"They've quieted down a bit," I said. "I'll go on up with my brother from now on — maybe I can keep nun from getting so hot about things."

"What's got them two at each other that way?" Clint asked me.

"They just don't get along," I said. I knew that if I told them the real story, it would blow the whole trip. "This has been building for quite a while now. I thought they could forget about it while they were up here, but I guess I was wrong."

"Sure makes things jumpy in camp," Miller said shortly.

"It sure does," I agreed.

Jack wasn't too happy about my going up the hill with him, but I don't think he dared to say much about it in front of Miller.

When we got up there, he wouldn't talk to me, so I just let it go.

A good-looking five-point came out just about sunset, but he ignored it. No matter what he might have told Miller, he was still after that freak. After shooting time, we rode back to camp without waiting for Lou.

"That was a nice deer you got for Sloane," Jack said finally. I guess he wanted to make peace.

"Fair." I said. "It was a lot of fun hunting that way."

"How'd you do it?"

"Miller and I just pussyfooted through the woods until we spotted him."

"Sloane'll be pretty tickled with him."

That seemed to exhaust that topic of conversation pretty much.

Supper was lugubrious. Nobody talked to anybody else. Jack stared fixedly into the fire, and McKlearey sat with his back to a stump, watching everybody and holding that filthy bandage out in front of him so he wouldn't bump his hand. I wondered how bad the cut was by now.

I fixed myself a drink and settled back down by the fire.

"Watch yourself, Danny," Lou said suddenly, his eyes very bright. "Same thing might happen to you as happened to Sullivan."

It didn't make any sense, so I didn't answer him. I noticed, though, that after that he concentrated on me. He seemed to flinch just a little bit every time I moved. Did the silly bastard actually think I was going to shoot him?

"Bedtime," he finally said. He got up and went to his tent. Jack waited a few minutes, and then he went to his tent, too.

I talked quietly with Cap and Clint for a while, trying to stir up the good feeling we'd had going that morning, but it didn't quite come off. I think we were all too worried.

I went on back to the latrine. On my way back to my tent I heard a funny slapping kind of noise over in the woods. I stopped and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark a little more. Then I saw a movement.

It was McKlearey. I guess he'd rolled out under the back of his tent or something, and he was back in the trees practicing his draw.

He was getting pretty good at it.

30

Clint woke me the next morning, and I rolled out of the sack quickly. It was chilly, and for some reason it seemed darker that morning than usual. Then it dawned on me. The moon had already set. It had been going down earlier and earlier every morning, and now it was setting before we even got up.

Breakfast was as quiet as supper the night before, and we had to take the lantern down to the corral with us when we went to saddle the horses. Miller seemed particularly grim. We mounted up and rode on up the ridge. It was a damned good thing the horses knew the way by now because it was blacker than hell out there.

Miller had insisted that Jack take Sloane's old spot, the lowest on the hill, and that Lou take the very top one. I guess he wanted to get as much distance between the two of them as possible.

As soon as Cap dropped us off, Jack went over to the edge of the ravine. I stayed with the horses until Cap came back from dropping off Lou.

"I sure hope they both fill today," he said. "All the fun's gone out of it now."

"Yeah," I said. "I'll remind Jack that there's only three more days. Maybe that'll bring him to his senses."

"Somethin' is gonna have to. See you about noon, son."

"Right, Cap."

He rode off down into the darkness, and I went over to find Jack.

"See anything?" I asked.

"Still too goddamn dark," he said, and then, "I don't know why I had to get stuck with the bottom of the hill like this."

"Man," I told him, "I got a five-point yesterday four miles below here. They're all over the side of the mountain."

"Not the one / want," he said.

"Are you still hung up on that damn thing?"

"I said I was gonna get that white one, and I meant it."

"Goddamn it, Jack, there are only three days left after today. You're going to wind up going down empty."

"Don't worry about it," he said, "I know what I'm doin'."

We sat waiting for it to get light.

The sky paled and the shadowy forms of the rocks and bushes began to appear around us. Several does and a couple small bucks went down the ravine below our post.

"They're starting to move," I said.

"Yeah."

I looked at the thin, dark man beside me with the wiry stubble smudging his cheeks and chin. Jack's eyes were hollow, with dark circles under them. The red baseball cap he was wearing was pulled low over his eyebrows, and he was staring fixedly up the gorge. I tried to make out the shadow of the boy I'd grown up with in his face, but it wasn't there anymore. Jack was a stranger to me. I guess I'd been kidding myself all along. He always had been a stranger. The whole business when I'd gotten back to Tacoma had been a fake. I suppose we both knew it, but neither one of us had had the guts or the honesty to admit it.

When the white deer came out, he was on top of that bluff that was opposite Jack's old post. The rock face dropped about forty or fifty feet onto a jumble of rocks and gravel and then fell again into the wash at the bottom of the hill. Maybe Jack wouldn't see him.

"There he is!" Jack hissed.

Damn it!

"What is it?" he demanded, his hands trembling violently. "Two hundred yards?"

"It's pretty far," I said, "and he's right on top of that cliff."

The deer looked around uncertainly, as if he were lost. Somehow he looked more helpless man ever.

Jack was getting squared away for a shot.

"Wait, for Chrissake!" I said. "Let him get away from that goddamn cliff."

"I can't wait. McKlearey'll spot him." His hands were shaking so badly that the end of his gun-barrel looked like the tip of a fishing rod.

"Calm down," I snapped. "You'll never get off a shot that way."

"Shut up!" he snapped and yanked the trigger.

His Mauser barked hollowly. The deer looked around, startled. "Run, you son of a bitch," I muttered under my breath.

Jack was feverishly trying to work the bolt of his gun, his shaking hands unable to handle the simple operation.

"Calm down," I said again.

"He'll get away," Jack said. "Oh, Jesus, he'll get away!" He rammed another shell up the tube. He fired again, not even bothering to aim.

McKlearey's gun barked from up the ridge. He must have been at least six hundred yards from the deer.

"Oh, Jesus!" Jack said, fighting with the bolt again. He stumbled to his feet.

"Jack, for Christ's sake, calm down! You'll never hit anything this way!" I put my hand on his arm.

"Get away from me, you bastard!" he screamed. He spun on me, pointing the rifle at me and still fighting with the bolt.

It was happening — it wasn't exactly the way it had been that day in the pawnshop, but it was close enough.

I thumbed off the hammer-thong and left my hand hanging over my pistol-butt. "Don't close that bolt with that thing pointed at me, Jack," I told him.

Maybe some day you'll be no good, and then I'll shoot you. There it was again.

"I mean it, Jack," I said. "Point that gun-muzzle away from me." I felt very cold inside. I knew he could never close that bolt and get his finger onto the trigger before I got one off. I was only about five feet away from him. There was no way I could miss. I was going to kin my brother. It hung there, an absolute certainty — no fuss, no dramatics, nothing but a mechanical reflex action. I felt disconnected from myself, as if I were standing back, watching something I had no control over. I even began to mourn for my dead brother.

Then his face kind of sank in on itself. He knew it, too.

Then McKlearey fired again.

Jack spun back around and fired at the deer three times in a row from a standing position, his hand very smooth on the bolt now.

The deer had frozen up. I thought I could see him flinch with the sound of each shot.

McKlearey fired.

Jack fired his last round. His hand dove into his jacket pocket and came out jerkily with a handful of shells. He started feverishly shoving them down into the magazine.

McKlearey fired again.

The deer lurched and fell on his side, his sticklike legs scrabbling at the rocks and bushes.

"Aw, no!" Jack said in an agonized voice.

The deer stumbled to his feet, staggered a step or two and, with what looked almost like a deliberate lunge, fell off the cliff.

"Aw, God damn it!" Jack said, his voice breaking oddly.

The deer hit the rock-pile below and bounced high in the air. I could hear his antlers snap off when he hit. His white body plunged into the brush like a leaping trout reentering the water. I heard him bounce again and tumble on down the ravine.

"Aw, goddamn son of a bitch!" Jack sobbed, slamming his rifle down on the ground. He sat down heavily and buried his face in his hands. He was crying.

Up the ridge McKlearey gave a wild yell of triumph followed by a barrage of shots from his pistol. He must have emptied the thing. Maybe, with any kind of luck, one of them would drop back in on him.

31

I went straight on down into the ravine, leaving Jack on the ridge to get himself straightened out. The brush was a little tough at first, but I got the hang of it in a couple minutes. I just bulled on through, hanging onto the limbs to keep from falling — kind of like going down hand over hand.

I could still hear McKlearey screaming and yelling up on the knob at the top of the ridge.

I'd marked the last place where I'd seen the deer, and I hit the bottom a good ways below where that had been. I was pretty sure I was below the carcass.

The wash at the bottom of the ravine was about fifteen feet wide and six to ten feet deep. I imagined that when the snow melted, it was probably a boiling river, but it was bone-dry right now. Most of the sides were steep gravel banks with large rocks jutting out here and there. I finally found a place where I could get down into the wash. I seemed to remember hearing some gravel sliding after the deer had stopped bouncing. I started up the ravine.

The deer was about a hundred yards from where I'd come down. He was lying huddled at the foot of a gravel bank in a place where the wash made a sharp turn. He was dead, of course.

Only one of his legs was sticking out; the others were all kind of tucked up under him. The protruding leg was at an odd angle.

His head was twisted around as if he were staring back over his shoulder, and a couple of his ribs were poked out through his skin. His fur wasn't really white but rather a cream color. It had smudges and grass stains on it — either from his normal activity or from the fall through the brush.

His antlers were shattered off close to his head, and the one red eye I could see was about half open. There was dirt in it.

A thin dribble of gravel slithered down the steep bank and spilled down across his shoulder. A heavy stick protruded from the bank just above him.

"You poor bastard," I said softly. I nudged at his side with my toe, and I could hear broken bones grating together inside. He was like a sack full of marbles.

"Probably broke every bone in his body," I muttered. I took hold of the leg. It was loose and flopping. I tucked it back up beside the rest of him. Folded up the way he was, he didn't take up much more room than a sack of potatoes. I squatted down beside him.

"Well," I said, "you did it. God knows we ran you off this hill often enough. You just had to keep coming back, didn't you?" I reached over and brushed some of the dirt off his face. The eye with the dirt in it looked at me calmly.

"I sure wish I knew what the hell to do now, old buddy," I said. "You're Lou's deer, and I suppose I ought to make him keep you, no matter what shape you're in. Christ only knows, though, what that'll lead to."

How did I always get into these boxes? All I wanted to do was just look out for myself. I had enough trouble doing that without taking on responsibilities for other people as well. I had to try to figure out, very fast, what would be the consequences of about three different courses of action open to me right now, and no matter what I decided to do, I had no guarantees that the whole damn mess wouldn't blow up in my face. I sure wished that Miller were here.

I could hear McKlearey yelling, but he sounded like he was coming down the hill now. Whatever I was going to do, I was going to have to make up my mind in a hurry.

I put my hand on the deer's shoulder. He was still warm. A kind of muscle spasm or reflex made his eyelid flutter at me.

"You're a lot of help," I said to the deer. I stood up.

I could hear McKlearey crashing around in the brush several hundred yards up the ravine.

"Well, piss on it!" I said and pulled on the limb sticking out of the gravel bank. The whole bank gave way, and I had to jump back out of the way to keep from getting half-buried myself. The slide completely covered the carcass. I stood holding the stick for a moment, then I pitched it off into the brush. I turned around and went on back downstream.

