller pulled, and Clint slapped the horse sharply on the rump. The horse laid back his ears and carefully stepped down the ramp. Clint hopped out and closed the gate again.

They led the horse over to the pickup and put a cumbersome-looking packsaddle on him. Then they tied him to a sapling and went back to the stock-truck. They unloaded three more packhorses, one by one.

"We could get by with just a couple," Miller explained, "but we'll need this many to bring out the deer."

Then they began bringing out the saddle horses. Jack's horse came out first. After he'd been saddled and bridled, Miller told Jack to mount and walk him up and down the road a ways to loosen him up. I could see that Jack was getting a kick out of it. That baseball cap of his made him look like a kid.

McKlearey's horse was next, and Lou took off at a gallop.

"Hey!" Miller said sharply as Lou came back up the road. "I said to walk him! That horse plays out on you, and you're gonna be afoot." Lou reined in and did as he was told. I thought that was a good sign. I began to have hopes that Miller might just be able to keep McKlearey in line.

They brought out Ned next, and my stomach tightened up. He looked meaner than ever. I particularly didn't like the way he kind of set himself when Clint threw the saddle on him. I walked up to the horse slowly. He laid his ears back and watched me. I pulled off my quilted red jacket and red felt hat. No point in messing up my hunting gear. Skin heals. Clothes don't.

Clint held the stirrup for me while Miller held the horse's head. They hadn't done that for anybody else, and that sure didn't help my nerves any. I got up into the saddle and got my feet arranged in the stirrups.

"You all set?" Miller asked, with the faintest hint of a smite under his mustache.

"I guess."

Miller nodded sharply, and both he and Clint jumped back out of the way. Now, that really makes you feel good. Ned stood perfectly still for a minute. I could feel him wound up like a spring under me.

"Give 'im a boot in the ribs," Miller said. I nudged the horse gently with my heels. Nothing happened. I looked around for a soft place to land.

"Kick 'im," Miller said, grinning openly now.

I gritted my teeth and really socked the horse in the ribs. His front feet came up off the ground. If old Clint hadn't warned me, I think I'd have been dumped right then. That big gray horse pranced around on his hind feet for a minute, righting to get some slack in the reins so he could get his head down. Then he dropped down again, still fighting. I was hanging onto the reins with one hand and the saddle horn with the other. He jumped a couple times and spun around.

"Kick 'im again, Dan!" Clint shouted, laughing. "Stay with 'im, boy!" I kicked the horse in the ribs again, and he reared just as he had the first time. This time I wasn't so surprised, so I let go of the saddle horn and swung the reins at his ears the way Clint had told me to. Then he twisted around and tried to bite my leg. I whacked him in the nose with the reins, and that seemed to settle him a little. He humped a couple more times, shivered, and took off down the road at a trot.

"Better run that horse a little," Miller called. "Others don't need it, but Old Ned's a bit frisky."

"Right," I said, and nudged the horse into a lope. I kicked him a little harder. "The man says run," I explained to horse.

McKlearey scowled at me as I barreled on past him.

The wind whistled by my ears, and I could feel the easy roll of Ned's muscles as he ran. I slowed him up and turned him about a half mile down the road. Then I opened him up to a dead run. I was laughing out loud when I pulled up by the trucks. I couldn't help it. I hadn't had so much fun in years. Ned pranced around a little, blowing and tossing his head. I think he was getting a kick out of it, too.

"Hey, cowboy," Jack yelled, "where'd you learn to ride like that?"

"Beginner's luck," I said. I looked over to where Miller and Clint were saddling Stan's horse. "OK to walk him now?" I asked.

"Yeah, he looks to be settled a bit," Miller said, still grinning.

I pulled Ned in beside Jack's horse, and the two of us rode on back down the road.

"You looked pretty fancy there, little brother," he said.

"I picked the wrong horse," I told him. "That little exhibition back there was all his idea."

"How the hell'd you manage to stay on?"

