"Brains," Sloane said, tapping his forehead. "This ol' massa ain't about to sleep on no col', col' groun'." He went on blowing into the mattress. He was sitting on the ground near the fire, and his face kept getting redder and redder. He really didn't seem to be making much headway with the mattress. Then he got a funny look on his face and sort of sagged over sideways until he was lying facedown in the dirt.

"Christ, Sloane!" Jack said sharply. We all jumped to get him up again.

"Leave 'im be!" Miller barked. He stepped in and rolled Sloane over onto his back. He felt Sloane's pulse in his throat and then pulled over a chunk of log to put the big man's feet up on.

"Altitude," he said shortly. He looked around at us. "His heart OK?"

"He's never had any trouble I know of," Jack said, "and I've known him for years."

"That's a break. Get some whiskey."

We all dove for our sacks, but Lou beat all of us. He was already out. Miller nodded approvingly. He and McKlearey began working on Sloane, and soon they had him awake.

"Son of a bitch!" Cal said thickly. "That's the first time that's ever happened."

"Better take 'er easy for a bit," Miller said. "Takes some men a while to get adjusted to it. You come from sea level to better'n eight thousand feet in less'n a day."

"I just couldn't seem to get my breath," Cal said.

I picked up his air mattress and blew it up for him. Toward the end I got a little woozy, too.

"Easy, boy," Clint growled. "We don't need two down."

"Sloane, you dumb shit," Jack said, "why didn't you bring a bicycle pump? You like to scared the piss outa me."

Sloane grinned weakly. "I figured as windy as this bunch is, I wouldn't have any trouble gettin' enough hot air to pump up one little old air mattress."

"Are you sure you're all right?" Stan asked.

"I'll be OK," Cal said. "Just a little soft is all."

"If I was carryin' as much beer as you are," Jack said, "I'd be pooped, too."

"For God's sake, don't the on us," Lou said. "You still owe me three days' pay."

"You're all heart, McKlearey," I said.

He grinned at me. It suddenly occurred to me that he could be a likable son of a bitch when he wanted to be.

We eased Cal onto his air mattress and then stood around watching him breathe.

"We better get to work on the firewood, men," Miller said. "Ol' Sarge here can watch the Big Man." He gathered up the lead-ropes we'd taken off the packhorses. "Slim," he said to Jack, "you and the Professor and the Kid there take these two axes and that bucksaw and go down into that grove of spruce below the corrals. Bust the stuff up into four-or-five-foot lengths and bundle it up with these. Then haul 'em out in the open. We'll drag 'em in with a saddle horse." I guess that was his way. Miller seldom used our names. It was "Sarge" or "Slim" or "Big Man" or "Professor" or "the Kid." I suppose I should have resented that last one, but I didn't.

The three of us grabbed up the tools and headed off down into the spruce grove.

"You think Cal's going to be OK?" I asked Jack.

"Oh, he'll snap out of it." Jack said. "Sloane's a tough bastard."

"I didn't much like the way his eyes rolled back when he passed out," Stan said.

"Did look a little spooky, didn't it?" Jack said. "But don't worry. Soon as he gets his wind back, Sloane'll run the ass off the whole bunch of us."

We spread out, knocking off dead limbs and dragging downed timber out into the open. We started to bundle the sniff up, lying it with the lead-ropes.

"Say, Dan," Stan said after a while, "give me a hand here with that ax."

I went over to where he was working on a pile of dead limbs.

"It'll take me all night with this saw," he said.

I grunted and started knocking limbs off. I could hear Jack chopping away back in the brush.

"It's beautiful up here, isn't it?" Stan said when I stopped to take a breather. I looked around. The sun had just slid down behind the peaks, and deep blue shadows seemed to be rising out of the ground.

"Good country," I said, echoing Miller.

"I wish Monica could see it," he said, zipping up that bright orange jacket. "Maybe she'd understand then."

I sat down and lit a cigarette. "She gave you a pretty rough time about it, didn't she?"

"It wasn't pleasant," he said. "You have to understand Monica though. She's an only child, and her parents were in their forties when she was born. I guess they spoiled her — you know how that could happen under the circumstances. She's always been a strong-willed girl, and nobody's ever done anything she didn't want them to before."

"She's got to learn sometime," I said.

"I've tried to protect her," he went on. "I know she's not much of a wife really. She's spoiled and willful and sometimes spiteful — but that's not her fault, really, is it? When you consider how she was raised?"

"I can see how it could happen," I said.

"But this trip got to be such an issue," he said, "that I just had to do it. I couldn't let it go any longer."

"You've got to draw the line someplace, Stan."

"Exactly," he said. "She just had to realize that I was important, too." He was rubbing his hands together, staring at the ground. "I know she'd do anything to get her own way, and I'm just afraid she might have done something stupid."

"Oh?" I got very careful again. Damn it, I hate this walking on eggshells all the time!

"Some of the things McKlearey's been saying the last few days — I don't know."

"I wouldn't pay too much attention to McKlearey," I said.

"If I thought there was anything — I'd kill him — I swear it. So help me God, I'd kill him." He meant it. I knew he meant it. Stan didn't say things like that. His hands were clenched tightly into fists, and he was still staring down at the ground. I knew that one wrong word here would blow the whole thing.

"McKlearey and Monica? Get serious. She wouldn't touch that crude bastard with a ten-foot pole. McKlearey?" I laughed as hard as I could. It may have sounded a little forced, but I had to get him backed off it. It wouldn't take too much for his mind to start ticking off the little series of items as Clydine had done in her little breakdown of the "Hubby-Wifey-Creepy-Jarhead" caper. Once he did, somebody was liable to get killed.

Stan looked off into the distance, not saying anything. I don't think I'd been very convincing. Then Jack came up, dragging a big bundle of limbs.

"Hey, you guys," he said, puffing hard, "I hit a bonanza back in there. I got enough wood to last a month, but I'm gonna need help gettin' it out."

"Sure, buddy," I said with a false heartiness. "Come on, Stan, let's give him a hand." I hoped to get Stan's mind off what he was thinking.

We spent the next half hour dragging piles of wood out from under the trees. The light faded more and more, and it was almost dark when Miller rode down to where we were working.

"I got them other piles you left farther up the line," he said. "Looks like you got into a pretty good batch here."

"There's plenty more back in there," Jack said, "but it's gettin' too goddamn dark to be climbin' over all that stuff."

"We can haul out some more tomorrow," Miller said. "This'll last a while."

He had a rope knotted around his saddle horn with a long end trailing on each side of the horse. We lashed several bundles of the limbs to each end of the rope and followed his horse back toward the campfire and the greenish glow of the Coleman lantern hanging from a tree limb in front of the storage tent. The grass and moss felt springy underfoot, the air was sharp, and the stars had started to come out.

I think we'd all figured that we'd be able to just sit around the fire now that it was dark, but Miller kept us busy. McKlearey was just finishing up a table. It was the damnedest thing I'd ever seen — crossed legs, like a picnic table and a top of five-foot poles laid side by side. The whole thing was lashed together with baling wire. At first glance it looked rickety as hell, but Lou had buried about two feet of the bottom of each leg in the ground. It was solid as a rock.

"Hey, Professor," Lou said to Stan as we came into camp, "you want to bring that bucksaw over here and square off the ends of this thing?" Lou had immediately picked up Miller's nicknames. Stan gritted his teeth a little, but he did as Lou asked.

"Damn!" Clint said, grinning, "this'll make things as easy as workin' in the kitchen back at the ranch." He had pots and pans spread out on the table even before Stan had finished sawing the ends square.

Miller put Jack and me to work chopping the limbs we'd hauled in into foot-and-a-half lengths and piling them up along one side of the storage tent.

"Latrine's over there, men," Lou said importantly, coming up to us and pointing to a trail leading off into the trees. "I dug a slit-trench and put up a kind of a stool." He was getting a kick out of all of this.

"How's Sloane?" Jack asked him.

"Better, better," McKlearey said. "He'll be fine by morning. It was just blowin' up that goddamn air mattress that laid him out."

Jack grunted and went back to chopping wood. We kept at it for about another half hour, and my stomach was starting to talk to me pretty loud.

"Chow," Clint hollered, and we all homed in on the fire and the food.

"Plates and silverware there on the table," Clint said. "Grab 'em and line up."

We had venison steaks from Miller's freezer at the ranch, pork and beans and corn on the cob.

"Better enjoy that corn, men," Clint said. "That's all I brought. I figured we could spread out a little, first night out."

We took our plates back to the logs and stumps on the far side of the fire and began to eat. Sloane was up and about now and seemed to be a little better.

"Damn good," Jack said with his mouth full.

"Yeah, man," Lou said, shoveling food into his mouth.

It took me a little while to get the hang of holding the plate on my knees, but as soon as I got the idea that there was nothing wrong with picking up a steak in my fingers, I had it whipped.

After we finished eating and had cleaned up the dishes, we finally got a chance to sit down and relax. We all had a drink — whiskey and that icy-cold springwater — and sat, staring into the fire.

"Sure is quiet up here," Jack said finally. He'd be the one to notice that.

"Long ways from the roads," Miller said.

We sat quietly again.

Then we heard the horses snort and start to stir around, and a few minutes later a kind of grumbling, muttering chatter and a funny sort of dragging noise came from the woods.

"What's that?" Stan demanded nervously.

"Damn porkypine," Clint said. "Probably comin' over to see what we're up to."

McKlearey stood up, his eyes and teeth glowing sort of red in the reflected light of the fire. He pulled out his pistol.

"What you figgerin' on Sarge?" Miller asked, his voice a little sharp.

"I'll go kill 'im," McKlearey said. "Don't want 'im gettin' into the goddamn chow, do we?"

"No need to do that," Miller said. "He ain't gonna come in here while we're around. Long as we don't figure on eatin' 'im, there's no point in killin' 'im. I'm pretty sure the woods is big enough for us and one porky, more or less." He looked steadily at McKlearey until Lou began to get a little embarrassed.

"Anything you say, Cap," he said finally, holstering the pistol and sitting back down.

"Knew a feller sat on a porky once —” Clint chuckled suddenly.

"No kiddin'?" Jack laughed.

"Never did it again," Clint said. "Matter of fact, he didn't sit on nothin' for about three weeks afterward."

"How did he manage to sit on a porcupine?" Stan asked, amused.

"Well sir, me'n him'd been huntin', see," Clint started, "just kinda pokin' through the woods, havin' a little look over the top of the next ridge, like a feller will, and along about ten or so we got tuckered. We found what looked to be a couple old mossy stumps and just set down on 'em. Now the one I set on was a real stump, but his stump wasn't no stump — it was a big ol' boar porky —”

The story went on, and then there were others. The fire burned lower, popping once in a while as it settled into bright red coals.

McKlearey had several more drinks; but the rest of us had hung it up after the first one.

"I'd go a little easy on that, if it was me, Sarge," Miller said finally, after McKlearey had made his fourth trip back to the spring for cold water. "It'll have to last you the whole time. It's a pretty fair hike back to the liquor store."

We all laughed at that.

"Sure thing, Cap," McKlearey said agreeably and put his bottle away.

"Well," Sloane said finally, "I don't know about the rest of you mighty hunters, but I'm about ready to tap out. Last night was a little shallow on sleep." He was looking a lot better now but tired. I think we all were.

"Might not be a bad idea if we was all to turn in," Miller said. "Not really a whole lot to do in camp after dark, and we might as well get used to rollin' out before daybreak."

We got up, feeling the stiffness already settling in our overworked muscles. We all said good night and went off to our tents. Miller and Clint were in the one right by the storage tent, Sloane and Stan in the next one, then Jack and I, and finally, in the farthest one up the line, McKlearey in one by himself — it just worked out that way.

Jack and I stripped down to our underwear and hurriedly crawled into our sleeping bags. It was damned chilly in the tent. I fumbled around and got out my flashlight and put it on the ground beside the gun belt near the top of my bed.

"You suppose we oughta close the flap?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Let's see how it works out leaving it open," I said. I was looking out the front of the tent at the dying fire.

"Well" — he chuckled —”I sure wouldn't want to roll over on that porky."

"I don't think that tent-flap would really stop nun," I said.

"Probably not," he agreed. "Man, I'm tired. I feel like I've been up for a week."

"You and me both, buddy," I said.

"It's great up here, huh?"

"The greatest."

There was a long silence. The fire popped once.

"Good night, Danny," he said drowsily.

"Night, Jack," I said.

I lay awake staring at the fire, thinking the long thoughts a man can think alone at night when there are no noises to distract him. Once again I wished that somehow my little Bolshevik could be here to see all of this. Maybe then she'd understand. For some reason it was important to me that she did.

I guess I must have drifted off to sleep, because the fire was completely out when the first scream brought me up fighting.

"What the goddamn hell?" Jack said.

There was another scream. It was a man — right in camp.

I grabbed up the flashlight in one hand and the .45 in the other. I was out the front of the tent when the next scream came. I stubbed my toe on a rock and swore. I could see heads popping out of all the other tents except one. The screams were coming from McKlearey's tent.

I whipped open the front flap of his tent and put the beam of the flash full on him. "Lou! What the hell is it?"

He rolled over quickly and came up, that damned .38 in his right hand. Son of a bitch, he moved fast! "Who's there?" he barked.

"Easy, man," I said. "It's me — DAN."

"Danny? What's up?"

"That's what I just asked you. You were yelling like somebody was castrating you with a dull knife."

"Oh," he said, rubbing at his face and lowering his gun, "musta been a nightmare."

"What's wrong?" I heard Miller's voice call.

I pulled my head out of the tent. "It's OK," I called back. "Lou just had a nightmare, that's all. He's OK." I stuck my head back in the tent. "You are OK, aren't you, Lou?"

His face looked awful. He rubbed his bandaged hand across it again, and his hand was shaking badly. He tucked the gun back under his rolled-up clothes. "Keep the light here a minute, OK?" he said. He rummaged around in his sack and came out with a bottle. He took a long pull at it. I suddenly realized that I was standing there with that silly .45 pointed right at him. It had just kind of automatically followed the light. I lowered it carefully.

"Want one?" he asked, holding out the bottle toward me.

"No thanks. You OK now?"

"Yeah," he said, "just a nightmare. Happens to a lot of guys."

"Sure."

"All the time. Lotsa guys have 'em."

"Sure, Lou."

"That's true, isn't it, Danny?" he said, his voice jittery as if he were shivering. "A lot of guys have nightmares don't they?"

"Hell," I said, "I even have some myself." That seemed to help him.

"Hey, man," I said, "I'm about to freeze my ass off. If you're OK, I'm going back to my nice warm sack."

"Sure, man," he said. "I'm fine now. 'Night, Danny."

"Good night, Lou."

"Oh, hey, man?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for comin' in with the light."

"Sure, Lou."

I closed up his tent and hustled back to my sleeping bag. Damn, it was cold out there!

18

When the gun went off I think we all came up in panic. After the screaming in the middle of the night, I for one thought McKlearey had been having another nightmare and had unloaded on whatever it was that was haunting him. It was morning or at least starting to get light outside. I could see Miller standing calmly by the fire with a coffee cup in his hand. He didn't look particularly excited.

"What's up?" I heard Sloane call. "Who's shootin'?"

"Clint," Miller said. "He took a little poke out this mornin' to see if he couldn't scare up some camp-meat. Sounds like he found what he wanted."

"Jesus!" Jack exclaimed. "Sounded like he was right in camp."

"No, he's back down the trail about a quarter mile or so," Miller said.

I jerked on my pants and boots, wincing slightly at their clamminess, grabbed up the rest of my clothes, and hustled on out to the warmth of the fire. I stood shivering in my T-shirt for a few minutes, staring back along the trail that poked back into the still-dark woods.

"Hey, Cap," Clint's voice called in from out there.

"Yeah?" Miller didn't raise Ms voice too much.

"I got one. Send somebody out with a packhorse and a knife. I clean forgot mine."

"Right, Clint," Miller looked across the fire at me. "You want to go?" he asked.

"Sure." I said. "Let me finish getting dressed." I hauled on my shirt and sat down to lace up the boots.

"No big rush." He grinned at me. "That deer ain't goin' no place. Ol' Clint don't miss very often. Have yourself a cup of coffee whilst I go throw a packsaddle on one of the horses." He raised his voice again. "Be a few minutes, Clint."

"OK, Cap," Clint's voice came back. "Better send along a shovel, too."

"Right." Miller went off toward the corral, and I poured myself a cup of coffee and finished lacing up the boots. I went back into the tent and picked up my gun belt.

Jack was struggling into his plaid shirt, trying to stay in the sleeping bag as much as possible at the same time. "You goin' out there?" he asked me.

I nodded, buckling on the belt. "Clint wants a horse and a knife," I said. I pulled the smaller of the pair of German knives from the double sheath that hung on the left side of the gun belt and tested the edge with my thumb. It seemed OK. I grabbed my jacket and hat and went on back through the pale light to the fire.