Lou crossed the wash and came down over the rock-pile at the foot of the cliff. He stopped yelling when he started finding pieces of antler. He was there for quite awhile, gathering up all the chunks and fragments he could find. Then he came on down. I had climbed up out of the wash and was standing up on the bank when he got to where I was.

"You find 'im, Danny?" he asked me from down in the wash. His face was shiny with sweat, and his eyes were feverish.

"I came up from down that way," I said. "He must be above here somewhere." It wasn't exactly a lie.

"No, I came down this creek-bed. He ain't up there."

I shrugged. "Maybe in the brush somewhere —”

"The bastard busted his horns," he said, holding out both hands full of dark fragments.

"Damn shame," I said.

He began stuffing the pieces into various pockets. "A good taxidermist oughta be able to glue 'em all back together, don't you think?"

"I don't know, Lou. I've never heard of anybody doing it before."

"Sure they can," he said. "But where the hell is the goddamn deer?"

"It's got to be up above," I said. "Did you get any kind of Mood-trail?"

"Shit! The way that fucker was bouncin'?"

"Maybe if we find one of the places where he hit —”

He'd finally finished stuffing chunks of horn in his pockets, and suddenly his eyes narrowed and he squinted up at me. His face was very cold and hard looking.

"Oh, now I get it," he said. "You and your brother, huh? You two are tryin' to keep my deer."

"You couldn't give me that deer after you knocked it off that cliff," I told him flatly.

"That's my goddamn deer," he said angrily.

"I never said it wasn't."

"Where the hell is it? Where the hell have you got my deer?" His voice was getting shrill.

"Come on, Lou, get serious."

"Don't do this to me, Danny." His eyes were bulging now.

"Settle down, Lou. Let's go back up and check out the brush."

"Danny? Is that you, Danny?" His face was twitching, and his voice was kind of crooning.

"Come on, Lou," I said, "let's go back up to where he hit."

"You know what I did to Sullivan, don't you, Danny?"

"Come on, Lou," I said.

Now what the hell was going on?

"It wasn't my fault, Danny. It was so fuckin' dark, and Charlie was all around us."

"Lou, snap out of it!"

"It wasn't my fault, Danny. He come sneakin' up on me. He didn't give me no password or nothin'."

"Lou!"

"Nobody knows where he is, Danny. I hid 'im real good. Nobody'll ever know."

I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

"Don't tell the lieutenant, Danny. Everything will be OK if you just keep your mouth shut about it." His eyes were wild now.

"Come on, Lou, snap out of it. That's all over now." I was starting to get a little jumpy about this. It could get bad in a minute. And I still wasn't over the little session with Jack up on the ridge.

"I'll pay you, Danny. I got five hundred or so saved up for a big R and R. It's all yours. Just for Chrissake, don't say nothin'."

Very slowly I eased off the hammer-thong again. How many times was this going to happen in one day?

"Please, Danny, I'm beggin' ya. They'll hang me for God's sake." His rifle was slung over his left shoulder, and his right hand was on his belt, real close to that damned .38. I wondered if he'd remembered to reload it. Knowing McKlearey, he probably had.

"OK, Kid," he said, "if that's the way you want it." The pleading note had gone out of his voice, and his face was pale and very set.

"McKlearey," I said as calmly as I could, "if you make one twitch toward that goddamn pistol, I'll shoot you down in your tracks and you damn well know I can do it. You know I can take you any time I feel like it. Now straighten up and let's go find that deer." I sure hoped that I sounded more convincing than I felt. Frankly, I was scared to death.

"I been practicin'," he said, his face crafty.

"Not enough to make that much difference, Lou," I said.

He stood there looking up at me. I guess it got through to him — even through what had happened on the Delta — that I had him cold. At least I had him cold enough to make the whole thing a bad gamble for him. Finally he shook his head as though coming out of a bad dream.

"You say you came up the creek-bed?" he asked as if nothing had happened.

"Yeah," I said. "The deer's gotta be above us somewhere — maybe off in the brush."

"Maybe if we each took one side," he said. "It sure as hell ain't down in here." He turned and clambered up out of the wash on the other side.

"Danny?" he said from the other side of the wash.

"Yeah?"

"Sullivan and the other Danny are both dead, did you know that? Charlie got 'em. They been dead a long time now."

"Sorry to hear that, Lou."

"Yeah. It was a bad deal. They was my buddies — but Charlie got "em."

I didn't want to get started on that again. "Work your way up to where you found those pieces of horn, Lou," I said. "I'll go up this side."

"Sure. Fuckin' deer has gotta be here someplace."

I let him lead out. I wasn't about to let him get behind me.

"You find 'im?" Miller called from the ridge.

"Not yet, Cap," I called back.

"Any sign?"

"Lou found some pieces of horn," I said.

"And some fur," Lou called to me. "Tell 'im I found some white fur, too."

"He got some fur, too," I relayed.

"He's gotta be down there then."

"Yeah. I know."

"Did he go off that bluff?"

"Yeah. I saw him fall."

Cap shook his head disgustedly and started to come down into the ravine.

The three of us combed the bottom for about an hour and a half. We passed the collapsed gravel bank about a half dozen times, but neither of them seemed to notice anything peculiar about it.

"It's no good," Miller said finally.

"But he's down here," Lou said. "We all seen 'im fall. I got 'im. I got 'im from way up there." He pointed wildly.

"I ain't doubtin' you shot him," Cap said, "but we ain't gonna find 'im."

"He's gotta be here," Lou said frenziedly. "Let's go back just one more time. He's here. He's gotta be here."

Miller shook his head. "Face it, Sarge," he said. "He's under a rockslide." He nudged the bank of the wash with the tow of his cowboy boot. A small avalanche resulted. "This whole gully is like this. One little bump brings it right down. There's two dozen places in this stretch we been workin' where the bank has give way just recently. He could be under any one of 'em. Only way you're gonna find that deer is with a shovel — and even then you wouldn't get him till the snow came."

"Maybe he's under a bush," Lou said. "Did we look over there?" He pointed desperately toward a place we'd all checked a half dozen times.

"We ain't gonna find 'im," Miller said.

"I gotta find 'im!" Lou screamed. "I gotta!" Then his face fell apart, and he started to cry like a little kid.

Miller stepped up to him and slapped nun sharply in the face.

"Come out of that, now, Sergeant!" he barked. "That's an order."

Lou's eyes snapped open. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry, sir. I — I guess I lost my head."

"Let's get on Up to the ridge," Miller commanded. We started climbing. McKlearey coughed now and then — or maybe he was sobbing, I'm not sure. I still didn't let him get behind me.

32

I don't think either Jack or Lou said more than ten words the rest of that day. Miller, Clint, and I were so busy watching them that we didn't say much either, so it was awfully quiet in camp. Neither one of them went out that evening, and we all sat around staring at each other. At least McKlearey had quit talking to himself.

The next morning they were still pretty quiet, and I got the idea that they both wanted to finish up and get on back down the mountain.

I went up on the ridge with Jack again, and almost as soon as it was legal shooting time, we heard McKlearey's gun bang off once, and then a minute or so later the flat, single crack of his pistol.

"Lou got one," I said to Jack. It was pretty obvious, but the silence was beginning to bug me.

"Yeah," Jack answered indifferently.

We saw Miller going on up, trailing Lou's horse and a pack animal. About twenty minutes later he went on back down with Lou and what looked like a pretty damn small deer.

"Shit!" Jack snorted. "The great hunter! I've seen bigger cats." Maybe he was coming out of it a little — maybe not. I couldn't tell for sure.

It was almost lunchtime when a fair-sized buck came down the draw.

"Four-point," I whispered to Jack, who hadn't even been watching, I don't think.

"Where?"

"Coming down the bottom of the gully."

"Yeah, I see 'im now," he said. His voice was very flat.

"I'll take 'im." He squared himself around into a sitting position, aimed, and fired. The buck dropped without a twitch.

"Good shot!" I said.

He shrugged and cranked out the empty. It clinked against a rock and rolled on down the hill.

"You going to signal?" I asked him.

"Miller'll be up in a few minutes anyway," he said.

"Yeah, but we'll need a packhorse."

"Maybe you're right," he said. He wearily pulled out the automatic, thumbed it, and touched it off in the general direction of the mountain above us. "Let's go gut 'im," he said.

We went down and field-dressed the deer. By the time we were done, Miller was there with the horses and a rope. He tossed us one end, and with a horse pulling from up above and the two of us guiding the carcass, getting the deer up was no trick at all.

"Damn nice deer," Miller said rather unconvincingly.

"It's worth the price of the tag, I guess," Jack said. He seemed pretty uninterested.

We got everything loaded up and went on back down to camp.

Clint and McKlearey had already gone on down. Miller told us that Lou had been all hot to leave, and there weren't really enough packhorses to haul out all of our gear and the deer as well, so Clint had loaded up and they'd gone on down.

"How big a one did he get?" Jack inquired.

"Two-point," Miller said. "Nice enough deer, but I think old Sarge musta made a mistake. He probably shoulda waited till he had a little more light."

Jack didn't say anything.

"Clint won't be back till late again," Miller said, "so we'll go on out tomorrow mornin'. We oughta skin your deer out and let it cool anyway. I tried to tell that to Sarge, too, but he seemed to be in a helluva rush for some reason."

"Probably got a hot date back in Tacoma," Jack said sourly.

Miller let that one go by.

We ate lunch and skinned out Jack's deer, and then Jack went into his tent to lie down for a while. I wandered around a bit and then went on down to the pond to molest the fish. The sun was hot and bright on the water, and the fish weren't moving.

Miller came on down after about a half hour and stood watching me as I fished. "Any action?" he said finally.

"Pretty slow, Cap," I said.

"Usually is this time of day."

"Maybe if I pester 'em enough, they'll bite just to get rid of me."

He chuckled at that.

I made another cast.

"Trip sure turned out funny," he said finally.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"I got a hunch Ol' Sarge oughta see a doctor of some kind. He sure went all to pieces yesterday."

I nodded. "I guess something pretty bad happened to him over in Vietnam," I said. I didn't want to go into too many details. I'd pushed the whole business about Sullivan and Danny — the other one — into the back of my mind, and I was doing my level best not to think about it.

"I kinda thought that might have somethin' to do with it," Cap said. "It's all kinda soured me on this guidin' business though."

"Don't judge everybody by us, Cap," I said. "You run a damn fine camp, and you know this country as well as any man could. None of what happened up here was your fault. This was all going on before we ever got up here."

"I keep thinkin' I shoulda done somethin' to head it all off before it went as far as it did though," he said, squinting up at the mountain. He still looked a lot like God.

"I don't think anybody could have done anything any differently," I told him. "You just got a bad bunch to work with, that's all. Nobody could have known that Cal was going to get sick or that McKlearey was going off the deep end the way he did. It was just the luck of the draw, that's all."

"Maybe," he said doubtfully. "Then, maybe too, I just ain't cut out for it. I can tell you right now that you're the only one of the whole bunch I'd care to go out with again. Maybe if a man's goin' into the business, he can't afford to have them kinda likes and dislikes."

I couldn't say much to that really.

Finally he cleared his throat. "I'm gonna ask you somethin' that ain't really none of my business, so if you don't want to answer, you can just tell me to keep my nose where it belongs, OK?"