"Clint warned me about this knothead in the truck on the way up. I was ready for him. You might not have noticed, but I had a pretty firm grip on this saddlehorn."

Jack laughed. "You two didn't slow down long enough for me to see that part of it."

I gingerly felt my rump. "I sure hope he doesn't feel he has to go through this every time we start out."

Jack laughed again, and we plodded down the road.

"How's this Miller strike you?" I asked him.

"I don't think I'd want to cross him."

"Amen to mat, buddy," I agreed.

"'He sure as hell acts like he knows what he's doin'," my brother said.

"He's an old-time Marine," I said. "Him and Clint both."

"McKlearey'll cash in on that," Jack said, unbuttoning his quilted hunting vest.

"Wouldn't doubt it."

"How's Clint? He seemed pretty grouchy back at the house."

"That's mostly bark," I said. "We talked quite a bit on the way up. Like I told you, he was the one that warned me about this horse and his little habits."

"Yeah," Jack said. "I noticed that he was callin' you by name when you guys got down from the truck."

We turned around and rode back on up to the others. Stan and Sloane were mounted now and were starting off down the road. Sloane seemed to be puffing pretty hard. Maybe his horse had him a little spooked, or maybe his down-filled parka was a little too warm.

Jack and I got down and helped Miller and Clint load up the packhorses. Then Miller called in the others.

"Now here's how we'll go," he said after they had dismounted. "I'll lead out and Clint'll bring up the rear with the packhorses. Don't try nothin' fancy along the trail. Let the horse do all the work and most of the thinkin'. Just set easy and watch the scenery go by. The horses know what they're doin', so trust 'em."

He showed us how to tie our rifles to the saddle where they'd be out of the way. His own gun case was lashed to the back of one of the packhorses, and Clint's .30-30 was tucked in beside it.

I think we all saw the quick glance that passed between Miller and Clint when we hauled our pistol belts out of McKlearey's car.

"Bears," Sloane explained, almost apologetically.

"Bears!" Clint snorted. "Ain't no damn bears up that high."

"Oh," Sloane said meekly. "We thought there might be."

Miller scratched his mustache dubiously. "Can't leave 'em here," he said finally. "Somebody might come along and steal 'em. I guess you'll have to bring the damn things along. They might be some good for signalin' and the like." He shook his head and walked off a ways by himself, his fists jammed down into the pockets of his sheepskin coat and that big hat pulled down low over his eyes.

We all looked at each other shamefacedly and slowly strapped on our hardware.

"Looks like the goddamn Tijuana National Guard," Clint muttered in disgust.

We stood around like a bunch of kids who'd been caught stealing apples until Miller came back.

"All right," he said shortly, "get on your horses and let's get goin'."

We climbed on our horses — Ned didn't even twitch this time — and followed Miller on up to the end of the road and onto the saddle trail that took off from there. The trail moved up along the side of a ridge. Once we got up a ways, the pines thinned out and we could see out for miles across the heavily timbered foothills. The horizon ahead of us was a ragged line of snow-covered peaks; to the east, behind us, it faded off into blue, hazy distance. The grass up here was yellow and knee-high, waving gently in the slight wind that followed us up the ridge. I could see little swirls and patterns on top of the grass as gusts brushed here and there.

It was absolutely quiet, except for the horses and the sound of the wind. I felt good — I felt damned good.

At the top of the ridge we stopped.

"Better let the horses blow a bit," Miller said. "Always a good idea to let 'em settle into it easy." He seemed to have gotten his temper back.

"Do we have quite a bit farther to go?" Sloane asked, breathing deeply. He looked pretty rough. I guessed that he was feeling the lack of sleep.

"We're just gettin' started," Miller said. "We'll cut on up across that saddleback there and then down into the next valley. We stay to the valley a piece and then go up to the top of the other ridge. Then on into the next hollow. 'Bout another twelve miles or so."