"I'll be along in a little bit," Jack called after me.

There was a bucket of water on the table, and I scooped some out with my hands and doused it in my face. The shock was sharp, and I came up gasping. I raked the hair back out of my face with my fingers and stuffed my hat on. Still shivering, I drank the cup of coffee.

There was a kind of mist or cloud hanging up on the side of the mountain, blotting out the top. I waded down toward the corral through the gray-wet grass. I could see Miller's dark track through it and Clint's angling off toward the woods.

"You bring a knife?" Miller asked, handing me the lead-rope to the sleepy-looking packhorse he'd saddled.

I nodded. Somehow, it didn't seem right to talk too much.

"He's prob'ly 'bout four-five hundred yards down that trail," he said, pointing. "When you get out there a ways, sing out, and he'll talk you in."

"Right."

I led the horse on into the woods. It was still pretty dark back in there, the silvery light filtering down through the thick spruce limbs. The horse walked very close to me — maybe they get nervous about things, too.

"Clint?" I called after about five minutes.

"Over here," his voice came. "That you, Dan?"

"Yeah." I followed his voice.

"I kinda figgered it might be you," he said. "You bring a knife and a shovel?"

"Yeah," I said. Then I saw him sitting on a log, smoking a cigarette. His .30-30 was leaning against the tree behind him.

"She's right over there," he said, pointing. He got up, and we walked back farther into the dun woods.

The deer, a young mule doe, had fallen on its side in a clump of heather, its sticklike legs protruding awkwardly. A dead deer always looks tiny somehow, not much bigger than a dog. They look big when they're up and moving, but after you shoot them, they seem to kind of shrink in on themselves. A doe looks even smaller, maybe because there aren't any horns."

"This one ought to last us," Clint said. "Give me a hand and we'll drag 'er out in the open."

We each grabbed a hind leg and pulled the deer out of the heather-bed. Her front legs flopped limply and her large-eared head wobbled back and forth as it slid over the branches of the low-lying shrub. I didn't see any blood.

"Ever gutted many deer?" he asked me.

"One," I said. "I didn't do a very good job of it."

"Well, now," he said, "I'll show you how it's done. Hold that leg up and gimme your knife."

I handed him the smaller knife and held the hind leg up for him.

"Now, you start here —” He made a slit through the deer's white belly-fur and continued it back toward the tail, just cutting through the skin.

"Idea is to keep as much hair out of the meat as you can," he told me.

I watched as he sliced the skin from chin to tail.

"You going to cut her throat?" I asked him. "I thought you were supposed to do that."

"Not much point," he said. "We'll have the head off in about five minutes. Carcass'll bleed out good enough from that, I expect." He pushed the point of the knife through the belly-muscles with a hollow, ripping sound, and started to saw up through the ribs.

"Here," I said, handing him the big knife, "use this one."

He grunted, laying the smaller knife aside. He hefted the big one. "Quite a frog-sticker," he said, looking at the ten-inch blade. He bent back over the deer.

I tried not to look too closely at the way the sliced muscles twitched and quivered.

"Hey, where are you guys?" Jack called from back at the trail.

"Over here," I said.

Clint took the big knife and chopped through the pelvis bone, making a sound a lot like somebody chopping wet wood.

"Ooops," Jack said as he came up on us. "I'll just wait till you guys finish up there."

"Squeamish?" Clint asked, his arm sunk up to the elbow inside the deer's body cavity.

"Not really," Jack said, "but —” He shrugged and went back to where McKlearey was coming through the trees. The two of them stood back there, watching.

"Now then," Clint told me, "you just grab hold of the windpipe here and kind of use it as a handle to pull everything right out." He grabbed the severed windpipe and slowly pulled out and down, spilling out the deer's steaming internal organs. Once they were clear of the carcass, he dragged them several feet away and dumped them in a heap. He came back and chopped away the lower half of each leg, the big blade grating sickeningly in the joints.

"No sense haulin' anything back we can't use." he said. Then he turned to the head.

"Where'd you hit her?" I asked, looking into the body cavity. "I don't see any hole."

"Right here," he said, probing a finger into the fur just under the base of the skull.

"Good shot," I said. "What was the ranger?"

"'Bout forty — maybe fifty yards. If you're quiet you can get pretty close."

He made a slice around the neck with the big knife about where he'd had his finger and then cut the head away. Bone fragments and small gleaming pieces of copper from his bullet were very bright against the dark meat.

"Let's dump 'er out," he said.

We picked up the surprisingly heavy carcass and turned it over to drain.

"Hey, Slim," Clint called to Jack, "why don't you and the Sarge there get that shovel off the packhorse and dig a hole so's we can bury the guts?"

"Sure," Jack said, going over to the drowsing horse.

"Ordinarily, I'd leave 'em for the coyotes and bobcats," Clint said, "but then I got to thinkin' that maybe we wouldn't want 'em comin' in this close to camp." He went to the steaming gut-pile and cut the liver free of the other organs. "Breakfast," he said shortly. He fished a plastic bag out of his coat pocket and slid the dripping liver inside.

"This deep enough?" McKlearey asked, pointing at their hole. I noticed that he had on a fresh bandage.

"Yeah, that'll do it," Clint answered. "Just kick them guts and hooves and the head in and cover 'em up. We'll pile rocks on top when you're done."

I looked away. It hadn't bothered me so far, but the deer's eyes were still open, and I didn't want to see them kicking dirt in them.

"That's got it," Jack said.

Clint gave me back my knives. "Pretty good set," he said. "Where'd you come by it?"

"In Germany," I said. "Got it when I was in the Army."

"Damn good steel," he said. "Holds the edge real good."

"They're a bitch to sharpen." I grinned at him. Actually, Clydine had sharpened them for me. I don't know where she'd learned how, but she sure could put an edge on a knife.

We piled rocks on the buried remains of the deer, and then the three of us lifted the carcass onto the pack-frame saddle while Clint held the horse's head to keep him from shying at the blood-smell.

Clint picked up his rifle, and we went on back to camp.

"Dry doe," Clint told Miller when we got back to the corral. "Picked 'er up on that little game trail back in there a ways."

"Looks like she'll last us," Miller said.

"Should. I'll skin 'er out after breakfast when you fellers go up on the ridge."

They put a short, heavy stick through the hocks of the hind legs and hung the carcass to a tree limb a ways behind camp.

After they'd unsaddled the packhorse, we all walked back on up to the fire. Clint washed up and started hustling around the cook table McKlearey'd built for him.

"First blood," Sloane said in the kind of gaspy voice he'd developed since we'd gotten up into the high country.

"This one don't really count." Miller chuckled.

"At least there are deer around," Stan said.

"Oh, there's plenty of deer up here, all right," Miller said.

I got the enameled washbasin and filled it with warm water from the big pot on the fire and did a little better job of washing up man I'd managed earlier. Then Clint ran us all away from the fire because we were in his way.

I walked on down to the edge of the beaver pond and looked out over the clear water. It was about four or five feet deep out in the middle, and the bottom was thinly sprinkled with matchstick-sized white twigs. I saw a flicker under the surface about ten feet out and saw a good-sized trout swim slowly past, his angry-looking eye glaring at me with cold suspicion.

"Hey, man, fish in there, huh?" It was McKlearey. I could smell the whiskey on him. Christ Almighty! The sun wasn't even up yet!

"Yeah," I said. "Wonder if anybody thought to bring any gear."

"Doubt it like hell," he said, jamming his hands deeper into his field-jacket pockets.

I squatted down by the water and washed off my knives. The edges were still OK, but I thought I'd touch them up a little that afternoon.

"Sun's comin' up," Lou said.

I looked up. The very tip of the looming, blue-white peak above us was turning bright pink. As I watched, the pink line crept slowly down, more and more of the mountain catching fire. The blue-white was darkly shadowed now by comparison.

"Nice, huh?" Lou said. His face was ruddy from the reflected glow off the snow above us, kind of etched out sharply against the dark trees behind him. "I can think of times when I'd have give my left nut for just one look at snow. It never melts up there. Did you know that? It's always there — summer and winter — always up there. I used to think about that a lot when I was on the Delta. It's always up there. Kinda gives a guy somethin' to hang on to." He snorted with laughter. "Bet it's colder'n a bitch up there," he said.

"If it got too cold you could always think about the Delta, I guess," I said.

"No," he said, still staring at the mountain. "I never think about the Delta. Other places, yeah, but never the Delta."

I nodded. "How's the hand?" I pointed at the bandage.

"Little sore," he said. "It'll be OK."

"Chow!" Clint hollered from camp.

Lou and I walked on back up toward the tents. Maybe there was more to him than I'd realized.

Clint had fried up a bunch of bacon and then had simmered onion slices in the hot grease and had fried up thin strips of fresh deer liver. There were hot biscuits and more coffee. The little old fart could sure whip up a helluva meal on short notice. We fell on the food like a pack of wolves, and for about ten minutes all you could hear was the sound of eating. The altitude does that to you.

After we'd eaten and were lazing over a last cup of coffee, watching the edge of the sunlight creep down the mountain toward us, Miller cleared his throat.

"Soon as you men get your breakfast settled, we'll saddle up and take a little ride on up the ridge there. I want to show you the stands you'll be usin'. You'll need to see 'em in the daylight 'cause it'll still be dark yet when you get up there tomorrow. Then, too, it'll give us a chance to scout around some."

"You think we'll see any deer?" Stan asked.

"We sure should," Miller said. "I've seen five cross that ridge since we set down to breakfast."

We all turned and looked sharply up at the ridge.

"None up there right now though," he said. "Your bucks'll all be up there. Now some of you men may've hunted mule deer before, and some of you've hunted white-tail. These are all mulies up here. They're bigger'n white-tail and they look and act a whole lot different. A mulie's got big ears — that's how he gets his name — and he can hear a pin drop at a half a mile. He's easy to hunt 'cause you can count on him to do two things — run uphill and stop just before he goes over the ridge. He'll always run uphill when he's been spooked — unless, of course, he's just been shot. Then he'll go downhill.

"A white-tail runs kind of flat out, like a horse or a dog, and if you're a fair shot you can hit him on the run. Your mulie, on the other hand, bounces like a damn jackrabbit, and you can't tell from one jump to the next which way he's goin'. Looks funnier'n hell, but it makes him damn hard to hit on the run. You shoot over 'im or under 'im ever' time.

"That's why it's good to know that he's gonna stop. As soon as he gets a ways away from you — and above you — he'll stop and look back to see what you're doin'. Some people say they're curious, and some say they're dumb, but it's just somethin' he'll always do. Wait for it, and you're likely to get a clear, standin' shot."

"What's the range likely to be?" Sloane gasped.

"Anywhere from one hundred to three hundred yards," Miller said, looking closely at Cal. "Much out past that and I wouldn't shoot, if it was me. Too much chance of a gut shot or havin' the deer drop into one of these ravines. He does that and he'll likely bounce and roll for about a mile. Won't be much left when he stops."

He stopped and looked around. It was the longest speech I ever heard him make.

"Let's go get the horses," he said, almost as if he were ashamed of himself for talking so much.

We trooped on down to the corral, and he made each man saddle his own horse. "Might as well learn how to do it now as later," he said.

I approached that knotheaded gray horse of mine with a great deal of caution. He didn't seem particularly tense this morning, but I wasn't going to take any chances with him. I got him saddled and bridled and led him out of the corral. The others all stopped to watch.

"Well, buddy," I said to him as firmly as I could, "how do you want to play it this morning?"

He turned his head and looked inquiringly at me, his long gray face a mask of equine innocence.

"You lyin' son of a bitch," I muttered. I braced myself and climbed on his back. His ears flicked.

"All right," I said grimly, "let's get it over with." I nudged him with my heels and he moved out at a gentle walk with not so much as an instant's hesitation. I walked him out into the bottom, turned him and trotted him back to the corral.

"How about that?" I called to the others. "Just like a pussycat."

"You got him all straightened out yesterday," Miller said. "He won't give you no more trouble."

The others mounted, and we rode off down to the lower end of the basin, crossed the creek, and started up the ridge, Clint's horse, alone in the saddle-horse corral, whinnied after us a couple times and then went over to the fence nearest the pack-horses.

I was a little stiff and sore, but it didn't take too long for that to iron itself out.

The ridge moved up in a series of steps with low brush breaking off each side. A little way out we rode into the sunlight.

About a half mile up from camp, Miller stopped.

"This'll be the first stand," he said. "The Big Man'll be here." It made sense. This was the lowest post, and Sloane was having trouble with the altitude.

"You want me to wait here now?" Cal asked, disappointment evident in his voice.

"No need of that," Miller said, "but we'd better look around a mite so's you can get it all set in your mind. I'll be droppin' you off by this white rock here." He pointed at a big pale boulder. "Best place to set is right over there."

We all got off and walked on over. A natural rock platform jutted out over the deep ravine that ran down the right-hand side of the ridge. The other, shallower, ravine with its meadows ran down into the basin where we were camped.

"You see that notch over on the other side?" Miller said, pointing it out to Sloane.

"Yeah."

"That's a main game trail. They'll be comin' across that from the next ravine. Then they'll turn and go on down to the bottom. They'll be in sight all the way."

"How far is it to that notch?" Sloane gasped.

"'Bout a hundred and fifty yards. It's best to let 'em get all the way to the bottom before you shoot. That way they won't fall so far and you'll have plenty of time to look 'em over."

"OK," Sloane said.

"Don't get so interested in this trail that you ignore this draw here that runs on down to camp though. They'll be crossin' there, too — lots of 'em. And they'll be grazin' in those meadows."

Sloane looked it all over. "I think I've got it located," he said, taking a deep breath.

Jack's post was on the next step up the ridge. There was a bit more brush there, but another big game trail cut into the ravine from the far side.

"Watch your shots over there, Slim," Miller said. "It breaks off pretty sharp, and a deer'd get busted up pretty bad if it was to go over that edge."

"Yeah," Jack replied, his eyes narrowing, "I can see that."

Stan was next up the hill, his post much like the two below.

McKlearey's post was down in a notch.

"You'll have to watch yourself in here, Sarge," Miller told him. "You're right in the middle of a trail here, and you might get yourself stampeded over if they start to runnin'."

"Stomp your ass right into the ground, McKlearey." Jack laughed. "Wouldn't that be a bitch?"

"I'll hold 'em off till you guys get here."

Lou grinned. "We'll ambush the little bastards."

My post was the highest on the ridge. The horses scrambled up the rocky trail from McKlearey's notch, their iron-shod hooves sliding and clattering.

"I'm puttin' the Kid up here," Miller explained, "'cause that horse he's ridin' is the biggest and strongest one in the string. This little stretch of trail can be a bitch-kitty in the dark."

"Anybody wanna trade horses?" I asked, not meaning it.

We came out on the rounded knob at the top of the trail and looked around.

"At least you'll have scenery," Jack said. He was right about that. You could literally see for a hundred miles in every direction except where the peak whitely blotted out a quarter of the sky.

We all got down and walked around, looking out at the surrounding mountains.

"Buck!" Miller said, his voice not loud but carrying to us with a sharp urgency.

The deer was above us. I counted him at five points, but that could have been off. He was a hundred and fifty yards away, but he still looked as big as a horse. He watched us, his rack flaring arrogantly above his head like a vast crown. It was probably my imagination, but his face seemed to have an expression of unspeakable contempt on it, an almost royal hauteur that made me feel about two feet tall. None of us moved or made a sound.

Slowly he turned the white patch of his rump to us, flicked his tail twice, then laid his ears back and bounded up the mountainside as if he had springs on his feet. He soared with each jump as though the grip of earth upon him was very light and he could just as easily fly, if he really wanted to.

Far up the rockslide he slowed, stopped, and looked back at us again. Then he walked off around the ridge, picking his way delicately over the rocks, his head up and his antlers carried proudly.

I still felt very small.

19

Miller split us up then and sent us on back down the ridge by several different trails. He told us to ride slowly and keep a good sharp eye out for any really big bucks.

"Come on, Cal," I said to Sloane, "let's ease on down this way."

Miller glanced at me and nodded once. One of us was going to have to stick pretty close to Calvin from here on out.

"Sure thing," Sloane said with a heartiness that sounded hollow as all hell. He was looking pretty tough again.

We rode off slowly, and I concentrated pretty much on picking as easy a trail as I could find. The sun was well up by now, and the air up there was very clear. Every limb and rock stood out sharply, and the shadows under the bushes were very dark. I could hear the others clattering over rocks now and men above us. After about five minutes Cal called weakly to me.

"Better hold up a minute, Dan." He jumped down off his horse and lurched unsteadily off to the side of the trail. I rolled out of the saddle and caught his bridle before his horse could wander off. I tied both horses to a low bush.

He was vomiting when I got to him, kneeling beside a rock and retching like a man at the end of a three-day drunk.

"You OK?" I asked. A guy always asks such damned stupid questions at a time like that.