"Shoot," I said. I knew what he was going to ask.

"You found that freak deer yesterday, didn't you, son?"

I nodded.

"Thought maybe you had. You're too good a hunter not to have, and you was the closest one to the place where he dropped into that gully."

"He was down in the wash," I said quietly, not looking at him, "all busted up. I dumped one of those gravel banks over on him. I just didn't think he was worth somebody getting killed over."

"Was it really that bad between your brother and the Sarge?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, looking out over the pond. "It was getting real close. I figured that if neither one of them got the damn thing, it'd cool things down."

"You think pretty fast when you have to, don't you?"

"I was right in the middle," I said. "It was the only thing I could come up with in a hurry to keep the roof from falling in on me. I'm not very proud of it really." That was the truth, too.

"I don't know," he said after a minute, "from where I sit, it makes you look pretty tall."

I didn't understand that at all.

"A man's more important than a deer," he said, hunkering down and dipping his fingers in the water. "Sometimes a man'll forget that when he gets to huntin'. You're just like me, son. You wouldn't never try to take another man's deer or keep 'im from findin' it. It's just somethin' a man don't do. So you figure that what you done was wrong — particularly since it was the Sarge who shot the damn thing, and you don't like him very much. But you'd have done the same thing if it'd been your brother shot 'im. A lot of men wouldn't, but you would. Takes a pretty big man to do the right thing in a spot like that."

I felt better. I'd been worrying about it a lot.

"You gonna reel that fish in, or let 'im run around on the end of your line all day?" he said to me.

"What?" I looked at the pole I'd laid down across a log. The tip was whipping wildly. I grabbed the rod before the fish could drag it into the water. I brought him in close to shore, reached down into the water and carefully unhooked him. "Don't tell Clint," I said, shooing the exhausted trout back out into deeper water.

"Wild horses wouldn't get it out of me." He laughed. We went on back up to camp.

After that, things were OK again. Jack kept pretty much to his tent except for supper, and Cap and I spent the rest of the afternoon getting things squared away so we could break camp the next morning. I moved my gear back into Jack's tent so we could strike the one I'd been sleeping in as well as McKlearey's.

After supper, Jack had a couple of drinks and went back to his tent. Cap and I sat up telling stories and waiting for Clint to get back.

The little guy came in about ten thirty, madder than hell.

"That damn burrhead run off on me, Cap," he growled as he rode up.

"Run off? What do you mean, run off?"

"We got about a half mite from the bottom, and he kicks ol' Red in the slats and took off like a scared rabbit. When I got to the bottom, ol' Red was all lathered up and blowed and wanderin' around not tied to anything, and that burrhead and that pile of nuts and bolts he called a car was gone."

"Didn't he take his deer?" Cap asked.

"He didn't take nothin'! He even left his rifle tied to the saddle."

"He say anything at all?"

"Not a word — not a good-bye, go to hell, kiss my ass, or a damn thing. I figured maybe he'd gone on down to the place. I was gonna have some words with him about runnin' off and leavin' me with all the work, but there wasn't a sign of 'im there neither. He just clean, flat took off. I left all his stuff in the barn. I don't know how the hell we'll get it all back to 'im."

"We'll take it back," I said. "I'll see that he gets it all."

Clint grunted, still pretty steamed.

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

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

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

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

We finally got things squared away and got to bed.

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

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

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

"Me." I grinned at him.

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

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

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

"I think I've been had," I said.

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

"You're a dirty old man," I called after him.

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

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

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

"All right, dammit!" I yelled. "Come and get it or I'll feed it to porky."

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

"Biscuits are a little underdone," he said first, mildly.

"Can't win 'em all," I told him.

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

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

"Flapjacks seem a little chewey, wouldn't you say?" he asked me.

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

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

I didn't say anything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I hadn't thought of it," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe there was some hope for Jack after all.

33

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

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

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

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

"We'd appreciate it, Cap," I said. I walked with him back up toward the house.

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

"Yeah," I said, "he told me he planned to."

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

"He's not as bad as he seemed to be up there," I said.

"He's a lot younger'n you," Cap said.

"No. He's two years older."

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh. Maybe — in some ways anyhow."

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

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

He grinned at me. "If I ever make it, I'll let you know."

I laughed. "Right," I said.

"You got my address here?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I said.

"Drop me a line once in a while, son. Let me know how you're makin' out."

"I will, Cap. I really will." I meant it, too.

He slapped my shoulder. "We stand here talkin' all afternoon, and you two'll never get home."

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

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

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

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

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

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

I shook hands with Cap and then with Clint.

"Thanks for everything," I said.

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

"And don't make yourself obnoxious by not writin' neither," Clint growled, punching my shoulder.

We were all getting a little watery-eyed.

"I'd better go," I said quickly. "I'll keep in touch." I got quickly into the car.

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

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

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

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

"He probably understood," I said.

"Hey," he said suddenly, "what day is today anyway?"

"Sunday."

"Man, I lost track up there."

I laughed.

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

"Let's make a piss-call at the summit," he said.

"Sure."

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

"Dan," he said after a while.

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry I threw down on you up there."

"You didn't mean it, Jack. I knew that."

"You'd have shot though, wouldn't you?"

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

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

I didn't say anything.

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

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

"Maybe it's best nobody found the thing," he said. "God only knows what might have happened."

"I did find it," I told him bluntly.

"What?"

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

"No shit?"

"No shit. I wasn't about to get caught in the middle of a pitched gun battle."

"You did that just to keep him from puttin' me down?"

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

"McKlearey, too?"

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

"Jesus, Kid, I'm sorry as hell."

"Let's forget it," I said. "Everybody was all keyed-up."

"Man, McKlearey sure fell apart at the end, didn't he?"

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

"Yeah, he was holdin' it pretty careful all the time. You want another beer?"

"Yeah. I'm a little tired of whiskey for a while."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I've been busy."

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

"The bathroom?" I laughed. "Not in the bathroom!"

"Move it!" she barked.

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

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

"The rifle isn't," I said. "The pistol is, I guess."

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

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

"Men!" she said.

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

It felt awfully good just having her around.

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

"Two Bambis," I told her.

"Do you feel better now?"

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

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

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

"Tell me."

"Do you have to get back home tonight?"

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

"No idea, my little wisteria of the workers," I said. "I'm too tired anyway." I really was.

"I've missed the botanical nick names," she said, wrinkling her nose at me.

"I've missed you, Rosebud."

"Really?"

"Really."

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

"The what?"

"The frog leg. The pistol — isn't that what they call it?"

"That's hogleg, love."

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

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

"It's a hideous thing." She shuddered.

"It saved my life a couple times up there," I told her. I was over dramatizing it, I knew that.

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

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

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

"Pretty close," I said.

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

I wasn't sure she was really awake when I finished the story. "... and that's it," I said, winding it up.

"Was he really white?" she asked drowsily.

"Kind of cream-colored."

"He must have been beautiful."

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

"It wasn't his fault."

"No, but I hated him anyway."

"You don't make sense."

"I never pretended to make sense."

"Danny?"

"Yes, love?"

"Do you think Cap and Clint would like me?"

"I think they'd love you, Blossom."

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

"Go to sleep, Little Rower," I said.

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

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

The Parting

34

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

"She seems to be coming out of it OK," he said. "She's home now, but she's got to take it pretty damned easy."

"I'm glad to hear she's better," I said.

"Sloane and Larkin both called me after they came down — say, how sick was old Cal anyway? He says one thing, and Stan says another."

"He was pretty damn sick," I said.

"Yeah, I kind of thought he might have been. How was the hunt?" His voice sounded wistful.

"The hunt was pretty good," I said. "Things got a little hairy a time or two though."

"McKlearey?"

"Yeah."

"I figured Miller'd be able to keep him in line."

"He did OK, but things still got a little woolly a time or two."

"Did anybody get that white deer Sloane told me about?"

"McKlearey shot him and he fell off a cliff. We never found him."

"Too bad — say, Dan, I gotta get back to work. Gimme a buzz tonight, OK?"

"Sure, Mike. After supper, OK?"

"Right. Bye now."

I guess his boss had been standing over him. I called the pawnshop. Sloane answered. His voice sounded a little puny, but otherwise he seemed OK.

"How are you feeling, Cal?" I asked him.

"Hell," he said, "I'm OK now. I was startin' to come out of it by the time we got back down the hill."

"You see a doctor?"

"Yeah." He giggled. "Claudia was on me about it as soon as I got back. He says it happens to guys my age some times. He's got me takin' it kinda easy for a couple of weeks."

"Good idea," I said. "Oh, we got your deer for you."

"Hey, great, man — how big?"

"Five-point. He's in prime condition."

"Thanks a lot, Dan. Who shot 'im?"

"I did. Miller and I went out and found him."

"Shoot out the liver?" He giggled.

"Not a chance," I said. "Old Clint was threatening to burn me at the stake if I did."

He told me he'd call a processing plant to take care of the deer, and I said I'd drop the hide and horns by later that morning after I'd cleaned my guns.

After I hung up I sorted out all my hunting clothes and took them over to the washhouse. Then I went back and cleaned my guns and McKlearey's rifle. Then I bundled up Lou's gear and the two deer hides and drove on over to the shop.

"Come on in, Dan," Cal called as I pushed my way on in with a big armload of gear.

"I brought Lou's stuff on over," I said.

Cal wanted to know where Lou was. He hadn't shown up for work that morning. I told him that I didn't know and filled him in on the way Lou'd taken off from Clint.

"God," Sloane said, "that doesn't sound like Lou. He's pretty irresponsible sometimes, but he's never gone that far before."

"He was pretty badly shook up," I said. "I don't think he was thinking straight toward the end." I told him about McKlearey's shooting the white deer and then not being able to find it.

"God damn," Cal said, "you say he took that .38 along with him?"

"That's what Clint said."

"Christ," he said, his face darkening, "that damn gun's on the record as being here in the shop. If he's gone off the deep end or something and does something stupid with it, it could get my ass in a helluva lotta trouble."

"Shit," I said, "I hadn't thought of that."

"Now what the hell do I do? I don't want to report the gun stolen — that'd get him in all kinds of trouble. I wish I knew where the hell he was."

"Beats me, Cal. He didn't even say good-bye when he left."

Sloane shook his head. "I'll figure something out," he said. "You want a drink?"

"Sure."

"Come on back." He jerked his head, and we went on into the back room. I dumped Lou's gear in a corner and Cal reached down the bottle and handed it to me.

I took a belt and handed it back to him. He capped it up and put it away.

"Doctor said I oughta back off for a while," he said. "I'm cuttin' way down on my smoking, too — and I'm on a diet."

"Jesus, Sloane, you're going whole hog, aren't you?"

"Let me tell you, man," he said seriously, "I could feel the buzzards snappin' at my ass up there. The doctor told me I came about that close to havin' a coronary." He measured off a fraction of an inch with his fingers. "Goddamn heart was workin' doubletime to make up for the lack of oxygen. About one more day and I wouldn't of made it back down. He says I gotta quit smokin', cut way back on the booze, lose fifty pounds, and get ten hours sleep a night. Christ, I feel just like a goddamn invalid."

"Jesus," I said, "you were sicker'n any of us figured then."

"I was sicker'n I figured even," he said. "That damned doctor like to scared the piss outa me."