Sloane shook his head and took another deep breath. "I think I've got this damned belt too tight," he said. He opened the parka, undid his gun belt, looped it a couple times around the saddle horn and buckled it. He eased off on his pants belt a couple notches. "That's better," he said.

"I told you your beer-drinkin' habit would catch up to you someday, Calvin," Jack said laughing.

"Doe!" Miller said suddenly, pointing up the ridge at a deer that had stopped about a quarter of a mile away and was watching us nervously.

Sloane pulled a pair of small binoculars out of his coat pocket and glassed the ridge. "Where?" he demanded.

"See that big pine off to the left of that patch of gray rock?"

"Back in the shade a bit," I said.

"I don't — oh, yeah, now I see her."

We watched the doe step delicately on over the ridge and go down into the brush on the other side.

"There's a big game trail up there," Miller said. "I followed it down last winter during the big snow. It was the only place I could be sure of the footing."

"On horseback?" Stan asked.

"I was leadin' 'im," Miller said. "He'd gone lame on me up the ridge a ways. I had to hunker down under a ledge for two days till the snow eased up."

Stan shook his head. "That would scare me into convulsions," he admitted. "Did you ever think you weren't going to make it?"

"Oh, it give me a few nervous minutes," Miller said. A stray gust of wind ruffled that white mustache of his. He squinted up the ridge, his face more like rock than ever.

McKlearey came up. He'd been hanging back, riding about halfway between the rest of us and Clint, who was a ways back with the packhorses. Maybe he was ashamed of himself because Miller'd had to speak to him about running the horse. He reined in a little way from the rest of us and sat waiting, watching us and rubbing at his bandaged hand.

"It's good country up here," Miller was saying. "Ain't nobody around, and things are nice and simple. Air's clean, and a man can see a ways. Good country."

I reached out and scratched Ned's ears. He seemed to like it. My eyes were a little sandy from lack of sleep, but Miller was right — you could see a ways up here — a long ways.

17

About three thirty that afternoon we crossed the second ridge and dropped down into a little basin on the far side. There were several small springs in the bottom, all feeding into a little creek that had been dammed a couple times by beavers. There were several old corrals down there — poles lashed to trees with baling wire — and a half dozen or so tent frames back under the trees. You wouldn't have expected to find a place like this up on the mountainside.

"Old sheep camp," Miller said as we rode down into the basin. "Herders are all down now, so I figured it'd be about right."

"Looks good," Jack said.

"Got water, shelter, and firewood — and the corrals, of course," Miller said. "And the deer huntin' up on that ridge is about as good as any you'll find." He nodded to a ridge that swelled on up out of the scrubby timber into the open meadows between us and the rockfalls just below the snow line.

We reined up in the camp area and climbed down off the horses. My legs ached, and I was a little unsteady on my feet. We tied our horses to the top rail on one of the corrals and walked around a bit, looking it over.

The six tent frames were in a kind of semicircle at the edge of the trees, facing a large stone fire pit and looking out over the grassy floor of the basin and the largest of the beaver ponds out in the middle. Out beyond the pond, the draw rose sharply in a series of steeply slanted meadows. Directly overhead, almost as if it were leaning over the little basin, the bulky white mass of Glacier Peak rose ponderously, so huge as to be almost unbelievable.

There was a rocked-up spring behind the last tent frame, a sandy-bottomed pocket of icy water about two feet deep and perhaps three feet across. The outflow trickled off along the edge of the trees toward the horse corrals at the lower end of the camp.

None of the trees in the little grove were much more than fifteen feet tall, and they were brushy — spruce mostly. We were within a quarter of a mile of the timberline. There were a lot of low shrubs — heather, Miller said — lying in under the trees, and moss in the open spaces. I noticed a lot of sticks and downed trees lying around.

"Beaver," Miller said. "Greatest firewood collectors around."

McKlearey rode on in and climbed down off his horse. He still kept off to himself.

"Clint'll be along in a few minutes," Miller said. "Let's get a fire goin' so we can have some coffee."