He nodded jerkily and then vomited again. He was at it for quite a long time. Finally he got weakly to his feet and stumbled back toward the horses.

"Jesus, Cal," I said, trying to help him.

"Don't tell the others about this," he said hoarsely, waving off my hand.

"Christ, man, you're really sick, aren't you?"

"I'll be OK," he said, hanging onto his saddle horn. "Just don't tell the others, OK?"

"If you say so," I said. "Let's sit down a bit."

"Sure," he agreed.

I led him over to a clear place and went back to get the water bag hanging on my saddle horn. When I brought it back, he drank some and washed off his face. He looked a little better, but his breathing was still very bad, and his face was pale inside the framing fur of his parka hood.

"I just can't seem to get used to it." He gasped. "God damn, I can't. It's like there was a wet blanket over my face all the time."

"You ever have trouble at high altitudes before?" I asked him.

"No more than anybody else, I don't think. Oh sure, I'd get a little woozy and I'd get winded easy, but nothing like this. Of course, I haven't been up in the mountains for five or six years now."

"It'll settle down," I said — not really believing it. "Hell, we've only been up here for a day or so."

"I sure hope so," he said. "I don't know how much more of this I can cut."

"Cal," I said after a minute or so, "if it gets bad — I mean really bad — you'll let me know, won't you? I mean, shit, none of this is worth blowing a coronary over."

"Hell," he said, "my heart's in good shape — it's my fuckin' lungs."

"Yeah, I know, but tell me, huh? I mean it."

He looked at me for a moment. "OK, Dan," he said finally, "if it really gets bad."

That was a helluva relief.

"Like you said, though, it'll settle down." His face had a longing on it that was awfully damned exposed.

"I've just got to make this one, you know?" he said. "If I don't make it this time, I don't think I ever will."

"I'm not sure I follow you," I said.

"Look, Dan," he said, "let's not kid each other. I know what I am — I'm a big fuckin' kid — that's what I am."

"Hey, man —”

"No, let's not shit each other. I wouldn't say this to any of the others. Hell, they wouldn't understand it. But you're different." He lit a cigarette and then immediately mashed it out. "I sure as shit don't need those things."

"I've cut way down, too," I said, wanting to change the subject.

"This whole damn trip," he went on, "it's a kid thing — for me anyhow. At least it was when it started. It was just another of the things I do with your brother and Carter and McKlearey and a whole bunch of other guys — parties, booze, broads, the whole bit — all kid stuff. I gotta do it though. You see, my old man was fifty-five when I was born. My old lady was his second wife. I can't ever remember him when he wasn't an old man. I get this awful feeling when I get around old people — like I want to crawl off and hide someplace."

"You're not alone there," I told him. "I ever tell you about the Dan Alders' curse? With me it's old ladies on buses. Drives me right up the wall every time."

He grinned at me briefly. He almost looked like the old Cal again.

"So I hang around with young guys," he went on, "and I do the stuff they do. Shit, man, I'm forty-two years old, for Chrissake! Don't you think it's time I grew up? I own four businesses outright, and I'm a partner in about six more. Let's face it, I'm what they'd call a man of substance, and here I am, boozin' and partyin' and shackin' up with cheap floozies like that goddamn Helen. Jesus H. Christ! Claudia's ten times the woman and about a million times the lady that pig was on the best day she ever saw." He shook his head. "I've gotta be outa my goddamn rabbit-ass mind!"

"We all do funny things now and then," I said, wishing he'd change the subject.

"I don't know why the hell Claudia puts up with me," he said. "She knows all about it, of course."

"Oh?"

"Shit yes! Do you think for one minute I could hide anything from her? But she never gives me hell about it, never complains. Hell, she never even mentions it. The goddamn woman's a saint, you know mat?"

"She's pretty special," I agreed.

Sloane looked out over what Mike used to call the Big Lonely.

"God, it's great up here," he said, "if only I could get my goddamn wind!" He pounded his fist on his leg as if angry with his gross body for having failed him.

"Anyway" — he picked it up again —”like I was sayin', this started out as just another kid thing — something I was gonna do with Jack and Carter and some of the guys, right?"

"If you say so," I said. He had me baffled now.

"Only it isn't that anymore. This is a, baby. This is where little Calvin grows up. This time I make it over the hump. By God, it's about time, wouldn't you say? Claudia deserves a real husband, and by God I'm gonna see that she's got one when I get back. He looked up at the sky again. "This time I'm gonna make it, I really am." Then he started coughing again, and I started worrying.

After he got straightened around with his breathing apparatus again, we got up and went back to the horses.

"You mink I can make it, Dan?" he asked after I'd helped him back on his horse.

I looked at him for a minute. "You already have, Cal," I said. "That was it back there. Anything else is just going to be a souvenir to remember it by." I went over and climbed up on Ned. A guy can say some goddamn foolish things sometimes. But Cal needed it, so I said it — even though we both knew "growing up" doesn't happen like that. It takes a long time — most of your life usually.

Then we heard the other guys yelling farther up the slope. We nudged the horses over to where we could get a clear view of the ravine. We both looked up and down the opposite ridge for a minute and then we saw what they were yelling about.

It was a white deer.

He was a buck, maybe about a seven-pointer, but he wasn't as big as the five-point we'd seen earlier. His coat was a sort of cream-colored, but his antlers were very dark. He stood about a quarter of a mile away on the other ridge, his ears flickering nervously at all the shouting the others were doing. I suppose like most albinos, his eyes weren't really too good.

"Look at that!" Sloane said reverently. "Isn't that the most beautiful goddamn thing you ever saw?" He handed me his binoculars. They brought the thing up pretty close; they were damn good glasses.

The deer's eyes were a deep red, so he was a true albino. You could actually see the pink skin in places where the wind ruffled his fur back. He looked more completely defenseless than any animal I've ever seen. For some reason, when I looked at him, I thought of Clydine.

I gave the glasses back to Sloane and sat on the horse watching until the deer's nerves finally got wound too tight and he bounded off across the other ridge and out of sight.

"Isn't that something?" Cal gasped.

"Never seen one before," I said. "I've seen a lot of deer, but that's the first white one I've ever seen."

"The son of a bitch looked like a ghost, didn't he?"

"Or like Moby Dick," I said, and then I wished I hadn't said it. It was so goddamn obvious.

"Yeah. Moby Dick," Sloane said. "They got him at the end of the book, didn't they?"

"No," I said. "He got them — the whole damn bunch. All but Ishmael, of course."

"I never read it," Sloane admitted. "I saw the movie though — first half of it anyway. I was with this girl —”

"I'd rather you didn't mention that name to the others," I said, forgetting Stan for a moment.

"What name?"

"Moby Dick."

"Why not?"

"It's a real bad scene, man. Just say it's a superstition or something, but don't get Jack and McKlearey started on something like that. Somebody's liable to wind up dead."

"You are jumpy," Sloane said. "What's got you all keyed up?"

"Man, I'll tell you, this whole damn trip is like setting up housekeeping on top of a bomb. McKlearey's been playing McKlearey-type games with a couple women we both know. If we don't keep a lid on things, Jack and Stan are going to go off in a corner and start to odd-man to see who gets to shoot the son of a bitch."

"Jesus!" Sloane said.

"Amen, brother, amen. This whole trip could turn to shit right in our faces, so let's not buy trouble by starting any Moby Dick stuff. That son of a bitch sank the whole goddamn boat, and I left my water wings at home."

"Hell," he squawked, "I can't even swim."

Of course the first thing Stan said to me when Sloane and I came trailing into camp was "Call me Ishmael," in a properly dramatic voice.

"I only am escaped to tell thee," I grated back at him just as hard and as sharp-pointed as I could make it, hoping to hell he'd get the point.

"What the hell are you two babblin' about?" Jack demanded.

Stan, of course, had to tell him.

We unsaddled the horses, turned them loose in the corral, and then all went on up to the fire where Clint was working on lunch.

"Man" — Jack was still carrying on about the white deer — "wasn't that the damnedest thing you ever saw?"

"Pretty damn rare," Miller said. "Most likely a stag though."

"Stag?" Sloane asked. "I thought any buck-deer was a stag."

"Well, not really," Miller said. "A stag is kinda like a steer with cows. Either he's been castrated or had an accident or he just ain't got the equipment. Most of them freaks are like that — I don't know why."

They talked about it all the way through lunch. I kept trying to pour cold water on it, but I could see all the others visualizing that white head over their mantelpieces or what-not. I began right about then to hate that damned deer. I wished to hell he'd fall off a cliff or something.

After lunch we hauled in more firewood and cleaned our rifles. McKlearey lashed together a kind of rifle rack and put it in the back of the supply tent. "Keep the scopes from gettin' knocked around that way," he rasped. His bandage was dirty again.

The sun went down early — it always would here, right up against the backside of that peak like we were. The twilight lasted a long time though. We had venison steak for dinner and settled down around the fire to watch the last of the daylight fade out of the sky.

They went back to talking about that damned white deer again.

I'd been kind of half-assed watching McKlearey. He'd been making a lot of trips to his tent for one reason or another, and his eyes were getting a little unfocused. I figured he was hitting his jug pretty hard again.

I caught Miller's eye, and I knew he'd been counting McKlearey's trips, too. He didn't look too happy about it.

"Well, I'll sure tell you one thing," Jack was saying, "if that big white bastard crosses my stand, I'll dump 'im right in his tracks."

"You said it, buddy," McKlearey said, his voice slurring a little. "How about you, Danny Boy?"

"I came up here to hunt," I said. "I'm not declaring war on one single deer."

"There's lots of deer up on that mountain," Miller said. "Lots are bigger'n that one."

"Just like the girls in Hong Kong, huh, Danny?" McKlearey said, trying to focus his eyes on me.

"I wouldn't know, Lou," I said. "I've never been there, remember?"

"Sure you have, Danny. Me'n you made an R and R there once."

"Not me, Lou. You must have me mixed up with somebody else."

He squinted at me very closely. "Yeah," he said finally, "maybe so. I guess maybe it was another guy."

What the hell was that all about?

We kept on talking until it got completely dark, and Miller suggested that we all get to bed. I walked on down to McKlearey's slit-trench to unload some coffee. On the way back I met Clint.

"Say, Dan," he said, his voice hushed, "What's the score on old Sarge anyway? Does it seem to you he's actin' a little funny?"

"Lou? I don't know, Clint. I don't really know him all that well. Seems to me he's been acting a little funny ever since I first met him."

"Well," he said, "I know one thing for sure. He hits that bottle about as hard as any man I've ever seen. That ain't good up this high."

"He's used to it," I said.

"Maybe so, but Cap's a little worried about it. He wants this trip to go smooth, and already he's got a sick man and one that's actin' kinda funny. Don't take too much to spoil a trip for ever'body."

"I think it'll work out, Clint. Once we get to hunting, we'll be OK."

"I sure hope so," he said.

"Sure, Clint, it'll all settle down, don't worry." I wished that I could be as sure as I sounded. I walked on back up to the tent.

Jack was already in bed and about half-asleep, so I just undressed and crawled in my sleeping bag.

I lay in my sack, staring out at the fire and remembering the other deer — not the white one — and how he'd soared and bounced up the mountainside. Almost as if he could fly, if he really wanted to. For me, at least, it was going to be a good hunt.

20

“Time to roll out." Clint's head blotted out the looming white mountain in the doorway of the tent. I was immediately awake. It's funny, in town or anyplace else, I always have a helluva time waking up. When I'm hunting though, I snap awake just like I was a different guy.

I was dressed and out to the fire while Jack was still mumbling around looking for his pants. I washed up and hunkered down by the fire waiting for the coffee to finish boiling. Slowly one by one the others joined me.

"Darker'n hell," Jack said. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Four," I said. We both spoke quietly, our voices hushed by the deep silence around us. Lou came out rubbing down the tape on a fresh bandage. I wondered why he didn't wear a glove or try to keep that hand out of the dirt.

Miller came up from the corral about the same time Stan and then Sloane came out of their tent.

"Cold," Stan said shortly, zipping up his new jacket and getting up close to the fire.

"Mornin', men," Miller said. "Coffee ready?"

"In just a minute or so, Cap," Clint said. He looked around, his battered old cowboy hat pushed back from his face. "You fellers are gonna have to step back from the fire if you want any breakfast."

We all moved obediently back away and he began slapping his pans down on the grill. "Coffee's ready," he said. "Take it over to the table there."

I carried the heavy pot to the table and started pouring coffee into the cups. Then we all stood back in the bunch in front of the tents watching Clint make breakfast.

"We'll get up there well before first light, men," Miller said. "I'll ride all the way up to the top with the Kid here, and then I'll come on back down with the horses. They'd just get restless on you and move around and spook the deer. Besides, they might run off if you happen to get off a shot today."

"It's ready," Clint said. "Come get your plates."

We lined up, and he filled our plates for us. We sat down to eat. Miller continued with his instructions. "I'll bring the horses down and put 'em out to graze in this meadow out here. I'll be back up to get you about ten or so. Isn't likely there'll be much movin' after that. We'll go out again about three thirty or four this afternoon." He bent his face to his plate and scooped in three or four mouthfuls of scrambled eggs. He stared off into the dark while he chewed, his white mustache twitching with each bite.

"I don't know as I'd shoot today," he said. "Just kinda get an idea of the size of the deer. Lots of men bust the first one they see with horns. There's a lot of deer on this mountain. A lot of big ones, so take your time."

He ate some more. By then the rest of us had finished. He looked at his watch. "I guess we'd better saddle up," he said, rising.

The rest of us followed him on down to the corral. The moon was still high over the shoulder of the peak, and it was very bright out from under the shadow of the spruces. I'd had visions of fumbling around with flashlights and lanterns while we saddled the horses, but the moonlight was bright enough to make it almost as easy as doing it in broad daylight.

After we'd saddled the horses, we led them back up to the tents and picked up our rifles.

"How about the signals?" Sloane gasped, patting the butt of his Ruger.

"Oh, yeah," Miller said. He didn't sound very enthusiastic. "How 'bout this? One shot means a down deer. Two shots for one wounded and running. Three shots if you're in trouble — hurt or sick or hangin' off a cliff by one hand. OK?"

"Sure," Sloane said. "Anything'll work as long as we all know what it is."

"You fellers better get movin' if Cap's gonna get them horses back down by shootin' time," Clint said.

We tied our rifles to the saddles and climbed on. Miller led the way, and we strung out behind him single file.

By the time we got to his stand, Cal was breathing hard. Even though the horse was doing all the work, he was puffing as if he'd climbed the hill by himself.

"You OK?" Miller asked him.

"Fine," Sloane gasped. "You gonna take the horse with you now?"

"No. Just tie him to that bush there. I'll be back down in about half an hour or so — before shootin' time anyway. You might as well go on over and get settled now though."

"Right," Cal said, grunting as he slipped off his horse.

"Good luck, Sloane," Jack said. "Try not to bust anything bigger'n a twelve-point."

"Sure," Cal grinned. Then he giggled, and I think that made us all feel better. We waved and moved on up the mountainside.

Jack tied down his horse and faded back into the shadowy bushes with a backward wave.

Stan dismounted stiffly and stood by his horse, watching us as Miller, McKlearey, and I rode on up the ridge.

It was darker than hell in McKlearey's notch. His face was nothing more than a pale blur as he reined in his horse.

"This is as far as I go," he said.

"I'll be back down in a few minutes, Sarge," Miller said.

"I'll be here, Cap. Good luck, Danny boy."

"Same to you, Lou," I answered.

Then Miller and I went slowly on up the steep trail to my post.

The moon was just slipping behind the shoulder of the mountain as we came out on the knob at the top of the ridge.

"Better let my eyes settle into the dark a bit before I start back," Miller said. "Give the horse a rest, too." We both climbed down.

I offered him a cigarette and we squatted down in the darkness, smoking.

"Clint tells me you went to college," Miller said after a while.

"Yeah," I said. "Before I went in the Army."

"Always wished I'd had the chance to go," he said. "Maybe then I wouldn't be finishin' up on a broke-down horse-ranch, scratchin' to make a livin'."

"From the way I see it," I said, "you're one of the lucky ones. You're doing something you like."

"There's that, too," he admitted. "I don't know as it all adds up to all that much though. The work's hard and the pay's pretty slim. A man always wonders if maybe he coulda done better."

"I know a lot of people who'd trade even across with you, Cap," I said.

He chuckled. "I guess there ain't much point worryin' about it at this stage."

I untied my rifle and the water bag from my saddle.

"You got ever'thing, son? All your gear, I mean?"

"Yeah," I said, "I'm all set."

He stood up. Then he scuffed his boot in the thin dirt a couple times. Finally he blurted it out. "What's eatin' on old Sarge, anyway?"

"God, Cap, I don't know. Maybe he's just having trouble reconverting to civilian life. I met him about a month ago, and he's been jumpy as hell all that time. I've about halfway got a hunch he had a pretty rough time in Vietnam — he's out on a medical. Malaria, I think."