"You're going to be OK, aren't you?"

"Oh, I'll come out of it OK. He said there wasn't any permanent damage, but little Calvin's gonna walk the straight and narrow for a while."

"Not a bad idea," I said, lighting a cigarette. I saw the hungry look in his eyes and mashed it out quickly. "Sorry, Cal," I said.

"It's a little tough, right at first," he said.

We went on back out to the shop.

"You know," he said, "its funny."

"What?"

"You remember that day up there when I told you I was gonna buckle down after the trip — maybe grow up a little?"

"Yeah," I said, "I remember."

"Looks like I'm gonna have to do just exactly that." He giggled, suddenly sounding like the Cal I'd always known. "This ain't exactly what I had in mind though."

"Somebody once said that a guy shouldn't make promises to himself," I told him. "He winds up having to keep them."

"Boy, mat's sure as hell the truth," he said.

He gave me the address of the packing plant where they'd process the deer for him, and I told him that Jack and I would get it over there for him that afternoon.

About noon, Claudia came in.

"Hello, Dan," she said in her deep voice.

"Claudia," I said. She still gave me goose bumps.

"How many cigarettes, Calvin?" She wasn't badgering; she was just asking.

He mutely held up three fingers.

"Truth?" she asked.

"Ask Dan," he said.

"He's only had one since I got here about ten thirty," I said. "Cross my heart and hope to turn green all over."

She laughed, and her hand touched my arm affectionately.

"And how many nips from your hide-out bottle?" she asked him.

"What bottle?"

"The one on the top shelf in the storeroom."

"How'd you find out about that?"

"I've always known about it," she said.

He stared at her for a minute and then started laughing. "I give up," he said. "What the hell's the use anyway?"

"How many?" she repeated.

"Not one. I gave Dan a belt, but I haven't touched a drop."

"Good," she said. "I'm not nagging you, Calvin. This is for your own good."

"I know, dear," he said. It was the first time I'd ever heard him use any term of endearment to her.

"You'd better run on along home now," she said. "I put a big bowl of salad in the refrigerator for you."

"I'm startin' to feel like a damn rabbit," he complained. "I got lettuce comin' out of my ears."

"But you've lost weight, haven't you?" she said.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said grudgingly.

"And take your nap this time," she commanded.

"Yes, ma'am."

I said good-bye to him, and he went on out. I'd been ready to leave, too, but Claudia had given me a quick signal to stick around. After he left she turned to me, her face serious.

"Just how bad was he up there, Dan?" she asked me.

"He was pretty sick," I told her. "He couldn't seem to get his breath, and there were a couple times when he couldn't keep anything down. We all figured he'd snap out of it, but he just couldn't seem to get adjusted."

"Why didn't you send him down earlier?" she asked.

"I don't think any of us really knew how sick he really was," I told her. "A couple times it seemed like he was getting better. He'd go on out hunting and things seemed to be coming along fine, but then he'd conk out again. We were all watching him pretty closely, but he kept telling us that he'd be all right in just a little bit."

She shook her head. "Men!" she said. "You're all just a bunch of overgrown children."

"I've been finding that out," I told her.

"I'd die if I lost him, Dan."

Sloane?

I guess it must have shown on my face.

"You don't understand, do you, Dan?"

"It's none of my business really," I told her.

"I know," she said, "but I want to tell you anyway."

Why me, for God's sake? Why always me?

"I think I'm as happy now as I've ever been in my life," she said, looking out the window. "For the first time, Calvin-needs me — not just the fact that I can keep his books or pick out furniture or any of that. He needs me. When he came home, he was frightened — terribly frightened. He came to me for the first time without making it some kind of deal — you know, TU do this for you if you'll do that for me.' It was the first time he didn't try to buy me. You have no idea what that means to a woman."

"I think I do," I said quietly.

"I suppose maybe you would," she said. "You seem to see a lot of things that other people don't." She looked steadily up at me for a minute. "You see, Dan," she said finally, "I can't have any children. I did something pretty stupid when I was about seventeen, and I had an abortion. It wasn't even a doctor who did it, and of course I went septic. I wound up losing everything." She passed her hand across her lower abdomen. "Calvin and I decided not to adopt children — I suppose we could have, but we just decided not to. So Calvin is my baby. That's the way it's always been."

I nodded.

"But this is the first time he's ever turned to me this way. Maybe it really isn't much of a basis for a good marriage but —” she shrugged.

"It's probably as good as any," I said, "and better than a lot of them."

She smiled at me. "Thank you," she said, "I thought you'd understand."

We talked a while longer, and then I took off. She was one helluva woman.

I picked up Clydine after her last class, and we went on back to my place. She'd told me quite emphatically that morning that she was going to spend every spare minute with me until I left for Seattle. I wasn't really about to argue with her.

35

I didn't see Stan until the next weekend. I'm not sure why, but I think I was avoiding him. When I called to make sure he was home, I got the distinct impression that he'd have preferred to keep it that way, but it was too late then.

He was growing a mustache, and it made his face look dirty. Stan didn't have the kind of face you'd want to put a mustache on. And instead of one of the usual sober-colored, conservative sport shirts I'd always seen him in, he was wearing a loud checkered wool shirt — outdoorsy as all hell, and on him about as phony as a nine-dollar bill.

"Well, Dan," he said with a nervous joviality, "how the hell have you been?" As if he hadn't seen me in ten years, for God's sake.

"Fair, Stan. Just fair."

We went on into his tidy little living room.

"How's old Cal?"

"He's coming along. His doctor's got him on a short schedule and cut him off on booze and cigarettes."

"He gave me a damn bad scare up there, the poor bastard."

What the hell was all this?

He fidgeted around a little, and our conversation was pretty sketchy. I wasn't sure what this he-man role he was playing was all about, but I desperately wanted to tell him that it wasn't coming off very well.

"Oh," he said, "I've been fixing up the den. I wanted you to see it." He led me back to the room he'd identified as the study the last time I'd been there.

He'd redone the place in early musket ball. The rifle and his shotgun were hanging on the wall where they could collect dust, and there were hunting prints hanging all over the place. I could see copies of Field and Stream and The American Rifleman scattered around with a studied carelessness. The place looked like a goddamn movie set.

"I'm having that buck's head mounted," he said. "How do you think it would look right there?" He pointed to a place that had obviously been left empty for the trophy.

"Ought to be OK, Stan," I told him.

We went back into the living room and I listened to him come on like the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway for about a half hour or so.

Then Monica came in and suddenly it all fell into place.

"Did you pick up the beer like I asked you to?" he said to her, his voice cocked like a gun.

"Yes, Stan," she said — rather meekly, I thought.

"Why don't you open a couple for Dan and me?"

"Of course," she said and went on back out to the kitchen.

I watched Stan, who had never smoked, light a cigar. I wanted to tell him that he was overplaying it, but I wasn't sure how to go about it.

I sat around for another half hour or so, listening to him swear and give Monica orders, and then I'd had a gutful of the whole thing. I made an excuse and got away from them.

I suppose that what made the whole thing so pathetic was the fact that it was all so completely unnecessary. After her little misjudgment with McKlearey, Monica would have been pretty docile even without his big hairy-chested routine. Stan was saddling himself with the necessity of playing a role for the rest of his life. He'd get better at it as time went on. In a few years he might even get to the point where he believed it himself, but I don't think he'd ever really be comfortable with it.

I picked up Clydine and told her about it as we drove back on across town to my place.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I can't do a damn thing," I said. "I sure as hell can't tell him that McKlearey got to Monica, and that's the only way I could convince him that this act of his isn't the thing that put him in the driver's seat."

"But if this is so unnatural for him," she objected, "he's really no better off than he was before, is he?"

"No," I said, "he isn't. He's still in a box — it's just a different box, that's all."

"But you ought to be able to do something," she said.

"Hell, Rosebud," I said, "I didn't hire on as God. Last time I tried to walk on water, I got wetter than hell."

She crossed her arms and glowered straight ahead. "I still think there's something you could do," she said. "It's just awful to think about what they'll have to go through for all the rest of their lives."

"Well," I said in my best Hemingway manner, "don't mink about it then."

She didn't catch the allusion, and so she was angry with me for being an insensitive clod. You can't win.

When we got to my place, she was still steamed, so we sat around listening to records and not talking to each other. She sure could be stubborn when she wanted to be.

Then Cal called. "Dan," he said, "I just got a call from one of the bartenders on the Avenue, and he said he just saw McKlearey."

"No shit? I thought he'd blown town."

"I really don't much give a damn what he does," Cal said, "but I sure as hell want to get that goddamn pistol back from him. I could write it off on the three days' pay I owe him from the car lot, but the paper has got to be straightened out."

"Yeah," I said, "I see what you mean."

"Are you busy right now? I tried to get hold of Jack, but he's out delivering a camper trailer."

"What do you need?" I asked him, glancing at Clydine. She still wasn't looking at me.

"Somebody's gonna have to run him down — somebody who knows the score. I can't get away until later, and I'm afraid he'll go back in his hole before then."

"You want me to find him?"

"Right. Just tell him to come by the shop. I want him to pick up all this shit of his anyway — and tell me what he wants done with his goddamn deer."

"Which way was he going?"

"God, I really don't know."

"I'll just have to hunt him down then, I guess," I said.

"Thanks a lot, Dan."

"Sure, Cal."

I hung up and went back to the dinky little living room.

"Do you want to play private detective?" I asked her.

She brooded for a minute or so, probably trying to decide whether it would be more fun to keep sulking or to find out what I was talking about. I couldn't quite make up my mind whether I wanted to give her a good solid spanking or a big kiss right on the end of her little snoot.

"What do you have in mind?" she finally asked, not really wanting to give up the good pout she had going.

"We've got to go find McKlearey," I told her.

"Old Creepy-Jarhead himself?"

"That's our man," I told her. "He's got a hot gun, and we've gotta get to him before the fuzz do or before he pulls a caper with it. Our client would find that pretty embarrassing." I lit a cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke.

"Have you been watching television?" She laughed, unable to help it.

"It's a big case, baby," I said, putting the Bogart accent on even more thickly. "Every shamus in town would give his eyeteeth to get a piece of the action."

"OK, Knuckles," she said toughly, standing up and hitching up her blue jeans. "Let's go run down the subject. We gonna rub 'im out when we find 'im?"

"Not unless we have to," I said. "You got your .38 handy?"

She took a deep breath, cocked one eyebrow at me, and gave me a long stare over her upthrusting frontage. "I've always got my 38 handy," she said.

"You nut," I laughed. "Let's go."

We went out to my car and began bar hopping back down the Avenue toward town. Some of the bartenders knew McKlearey and some didn't, so it was pretty hit and miss. I still wasn't sure which way Lou was going, and I couldn't be sure if he was still on the Avenue or if he'd cut on over toward Parkland or what.

"We'll try the Patio, and then I'll do what I should have done in the first place," I said.

"What's that, Knucks?" she said.

"Go back to my place and use the phone and the yellow pages."

"Clever," she said. "I can see how you got your rep as the best private nose in the business."

"Eye, baby. It's private eye — not nose."

"Whatever," she said and then laughed. I guess she'd gotten over her mad.

Lou was at the Patio. He was sitting in a booth alone, with a pitcher of beer in front of him. His left arm was in a sling, and his hand had a professional-looking bandage on it.

"Hey, there, Lou," I said with a heartiness I didn't really feel. "How the hell have you been?"