We all moved around picking up firewood, and Miller scraped the debris out of the fire pit. The wood was bone dry, and it only took a few minutes for a good blaze to get started.

Then Clint came in with the pack-string, and we started to unpack. The two-gallon coffee pot and a big iron grill that looked like a chunk of sidewalk grating were the first things to come off. Clint filled the pot from the spring behind the tent frames while Miller piled several big rocks in close to the fire to set the grill on.

"A man can cook with just a fire if he's of a mind," he said, "but this makes things a whole lot simpler." He set the grill in place while Clint dumped several fistfuls of grounds into the water in the pot.

"Don't you use the basket?" Stan asked.

"Lost it a couple years ago," Clint said. "Don't do no good up this high anyway. Water boils at about a hundred and seventy up here. You gotta get the grounds down close to the fire and kinda fry the juice out. Gives you somethin' to chew on in your coffee with them grounds floatin' loose, but that never hurt nobody."

He rummaged around in one of the packs and came up with a sack of salt and dumped a couple pinches in. Then he did something that still makes my hair stand on end. He fished out a dozen eggs, took one and cracked it neatly on a rock. Then he drank it, right out of the shell. I heard Sloane gag slightly. Clint paid no attention to us but crumbled the shell in his fist and dropped it in the pot. Then he clamped on the lid and put the pot down on the grill over the fire.

"I've heard of the salt before, Clint," I said when my stomach settled back down, "but why the eggshell?"

"Damn if I know," he said. "Only thing is, I never tasted coffee fit to drink without it had some eggshell in it."

I didn't ask him why he'd drunk the raw egg. I was pretty sure I didn't want to know.

"We'll have some jerky and cold biscuits with our coffee," Miller said. "That'll tide us till we get camp set up and Clint can fix a real meal."

We all sat around the fire on logs and stumps waiting for the coffee to boil. It boiled over, hissing into the fire with a pungent smell, three times. Each time Clint doused cold water into the pot and let it boil again. Then, the fourth time, he decided it was ready to drink. I'll have to admit that it was damned good coffee. The strips of beef-jerky chewed a bit like old harness leather, but they were good, too, and the cold biscuits with honey set things off just right. I don't think I'd realized just how hungry I was.

Miller brushed the crumbs out of his mustache and filled his coffee mug again. "First thing is to check out the corrals," he said. "We'll need two good ones anyway — that way we won't be stirrin' up the pack animals ever'time we want a saddle horse. Way we'll do it is this: Go around those nearest two corrals and yank real hard on ever' place that's wired. Any place that comes loose, we'll rewire. Balin' wire is looped around that dead tree by the spring. Soon as we get that done, we can unsaddle the stock and turn 'em loose in the corrals. We brought some oats for 'em, but we'll have to picket 'em out to graze in the daytime while you men are up on the ridge. After we get the horses tended to, we'll set up the tents."

"Couldn't some of us start on the tents while the others work on the corrals?" Sloane asked, puffing slightly again.

"I suppose we could," Miller said, "but we'll do 'er the way I said before. Me'n old Clint there was in the Horse-Marines when we was pups, and the first thing we learned was to see to the stock first. Up here a man without a horse is in real trouble. She's a long damn walk back down."

"I see what you mean," Cal said, breathing heavily. He was used to making the decisions, but Miller was in charge, and now we all knew it.

It only took us about fifteen minutes to check out the corrals. Most of the lashings were still tight. Then we unsaddled the horses and turned them into the corrals, laying the saddles over the top rail of a corral we weren't using. Miller dumped oats from a burlap sack into a manger that opened onto both corrals. The horses nuzzled at him and he moved among them. He spoke to them, his voice curiously gentle as he did.

Then we all went up to the fire and had another cup of coffee. The sun was sliding down toward the tops of the peaks above us, and the air was taking on a decided chill. We stood looking at the welter of packs, sleeping bags, and rolled-up tenting that lay in a heap under the tent frames.

"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 piled 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.