"Mean stuff," he said. "Clint gets a touch of it now and then."

"Oh?"

"Puts him flat on his back."

"Yeah. I've heard it's no joke."

"I sure wish ol' Sarge would go a little easier on the liquor though. I can sure tell you that."

"At the rate he's going," I said, "that bottle of his won't last much longer."

"He's got more'n one," Miller said gloomily. "That sack of his clinks and gurgles like a liquor store. I wonder he had room for spare sox."

"Oh, brother," I said.

"Did you talk with the Big Man on the way down yesterday?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Yeah," I said. "He's going to let me know if he gets really bad."

"That's a real good idea. Clint can take him back on down if he gets too sick. Most men start to get their wind before this."

"I think he'll be all right now," I said.

"I sure hope so." He looked around. "Well, I guess I better be gettin' on down."

"Yeah," I said. I glanced at my watch. "About half an hour till shooting time."

"Ought to work out about right, then," he said. "Well, son, good luck."

"Thanks, Cap."

I watched him ride on off down the trail with Ned trailing behind him. Then I slung my rifle and walked on up to the top of the knob. I sat down and lit another cigarette. I'd meant to ask him if the smoke would spook off the deer, but I'd forgotten.

I unslung the rifle and started pulling cartridges for it out of my gun belt and pushing them one by one into the magazine. I eased the last one up the tube with the bolt and then pushed the bolt-handle down. I snapped on the safety and carefully laid the rifle down on a flat rock. Then I loaded the pistol and put it back in the holster. Now what the hell was I supposed to do for the next twenty-five minutes?

I sat down on the rock beside the rifle again and looked off toward the east. I could just make out the faintest hint of light along toward the horizon out there.

I remembered a time in Germany when I'd pulled the four-to-six shift on guard duty and had watched the sun slowly rise over one of those tiny little fanning villages with the stonewalled, red-tile-roofed houses huddled together under a church spire. It's a good time for getting things sorted out in your mind. I wonder how many times other guys have thought the same thing — probably every guy from along about the year one.

One thing was sure — I was a helluva long way from Germany now. I started to try to figure out what time it would be in Wertheim about now, but I lost track somewhere off the east coast. I wondered what Heidi was doing right now. I still felt bad about that. If only she hadn't been so damn trusting. No matter what I'd told her, she'd gone on hoping and believing. It was a bad deal all the way around. She'd gotten hurt, and I'd picked up big fat guilt feelings out of it.

And naturally that got me to thinking about Sue. Oddly enough, it didn't bother me to think about her anymore. For a long time I'd deliberately forced my mind away from it. About the only time I'd thought about her was when I was in the last stages of getting crocked — and that usually wound up getting maudlin. At first, of course, I'd been pretty bitter about it. Now I could see the whole thing in a little better perspective. I'd told a lot of people that it wouldn't have worked out between Sue and me, but that had been a cover-up really. Now I began to see that it was really true — it wouldn't have worked out. It wasn't just her old lady either. Sue and I had looked at the world altogether differently. She'd have probably turned into a Monica on me within the first six months.

That made me a little less certain about graduate school. Maybe I'd just gone ahead and made those plans to go back to the campus in Seattle with some vague idea in the back of my mind about possibly getting back together with her again. Or maybe I was just looking for a place to hide — or to postpone things. I was awfully good at postponing things.

The streak of light off along the eastern horizon was spreading now, and the stars were fading. A steel-gray luminosity was beginning to show in the rocks around me. It was still about fifteen minutes until it would be legal to shoot. Once again I found myself wishing my little Bolshevik could see this. Talk about an ambivalent situation, that was really it. I guess I knew she'd been right that night at Sloane's orgy — she and I weren't for keeps. There was no way we could be, but lately I couldn't see anything nice or hear anything or come up with an idea without wanting to share it with her. She was a complete and absolute nut, but I couldn't think of anybody that was more fun to be around.

A deer crossed the brow of the ridge on the far side of the ravine. I think I looked at it for about thirty seconds before I actually realized it was a deer. It was still too dark to tell if it was a buck or a doe. I began to get that tight excitement I get when I'm hunting — a sort of a double aliveness I only get then. I picked up my rifle and tried to see if I could catch the deer in the scope, but by that time it was down in the brush at the bottom of the ravine. Then I started paying attention to what I was doing. I began scoping the ravine and the ridge carefully.

It was getting lighter by the minute. I counted three more deer crossing the ridge — three does and a small buck.

I checked my watch. It was legal to shoot now.

In the next hour, thirty or forty deer crossed the ridge and another dozen or so drifted across the meadow behind me. Most of them were does, of course, and the bucks were all pretty small. I put the scope on each one and watched them carefully. Deer are funny animals, and I got a kick out of watching them. Some would come out of the brush very cautiously, looking around as if the whole world was out to get them. Others just blundered on out as if they owned the woods.

The pink sunlight was slipping down the peak above again, and it was broad daylight by now.

The white deer crossed the ridge above me from the meadow at my back just before the sun got down to the rockfall.

I caught the flicker of his movement out of the corner of my eye and swung the scope on him. He crossed about seventy yards above me, and he completely filled the scope. I think he looked right straight at me several times. I could see his pale eyelashes fluttering as he blinked nearsightedly in my direction. It never occurred to me to shoot. Maybe if I had, I could have headed off a whole potful of trouble, but it just didn't occur to me — I'm not even sure I could have shot. I just wasn't so hungry that I had to kill something unique.

21

"You see any with any size?" Miller asked when he came back up about ten thirty.

"One pretty good three-point was all," I told him. I'd decided the less I said about the albino, the better.

"There'll be bigger ones," he said. "The others already went on down." He was looking at me kind of funny.

"I haven't seen anything in the last hour or so," I told him, walking over to Ned. The damn fool horse reached out and nuzzled at me, almost like a puppy. I scratched his ears for him.

"You two sure seem to be gettin' along good." Miller chuckled.

"I think he's all bluff," I said, tying the rifle to the saddle and hooking the water bag over the horn. I climbed on, and we started down the ridge.

"The Big Man don't seem much better," he said when we got out past McKlearey's notch.

"He'll hold on," I said. "This is awfully important to him."

Miller grunted.

It was close to eleven when we got back down to camp.

"What the hell's the matter with your eyes Dan?" Jack demanded as I climbed down at the corral. "That big white bastard damn near walked over the top of you up there — couldn't'a been more'n thirty yards from you."

"Oh?" I said. I saw Miller watching me closely. "I must have been watching another deer."

"Hell, man, that's the one that counts."

I unsaddled Ned and ran him into the corral.

Jack shook his head disgustedly and stalked back up to the fire. I followed him.

"I'm not shittin' you," he told the others. "Just goddamn near ran right over him. I was watchin' the whole time through my scope."

"Why didn't you shoot?" McKlearey demanded.

"Christ, Lou, he was almost a mile away, and Stan, you, and Dan were all between me and him. I ain't about to get trigger-happy."

"Are you sure it was the same deer?" Stan asked.

"Ain't very likely there's more than one like that on the whole mountain," Jack said. "I still can't see how you missed spottin' him, Dan."

"Coulda been brush or a rise of ground between the Kid and that deer," Miller said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "That ground can be damn tricky when you get at a different angle."

"Now that's sure the truth," Clint said. "I seen a nine-pointer walk no more'n ten yards in front of ol' Cap here one time. From where I was sittin' it looked like they were right in each other's laps, but when I got down there I seen that deer had been in a kind of shallow draw."

Miller chuckled. "Biggest deer we seen all that year, too."

"I guess that explains it then," Jack said dubiously.

"Where's Sloane?" I asked.

"He's lying down in the tent," Stan said. "He's still not feeling too well."

"Is he asleep?"

"I think he was going to try to sleep a little."

"I won't pester him then," I said. "Any of you guys see any good ones?"

"I seen a four-point," McKlearey said, "but I figure it's early yet."

"That's playin' it smart, Sarge," Miller said. "We got plenty of time left."

"What time you think we oughta go back up?" Jack asked him.

"Oh, 'bout three thirty or so," Miller said. "Evenin' huntin' ain't all that productive this time of year. Deer'll move in the evening, but not near as much as in the mornin'."

We loafed around until lunchtime and then ate some more venison and beans. We tried to get Sloane to eat, but he said he didn't feel much like it, so we left him alone.

The rest of the guys sacked out after we'd eaten, but I wasn't really sleepy. I was feeling kind of sticky and grimy and thought a bit about maybe trying to swim in the beaver pond, but one hand stuck in there convinced me that it would be an awful mistake. I think that water came right out of a glacier somewhere. I settled for a stand-up bath out of the washbasin and called it good. Then I washed out my shirt and underwear and hung them on limbs to dry. I felt better in clean clothes and with at least the top layer of dirt off.

At three thirty we went down to the corral. Sloane was still feeling pretty rough, and Miller suggested that maybe he ought to just stay in bed so he'd be better tomorrow. Cal didn't give him much of an argument.

"Horses'll be OK to stay with you men," Miller said. "They're a whole lot quieter come evenin'. I'll just ride on up to the top with the Kid here, and we'll come on down end of shootin' time."

We all got on our horses and started up the ridge. It felt a little funny not having Cal along. Each of the others peeled off at their regular stands, and Miller and I scrambled on up to my knob at the top.

We got down and tied the horses securely and went on up to the rock where I'd sat that morning.

Miller lit a cigarette. "Sun's still pretty warm, ain't it?" he said.

"Yeah," I agreed. I could see that something was bothering him.

After a long while he said it. "How come you didn't shoot this mornin'?"

"I didn't see anything I wanted to shoot," I said.

"I was down below watchin' you with my field glasses," he said. "I saw you follow that freak deer with your scope all the way across the ridge. I don't think your brother saw you."

"I don't know, Cap," I said. "I just didn't feel like shooting him."

He nodded. "Maybe I'd feel the same way," he said. "I've seen a few of 'em and I've never shot one."

"I just watched him," I said. "I don't think I even considered pulling the trigger on him."

"In a way I almost wish you had. It woulda put an end to it. Your brother and ol' Sarge are startin' to get at each other about it."

"I know," I said. "I wish the damn deer would get the hell off this side of the mountain."

"Ain't very likely."

I had a cigarette.

"Doe," Miller said, nodding at the other ridge.

We watched her step daintily down into the ravine. Then something spooked her. She snorted and bounded up the side of the ravine and on over the ridge.

"Picked up somebody's scent," Miller said. "Breeze gets a little tricky this time of evenin'."

We sat in silence, watching several does and a couple of small bucks pick their way on down the ravine. The sun crept slowly down toward the shoulder of the peak, and the shadows of the rocks and bushes grew longer. It was very quiet up there.

The sun slid behind the mountain, and the lucid shadowless twilight settled in. After a while Miller checked his watch.

"I guess that's about it," he said.

We got up and went back to the horses.

"Evenings are a little slower, aren't they?" I said.

"Yeah," he agreed, "like I said."

We mounted up and started down. McKlearey was already on his horse waiting for us, but we had to whistle for Stan and Jack. It was almost dark by the time we got down to the corral. We unsaddled and went back up to camp.

"Boy," Jack said, "you weren't kiddin' when you said pickin's were lean at night. I don't think I seen more'n half a dozen."

"You saw more than I did then," Stan said.

"I seen eight or ten," McKlearey said.

"I know some fellers don't even go out in the afternoon, Clint said, "but a man never knows when that big one'll come easin' by. Besides" — he grinned —”it gives me a chance to get supper goin' without havin' all you men under foot."

We got the point and backed away from the fire to give him a little more room.

"I don't mind goin' out," McKlearey said. "That's what we came up here for. I wouldn't want old Whitey gettin' past me."

"Don't be gettin' no wild ideas about my deer," Jack said.

"He ain't yours till you get your tag on 'im, Alders."

"I'll tag 'im," Jack said, "don't worry about that."

"Not if I see 'im first, you won't," McKlearey snapped.

"I told you men yesterday," Miller said, "that there's a whole lot of deer up on that mountain. You get your mind all set on just that one, and you're liable to come up empty."

"One of us is bound to get Mm," Jack said.

"Not necessarily," Miller said. "There's a hundred or more trails on that ridge. He could be crossin' on any one of "em."

"I'm still gonna wait a few days before I fill my tag," Jack said.

I went over to see how Sloane was doing. I'm afraid that about two or three more smart remarks from my brother, and I'd have had to get in on it. Jack could be awfully knot-headed stubborn when he got his back up.

"Hey, Cal," I said, poking my head into his tent. "How's it going?"

"A little better now, Dan," he said from his bed. "I think it's startin' to settle down finally."

"Good deal, Cal. I'm glad to hear it."

"Come on in," he said, "have a blast." He giggled. That made me feel better right there.

"Now there's an idea," I said. I went on into his tent. He fished out his bottle and we each had a small snort.

"I'll tell you, buddy," he said, "it just damn near had me whipped there for a while. About ten this morning it was all I could do to climb up on that horse."

"You been sleeping straight through?" I asked him.

"Dozing," he said. "I feel pretty good now. Except I'm hungrier'n hell."

"Wouldn't be surprised," I said. "We couldn't interest you in lunch."

"I couldn't have eaten lunch if you guys had all held guns on me."

"You about ready to make an appearance?" I asked him.

"Sure thing. Chow about ready?" He sat up, carefully.

"Should be."

"Good." He pulled on his boots and got slowly to his feet. "I ain't about to rush it this time," he said.

"Good thinking."

We went out to join the others, and there were the usual wisecracks about Sloane loafing around camp. He laughed and giggled as if nothing were wrong. I could see the relief in Miller's face. We all felt a helluva lot better. Having a man sick like Cal had been is just like having a heavy weight on top of everybody's head.

"You're lookin' a helluva lot better there, Sullivan," McKlearey said.

"Who?" I asked him.

"Sullivan there." He pointed at Cal with his bandaged hand.

I shrugged. Maybe it was some kind of goof-off nickname.

"Come and get it," Clint said, "or I'll feed it to the porky."

"Where is that little bastard anyway?" Jack said as we walked toward the fire.

"Oh, he's still around," Miller said. "Just watch where you set."

We lined up and Clint filled our plates. Then we went over and sat around the fire to eat.

"Hell," McKlearey said suddenly, staring at Cal. "You ain't Sullivan."

"I never said I was." Sloane giggled through a mouthful of beans.

"Hey, Danny," McKlearey said, "where the hell is Sullivan?"

"Sullivan who?" I asked.

"Oh, shit, you know Sullivan as well as I do."

"Sorry, Lou. It doesn't ring a bell."

He looked at me closely. "Oh," he said. "No, I guess it wouldn't. I guess I was thinkin' about somebody else."

"McKlearey," Jack said, "what the hell are you smokin' anyway?"

"Well," Lou said, grinning broadly at him, "I tried a pine-cone this morning."

"How was it?" Sloane giggled. "Did it blow your mind?"

"Aw, hell no," Lou said. "Turned it inside-out a couple times, but it didn't even come close to blowin' it."

Who the hell was Sullivan, for Chrissake?

We finished eating and cleaned up our dishes. Then we all sat down around the fire with a drink.

"Same layout for tomorrow as this morning?" Sloane asked.

"Seems to work out pretty well," Miller said, "and you men all got them posts you're on pretty well located by now."

"God, yes," Jack said. "Let's not switch around now. I'd get lost sure as hell."

"Well, then," Sloane said, polishing off his drink, "if there aren't gonna be any changes, I think I'll hit the sack."

"Christ, Sloane," Jack said, "you been sleepin' all day."

"Man, I need my beauty sleep." Cal giggled.

"Somehow," I said, grinning, "I think it's a little late for that."

"Never hurts to give it a try," he said, getting up.

"I'll call it a day, too," Stan said.

"What a buncha candy asses," McKlearey rasped.

"Four o'clock still comes damned early," Clint growled at the rest of us. It occurred to me that the little old guy had to be up at least a half hour before the rest of us, and he might feel it was bad manners to go to bed before we did.

"Why don't we all hang it up?" I suggested. "Maybe then you mighty hunters won't be so damn rum-dum in the morning."

"I suppose a good night's sleep wouldn't kill me," Jack said. We all got up.

"Man," Lou said, "this is worse than basic training."

"But this is fun, Lou," I said.

"Oh, sure" — he grinned at me —”I'd rather do a little sack-time with some high-class broad." He winked knowingly at Stan.

Christ! Was he trying to get killed?

Stan's face tightened up, and he went off to his tent without saying anything.

The rest of us said good night and scattered toward our sacks.

"Sloane seems a lot better," Jack said after we'd gotten settled.

"Yeah," I agreed. "That's a helluva relief."

"God, it must be awful — gettin' old like that," he said suddenly.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked him. "Sloane isn't old."

"You know what I mean," Jack said. "When your lungs or your legs give out like that."