He looked up at me, his eyes kind of flat, as always.

I introduced him to Clydine, and he invited us to join him. He had that gun on him. I didn't see it, but I could almost smell it on him. I wished to hell I hadn't brought my little Bolshevik along.

"Where in hell have you been, Lou?" I asked him after the bartender brought the pitcher I'd ordered. "Nobody's seen you since the hunt."

Something happened back behind his flat, empty eyes. Suddenly he was all buddy-buddy, friendly as a pup.

"Christ, man," he said, "I been in the goddamn hospital." He waved his bandaged hand at me. "I picked up a damn good case of blood poisoning in this thing."

"No shit?" I said. "I knew it was giving you some trouble, but I never even thought about blood poisoning."

"Hell," he said, "I had a red streak an inch wide goin' up my arm all the way to the armpit. Man, I was flat outa my head by the time I got to that VA hospital up in Seattle."

"So that's why you took off so fast," I said, helping him along.

"Shit, yes, man," he said. "I was about halfway outa my skull even up there — with the fever and all. I knew damn well I was gonna have to get to a doctor in a hurry."

"Christ, Lou," I said, "you should have said something."

"I didn't think it was that bad at first."

Clydine was watching him closely, not saying anything. I think she was trying to fit Lou into all the things I'd told her about him.

I passed Sloane's message on to him, and he said he'd take care of it.

"Hell," he said, "as far as that deer goes, you guys can just go ahead and split it up. I don't care that much about venison myself."

"I suppose we could give it to Carter," I said. "After all, he didn't get to go."

"Hey, there's a good idea. Why don't you just give it to Carter?"

"Tell Sloane when you drop by the shop," I told him, nailing down that point again. I wasn't sure how much it was going to take to separate Lou from that gun. "Oh, Cal says to tell you he'll let you have the pistol for what he owes you from the lot, but he's gotta get the paper on it straightened out."

That seemed to make Lou feel even better. He got positively expansive.

After about a half hour Clydine had to make a run to the ladies' room.

"I bet I acted pretty fuckin' funny up there, huh?" Lou said while she was gone.

"You weren't raving or anything," I said carefully, "but sometimes you didn't make too much sense."

"It was the fuckin' fever," he said. "You know, from the blood poisoning. I can only remember about half of what went on up there."

"Hell," I said, "it's lucky you were even able to walk, as sick as you were."

"Yeah," he agreed. "I was pretty far gone, all right. I bet I said a lotta wild stuff, too, huh?"

"Most of it was pretty garbled," I said. I was walking right on the edge and about all I had to defend myself with was a ballpoint pen.

"Guy'll say fuckin' near anything when he's out of his head like that, won't he?"

"Hell, man," I said, "you were having screaming nightmares, and you were talking to yourself and everything. I'm not kidding, old buddy, we thought you were cracking up."

He laughed. "I'll bet it scared the piss outa you guys, huh?"

"Shit! We were waiting for you to start frothing at the mouth and biting trees."

"Yeah, I was really gone," he said. "Did I ever say anything about the Delta?" He asked it very casually — too casually.

"Nothing that made any sense," I said. "You said something about how you used to think about snow when you were out there."

"Yeah," he said, "I remember that — not too well, of course, but I remember it. Did I mention any names while I was out my head?"

"I think so," I said, "but I didn't really catch them."

Clydine came back.

"I'm gonna blow this town," Lou said. "Winter's comin' and the rain bugs me."

"Yeah," I said, "it can get pretty gloomy around here."

"And I gotta work outside, too. I can't cut bein' penned up inside. I think I'll cut out for Texas or Florida or someplace. I just came back today to get my gear together."

"Be nice down South this time of year," I agreed. "Make sure you see Sloane before you go though, huh? He's pretty worried about it."

"Sure," he said, emptying his glass. "Hey, tell Jack I'm sorry about givin' 'im such a hard time up there, huh? Chances are I won't get a chance to see 'im before I take off."

"Sure, Lou,"

"I probably won't ever be comin' back up here again," he said. "That probably ain't gonna hurt some guys' feelin's."

"Oh," I lied, "you haven't been all that bad, Lou."

He laughed, the same harsh raspy laugh as always. "Look," he said, "I'm gonna have to take off — if I'm gonna see Sloane and all. Just forget anything I said up there, huh — about the Delta or anything, OK?"

"What Delta?" I said.

He grinned at me. "You're OK, Danny — too bad we didn't get to know each other better." He stood up quickly. I could see the bulge of the gun under his jacket. "I gotta run. You take care now, huh?"

"So long, Lou," I said.

He waved, winked at Clydine, and started out. Then he stopped and came back, his face flat again.

"Hey," he said, "I owe you five, don't I?"

I'd forgotten about it.

"Here." He pulled out his billfold and fumbled awkwardly in it. He was carrying quite a wad of cash. He dropped a five on the table. "We're all square now, right?"

"Good enough, Lou," I said.

He poked a finger at me pistol-fashion by way of farewell, turned, and went out.

"Wow," Clydine said in a shuddery voice, "I don't want to play cops and robbers anymore."

"I shouldn't have brought you along," I said.

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," she said. "He's a real starker, isn't he?"

"He's got all the makings," I said, picking up the five-dollar bill. I looked it over carefully.

"What's the matter?" she said. "You think it may be counterfeit?"

"Nobody counterfeits fives," I said.

"What are you looking for then? Blood?"

"I don't know," I told her. "I think he was pretty close to broke when he came out of the woods, though."

"Maybe he went to the bank."

"That's what worries me," I said, still looking at the bill.

"OK, Knucks," she said, "I told you I didn't want to play cops and robbers anymore. What's on for the afternoon?"

"Let's go to Seattle."

"Why?"

"I'm going to have to go house hunting."

"Oh," she said. I don't think either of us liked the reminder that I'd be leaving soon.

36

On the first of October I moved to Seattle and began the tedious process of getting enrolled for classes and so forth. I'd found a little place the landlord referred to as a cottage but for which the word "shack" might have been more appropriate. Even when compared to the shabby little trailer I'd been living in, the place was tiny. The fold-down couch that made into a bed was perhaps the most uncomfortable thing I've ever slept in, but the place was close enough to the university to compensate for its other drawbacks.

Even though Clydine and I had both been convinced that my move to Seattle would more or less terminate what some people chose to call our relationship, it didn't work out that way. I kept coming across reasons why I just had to make a quick trip to Tacoma, and I think she made seven shopping jaunts to Seattle during my first month up there.

I guess when you get right down to it, I got out of Tacoma just in time to miss the big messy bust-up between Jack and Marg — or maybe Jack just held off until I left town, though that was a kind of delicacy you just didn't expect from my brother.

About ten o'clock on a drizzly Saturday morning I came down the steps of the library with a whole dreary weekend staring me in the face. The bibliographical study for Introduction to Graduate Studies that I'd assumed would take from twelve to fourteen hours had, in fact, been polished off in just a shade under forty-five minutes. I spent another half hour trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. As far as I could see, the job was complete, so I left the library feeling definitely let down and vaguely cheated somehow.

I had absolutely nothing to do with myself, so I decided, naturally, to bag on down to Tacoma. At least down there I should be able to find somebody I knew to drink with.

The highway was dreary, but it didn't really bother me. Without even thinking, I swung on over to Clydine's place. Who the hell was I trying to kid? There was only one reason I'd come down to Tacoma, and it sure wasn't to find somebody to drink with.

I went up the stairs two at a time and knocked at the door.

Her folks were there.

"Danny," she said in surprise when she opened the door, "I thought you had to work this weekend." She was wearing a dress and her hair was done up.

"I finished up sooner than I thought," I said.

"Well, come on in," she said. "Meet my folks." She gave me one of those smark-alecky grimaces that conveyed a world of condescension, sophomoric superiority, and juvenile intolerance. It irritated the piss out of me for some reason, and I made a special effort to be polite to them.

Her father was a little bald-headed guy with a nervous laugh. I think he was in the plumbing supply business, or maybe hardware. Her mother was short and plump and kind of bubbly. I think they liked me because of my haircut. Some of Clydine's friends must have looked pretty shaggy to them.

I could see my little leftist smoldering in the corner as I talked about fishing with her father and Europe with her mother. I knew that about all I was doing was mildewing the sheets between the little nut and me and breeding a helluva family squabble which would probably start as soon as I left. I told them I had to run across town and see my brother and then left as gracefully as I could.

I snooped around the Avenue a bit, but I really didn't feel like seeing Jack yet, and the pawnshop had a whole platoon of guys lined up inside, so I took a chance and drove on over to Parkland to see Mike. Surprisingly, he was home, and the two of us went into his living room and sprawled out in a couple of chairs and drank beer and watched it rain.

"Damn shame about Jack and Marg," he said.

"Yeah, but it was bound to happen, Mike. It was just a question of time really."

"I've never really been able to figure out what it is about Jack," he said thoughtfully. "I like him — hell, everybody likes the son of a bitch, but he just can't seem to hang in there the way most guys do."

"I think maybe Cap Miller came closer to Jack's problem than anybody else really," I said.

"Oh?"

"He said that the way he saw it Jack isn't ever really going to grow up. Maybe that's it."

"Not much gets by old Miller," Mike commented.

"It's funny, too," I said. "It's the one thing Jack's been obsessed with ever since I can remember — growing up. He used to think about that more than anybody I ever knew."

"Maybe he tried too hard."

"I think he tried too soon, Mike. Have you ever seen one of these girls who start going out on dates when they're eleven-lipstick, high heels, the whole bit?"

"Yeah, but what's the connection?"

"Have you ever known one of them that ever really grew up? I mean one who wasn't still pretty damned juvenile even when she got to be twenty-three or twenty-four?"

"I always thought that kind of girl was just stupid."

"Maybe that enters into it," I said, "but there's a kind of immaturity there, too."

He shrugged. "I still don't get the connection."

"Well," I said, "I've got a hunch that the patterns we set up when we first start doing something are usually going to be the patterns we're going to follow for the rest of our lives. Now, if you start out trying to be grown-up — or adult, if you prefer that term — while you're still physically and mentally a child, you're going to start the whole business all wrong. You'll start a pattern of playing grown-up. You'll contaminate all of

your adulthood with that juvenile pattern. I think that's what happens to the little girl with her gunked-on makeup and wobbly high heels. She spends the rest of her life playing grown-up. I sort of think that the same thing happened to Jack."

"You mean he's just playing?"

"The worst part of it is that he doesn't know he's playing," I said. "He just doesn't know the difference. He's impatient, he's flighty, he's self-centered, he's intolerant — he's got all the classic traits of immaturity."

"Shit, man" — Mike laughed —”you've just described about three-quarters of the people in the whole damn country."

"Including you and me, probably," I said. "That's another thing Old Cap said. I asked him when anybody really grows up, and he told me that if he ever made it, he'd let me know."

"Sounds like you and old Cap got along pretty well," he said.

"I don't think I've ever met a man I liked or respected more," I said, "except maybe my old man."

"He kinda hits a guy that way, doesn't he?"

I nodded. "Say, how's Sloane doing? I was going to stop by the shop, but the place was mobbed."

"Christ" — Mike laughed —”you wouldn't recognize the old fart. He's lost thirty pounds and gone teetotaler on us. He doesn't even drink beer anymore."

"He got a pretty good scare up there, I guess."