"Oh, hell. Sloane's got a lot of miles left in him," I said. "He's just a little winded."

"It gives me the creeps, that's all."

"That's a helluva thing to say."

"I know, but I can't help it."

"What's eating at you, Jack?" I asked him, sitting up.

"I'm not gettin' anyplace. It's like I'm standin' still."

"What the hell brought this on?"

"God damn it, I've known Sloane since I was a kid. He's always been able to handle himself and anything that came along. He's always been the roughest, toughest guy around."

"Jesus, Jack, it's not his fault he gets winded up here. It could happen to anybody."

"That's just it. A couple more years, and it's damn likely to happen to me."

"Oh, bullshit! You're not carrying the gut Sloane is."

"It's not only that," he said, and his voice had an edge of desperation. "It's what I was sayin' before — I'm not gettin' anyplace. Hell, I'm not any further ahead right now than I was five goddamn years ago. I've got a marriage goin' sour. I've got a pissy-ass, two-bit job — hell, I had a better job year before last. Man, I'm just goin' downhill."

What the hell could I say? As far as I could see, he was calling it pretty close.

"It's been just too much booze, too many women, too many different jobs," he went on. "I've just got to dig in, goddammit, I've got to!"

"All you have to do is make your mind up, they say." What an asinine thing to say!

"Christ! I wish I could be like you, Dan, you know that? You know where you're goin', what you're gonna be. Me, I'm just floppin' around like a fish outa water. I just can't seem to settle down."

"Man, it's not just exactly as if you were over the hill or anything."

"You know what I mean. I keep hopin' something will click — you know — make it all snap into place so I can get settled down and get started on something. Maybe this trip will do it." He stared gloomily at the fire.

He was afraid! Jack had been talking for so long about how he wasn't afraid of anything that I guess I'd almost come to believe it. Now it came as a kind of shock to me. Jack was afraid. I didn't know what to say to him.

"You want a belt?" I asked him.

"Yeah. Maybe it'll help me sleep."

I fished out my bottle and we each had a quick drink. Then we both sat staring out at the dying fire.

We were still awake when McKlearey started screaming again.

"Sullivan," he screamed, "look out!" Then there was a lot more I couldn't understand.

By the time I got untangled from my sleeping bag and got outside the tent, Lou was standing outside, still hollering and waving that goddamn .38 around. I wasn't just exactly sure how to handle it.

"McKlearey!" It was Sloane. He had his head out of his tent, and there was a bark to his voice that I hadn't heard him use very often.

"Huh?" McKlearey blinked and looked around, confused. "What's up, Cal?"

"You're havin' another bad dream," Sloane said. "Settle down and put that goddamn gun away."

"What?" Lou looked down and saw the pistol in his hand. "Jeez!" he said. "Sorry, you guys. I musta had another damn nightmare." He lowered the gun and went back into his tent holding his left hand carefully in front of him to keep from bumping it.

After a minute or so I heard the clink of a bottle in there. What the hell? As long as it kept him quiet.

22

I woke up the next morning before Clint came around to shake us out. I could see the little old guy and Miller standing over by the fire and hear the low murmur of their voices. I got up quietly and went on out of the tent.

"Mornin', Dan," Clint said.

"Clint. Cap," I said.

"Coffee'll be done in just a bit," Clint said.

"Ol' Sarge seems to have got settled down," Miller said, his low voice rumbling. "At least I didn't hear him no more last night."

"I think he's only good for about one of those a night," I said.

"Well," Clint growled, "I don't know about him, but it's about all I'm good for."

"Amen," I agreed.

"I better go check the horses," Miller said and went off down toward the corrals.

I finished dressing and asked Clint if I could give him a hand with breakfast.

"Naw, Dan, thanks all the same, but I got 'er just about ready to go on the fire."

"OK," I said and got cleaned up.

"Coffee's done," he said as Miller came back up.

"Thanks, Clint," I said. "It's a little chilly this morning."

"Some," Miller agreed, shaking out his cup.

"I sure hope we don't get any snow," I said.

Miller grinned at me. "You got a thing about snow, son?"

"I went on maneuvers two winters in a row in Germany," I said. "I got a little used up on it."

"We could get some," he said, "but it's not very likely. I wouldn't lose no sleep over it."

The three of us had coffee. It was kind of sleepy and quiet — a private sort of time of day. None of us said much. The moon over the top of the peak was very sharp and bright.

"I better roust out the others," Clint said finally.

"I'll get 'em," I said.

"OK. I'll get breakfast on."

I woke up the others and then went back down to the fire. The smell of bacon and frying potatoes was very strong, and I realized I was hungry.

Jack came straggling down to the fire, his unlaced boots flopping loosely on his feet and his baseball cap stuffed down on his scrambled hair. "Son of a bitch!" he said, "it's colder'n a witch's tit."

"You keep company with some mighty strange women," I said, just to be saying something.

Clint doubled over with a wheezy, cackling kind of laugh. Even Miller grinned. I didn't really think it was all that funny myself.

"Always a smart-ass in the crowd," Jack growled. He finished dressing and washed up. By then the others had come out.

Sloane looked a lot better, and we all felt relieved about that.

"This cold'll hold the deer back a little," Miller said as we started to eat. "They're liable to be dribblin' across them ridges most of the mornin', so I won't be back up to get you men till 'bout noon or so." We all nodded. "Clint'll fix you up with some sandwiches to kinda tide you over."

"That's a good idea," Jack said. "I got a little gaunt yesterday."

We finished eating and went down to the corral and saddled up by moonlight again. Then we led the horses back up to camp, got our rifles and sandwiches and started up the ridge.

None of us said very much until after we'd dropped Sloane off. Then Stan dropped back to where I was riding and pulled in beside me.

"Did you hear him last night?" he said, his face tight in the moonlight.

"Who?"

"McKlearey."

"You mean all that screaming? Hell, how could I help it?"

"No," he said. "I mean before we went to bed. That clever little remark he made — about a 'high-class woman.'"

"It didn't mean anything, Stan," I said. "He was just talking."

"Maybe, but I don't think so."

"Oh, come on, Stan. He talks like that all the time. It doesn't mean a thing."

"I wish I could believe that," he said, "but somehow I just can't. I'm about to go out of my mind over this thing."

"You're imagining things." God, he acted so positive!

"Your post, Professor," Miller said from up in front of us.

Stan nudged his horse away before I could say anymore.

"He was daydreamin'." McKlearey chuckled raspingly. "He's got a young wife with a wild body on her." He laughed again. Stan didn't turn around, but his back stiffened.

We rode on up the ridge and dropped off McKlearey.

At the top Miller wished me luck and went on back down. He seemed to have something on his mind — probably the same thing the rest of us did.

I sat on my rock waiting for it to get light and trying not to think about it. I didn't want it to spoil the hunting for me.

Once again the sky paled and the stars faded and the deer started to move. I saw one pretty nice four-point about seven or so, but I held off. I still thought I might be able to do a little better. The rest were all either does or smaller bucks.

The sun came up.

By eight thirty I began to feel as if that rock was beginning to grow to my tailbone. I'd swung my scope up and down the ravine so many times I think I knew every branch and leaf on the scrubby, waist-high brush, and there must have been trails out in the meadow behind me from my eyeballs. Nothing had gone by for about fifteen minutes, and frankly I was bored. Sometimes that happens when you're hunting — particularly stand-hunting. Maybe I just don't have the patience for it.

I stood up and walked down the knob a ways. I wondered if I could see any of the others. I made damn sure the safety was on and then ran the scope on down the ridge. I could see the camp a mile and a half or so away. It looked like a toy carelessly dropped at the edge of the spruces. The beaver pond looked like a small bright dime in the middle of the yellow-green meadow.

I was sure I could make out Clint moving around the fire, and I thought I saw Miller among the horses grazing in the lower meadow. I swung the scope up the ridge a ways.

I could see the white boulder that marked Sloane's post, but Cal himself was under the upswelling brow of the next hump. I spotted Jack rather quickly. He was standing up, tracking a doe over in the ravine with his rifle.

I searched the next post for a long time but couldn't locate Stan — which was odd, since his post was all out in plain sight with no obstructions in my line of sight. I thought maybe he was lying under some brush, but that orange jacket of his should have stood out pretty vividly against or even under the yellowing leaves of the sparse brush.

I moved the scope on up to the notch. A lazily rising puff of cigarette smoke pinpointed Lou for me — even though he was the only one of us who wasn't wearing any kind of bright clothing. He'd rigged up a kind of half-assed blind of limbs and brush and was sprawled out behind it, his rifle lying against a limb. He was only about a hundred and fifty yards down the hill. He raised his arm to his face with a Clint and a flicker of that white bandage. He had a bottle with him. Maybe that's what had Miller so worried. McKlearey sure didn't seem to be hunting very hard.

I was about ready to go on back up to my rock-roost when I caught a flash of color in the thick brush between Stan's post and McKlearey's notch. I put the scope on it.

It was Stan. He was crawling through the bushes on his hands and knees. His face looked sweaty and very pale. He seemed to be trembling, but I couldn't be sure.

"What the hell is he up to?" I muttered under my breath. I watched him inch forward for about five minutes. When he got to the edge of the notch, he stopped and lay facedown on the ground for several minutes. He was about fifty yards above and behind McKlearey.

I didn't like the looks of it at all, but there wasn't a helluva lot I could do at that point.

Then Stan raised his face, and it was all shiny and very flushed now. He slowly pulled his rifle forward and poked it out over the edge of the bank.

I suddenly was very cold.

Stan got himself squared away. There wasn't any question about what he was aiming at.

"No, Stan!" It came out a croak. I don't think anybody could have heard it more than five feet away from me. Helplessly I put my scope on McKlearey.

Stan's shot kicked up dirt about two feet above Lou's head. McKlearey dove for cover. Instinct, I guess.

I didn't really consciously think about it. I just snapped off the safety, pointed my rifle in the general direction of the other side of the ravine and squeezed the trigger. The sound of my shot mingled and blurred in with the echo of Stan's.

I saw the white blur of his face suddenly turned up toward me for a moment, and then he scrambled back into the brush.

McKlearey was burrowing down under his pile of limbs like a man trying to dig a foxhole with his teeth.

There was something moving on the other side of the ravine. It flickered palely through the bushes, headed down the ridge.

It was the white deer. Apparently the double echo was confusing hell out of it. It ran down past McKlearey and on down the ravine. A couple minutes later I heard several shots from the stands below. Jack and Cal were shooting.

I hoped that they'd missed. The poor white bastard was just an innocent bystander really. He had no business being on that other side just then.

I looked down and saw that my hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold my rifle. I took several deep breaths and then slowly pulled back the bolt, flipping out the empty in a long, twinkling brass arc. It clinked on a rock and fell in the dirt. I closed the bolt, put the safety back on, and picked up the empty. Then I went back up to my rock and sat down.

23

“MAN!” Jack said when I got back down to camp, "the son of a bitch ran right through the whole damn bunch of us!"

"I shot at him five times!" Sloan gasped, his face red. "Five goddamn times and never touched a hair. I think the son of a bitch is a ghost, and we all shot right through 'im." He tried to giggle but wound up coughing and choking.

"You OK?" I asked him.

He tried to nod, still choking and gasping. It took him a minute or so to get settled down.

"Did you shoot, Dan?" Jack asked me.

"Once," I said, taking out the empty cartridge case, "and I think Stan did too, didn't you, Stan?"

He nodded, his face very pale.

"I got off three," Jack said. He turned to Miller. "I thought you said they always ran uphill, Cap."

"Ninety-nine times out of a hundred," Miller said.

"Maybe one of us bit him," Sloan gasped.

Miller shook his head. "He cut back on up over that far ridge when he got past you men. I expect all the shootin' just kept pushin' him on down. I don't imagine he can see too good in broad daylight with them pink eyes of his."

Lou didn't say anything, but his eyes looked a little wild.

We ate lunch and then all of us kind of poked around looking for something to do until time to go back up again.

I wound up wandering down to the pond again. I stood watching the fish swim by and trying not to think about what had happened that morning.

"Why don't you watch where the hell you're shootin'?" It was McKlearey.

I looked at him for a moment. "I know where I was shooting, Lou," I told him.

"Well, one of them damn shots just barely missed me," he said. His hands were shaking.

"Must have been a ricochet," I said.

"I ain't all that sure," he said. He squatted down by the water and began stripping off his bandage.

"I've got no reason to shoot you, Lou. I don't have a wife." I just let it hang there.

He looked at me for a long time, but he didn't answer. Then he finished unwinding his hand. The gash in his palm was red and inflamed-looking, and the whole hand looked a little puffy.

"That's getting infected," I told him. "Clint's got a first-aid kit. You'd better put something on it."

"It's OK," he said. "I been pourin' whiskey in it."

"Iodine's cheaper," I said, "and a helluva lot more dependable."

He stuck the hand into the water, wincing at the chill.

"That's not a good idea either," I said.

"I know what I'm doin'," he said shortly.

I shrugged. It was his hand, after all.

"Danny," he said finally.

"Yeah?"

"You didn't see who shot at me, did you?"

I didn't really want to lie to him, but I was pretty sure Stan wouldn't try it again. He'd looked too sick when we'd gotten back down. "Look, Lou," I said, "with the scopes on all the rifles in camp, if somebody was trying to shoot you, he'd have nailed you to the cross with the first shot. If one came anywhere near you, it was more than likely just what I said — a ricochet."

"Maybe —” he said doubtfully.

"You're just jumpy," I said. "All keyed up. Shit, look at the nightmares you've been having. Maybe you ought to go a little easy on the booze.

"That's why I drink it," he said, staring out across the beaver pond. "If I drink enough, I don't dream at all. I'm OK then."

I was about to ask him what was bothering him, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't tell me. Besides, it was none of my business.

We went back up to camp, and he went into his tent.

We went out at three thirty again, the same as we had the day before.

"I thought you wasn't gonna shoot at that deer," Miller said when we got up to the top.

I couldn't very well tell him why I'd shot, and I didn't want to lie to him. "I was just firing a warning shot," I said. In a way it had been just that.

He looked at me for a minute but didn't say anything. I'm not sure if he believed me.

None of us saw anything worth shooting that evening either, and we were all pretty quiet when we got back down.

"Come on, men," Miller said, trying to cheer us up. "No point in gettin' down in the mouth. It's only a matter of time till you start gettin' the big ones."

"I know which one I'm gonna get," Jack said. "I'm gonna bust that white bastard."

"Not if I see 'im first," McKlearey said belligerently, nursing his hand.

They glared at each other.

"All right," Jack said finally, "you remember that bet we got?"

"I remember," Lou said.

"That deer is the one then."

"That's fine with me."

"That wasn't the bet," I said flatly.

They both scowled at me.

"Dan's right," Sloan said, gasping heavily. "The original bet was best deer — Boone and Crockett points." His voice sounded pretty wheezy again, but his tone was pretty firm.

"There's still the side bet," Stan said very quietly. I'd forgotten about that one.

McKlearey stared back and forth between the two of them. He looked like he was narrowing down his list of enemies. "All right," he said very softly. It didn't sound at all like him.

"I don't want you men shootin' at that deer when he's up on top of no cliff or somethin'," Miller said. "I seen a couple men after the same deer once — both of 'em so afraid the other was gonna get it that they weren't even thinkin' no more. One of 'em finally shot the deer right off the top of a four-hundred-foot bluff. Wasn't enough left to make a ten-cent hamburger out of it by the time that deer quit bouncin'."

"We'll watch it," Jack said, still staring at McKlearey.

Lou edged around until he had his back to a stump and could keep an eye on both Jack and Stan. His eyes had gone kind of flat and dead. He was sort of holding his bandaged hand up in the air so he wouldn't bump it, and his right hand was in his lap, about six inches from the butt of that .38. He looked like he was wound pretty tight.

We tried talking, but things were pretty nervous.

After a while Stan got up and went back to the latrine. I waited a couple minutes then followed him. He was leaning against a tree when I found him.

"Stan," I said.

"Yes." He didn't look at me. He knew what I was going to say.

"Be real careful about where you place your shots from now on, OK?"

He took a quick breath but didn't say anything. I waited a minute and then went on down the trail.

When the others got up to go to bed, Miller jerked his head very slightly to me, and he and I sat by the fire until they had all gone into their tents.

"I've got to go check the stock," he said. "You want to come along, son?"

"Sure, Cap," I said. "Stretch some of the kinks out of my legs."

We stood up and walked on down toward the corrals. Once we got away from the fire, the stars were very bright, casting even a faint light on the looming snowfields above us.

Miller leaned his elbows across the top rail of the corral, his mustache silvery in the reflected starlight, and his big cowboy hat shading his eyes. "Them boys seem to be missin' the whole point of what this is all about," he said finally.

"I'm not very proud of any of them myself, about now," I said. "They're acting like a bunch of damn-fool kids."

"I've seen this kinda stuff before, son. It always leads to hard feelin's."

"Maybe I should have shot that deer."

"Not if you didn't want to," he said.

"I wouldn't have felt right about it, but it'd sure be better than what's going on right now."

"Oh, a friendly bet's OK. Men do it all the time, but them boys are takin' it a little too serious."

"Well, most of that's just talk," I told him. "They go at each other like that all the time. I wouldn't worry too much about it. I just don't like the idea of it, that's all."

"I don't neither," he said, "and I'll tell you somethin' else I don't much like."

"What's that?"

"The feelin' I keep gettin' that we ain't all gonna finish up this hunt. I've had it from the first day."

I couldn't say much to that.

"I sure wouldn't want one of my hunters gettin' shot on my first trip out." He looked at me and grinned suddenly. "Wouldn't be much of an advertisement, now would it?"

24

SLOANE was much worse the next morning. Much as he tried, he couldn't even get out of the sack. Both Stan and I offered to stay with him, but he insisted that we go ahead on up.

Breakfast was kind of quiet, and none of us talked very much on the way up the ridge.

Miller looked down at me from his saddle after I'd dismounted at the top. "If the Big Man don't get no better," he said, "Clint's gonna have to take him on down. This is the fourth day up here. He just ain't comin' around the way he should."

"I know," I said.

"I like the Big Man," Miller said. "I don't know when I've ever met a better-natured man, but I ain't gonna be doin' him no favors by lettin' him the up here."

I nodded. "I'll talk with him when we get back down to camp," I said.

"I'd sure appreciate it, son," he said. "Good huntin'." He took Ned's reins and went on back down.

It was chilly up there in the darkness, and the stars were still out. I sat hunched up against the cold and tried not to think too much about things. Every now and then the breeze would gust up the ravine, and I could pick up the faint smell of the pine forest far down below the spruces.

The sky began to pale off to the east and the stars got dimmer.

I kind of let my mind drift back to the time before my father died. Once he and I had gone on out to fish on a rainy Sunday morning. The fish had been biting, and we were both catching them as fast as we could bait up. We both got soaked to the skin, and I think we both caught cold from it, but it was still one of the best times I could remember. Neither one of us had said very much, but it had been great. I suddenly felt something I hadn't felt for quite a few years — a sharp, almost unbearable pang of grief for my father.

It was lighter, and that strange, cold, colorless light of early morning began to flow down the side of the mountain.

I quite suddenly remembered a guy I hadn't thought about for years. It had been when I was knocking up and down the coast that year after I'd gotten out of high school. I'd been working on a truck farm in the Salinas Valley in California, mostly cultivating between the mile-long lettuce rows. About ten or so one cloudy morning, I'd seen a train go by. About as far as I was going to go that day was eight or ten rows over in the same field. I walked the cultivator back to the farmhouse and picked up my time. That afternoon I'd jumped into an empty boxcar as the train was pulling out of the yard headed north.

There was an old guy in the car. He wasn't too clean, and he smelled kind of bad, but he was somebody to talk to. We sat in the open doorway looking at the open fields and the woods and the grubby houses and garbage dumps — did you know that people live in garbage dumps? Anyway, we'd talked about this and that, and I'd found out that he had a little pension of some kind, and he just moved up and down the coast, working the crops and riding trains, with those pension checks trailing him from post office to post office. He said that he guessed he could go into almost any post office of any size on the coast, and there'd be at least one of his checks there.

He'd said that he was sixty-eight and his heart and lungs were bad. Then he'd kind of looked off toward the sunset. "One of these days," he'd said, "I'll miss a jump on one of these boxcars and go under the wheels. Or my heart'll give out, or I'll take the pneumonia. They'll find me after I been picked over by a half-dozen other bums. Not much chance there'd be anything left so they could identify me. But I got that all took care of. Look —”

He'd unbuttoned his shirt and showed me his pale, flabby, old man's chest. He had a tattoo.

"My name was Wilmer O. Dugger," it said. "I was born in Wichita, Kansas, on October 4, 1893. I was a Methodist." It was like a tombstone, right on his chest.

He'd buttoned his shirt back up. "I got the same thing on both arms and both legs," he'd said. "No matter what happens, one of them tattoos is bound to come through it. I used to worry about it — them not bein' able to identify me, I mean. Now I don't worry no more. It's a damn fine thing, you know, not havin' nothin' to worry about."

I think it had been about then that I'd decided to go to college. I'd caught a quick glimpse of myself fifty years later, riding up and down the coast and waiting to miss my jump on a boxcar or for my heart to quit. About the only difference would have been that I don't think I'd have bothered with the tattoos.

The breeze dropped, and it got very still. I straightened up suddenly and picked up my rifle. It felt very smooth and comfortable. Something was going to happen. I eased the bolt back very gently and checked to make sure there was one in the tube. I closed it and slipped the safety back on. I could feel an excitement growing, a kind of quivering tension in the pit of my stomach and down my arms and legs, but my hands were steady. I wasn't shaking or anything.

A doe came out on the far side of the ravine. Very slowly, so as not to startle her, I sprawled out across the rock and got my elbows settled in so I could be absolutely sure of my shot.

The doe sniffed a time or two, looked back once, and then went on down into the ravine.

Another doe came out of the same place. After a minute or so she went on down, too.

Then another doe.

It was absolutely quiet. I could hear the faint toc-toc-toc of their hooves moving slowly on down the rocky bottom of the ravine.

I waited. I knew he was there. A minute went by. Then another.

Then there was a very faint movement in the brush, and he stepped softly out into the open.

I didn't really count him until later. I just saw the flaring rack and the calm, almost arrogant look on his face, and I knew that he was the one I wanted. He was big and heavily muscled. He was wary but not frightened or timid. It was his mountain.

He stood broadside to me and seemed to be looking straight across at me, though I don't really think he saw me. Maybe he just knew that I was there, as I had known that he would be.

I put the cross hairs of the scope just behind his front shoulder and slipped off the safety. His ears flicked.

I slowly squeezed the trigger.

I didn't hear the shot or feel the recoil of the rifle. The deer jerked and fell awkwardly. Then he stumbled to his feet and fell again. He got up again slowly and kind of walked on back over the other side of the ridge, his head down. It didn't occur to me to shoot again. I knew it wasn't necessary.

I stood up, listening now to the echo of the shot rolling off down the side of the mountain. I jacked out the empty shell, slipped the safety back on and slung the rifle. Then I started down into the ravine. I could hear the three does scrambling up through the brush on the far side.

The going was pretty rough, and it took me about ten minutes to get to where he'd been standing. I looked around on the ground until I found a blood spot. Then another. I followed them down the other side.

He'd gone about a hundred yards down the easy slope of the far side of the ridge and was lying on his side in a little clump of brush. His head was still raised but wobbling, as I walked carefully up to him. His eyes were not panicky or anything. I stepped behind him, out of range of his hooves, and took out my pistol. I thumbed back the hammer and put the muzzle to the side of his head between his eye and ear. His eye watched me calmly.

"Sorry I took so long to get here, buddy," I said.

Then I pulled the trigger.

The gun made a muffled kind of pop — without any echo to it, and the deer's head dropped heavily, and the life went out of his eye. I knelt beside him and ran my hand over his heavy shoulder. The fur felt coarse but very slick, and it was a kind of dark gray with little white tips shot through it. He smelled musky but not rank or anything.

I stood up, pointed the pistol up toward the top of the mountain, and fired it again. Then I began to wonder if maybe I'd given the wrong signal. I put the pistol back in the holster and slipped the hammer-thong back on. Then I leaned my rifle against a large rock and hauled the deer out in the open. I walked back on up to the ridge and hung my jacket over a bush to mark the spot for whoever came up with a horse.

I went back to the deer and started gutting him out. I wasn't nearly as fast as Clint was, but I managed to get the job done finally. I did seem to get a helluva lot of blood on my clothes though, but that didn't really matter.

I was trying to get him rolled over to drain out when Clint came riding down the ridge, leading Ned and a packhorse.

"Damn nice deer," he said, grinning. "Six-pointer, huh?"

"I didn't count him," I said. I checked the deer. "Yeah, it's six points, all right."

"Have any trouble?" He climbed down.

"No. He came out on the ridge, I shot him, and he kind of staggered down here and fell down. I'm afraid I busted up the liver pretty bad though." I pointed at the shredded organ lying on top of the steaming gut-pile.

"Where'd you take him?" he asked.

"Right behind the shoulder."

"That's dependable," he said. "Here, lemme help you dump 'im out."

We rolled the deer over.

"Heavy bugger, ain't he?" Clint chuckled.

"We're gonna get a rupture getting him on the horse," I said. "Say, how'd you get above me anyway?"

"I come up through the meadows and then across the upper end of the ravine at the foot of the rockslide. Gimme your knife a minute."

I handed it to him.

"Better get these offa here." He cut away two dark, oily-looking patches on the inside of the deer's hind legs, just about the knees. "Musk-glands," he said. "Some fellers say they taint the meat — I don't know about that for sure, but I always cut 'em off on a buck, just to be safe." Then he reached inside the cut I'd made in the deer's throat and sliced one on each side. "Let's turn him so's his head's downhill," he said.

We turned the deer and blood slowly drained out, running in long trickles down over the rocks. There really wasn't very much.

Clint held out his hand. I wiped mine off on my pants, and we shook hands.

"Damn good job, Dan. I figure that you'll do."

It was a little embarrassing. "Hey," I said. "I damn near forgot my coat." I went on up to the ridge-top and got it. The sun was just coming up. I felt good, damned good. I ran back down to where Clint was standing.

"Easy, boy," — he laughed —”you stumble over somethin' and you'll bounce all the way to Twisp."

"OK," I said, "now, how do we get him on the horse?"

"I got a little trick I'll show you," he said, winking. He took a coil of rope off his saddle and dropped a loop over the deer's horns. We rolled him over onto his back, and Clint towed him over to a huge flat boulder with his horse. The uphill side of the boulder was level with the rest of the hill and the downhill side was about six feet above the slope. Then he led the pack-horse over and positioned him below the rock. I held the pack-horse's head, and Clint slowly pulled the deer out over the edge.

"Get his front feet on out past the saddle, if you can, Dan," Clint said.

I reached on out and pulled the legs over. When the deer reached the point where he was just balanced, Clint got off his horse and came back up.

"You're taller'n me," he said. "I'll hold the horse, and you just ease the carcass down onto the saddle."

I went around onto the top of the rock and carefully pushed the deer off, holding him back so he wouldn't fall on over. It was really very simple. Once the deer was in place we tied him down and it was all done.

"Pretty clever," I said.

"I don't lift no more'n I absolutely have to." He grinned. "Fastest way I know to get old in a hurry is to start liftin' stuff."

"I'll buy that," I said. "Which way we going back down?"

"Same way I come up," he said. "That way we don't spook the deer for the others. You 'bout ready?"

"Soon as I tie on my rifle," I said. I went back and got it and tied it to the saddle. Ned shied from me a little — the blood-smell, probably.

"Steady, there, knothead," I said. He gave me a hurt look. I climbed on and we rode on up to the top of the ridge. We cut on across the foot of the rockfall and out into the meadows.

"Cap was gonna come up," Clint said, "but somebody oughta stay with the Big Man, and I know these packhorses better'n he does."

I nodded.

We rode on slowly down through the meadows toward camp. I could see the others over on the ridge, standing and watching. I waved a couple times.

"God damn, boy," Miller said, "you got yourself a good one." He was chuckling, his brown face creased with a big grin.

"Had it all gutted out and ever-thin'," Clint told him.

Sloan came out of his tent. He was still breathing hard, but he looked a little better.

"Hot damn!" he coughed. "That's a beauty."

I climbed down off Ned.

"I fixed up a crossbar," Miller said. "Let's get 'im up to drain out good."

Clint slit the hocks and we slipped a heavy stick through. Then we led the packhorse over to the crossbeam stretched between two trees behind the cook-tent. Miller had hooked up a pulley on the beam. We pulled the deer up by his hind legs and fastened him in place with baling wire.

"Damn," Miller said, "that's one helluva heavy deer. Three hundred pounds or better. Somebody in the bunch might get more horns, but I pretty much doubt if anybody'll get more meat."

We stood around and looked at the deer for a while.

"How 'bout some coffee?" Clint said.

"How 'bout some whiskey?" Cal giggled and then coughed.

"How 'bout some of both?" Miller chuckled. "I think this calls for a little bendin' of the rules, don't you?"

"Soon as I see to my horse." I grinned at them. I walked over toward Ned, and my feet felt like they weren't even touching the ground, I felt so good.

25

I got up at the usual time the next morning and had breakfast with the others. I felt a little left out now. The night before had been fine, with everyone going back to look at the deer and all. Even with the skin off and the carcass in a large mesh game bag to keep the bugs off, it looked pretty impressive. Clint and I had salted the hide and rolled it into a bundle with the head on top. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it, but this way I'd be able to make the decision later. After the big spiel I'd given Clydine the day I'd left about not being a trophy hunter, I was about half-ashamed to keep the head and all, but I knew I'd have to have it in case of a game check. I thought maybe I could have the hide tanned and made into a vest or gloves or something — maybe a purse for her.

At breakfast I watched Cal carefully. He was coughing pretty badly, but he insisted on going down. I noticed that he didn't eat much breakfast.

We all walked on down to the corral, and I watched the others saddle up. Ned came over and nuzzled at me. I guess he couldn't quite figure out why we weren't going along. I patted him a few times and told him to go back to sleep — that's what I more or less had in mind.

"Go ahead and loaf, you lazy bastard," Jack said.

Miller chuckled. "Don't begrudge him the rest — he's earned it."

"Right," I said, rubbing it in a little bit. "If you guys would get off the dime, you could lay around camp and loaf a little bit, too."

"Of course, all the fun's over for you, Dan," Sloane gasped.

I'd thought of that, too. We went back up to the tents so they could pick up their rifles.

I stood with my back to the campfire watching them ride off into the darkness. The sound of splashing came back as they crossed the little creek down below the beaver dam.

"More coffee, boy?" Clint asked me.

"Yeah, Clint. I think I could stand another cup."

We hunkered down by the fire with our coffee cups.

"Now that you've shown them fellers how, I expect we'll be gettin' a few more deer in camp."

"Yeah," I agreed. "If they'll just get off that damn nonsense about that white deer."

"Oh, I expect they will. I got about half a hunch that all you fellers shootin' at 'im the other day spooked 'im clear outa the territory."

"I sure as hell hope so," I said.

"Knew a feller killed one once," he said. "He gave me some steaks off it. I dunno, but to me they just didn't taste right. The feller give up huntin' a couple years later. I always wondered if maybe that didn't have somethin' to do with it — 'course he was gettin' along in years."

I wasn't really sure how much Clint knew about what had happened that day, so I didn't say much.

"What you plannin' on doin' today?" he asked me.

"Oh, I thought I'd give you a hand around camp after a bit," I said.

"You'd just be under foot," he said bluntly.

"We can always use more firewood." He grinned.

"Then I might ride old Ned around a little, too. I wouldn't want him to be getting so much rest that he's got the time to be inventing new tricks."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry none about mat. I think you and him got things about all straightened out."

"But the first thing I'm gonna do is go back to bed for a while," I said, grinning at him. "This getting up while it's still dark is plain unhealthy."

"It's good for you." He chuckled. "Kinda gets you back in tune with the sun."

The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. Whatever the reason, when I went back to bed, I rolled and tossed in my sleeping bag for about an hour and a half and then gave it up as a bad job. I got up, had another cup of coffee, and watched the sunrise creep down the side of the mountain.

I finally wound up down by the beaver pond, watching the trout swim by.

"You wanna give 'em a try?" Clint hollered from camp.

"You got any gear?" I yelled back.

"Has a duck got feathers? Come up here, boy."

Miller was sitting by the fire mending a torn place on the skirt of one of the saddles. "Old Clint never goes no place without his fishpole," he said. "He'd pack it along on a trip into a desert — probably come back with fish, too."

The little guy came back out of his tent putting together a jointed, fiber-glass rod. He tossed me a leather reel case. I opened it and took out a beautiful Garcia spinning reel.

"Man," I said, "that's a fine piece of equipment."

"Should be," he growled, "after what I paid for it."

Somehow I'd pictured him as the willow-stick, bent-pin-and-worm kind of fisherman.

"How you wanna fish 'em?" he asked me.

"What do you think'll work best? You know a helluva lot more about this kind of water than I do."

He squinted at the sky. "Wait till about ten or so," he said.

"Sun gets on the water good, you might try a real small spoon — Meppes or Colorado spinner."

"What bait?"

"Single eggs. Or you might try corn."

"Corn?"

"Whole kernel. I'll give you a can of it."

"I've never used it before," I admitted.

"Knocks 'em dead sometimes. Give it a try."