"It musta been pretty hairy."

"You know it, buddy. Between him and McKlearey it was a real nervous trip."

"Lou took off, you know."

"Yeah. He told me he was going to."

"That damned trip sure changed a lot of things around here," Mike said.

"I guess it was sort of a watershed. Maybe we were all due for a change of some kind, and the trip just brought it all to a head."

"I sure wish I could have gone along," he said wistfully.

"So do I, Mike."

We talked for another hour or so, and then Betty wanted Mike to take her to the grocery store, so I took off.

I went on by the trailer court, but Jack's trailer was gone. That's always kind of a jolt. The damn things look sort of permanent when they're set down on a lot with fences and grass around them, so you forget that they've got wheels on them.

I dropped down to the trailer sales lot and Jack was sitting in the grubby, cigarette-stinking office with his muddy feet up on the desk.

"Yeah," he said, grinning tightly at me. "I moved Sandy in with me, and I didn't want Marg to pick up on that with the divorce comin' on and all."

"Oh?"

"Yeah," he said, lighting a cigarette. "We got things all kinda hammered out to where I don't get nicked too bad for support money, and I don't want her gettin' the idea that she's the aggrieviated party in this little clambake. I'm not about to get screwed into the wall with alimony payments."

"Where'd you move to?"

"I'm in a court out toward Madrona."

"Where'd Marg go?" I asked.

"She got an apartment out in Lakewood. Not a bad place. I found it for her."

"Sounds pretty civilized," I said.

He shrugged. "I didn't want her gettin' the idea she had any kinda claim on my trailer. I guess her lawyer was pissed-off as hell about it. I got her all moved out before he got the chance to tell her to stay put. Now that she abandoned me, it kinda cuts down on her share of the community property."

"You figure all the angles, don't you, Jack?"

"I been through it all before," he said. "If a guy uses his head, he don't have to get skinned alive in divorce court. Hey, you want a drink?"

"Sure." I didn't care much for that particular conversation anyway.

"Come on." He got up, hauled on a coat and led me across the soggy lot to a fairly new trailer. "Try to look like a customer," he said, leading the way inside. The trailer was clammy, but it was a little more private than the office. Jack went into the little utility room and pulled a fifth of cheap vodka out of one of the heating ducts.

"The boss can't smell this on me," he explained. "I have a coke afterward, and I'm pure as the driven snow." He laughed flatly.

We each had a couple of pulls from the bottle and then sat around in the chilly living room talking.

"Did McKlearey get that business with the gun straightened out with Sloane before he took off?"

"Yeah," Jack said, "he and Sloane dummied up the paper work and got it all squared away with the police department."

"Did you see him before he took off?"

"Naw, I got a gutful of that motherfucker up in the woods."

"The silly bastard had blood poisoning in that hand," I said. "He claims he was out of his head with the fever and the damned infection."

"I wouldn't bet on that. I think he just plain flipped out."

"It's possible," I said. "He was carrying that .38 when I saw him. Had it tucked under his belt."

"That silly bastard! He's just stupid enough to try to use it, too. He'll get about half in the bag some night and try to knock over a liquor store or a tavern. I hope somebody shoots him."

"At least he's out of our hair," I said.

"Yeah."

Somehow Jack and I didn't really seem to have much to talk about. I guess we never had really. I got the feeling that splitting up with Marg had hit him a lot harder than he was willing to admit to me.

"Hey," he said suddenly, "you wanna do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"When I moved the trailer, I found a bunch of stuff that belongs to the kids. I got it all in a box in the trunk of my car. You think you could run it on over to Marg's place for me? I think it's better if I stay away from there for a while."

"Sure, Jack."

"I'll give her a call and let her know you're comin'."

We went over to his car and transferred the box from his trunk to mine.

"Hey, Dan, look at this." He popped open his glove compartment. That stupid .45 automatic was in there.

"Shit, Jack," I said, "you'll get your ass in a sling if they catch you carrying that thing in your car that way without a permit."

He shrugged. "I got kinda stuck on it up in the brush, you know? Shit, a man oughta own himself a pistol — home protection and all that bullshit."

"Maybe so," I said, "but you sure as hell shouldn't be carting it around in your glove box."

"Maybe," I said. We went back in the office and he called Marg.

"She'll be there," he said after he hung up. He gave me the address and I took off again.

It took me a while to find the place. It was one of those older houses that had had the second floor remodeled into a self-contained apartment that you reached by way of an outside staircase. I went on up and knocked.

"Hi, Dan," she said, smiling blearily at me. She smelled pretty strongly of whiskey. "Come on in."

"I can only stay a minute," I said, carting in the box.

"Just set that down," she told me. "The girls are asleep. How about a drink?" She didn't wait for any answer but whipped me up a whiskey and Seven-Up almost before I got the box put down. "Come on in the living room," she said.

I pulled off my wet jacket, and we went on in and I sat on the couch. She sat in the armchair just opposite me and crossed her legs, flashing an unnecessary amount of thigh at me. "How's school?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Takes a while to get back into it," I said. "I think I'm doing OK."

"That's swell."

"I wish I'd gotten here sooner," I said. "I'd have liked to get a chance to see the kids."

"They'll be up in an hour or so," she said, leaning back to stretch her arms. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse, cotton, I think, and when she pulled it tight like that, her nipples stood out pretty obviously. Margaret was too big a girl to run around without a bra.

"Sure has been lonesome around here lately," she said.

"You have any plans — I mean for after —” I left it up there. Under the circumstances it was kind of a touchy subject really.

"Oh," she said, polishing off her drink in two gulps, "nothing definite yet. I'm not worried." She got up, went into the kitchen and came out with a fresh drink.

"You got any special plans for the rest of the day?" she asked, sitting on the couch beside me.

"I've got to get back across town before too long," I lied, ostentatiously checking my watch.

She didn't even bother with subtlety. Maybe she was too drunk or maybe the years with my brother had eroded any subtlety out of her. She simply reached out, grabbed my head and kissed me. Her tongue started probing immediately. I felt her hand fumbling at the front of her blouse and then the warm mashing of her bare breasts against me.

"You wouldn't run off and leave a girl all alone like this, would you?" she murmured in my ear.

"Margaret," I said, trying to untangle her arms from around my neck, "this is no good."

"Oh, come on, Danny," she coaxed. "What difference does it make?"

"I'm sorry, Margaret," I said.

She sat back, not bothering to cover herself. Her nipples were very large and darkly pigmented and not very pretty. "What's the matter?" she demanded. "Has Jack been telling you stories about me?"

"No," I said, "that's not it at all. I just don't think that under the circumstances it would be a good idea." I stood up quickly and gulped down the drink. "I've really got to run anyway."

"Boy," she said bitterly, "you're just not with it at all, are you?"

"I've got to run, Marg," I said. "Tell the kids I said hello."

"I sure never figured you for a square," she said.

"I'm sorry, Margaret," I said. I went out very quickly. Hell let's be honest, I ran like a scared rabbit.

I stopped at the Patio and had a beer to give myself a chance to calm down.

Clydine's folks had left when I got back to her place, and she tore into me for being nice to them.

All in all, I got the feeling that I'd have been away to hell and gone out in front to have just spent the whole day in bed.

37

DEAR CAP AND CLINT,

I've been so busy I kind of got behind in my letter writing, I guess I'm doing OK in school — at least they haven't kicked me out yet.

I was down to Tacoma a couple weeks ago and saw most of the others. Sloane has gone off his diet a little, but he hasn't started putting any weight back on yet. At least he'll have a beer with the rest of us once in a while, if we all get together and twist his arm. His doctor is sure now that there wasn't any permanent damage, so you can quit worrying about that.

My brother's divorce should be final about the end of Feb., and I think he'll be making himself kind of scarce around here for a while after that. He'll probably want to go someplace else for a while to get himself straightened out.

Nobody has had any word about McKlearey. We don't even know where he went. It's probably just as well, I suppose. He wasn't just the most popular guy around here anyway. I can't really say that any of us miss him.

I haven't seen Stan Larkin for a couple months now, but the last time he was still playing that same silly game I told you about before. It's kind of sad, really, because it's all so unnatural for him.

I guess we were a pretty odd bunch, weren't we? I'm glad you changed your mind about giving up guiding. You just happened to get a bunch of screwballs the first time out.

My girlfriend and I made up again. I think that's about the fourth or fifth time since school started. She's a 24-karat nut, but I think you'd like her.

Well, you fellows have a merry Christmas now, and don't let the snow pile up so deep that it won't melt off in time for me to get through when fishing season starts.

Well, Merry Christmas again. So long for now,

DAN

I write a lousy letter. I always have. I knew that if I read it over, I'd tear it up and then write another one just damn near like it, so I stuck it in an envelope and sealed it up in a hurry.

It was Wednesday night, and my seminar paper on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury was due on Friday, but I just couldn't seem to get it to all fit together. I went back and tried to plow my way through the Benjy section again. I knew that what I needed was buried in there someplace, but I was damned if I could dig it out.

I kept losing track of the time sequence and finally wound up heaving the book across the room in frustration.

I wondered what the hell Clydine was up to. Lately I'd taken to listening to the news and buying newspapers to check on any demonstrations or the like in Tacoma. I think my most recurrent nightmare was of some big cop belting her in the head with a nightstick — not that she might not have deserved it now and then.

Maybe that was why I couldn't really concentrate. I was spending about half my time worrying about her. God damn it, as harebrained as she was about some things, she needed a fulltime keeper just to keep her out of trouble.

I leaned back and thought about that for a while. I thought about some of the creeps she hung around with and decided that most of them needed keepers a whole lot worse than she did.

I guess it really took me quite a while to come to the realization that I really didn't want just anybody looking out for her. As a matter of fact, I didn't want it to be anybody but me, when I got right down to it. I knew finally what that meant. Of all the stupid, inappropriate, completely out of the question things to get involved in at this particular time! I was still running down the long list of reasons why the whole idea was crazy as I reached for the telephone.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Joan. Is Rosebud there?"

"Yeah, Danny. Just a minute — Clydine!" I wished to hell she wouldn't yell across the open mouthpiece like that.

"Hello." Damn, it was good to hear her voice.

"I want you to listen to me very carefully, Flower Child. I don't want to have to repeat myself."

"My, aren't we authoritarian tonight."

"Don't get smart. This is serious."

"OK. Shoot."

"I want you to transfer up here next quarter."

"Are you drunk?"

"No, I'm stone sober."

"Why the hell would I want to do a dumb thing like that? This isn't much of a school, I'll admit, but it's sure a lot better than that processing plant up there."

"Education is what you make of it," I said inanely. "I want you up here."

"All my friends are down here."

"Not all of them, Clydine."

"Well, it's terribly sweet, but it's just completely out of the question."

"Dear," I said pointedly, "I didn't ask you."

"Oh, now we're giving orders, huh?"

"Goddammit! I can't get any work done. I'm spending every damn minute worrying about you."

"I can take care of myself very nicely, thank you," she said hotly.

"Bullshit! You haven't got sense enough to come in out of the rain."

"Now you look here, Danny Alders. I'm getting just damned sick and tired of everybody just automatically assuming that I'm a child just because I'm not eight feet tall."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"I'm going to hang up," she said.

"Good," I said. "I'm going to be down there in an hour anyway."

"Don't bother. I won't let you in."