We got the pole rigged up, and I carted it and the gear down to the pond. I'd never used com before, and it took me a while to figure out how to get it threaded on the hook, but I finally got it down pat. After about ten minutes or so I hooked into a pretty nice one. He tailwalked across the pond and threw the hook. I figured that would spook the others, so I moved on down to the lower pond, down by the corrals.

The lower pond was smaller, deeper, and had more limbs and junk in it. It was trickier fishing.

On about the fourth or fifth cast, a ranker about sixteen inches or so flashed out from under a half-buried limb and grabbed the corn before it even got a chance to sink all the way to the bottom. I set the hook and felt the solid jolt clear to my shoulder. He came up out of the water like an explosion.

I held the rod-tip up and worked him away from the brush. It was tricky playing a fish in there, and it took me a good five minutes to work him over to the edge.

"Does nice work, don't he?" Clint said from right behind me. I damn near jumped across the pond. I hadn't known he was there. When I turned around, they were both there, grinning.

"He'll do," Miller said.

I lifted out the fish and unhooked him.

"Want to try one?" I asked, offering the pole to Clint.

I saw his hands twitch a few times, but he firmly shook his head. "I get started on that," he said, "and nobody'd get no dinner."

"Shall I throw him back?" I asked, holding out the flopping fish.

"Hell, no!" Clint said. "Don't never do that! If you don't want 'em, don't pester 'em. Put 'im on a stringer and keep 'im in the water. Catch some more like 'im and we'll have fresh trout for lunch — make up for that liver you blew all to hell yesterday."

"Yes, sir!" I laughed, throwing him a mock salute.

"Don't never pay to waste any kinda food around Clint here," Miller said.

"I went hungry a time or two when I was a kid," Clint said. "I didn't like it much, and I don't figger on doin' it again, if I can help it."

The hollow roar of a rifle shot echoed bouncingly down the ridge.

"Meat in the pot," Clint said.

There were three more shots, raggedly spaced.

"Not so sure," Miller said, squinting up the ridge.

"We going up?" I asked, gathering up the fishing gear.

"Let's see what kind of signal we get," Miller said.

We waited.

There finally came a flat crack of a pistol. After a minute or so there was a second.

"Cripple," Clint said disgustedly.

"It happens," Miller said. "I'll go. This might take some time and —”

"I know," Clint said. "I gotta fix dinner."

"I'll come along," I said.

Miller nodded. "Might not be a bad idea. We might need some help if the deer run off very far."

I took the gear back to camp and then went on down to the corral. "Any idea who it was?" I asked Miller, who was scanning the ridge with his glasses.

"Not yet," he said. "Yesterday we could see you goin' on over the other ridge."

"I got a hunch it was Stan," I said. "That pistol of his has a short barrel."

"Ain't the Big Man or your brother," he said. "I can see both of them, and they ain't movin'."

I waited.

"Yeah, it's the Professor, all right. He's just comin' up out of the gully."

We saddled our horses as well as Stan's horse and the pack-horse.

"We'll cut along the bottom here and go up on the other side," he said.

"All right."

We rode on up to the head of the basin and crossed the ravine just above the tree line. We could see Stan's fluorescent jacket in the brush about a mile up above. We started up.

We found him standing over the deer about a half mile from the ravine. The deer was bleating and struggling weakly, several loops of intestine protruding from a ragged hole in his belly.

"Why didn't you finish him off?" I demanded, swinging down from the saddle.

"I — I couldn't," he stammered, his face gray. "I tried but I couldn't pull the trigger." He was standing there holding his pistol in a trembling hand.

I pulled out the .45, thumbed the hammer, and shot the deer in the side of the head. He stiffened briefly and then went limp.

I heard Stan gag and saw nun hurry unsteadily away into the bushes. We heard him vomiting.

"His first deer?" Miller asked me very softly.

I nodded, putting the .45 away.

"Better go help 'im get settled down. I'll gut it out. Looks a little messed up."

I nodded again. The deer was a three-point. I think we'd all passed up bigger ones.

"Come on, now, Stan," I said, walking over to him. "It's all done now."

"I didn't know they made any noise," he said, gagging again. "I didn't think they could."

"It doesn't happen very often," I said. "It's all over now. Don't worry about it."

"I made a mess of it, didn't I?" he asked, looking up at me, His face was slick and kind of yellow.

"It's all right," I said.

"I just wanted to get it over with," he said. "I tried to aim where you said, but my hands were shaking so badly."

"It's OK," I said. "Anybody can get buck-fever."

"No," he said, "it wasn't that at all. It was what happened the other day — when you saw me."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't think of anything to say.

"I know you saw me," he said. "I really wasn't trying to kill him, Dan. You have to believe that. I just had to make him quit talking the way he was — about Monica."

"Sure, Stan. I know."

"But I just had to get it over with. I've got to get away from him. Next time —” He left it.

I glanced over at Miller. He was almost done. He was even faster than Clint. I was sure he couldn't hear us.

"You all right now?" I asked Stan.

"You're pretty disgusted with me, aren't you, Dan?" he asked.

"No," I said. "It's not really your fault. Things just got out of hand for you, that's all. You OK now?"

He nodded.

"Let's go give Miller a hand with the deer," I said.

He stood up and wiped his face with his handkerchief.

"I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Miller," he said when we got back. "I guess I just froze up."

"It happens," Miller said shortly, cleaning off his knife. "Bring that packhorse over here."

I got the horse.

We loaded the deer onto the horse and lashed him down.

"Did you leave any of your gear over on the other side?" Miller asked him.

"No," Stan said, "I brought everything along."

"Well, let's go on down then."

We climbed on the horses and rode on down to the bottom and across the ravine.

"What's the matter with Cal?" Stan said, pointing up the ridge.

I looked up, Sloane was standing up, weakly waving both hands above his head at us.

I looked at Miller quickly.

"Somebody better go see," he said.

I nodded and turned Ned's nose up the hill.

Above me, Sloane fumbled at his belt briefly and then came out with his Ruger. He pointed it at the sky and fired slowly three times, then he sagged back down onto the ground.

I booted Ned into a fast lope, my stomach all tied up in knots.

26

“DAN," Sloan gasped when I got up to him, "I'm sick. I've got to go down." He looked awful.

"Your chest again?" I asked, sliding down out of the saddle. Ned was panting from the run uphill.

Sloan nodded weakly. "It's all I can do to breathe," he said.

"Here," I said, "you get on the horse."

"I can't handle that horse," he said.

"I'll lead him," I said. I tied his rifle and canteen to the saddle and helped him up. Ned didn't care much for being led, but I didn't worry about that.

"How is he?" Miller asked when I got him down.

"Bad," I said, "worse than ever."

"Let's get 'im off the horse."

We got him down and over to the fire.

"Do you want a drink, Cal?" I asked him.

He shook his head. "My goddamn heart's beatin' so fast now it feels like it's gonna jump out of my goddamn chest."

Miller squatted down in front of him and looked him over carefully. "I hate to say this," he told Cal, "but I'm afraid you're gonna have to go on back down. You're gettin' worse instead of better."

Cal nodded.

"I'll refund part of what you paid."

"No," Cal said. "It's not your fault. You took us on in good faith. You don't owe me a dime."

Miller shrugged. "I wish to hell it hadn't happened," he said.

"I was doin' OK there for a while," Cal said, "but it came back this morning worse than ever."

"Well, let's get you laid down for now. That way you can get rested up for the ride."

We got Sloane over to his tent and came back to the fire.

"Somebody's gonna have to go out with him," Miller said. "He ain't gonna be able to drive the way he is."

I felt a sudden pang — almost a panic. I didn't want to leave yet. Then I was ashamed of myself for it.

"I'll go," Stan said very quietly. "I rode with him coming over, and besides, I'm all finished up now anyway."

Miller nodded, not saying anything.

"I could just as easily go, Stan," I said, not meaning it.

"There are other reasons, too," he said.

I looked at him. He really wanted to go. "All right, Stan," I said.

Miller looked at me. "You want to go fetch the others down for dinner, son?" he said. "I'll help Clint get things together for the trip down."

"Sure," I said. I went on down to get the horses.

Neither Jack nor McKlearey seemed particularly upset when I told them that Cal and Stan were leaving.

"I didn't figure Sloane would be able to hold out much longer," Jack said. "I've been sayin' all along that he wouldn't get it under control."

That wasn't how I remembered it.

McKlearey had merely grunted.

When we got back down though, the camp was pretty quiet. Stan had packed his and Sloane's gear and had it all laid out by the corral.

After we ate, we all pitched in and helped get things ready.

Clint skinned out Stan's deer and got it in a game bag. "Ill take yours down, too," he told me. "I'll hang it in the icehouse at the place."

"Have you got an icehouse?" I asked him. "I didn't think there were any of those left in the world."

"Well, it ain't really an icehouse. We got a big refrigeration unit in it. We don't keep it set too cold. Works about the same way."

McKlearey came over and looked Stan's deer over. "Ain't very big, is it?" he said.

"I don't see yours hangin' up there yet," Clint said.

McKlearey grunted and walked off.

"I'm gettin' to where I don't much care for ol' Sarge," Clint said.

"You're not the only one," I told him.

"Still," Clint said, squinting at the skinned carcass, "it really ain't much of a deer."

"Better than nothing," I said.

Clint, Stan, and Sloane left about two that afternoon. The rest of us stood around and watched them ride out. We'd tried to joke with Cal a little before he left, but he'd been too sick. His face was very pale, framed in the dark fur of his parka hood. The day seemed pretty warm to me, but I guess he felt cold. Just before they left, he gave Miller his tag.

"If you get a chance" — he gasped —”you might have somebody fill it for me."

"Sure," Miller said, "we'll get one for you."

"I think I'll go on up a little early," McKlearey said after they'd disappeared down the trail.

Jack looked at him narrowly. "Maybe I will, too," he said.

"Not much point," Miller said.

"We can find our way up there," Jack said.

Miller looked at them. Finally he shrugged. "Just don't stay too late," he said.

"We both got watches," McKlearey said, nursing his bandaged hand.

Miller walked away.

I felt like there'd been a funeral in camp. Jack and Lou went on up the hill, and I sat around watching Miller get things squared away for dinner. I offered to help but he said no.

"You take care of that fish?" he asked me.

"Oh, hell." I'd completely forgotten the fish.

"Why don't you see if you can get a few more?" he said.

"Sure." I got Clint's pole and went on down to the pond. It was a little slow, but I managed to get three more before the sun went down. I cleaned them and took them back up to camp.

"Enough to go around." Miller grinned at me. He seemed to be in a better humor now.

"I guess if I was fishing to eat, I wouldn't starve," I said, "but I don't think I'd gain too much weight."

"Not many would," he said. "Clint, maybe, but I sure wouldn't. Maybe I just ain't got the patience."

"Maybe you just can't think like a fish," I told him.

He didn't answer. He was looking on off toward the mountains.

"Weather comin' in," he said.

I looked up. A heavy cloudbank was building up along the tops of the peaks.

"Bad?" I asked him.

"Hard to tell. Rain, most likely."

Lou and Jack came on down about dark, and we ate supper. There weren't enough trout to make a meal of, so we just ate them as a kind of side dish.

With Clint, Stan, and Sloane gone, the group around the fire seemed very small, and it was a whole lot quieter.

"I think I seen 'im today," Lou said finally.

"Where?" Jack asked quickly.

"Up above me. I think I'll move on up to Danny's spot tomorrow."

"You'll have to walk that last bit," Miller said. "That horse of yours ain't that good."

"I can do that, too," Lou told him.

After that, nobody said much.

"Clint coming back tonight?" I asked Miller finally.

"More'n likely," he said. "He'll probably try to beat the weather."

"Think we'll get snow?" Jack asked him.

"Could. Rain more likely."

"What'll that do to the deer?"

"Hold 'em back at first. They'll have to come out eventually though."

I sat staring at the fire. I didn't much like the way Lou and Jack were beginning to push on Miller. The whole situation had changed now. With the others out of camp, things were getting pretty tight. Before, Cal and Stan had been around to kind of serve as a buffer between these two, and, of course, Clint's stories had helped, too. It was a lot grimmer now. I almost began to wish I'd gone down with the others. That would have left Miller right in the middle though, and that wouldn't have been any good. He didn't know what was going on.

"I suppose we might as well bed down," Miller said finally. "I imagine we'll get woke up when Clint comes in."

We all stood up and went off to our tents.

"I wish to hell you and McKlearey would get off this damn thing about that stupid deer," I told Jack after we'd crawled in our sacks.

"You know what's goin' on," he said shortly. "I ain't gonna back away from him like Larkin did."

"Stan didn't back away," I said. "Stan finally got smart."

"How do you figure?"

"Day before yesterday he took a shot at Lou. Sprayed dirt all over him."

"No shit?" Jack sounded surprised.

"Scared the piss out of him."

Jack laughed. "I wish I coulda seen it."

"It's not really that funny," I said. "That's why Stan left camp. He wasn't sure he could make himself miss next time."

"I sure wouldn't a missed. So Lou was playin' around with Stan's wife, too, huh? I didn't think he was her type."

"He isn't. She got stupid, is all."

"Well, don't get shook. I ain't gonna shoot 'im. I'm just gonna outhunt 'im. I'm gonna get that deer."

I grunted and rolled over to go to sleep.

McKlearey had another nightmare that night, screaming for Sullivan and for some guy named Danny — I knew that it wasn't me. It took us quite a while to get him calmed down this time.

Then about two thirty or so Clint came in, and we all got up again to help him get the horses unsaddled. It had started to drizzle by then, so we had to move all the saddles into the now-empty tent where Stan and Cal had slept.

All in all it was a pretty hectic night.

27

It drizzled rain all the next day. Miller had told Jack and Lou that there was no point in going out in the morning if it were raining, so we all slept late.

Camping out in the rain is perhaps one of the more disagreeable experiences a man can go through. Even with a good tent, everything gets wet and clammy.

Ragged clouds hung in low over the basin, and the ground turned sodden. Clint and Miller moved around slowly in rain-shiny ponchos, their cowboy hats turning darker and darker as they got wetter and wetter. The rest of us sat in our tents staring out glumly.

The fire smoked and smoldered, and what wind there was always seemed to blow the smoke right into the tents.

"Christ, isn't it ever gonna let up?" Jack said about ten o'clock. It was the fourth time he'd said it. I was pretty sure that if he said it again I was going to punch him right in the mouth.

"Piss on it," I said. "I'm going fishing."

"You're outa your tree. You'll get your ass soakin' wet out there."

I shrugged. "I've got plenty of dry clothes," I said and went on out.

"Can I use your pole, Clint?" I asked.

"Sure. See if you can get enough for supper."

"I'll give it a try." I picked up the pole and went on down to the ponds again. I'd kind of halfway thought I'd alternate between the two ponds, giving the fish time to calm down between catches, but I didn't get the chance. The larger, upper pond was so hot I never got away from it. The top of the water was a leaden gray, roughened up with the rain and the little gusts of wind. Maybe it was just obscured enough that the fish couldn't see me, I don't know for sure, but they were biting so fast I couldn't keep my hook baited. I caught seven the first hour.

It slowed down a little after lunch, about the time the rain slackened off, so I hung it up for a while and went on back up to camp. Jack and Lou took off for the ridge, and Clint, Miller, and I hunched up around the fire.

"Should clear off tonight," Clint said. "Weather forecast I caught last night down at the place said so anyway."

"I sure hope so," I said. "With the other two gone down and the rain, it's so damned gloomy around here you can carve it with a knife."

"How many fish you get?" he asked me.

"Nine or ten so far," I said. "I'll go get some more after I dry out a bit."

"There's no rush, son," Miller said. "You're right about missin' the other two though — I mean like you said. When a bunch of men start out on somethin' together, it always kinda upsets things if some of 'em don't make it all the way through." He turned to Clint. "Remember that time the bunch of us went out to log that stretch up by Omak and old Clark got hurt?"

"Yeah," Clint said.

"I don't think old Clark had said more'n about eight words in two months," Miller went on, "and he always went to bed early and stayed off by himself, but it just wasn't the same without him there."

"Yeah, that's right," Clint said.

They started reminiscing about some of the things they'd done and some of the places they'd gone. They'd covered a helluva lot of ground together, one way or the other — particularly after Miller's wife had died about twenty years or so ago.

I listened for a while, but I kind of felt as if I were intruding on something pretty private. I guess they were willing to share it, or they wouldn't have talked about it, but I've never much enjoyed that kind of thing. I'd a whole lot rather take people as I find them and not know too much about their past lives.

"Well," I said, standing up, "I guess I'd better get back to work if we're going to have trout for supper."

"Work?" Clint chuckled. "Who are you tryin' to kid?"

I laughed and went on down to the lower pond.

It was a lot slower now, and the fish seemed sluggish. I let my mind drift. I don't think I intended to. Usually I kept a pretty tight grip on it.

It had been on a day like this that I'd taken off from the Old Lady that time. I could still remember it. I'd gotten a job at one of the canned goods plants when I'd gotten out of high school, and when I came home from work that day, I'd found her in bed with some big slob. I'd yelled at him to get the hell out of the house, but he'd just laughed at me. Then I'd tried to hit him, and he'd beaten the crap out of me.

"Hit the little snot a time or two for me, Fred," my mother had yelled drunkenly.

After he'd finished with me and gone back into the bedroom, I had packed up a few clothes and taken off. I'd only stopped long enough to paint the word "whore" on the side of the house in green letters about five feet high and swipe the distributor cap off Fred's car. Both of my little revenges had been pretty damned petty, but what the hell else can you be at seventeen?

There was a shot up on the ridge. Then another. Then three more from a different rifle. The echoes bounced around a lot, muffled a little by the still lightly falling rain.

I stood waiting for the pistol-shot signal, but one never came. 'Trigger-happy bastards," I said and went back to fishing.

I caught three more pretty good-sized ones just before the sun went down, and I cleaned the whole bunch and carted them up to the fire. By then the rain had stopped, and the sky was starting to clear.

"Got a mess, huh?" Miller said.

"Best I could do," I said.

When Lou and Jack came back, they were both soaked and bad-tempered.

"Keep your goddamn shots off my end of the hill, McKlearey," Jack snarled as soon as Lou came in.

"Fuck ya!" McKlearey snapped back.

"That's about enough of that, men," Miller said sternly. "Any more of that kinda talk and we'll break camp and go down right now."

They both glared at him for a minute, but they shut up.

Clint fried up the trout, and we had venison and beans to go along with them. I was starting to get just a little tired of beans.

McKlearey had taken to sitting off by himself again, and after supper he sat with his back to a stump a ways off from the fire, holding his bandaged hand with the other one and muttering to himself. He hadn't changed the bandage for a couple of days, and it was pretty filthy. Every now and then I'd catch the names "Sullivan" and "Danny," but I wasn't really listening to him.

We all went to bed fairly early.

"Goddammit, Jack," I said, "Miller's not kidding. He and Clint have just about had a gutful of you and McKlearey yapping at each other about that damned white deer. Now I know a helluva lot more about what's happening than they do, and I'm starting to get a little sick of it myself. If you're going to hunt, hunt right. If you're not, let's pack it up and go down the hill."

"Butt out," he said. "This is between that shithead and me."

"That's just the point," I said. "You two are slopping it all over everybody else."

"If you don't like it, why don't you just pack up and go on down? You're all finished anyway."

"Then who the goddamn hell would be around to keep you and McKlearey from killing each other?"

"Who asked you to?"

"I invited myself," I said. "In a lot of ways I don't think much of you, but you're my brother, and I'm a son of a bitch if I want to see you get all shot up or doing about thirty years in the pen for shooting somebody as worthless as McKlearey." Maybe I came down a little hard. Jack's ego was pretty damned tender.

"As soon as they get those saddles out of there," he said, "I'll move over to Sloane's old tent."

"Don't do me any favors," I said. "I'll be all moved out by noon."

"Whichever way you want it," he said.

We both rolled over so our backs were to each other.

28

After he got back from taking Jack and Lou up the hill next morning, Miller came up to where I was sitting by the fire. "Feel like doin' a little huntin', son?" he asked me.

I looked up at him, not understanding what he was talking about.

"Somebody ought to fill the Big Man's tag for him," he said. I'd forgotten that.

"Sure," I said, "I'll get my rifle."

"We'll poke on down the trail a ways and hunt in the timber. That way we won't bother them two up on the hill."

The sky had lightened, and the pale light was beginning to slide back in under the tree trunks.

"Try not to shoot up the liver this time," Clint said, faking a grouchy look.

"OK, Clint." I laughed.

Miller and I got our rifles and went on down to the corral. I saddled Ned and we started on out.

"We'll go on down into the next valley and picket the horses," he said after a while. "Do us a little Indian huntin'."

"You'd better field-strip that for me," I said.

"Put our noses into the wind and walk along kinda slow. See what we can scare up."

"Good," I said. "That's my kind of hunting."

"Get restless sittin' still, is that it, son?"

"I suppose," I said.

"If I'm not bein' nosy, just how old are you?"

"Twenty-five last April," I said.

He nodded. "'Bout what I figured. 'Bout the same age as my boy woulda been."

I didn't push it. He and Clint had said a few things about "the accident" the day before. I hadn't known he'd had any kids.

"Lost him the same time I lost my wife," he said quietly. Then he didn't say any more for quite a while.

We rode on down into the valley and got into the pine trees.

"Creek there," he said. "Wind'll be comin' up the draw this time of day."

"Good little clearing right there for the horses," I said pointing.

"Should work out about right," he said.

We went on, dismounted, and hooked Ned and Miller's big Morgan to a couple of long picket-ropes. We unhooked our rifles and went on down into the creek-bottom. Miller's rifle was an old, well-used bolt-action of some kind with a scope that had been worn shiny in a couple places from being slid in and out of the case so many times. It had obviously been well taken care of.

"I see you brought that hog-leg along," he said, nodding at my pistol belt.

"Starting to be a habit," I said. "Besides, I keep extra rifle cartridges on one side, and my knives are on it," I said. I still felt a little apologetic about the damned thing.

"Can you hit anything with it?" he asked me.

"Not at any kind of range."

"You shootin' high or low?"

"Low."

"You're pushin' into the recoil just before you shoot," he said. "Clint always used to do the same thing."

"How do you mean?"

"Just before you fire. You push your hand forward to brace your arm for the kick." He held out his right forefinger pistol-fashion and showed me.

"Maybe you're right," I said, trying to remember the last time I'd fired it at a target.

"Get somebody to load it for you and leave a couple empty. Then shoot it. You'll be able to spot it right off. Barrel dips like you was tryin' to dig a well with it when you click down on an empty chamber."

"How does a guy get over it?"

"Just knowin' what you're doin' oughta take care of most of it."

I nodded.

"Well, son," he said, grinning at me, "let's you and me go huntin', shall we?"

"Right, Cap," I said.

"You take the left side of the creek, and I'll take the right. We'll just take our time."

I jumped the creek, and we started off down the draw, moving very slowly and looking around.

Miller stopped suddenly, and I froze. Slowly he pointed up the side of the draw and then passed the flat of his hand over the top of his big hat. No horns. Doe.

She stepped out from behind a tree, and I could see her. Miller and I both stood very still until she walked on up out of the draw. Then he motioned, and we went on.

The trees were fairly far apart, and there wasn't much underbrush even this close to the creek. The floor of the forest was thickly covered with pine needles, softened and very quiet after the rain from the day before.

A faint pink glow of sunlight reflected off the snow-fields above began to filter down between the tree trunks. The air was very clean and sharp, cold and pine-scented. I felt good. This was my kind of hunting.

We walked on down the creek-bed for about a half hour or so, spotting seven or eight more deer — all does or small bucks.

We went around a bend, and Miller froze. He poked his chin straight ahead.

I couldn't see the deer. Apparently Cap couldn't either, at least not clearly. He kept moving his head back and forth as if trying to get a clear view between the trees. He lifted his rifle once and then lowered it again. He held out his hand toward me, the fingers fanned out. Five-point.

Then he pointed at me and made a shooting motion with his hand, his forefinger extended and his thumb flipping up and down twice. He wanted me to shoot. Shoot what, for God's sake?

I put my scope on the woods ahead, but I couldn't see a damn thing. Then the buck stepped out into an open spot about a hundred yards away and stood facing me, his ears up and his rack held up proudly. I started doing some quick computations. I leaned the rifle barrel against a tree to be sure it would be steady and drew a very careful aim on a point low in the deer's chest, just between his front legs. I sure didn't want to mess up this shot with Cap watching me.

I slowly squeezed the trigger. When a shot is good and right on, you get a kind of feeling of connection between you and the animal — almost as if you were reaching out and touching him, very gently, kind of pushing on him with your finger. I don't want to get mystic about it, but it's a sort of three-way union — you, the gun, and the deer, all joined in a frozen instant. It's so perfect that I've always kind of regretted the fact that the deer gets killed in the process. Does that make any sense?

The deer went back on his haunches and his front feet went up in the air. Then he fell heavily on one side, his head downhill. The echoes bounced off among the trees.

"Hot damn!" Cap yelled, his face almost chopped in two with his grin. "Damn good shot, son. Damn good!"

I felt about fifteen feet tall.

I jumped the creek again, and the two of us went on up toward the deer.

"Where'd you aim, son?"

"Low in the chest — between the legs."

He frowned slightly.

"I'm sighted an inch high at two hundred," I explained. "I figured it at a hundred yards, so I should have been four to six inches above where I aimed. I wanted to get into the neck above the shoulder line so I wouldn't spoil any meat."

"Or the liver." He chuckled.

"Amen to that. I'd get yelled at something awful if I shot out another liver."

"Old Clint can get just like an old woman about some things." He laughed.

The deer was lying on his side with blood pumping out of his throat. His eyes blinked slowly. I reached for my pistol.

"You cut the big artery," Cap said. "You could just as easy let 'im bleed out."

"I'd rather not," I said.

"Suit yourself," he said.

I shot the deer through the head. The blood stopped pumping like someone had turned off a faucet.

"You always do that, don't you, son?" he said.

I nodded, holstering the pistol. "I figure I owe it to them."

"Maybe you're right," he said thoughtfully.

We stood looking at the deer. He had a perfectly symmetrical five-point rack, and his body was heavy and well-fed.

"Beautiful deer," he said, grinning again. "Let's see how close you figured it. Where'd you aim?"

"About here," I said, pointing.

"Looks like you were about eight inches high," he said. "You took him just under the chin."

"I must have miscalculated," I said. "I'd figured to go about six high."

He nodded. "You was shootin' uphill," he said. "You forgot to allow for that. It was a hundred yards measured fiat along the ground — only about seventy yards trajectory though."

"I never thought of that."

He laughed and slapped my shoulder. "I don't think we'll revoke your license over two inches," he said.

"Tell me, Cap," I said, "why didn't you shoot 'im?"

"Couldn't get a clear shot," he lied with a perfectly straight face.

"Oh," I said.

"Well, son, let's gut 'im."

"Right."

With two of us working on it, it took only a few minutes to do the job.

"Why don't you go get the horses while I rig up a drag?" Cap said.

"Sure." I leaned my rifle against a tree and took off. We were only a short distance from the horses really, and it took me less than ten minutes to get them. I rode on back, leading Miller's big walnut-colored Morgan.

"You move right out, don't you, son?" Cap said as I rode up.

"Long legs," I said.

"I'm just about done here," he said. He was sawing at a huckleberry bush with his hunting knife. I got off and handed him the big knife. He chopped the bush off close to the ground.

"That's sure a handy thing," he said. "Almost like an ax."

"That's what I figured when I got the set," I said.

He'd rigged up a kind of sled of six or eight of the bushes packed close, side by side, and lashed to a big dead limb across the butts and another holding them together about three feet or so up the trunks. He doubled over a lead-rope and tied it to the limb across the butts. Then we lifted the deer carcass onto the platform and tied it securely with another lead-rope. He tied a long rope to the doubled lead-rope at the front of the drag and fastened it to his saddle horn.

"You want me to hook on, too, Cap?" I asked him.

"Naw," he said. "Trail's too narrow, and old Sam here's big enough to pull the bottom out of a well if you want 'im to."

We stood for a moment beside the place where the deer had fallen.

"Good hunt," he said finally, patting me on the shoulder once. "We'll have to do 'er again some time."

I nodded. "This is the way it ought to be," I said.

"Well," he said, "let's get on back, shall we?"

We mounted and cut across up to the trail.

"Damn nice deer." Clint grinned when we got back to camp.

"Look at that shot," Miller said. "Right under the chin at about seventy or eighty yards uphill. The Kid there could drive nails all day with that rifle of his at about two hundred yards. Made the gun himself, too. Restocked one of them old Spring-fields."

"He fishes OK, too," Clint said, "and it don't seem to me he snores too loud. Reckon we oughta let 'im stay in camp?"

Miller looked at me for a minute. "He'll do," he said. We all grinned at each other.

"How 'bout us all havin' a drink?" Miller said. "I'll buy." He went into his tent and came out with a fifth of Old Granddad. He poured liberally into three cups and we stood around sipping at the whiskey.

"I ain't had so much fun in years," Cap said. "It was a real fine hunt."

"I ain't too much for all that walkin' you're partial to," Clint said, slapping one of his crooked legs.

Cap chuckled. "I told you that rodeoin' would catch up to you someday. Any action up there on the hill this mornin'?"

"Heard a couple shots earlier," Clint said. "No signals though."

"Probably missed," Cap said sourly. "Them two are each so worried that the other one's gonna get that damn freak that they can't even shoot anymore."

Just thinking about Jack and Lou almost spoiled the whole thing for me. I tried not to think about them. The morning had been too good for me to let that happen.

29

At lunchtime I rode up the ridge to pick up Jack and Lou. Jack just grunted when I brought him his horse, and McKlearey took off down the hill ahead of me. They'd both moved uphill a ways, McKlearey onto my old post, and Jack up to Stan's.

I came up to the corral about the time Lou was getting off his horse. Jack was waiting for him.

"Now look, you son of a bitch," he started. "I told you to do your goddamn shootin' in your own territory."

"Fuck ya!"

"I mean it, goddammit! That goddamn deer came out right in front of me, and you were at least five hundred yards away. You didn't have a fuckin' chance of hittin' 'im. You shot just to run 'im off so I couldn't get a clear shot."

"Tough titty, Alders. Don't tell me how to hunt."

"All right, motherfucker, I can see the whole hillside, too, remember. I can play the same game. And even if you dumb-luck out and hit 'im, I'll shoot the son of a bitch to pieces before you can get to 'im. You won't have enough left to be worth bringin' out."

McKlearey glared at Jack, his face white. They were standing about ten feet apart and they were both holding their rifles. Jack's hand was inching toward the butt of his automatic.

"That's just damn well enough of that kinda talk," Miller's voice cracked from behind them.

"This is between him and me," Jack said.

"Not up here, it ain't," Miller said. "Now I don't know what kinda trouble you two got goin' between yourselves back in town, but I told you the first day to leave all that stuff down there. I meant what I said, too."

"We paid you to bring us up here," McKlearey said. "not to wet-nurse us." His eyes were kind of wild, and he was holding his rifle with the muzzle pointed about halfway between Jack and Cap.

I'm still not sure why I did it, but I slipped the hammer-thong off my pistol. I think Lou saw me do it because he slowly shifted his rifle until it was tucked up under his right arm so there was no way he could use either of his guns.

Miller had thought over what Lou had said. "I guess maybe we better just pack up and go on back down," he said. He turned his back on them and walked back up to the fire.

"We paid for ten goddamn days!" McKlearey yelled after him.

I hawked and spit on the ground, right between them.

"He can't do that," Jack said.

"Don't make any bets," I said flatly. "You guys made a verbal contract with him that first day. He told you that if there was any trouble in camp, we'd all come out. You agreed to it."

"That wouldn't stand up in court, would it?" Lou asked.

I nodded. "You bet it would. Particularly around here. If you were going to take him to court, it'd be in this county, and the jury'd all be his neighbors." I wasn't that sure, but it sounded pretty good.

"Well, what the hell do we do now?" Jack demanded.

"You might as well go pack your gear," I said. "He meant it about going back down."

"Who needs 'im?" Lou said. "Let 'im go."

"It's twelve miles back to the road, McKlearey," I said, "and he'll take the horses, the tents, and all the cooking equipment with him. Even if you got that damned freak deer, how would you get him out of the woods?"

He hadn't thought of that.

"You sound like you're on Ms side," Jack accused me.

"How 'bout that?" I said. I walked off down toward the pond. It was a helluva goddamn way to wind up the trip.

I guess both Jack and Lou did a lot of crawfishing, but Miller finally relented. I suppose he really didn't want his first trip as a guide to wind up that way. Anyway, they managed to talk him out of it.

Much as I wanted to stay up there, I still thought Miller was making a mistake. I went back to camp and moved all my gear into the empty tent.

"You don't have to do that, Dan," Jack said quietly as I started to roll up my sleeping bag.

"We'll both have more room this way," I said.

"Christ, Dan, you know how McKlearey can rub a guy raw."

"Yeah," I said, "but you're grown-up now, Jack. You're not some runny-nosed kid playing cowboys and Indians." I stopped in the doorway of the tent. "One other thing, old buddy," I said, "keep your goddamn hand away from that pistol from now on. There's not gonna be any of that shit up here." I went on out of the tent. McKlearey was standing outside. I guess he'd been listening.

"That goes for you, too, shithead," I told him.

Christ! I was right in the middle again. How the hell do I always get myself in that spot?

It took me about fifteen minutes to get settled in, and then we ate lunch. Nobody talked much. Both Jack and Lou went back to their tents after we finished.

"I probably shouldn't have changed my mind," Cap said quietly. "I got a feelin' it was a mistake."