"Don't be funny. I'll kick your goddamn door down if you try that."

"I'll call the police if you do," she yelled at me.

"The fuzz? You? Oh, get serious! I'll be there in an hour." I slammed down the receiver.

As a matter of fact, I made it in less than an hour. I saw Joan scuttling down the steps as I climbed out of my car.

"Good luck," she called. "I'm heading for the nearest bomb shelter."

"She pretty steamed?" I asked.

"Don't forget to duck."

"Thanks a lot, Joan. You're all heart."

I went on up the stairs. She didn't have the door locked, but she did try to hold it shut against me. I pushed my way on through and we got down to business.

It was a glorious fight — the whole bit. We yelled and screamed at each other, and she slammed doors and threw books at me. I insulted her intelligence and her maturity, and she screamed like a fishwife.

Then she tried to hit me, and I held her arms so she couldn't, so she kicked my shins for a while — barefoot of course.

I'm sure we both knew we were behaving like a couple of twelve-year-olds, but we were having such a good time with the whole thing that we just went ahead and let it all hang out.

Finally she ran crying into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. I went right on in after her. She was lying across the bed, sobbing as if her heart were about to break.

"Come on, Blossom," I said soothingly, sitting down beside her.

"You — you said such aw — awful things," she sobbed.

"Come on, now. You know damn well I didn't mean any of it."

"No, I don't," she wailed. "First that awful phone call and now you come down here yelling, and calling me names, and ordering me around, and grabbing me, and — oh, Danny, why?"

"Because I'm in love with you, you little knothead," I said. I hadn't really meant to say it, but it was pretty damned obvious by then.

She rolled over very quickly and looked up at me, her face shocked. "What?" she demanded.

"You heard me."

"Say it again."

I did, and then she was all over me like a fur coat. She tasted pretty salty from all the crying, but I didn't mind. I kissed her soundly about the head and shoulders for ten minutes or so — as I said before, it was a glorious kind of fight.

"You're going to transfer up to the U next quarter," I said firmly.

"All right, Danny," she said meekly. "I know it's stupid, but I can't fight you and me both."

"You knew damn well you were going to do it anyway," I said kissing her again. "Why did we have to go through all of this?"

"I just wanted you to say it, that's all," she said, nestling down in my arms.

"You knew that was what it was all about, for God's sake. You're not dense."

"A girl likes to be told," she said stubbornly.

Women!

38

And so, after the holidays, Clydine Stewart, the terror of Pacific Avenue, transferred to the University of Washington. I'm not exactly sure what she'd threatened her parents with to get them to go along with a switch like that in the middle of her junior year, when the loss of credits probably set her back almost two full semesters, but somehow she managed to pull it off.

She rented a sleeping room down the block from my shack — primarily for the sake of appearances and to have a place to store her spare clothes and her empty luggage. She slept there on an average of about once a month.

I suppose that if a man lives with a woman long enough, he gets used to the damp hand-laundry hanging in the bathroom and the bristly hair-curler that he steps on barefoot in the middle • of the night, but I wouldn't bet on it.

"You don't put your hair up," I said one morning, as calmly as I could, "so why in the name of God do I keep stepping on these damned things?" I held out a well-mashed curler.

"A girl never knows when she might want to," she said, as if explaining to a child.

We were horribly crowded, and our books and records got hopelessly jumbled, and we were always stumbling over each other. We argued continually about who was going to use the desk and who got firsties on the bathroom in the morning. All in all, it was a pretty normal sort of arrangement. We even wound up sharing the same toothbrush after she lost hers and always kept forgetting to buy a new one.

She even read my mail, which bugged me a little at first, but I couldn't see much point in making an issue out of it since we read all our letters to each other anyway.

"Hey," she said one afternoon as I came in, "you got a letter from Cap Miller."

"Where are you?"

"In the bathtub."

I went on in. She'd gotten over that little hang-up.

"Where is it?"

"On the desk."

I bent over and kissed her and then dabbled foam on the end of her nose.

"Rat," she said.

"Are we going to have to go to the store this afternoon?" I asked her, going on back out to the living room-bedroom-study-reception hall-gymnasium.

"We'd better, if you want any supper tonight. Why?"

"Just wondering, that's all."

"Did you get any word on that fellowship yet?"

I picked up Cap's letter.

"Yeah," I said. "I got it." I tried to sound casual about it.

She squealed and came charging, suds and all, out of the bathroom. I got very wetly kissed, and then she saw that the shades were up and scampered back to the tub. What a nut!

I unfolded the letter. It was in pencil.

DEAR DAN,

I have been meaning to write a letter to you ever since we got your fine letter just before X-mas. I was real glad to hear about the big man. I have been awful worried about him ever since the trip last fall.

I was awful sorry to hear that your brother and his Mrs. broke up. That's always a real shame.

The snow here is pretty deep this time of year, but you don't need to worry about being able to get through come spring. Clint says he'll carry you piggyback from Twisp if need be. Ha-ha.

We are all wintering pretty well considering our ages. Clint has a little trouble with his legs that he broke so many times when the weather turns cold. And I have a little trouble getting started out of a morning myself, but otherwise we don't have no complaints to speak of.

Well, Dan, it's about time I went down and fed the stock. Old Ned is resting up so he'll be all full of p — — & vinegar when you come up. I knew you'd like to know that. Ha-ha. I have been going on here about long enough. Next thing you know I'll be turning into one of them book writers your learning about at college. So long till next time.

Your friend, CAP

Oh. Clint says to say hello for him, too.

I could see him laboring over the letter with that stub-pencil of his, the sweat trickling down the outer edges of his white mustache.

"He isn't very well educated, is he?" she called from the bathroom.

"He's one of the smartest men I know," I said.

"That's not the same thing."

"I know."

"You can see how hard he worked on that letter," she said. "I kept trying to see through all that stiffness to the real man."

"You have to meet him to see that," I said.

"I hope I get the chance," she said.

"You will," I promised her.

Somebody knocked at the door, and I put Cap's letter down, swung the bathroom door shut and answered it.

It was my mother.

"Danny, baby," she said, her mouth kind of loose and her tongue a little thick.

I couldn't say anything. Just seeing her was like having somebody grab me by the stomach with an ice-cold hand. I know that sounds literary, but that's the only way to describe it. I held the door open and let her in. My hands started to shake.

The years on booze had not been very kind to my mother. Her hair was ratty and gray, and not very clean, and her hat was kind of squashed down on top of it. She'd tried to put on some makeup and had done a rotten job of it. Her coat was shabby, and she had a large hole in one of her stockings.

She stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, waiting for me to say something.

"Sit down, Mother," I said, pointing at the couch.

"Thank you, Danny," she said and perched uneasily on the edge of the couch.

"How have you been, Mother?" I asked her.

"Oh," she said tremulously, "not too bad, Danny. I've got a pretty good job down in Portland. I'm in maintenance." She pronounced it "maintain-ance." "It is with the company that owns this big office building. I work nights."

I nodded. It was about what I'd expected.

"I got a week off," she said. "I heard about poor Jackie's marriage going on the rocks. You heard about that, didn't you?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Well, quick as a shot I went to my boss and I told him I was going to have to have a few days off so I could come up to Tacoma and see if I couldn't help him maybe patch things up. Poor Jackie. He's had such bad luck with his marriages."

"Yeah," I said.

"But he told me it was too late for that, and I was just so awful sorry. Then he told me you'd gone back to school up here, so I just had to come up here and see you. I mean, you are my baby and all, and we haven't seen each other in just years and years, have we?"

"It's been a long time, Mother," I agreed.

She was nervously trying to light a cigarette, and finally I fired up my lighter for her. Her hands were shaking as badly as mine were.

"Would you like a drink, Mother?" I asked her.

She raised her face quickly, and the sudden look of anguish cut right through me. She thought I was being snotty.

"No games, Mother," I said. "I'm going to have one, and I just thought you might like one too, that's all."

"Well," she said hesitantly, "maybe just a little one. I've been cutting way down, you know."

"Mixer? Water? It's bourbon."

"Just a little ice, Danny, if you got any."

I fixed us a couple, and I could see by the way her hands were shaking that she needed one pretty badly.

We both drank them off, and I refilled the glasses without saying anything. I think we both felt better then.

"I'm so proud of you Danny, baby," she said. "I mean your college and all. I never told you that, did I? There's so many things I never got the chance to tell you. You and Jackie both seemed to grow up so fast. It just seems like I no more than turned around and you were both gone. First Jackie in the Navy, and then your father passing away, and then you leaving like you did. It just all happened so fast."

"It's like that sometimes, Mother," I said. "Nothing ever stays the same."

"I can still remember you two when you were little," she said. "Jackie always so lively and full of fun, and you always so quiet and serious. Just like day and night, you two. And now poor Jackie getting divorced again." She dug out a handkerchief and held it to her face. She wasn't crying; she was just getting ready.

"He's a big boy now, Mother," I said.

"It's just all so rotten," she said. "You're the smart one. Don't ever get married, Danny. Women are just no good. We're all bitches."

"Now, Mother."

"No, it's true." The tears were running down her face now, smearing her makeup. "Your father was a good man — a fine man, and look what I did to him. He didn't understand me, but that didn't give me the right to hound him the way I did. I tried to be a good wife, but I just couldn't help myself."

"It's all right now, Mother. Just try not to let it get you down."

She finished her drink and mutely held out the glass. I doubt if she was even aware that she was doing it. I filled it again. She was making a good-sized dent in my bourbon, but what the hell?

"I'm pretty much a failure, do you know that, Danny? I failed your father, and I failed you boys." She was crying openly now, the wet, slobbering, let-it-all-go kind of crying you see once in a while in an old wino.

"I'm so sorry, Danny. I'm so sorry."

"It's all right, Mother. It was all a long time ago." How could I get her off it?

"Please forgive me, Danny, baby."

"Come on, Mother." That was too much.

"You've got to forgive me," she said. She looked at me, her eyes pleading and her face a ruin.

"Mother."

"I'm begging you to forgive me, Danny," she said. "I'll get down on my knees to you." She moved before I could stop her. She slid off the edge of the couch and dropped heavily to her knees on the floor.

"Come on, Mother," I said, trying to lift her back to the couch, "get up."

"Not until you forgive me, Danny."

This was silly. "All right, Mother, I forgive you. It wasn't your fault."

"Really, Danny? Really?"

"Yes, Mother. Come on now. Get up."

She let me haul her to her feet, and then she insisted on giving me a kiss. Then she kind of halfway repaired her face. She seemed a little calmer after that. She talked for a few minutes and then got ready to leave.

"I've got just enough time to make connections for the Portland bus," she said.

"Have you got your ticket?" I asked her.

"Oh, yes," she said brightly. "I'm just fine."

"Do you need any money — for a bite to eat or anything?"

"No, Danny, I'm just fine, really." She stood up. "I've really got to go now." She went over to the door. "I feel so much better now that we've had the chance to get things straightened out like this. I've worried about it for the longest time."

"It was good to see you, Mother."

"I'm so proud of you, baby." She patted my cheek and went out quickly. I watched through the window as she carefully made her way around the house in front. Her hat was on lopsided, and her dark coat had a large dusty patch on one shoulder where she'd stumbled against something. She went on out of sight.

"Oh, Danny," Clydine said. "Oh, Danny, I'm so sorry." She was standing behind me, wrapped in a bath towel, huge tears bright in her eyes.

"Oh, it's all right, Blossom. She's been like this for as long as I can remember. You get used to it after a while."

"It must have been awful."

"I don't even hold any grudges anymore," I said. "I thought I did, but I really don't. I really forgave her, do you know that? I didn't think I ever could, but I did. I wasn't just saying it." It surprised me, but I meant it. "I just wish she could quit drinking, is all," I added.

39

It was a Thursday morning several weeks after Mother's visit and Clydine had just got up. I was still lying in bed. She stood nude in front of the full-length mirror that was bolted to the bathroom door. She cupped her hands under her breasts.

"Danny," she said thoughtfully, hefting them a couple times.

"Yes, love?"

"Do you think I ought to start wearing a bra? I'm pretty chesty, and I wouldn't want to start to droop."

I howled with laughter.

"Well," she said, "I wouldn't! I don't see what's so goddamn funny."

She was absolutely adorable. Sometimes I'd catch myself laughing for no reason, just being around her. I loved her, not with that grand, aching, tragic passion that I'd pretty well burned out on Susan, but rather with a continual delight in her, a joy just in her presence. Believe me, there's a lot to be said for joy as opposed to tragic passion. For one thing, it's a helluva lot less exhausting in the long run.

Anyhow, nothing would do but our cutting classes and my taking her out immediately so she could buy herself some new bras.

We got back about eleven, and she modeled them for me.

"What do you think?" she said doubtfully.

"It's different," I said.

"You don't like it."

"I didn't say that. I just said it's different. How does it feel?"

"Like a darn straitjacket," she admitted. Then she sighed deeply. "Oh, well, I guess it's just another one of the curses of being a woman."

"Poor Blossom." I laughed.

She stuck her tongue out at me. I'd noticed, but hadn't mentioned, the fact that she'd backed way off on the truck-driver vocabulary and hadn't really gotten much involved with the militants up here. She'd told me that she disagreed ideologically with the main thrust of the university militants, but I suspected that she'd just plain outgrown them. At least I didn't have to worry about her getting her cute little fanny chucked into jail every weekend. That was something anyway.

After lunch she had a couple of classes, so I had a chance to get some concentrated work done. I was tackling the possibility that Melville's Billy Budd was not a simple hymn of praise to the natural man, but rather a much more complex parable of the struggle of good and evil — represented by Billy and Claggart — for the soul of Captain Vere. I'd landed on it by way of the chance discovery that Melville had practically camped on the New York Public Library copy of Milton's Paradise Regained all during the time he was writing Billy Budd.

I was deep in the mystic mumblings of the Old Dansker when Jack showed up.

He looked awful. He hadn't shaved for several days, and his eyes looked like the proverbial two burned holes in a blanket.

"Jesus, man," I said, holding the door open for him, "what the hell happened to you?"

"I just got out of jail," he said.

"Jail?"

He nodded grimly and collapsed into the armchair by the door. "You got anything to drink?"

I got him a water glass and poured it half-full of whiskey. His hands were shaking so badly that it was all he could do to get a good solid slug of bourbon down.

"What the hell happened, Jack?" I demanded.

"You know that .45 I bought from Sloane?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Sandy stuck the damn thing in her mouth and blew her brains all over the ceiling of my bathroom."

"Oh, Jesus!"

"The cops held me on suspicion of murder for three days in the Tacoma jail until they finally decided that she did it herself. They had the inquest this morning."

"Christ, man, why didn't you get in touch with me?"

"I thought you knew. It's been in all the newspapers and on the radio and TV."

"We've been pretty busy, and I just haven't paid any attention to the news for a while. God, Jack, I'm sorry as hell. I should have been there."

"Nothin' you coulda done." He shrugged. "They were just playin' games is all. Who the hell ever murders anybody by stickin' a gun in their mouth?"

"When did it happen?"

"Monday night. I'd been out — just kinda pokin' up and down the Avenue, you know. Anyhow, when I got back, there she was all sprawled out over the toilet stool with blood and hair and all that other gunk splattered all over the ceiling. Christ, Dan, I can still see it." He covered his eyes with one trembling hand.

"Finish your drink," I said, holding out the bottle to refill his glass.

He nodded and drank off the whiskey, shuddering as it went down. I filled his glass again.

"Look at that," he said, holding out his hands. They were trembling violently. "I can't stop shakin'. I been shakin' ever since I found her. My hands shake all the time."

"Come on, Jack, settle down," I said. He was in tough shape. I should have warned him about it. God damn it, I should have warned him!

"Christ, Dan, I can't. My nerves are all shot. I feel like somebody just kicked all my guts out."

"Was she acting funny or anything before it happened? I mean, did she give you any kind of warning at all?"

"Hell no," he said. "She always was kinda strange — you know, kinda quiet — but she wasn't any different at all. Christ, the last thing she said when I left was, 'See you when you get back.' God, Dan, that sure as hell don't sound like somebody who's gonna kill theirself, does it?"

"No way," I said.

"We was gettin' along just fine. Hell, no beefs, no trouble, nothin'. And then she just ups and kills herself."

"Did she leave a note or anything?"

"Nothin'. I think that's why the cops put the arm on me. She even cleaned the place all up before she did it."

"They got it all straightened out at the inquest, didn't they? I mean, they didn't leave the case open or anything?"

"No. It's all settled. They had a lotta medical experts in and all. Angle of the bullet and all that shit. I was there because I found the body and called the cops. I got to hear the whole thing. Couple guys she'd gone with before I met her got called

in, and they both said she'd talked about it when they knew her. Anyway, they finally ruled it 'death by suicide,' and the cops had to let me go. The bastards sure as hell didn't want to, I'll tell you that. Once those motherfuckers get their hands on you, they hate like hell to have to turn you loose."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"God," he said, "I couldn't even go back inside my trailer."

"What'd they do, padlock it all up?"

"No, nothin' like that. I just couldn't make myself do it. I went on out there, but I just couldn't go inside. Ain't that a helluva note?"

"You want to bunk in here for a few days?" It wouldn't set too well with the Little Flower, but this was an emergency.

"No, Dan, thanks anyway, but I gotta get outa the area for a while. I'm goin' down to Portland. Maybe stay with the Old Lady or something."

"You're welcome to stay here," I said.

"It's too close, man. I gotta get away. I was just wonderin' if you could maybe come back down with me and get some of my clothes and stuff out of the trailer for me. I can't make myself go back in there. I just can't do it." He sat hunched over, holding both hands around his glass.

"Sure, Jack," I said, "I'll leave a note for my roommate."

"How is she?" he asked.

"She's fine," I said. I scribbled a quick note to her and we took off. I followed his Plymouth on down to Tacoma and on out toward Madrona. It was cloudy and calm that day, and the trailer court seemed kind of shadowy, tucked back in under a bunch of big old pine trees.

I got out and went over to where he'd parked his car. "What do you need, Jack?" I asked him.

"Grab my clothes and some shoes and stuff," he said, not looking at the trailer. "Oh, get my transistor radio, too, huh? It's in the bedroom."

"Sure, Jack."

"Don't go in the bathroom, man. It's awful."

"I'll have to," I said. "You'll need your razor and all."

"Oh," he said.

"It'll be OK," I told him. I went on into the trailer. It took me about twenty minutes to pack up all his clothes. I didn't go into the bathroom until I'd got everything else squared away.

Actually, it wasn't as bad as I'd expected. Most of the mess was in a dried pool between the toilet and the tub. I gathered up Jack's stuff and took it on out to the living room. I tucked it all in various places in his suitcases and then hauled them on out to his car. On my last trip I carried out his radio and his shotgun.

"No, man," he said, his face turning a kind of pasty color, "leave that fuckin' gun here!"

"You can't leave it here," I told him. "Somebody might swipe it."

"You keep it then. I can't stand to look at the goddamn thing. I told you, Danny, my nerves are all shot."

I took the gun over and put it in my car,

"Did you lock up?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "I'll slip the latch when I leave. I'll clean up that mess in there."

"You don't have to do that."

I shrugged. "Somebody has to."

"Thanks, Danny," he said in a shaking voice. "I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to go in there again."

"You probably ought to sell it," I told him.

He nodded. "Hey," he said suddenly, "I think there's some beer in the refrig. Why don't we sit out here and have a couple? I need something."

"Sure, Jack." I went on back in and carted out the six-pack.

"I'll make arrangements with Clem to pick up the trailer," he said as I got into the front seat with him. He started the car.

"Where we going?" I asked him.

"Just down the road a ways. I can't stand to look at that damn trailer is all."

"OK."

We drove on out to the highway and then pulled off into a little roadside park.

"God, man," he said, opening a can of beer, "I'm just completely wiped out. It was all I could do to keep from tossin' my cookies when you hauled out my shotgun."

"It'll probably take you a while to get over this," I told him, popping open a can for myself.

"I don't know if I ever will," he said. "Danny, my hands shake all the time. I'm afraid, and I don't know what the hell it is I'm afraid of — maybe everything. Shit, I'm afraid of guns, the trailer, bathrooms, blood — Christ, anything at all, and I just come all apart."

"You'll be all right, Jack. It's just going to take you some time, that's all."

He sat at the wheel, staring moodily out at the murky day. "I don't know if you remember or not, but I had an argument with the Old Man once when I was a kid. I said that when a guy grew up, he wasn't afraid of anything anymore."

"I remember," I said.

"He tried to tell me I was all wet, but I wouldn't listen to him. I know what he meant now."

We sat drinking beer and not saying much.

"You fixed OK for money?" I asked him.

"Christ, I don't know. I don't think Old Clem'll spring loose with my check until Saturday. I hadn't thought about that."

"I can give you twenty," I said.

"Hell," he said, "I could always tap Sloane."

"I'd rather give it to you myself," I said.

"Shit," he said, "you already done more than enough."

I shrugged. "You're my brother, Jack. That's what it's all about." I gave him a twenty.

"Thanks, Kid," he said. "I'll get it back to you."

"No rash," I said.

"I suppose I ought to get goin'," he said. "I'd like to make it to Portland before too late."

"Sure, Jack. Just drop me at the gate of the trailer court, OK?"

"Right."

We drove on back and stopped outside the court.

He held out his hand and we shook.

"I probably won't see you for a while," he said, "but I'll keep in touch."

"Sure, Jack."

"It's been a wild six months or so, hasn't it?"

"Far out," I said.

"At least we got to go huntin' together," he said. "That's somethin' anyway."

"It was the best of it," I told him.

He nodded and I opened the door.

"You know somethin', Danny? What I was sayin' about a guy bein' afraid of things — that argument me and the Old Man had?"

"Yeah?"

"He was right, you know that?"

"He usually was, Jack."

"Yeah. Well, I'll tell you somethin', and this is the straight stuff. Maybe I hide it pretty good, but to tell you the honest-to-God truth, I been afraid all my life. It just took somethin' like this to make me realize it."

"Everybody's afraid, Jack, not just you. That's what Dad was trying to tell you. You've just got to learn to live with it."

He nodded. "Well," he said, "take care now."

"You too, Jack."

We shook hands again, and I got out.

I stood at the side of the road watching his battered Plymouth until it disappeared around a comer about a half mile down the highway.

That evening I told Clydine about it.

"I told you a long time ago that it was going to happen," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "How did you know, anyhow?"

"I just knew, that's all."

"That sure isn't much help," I said. "I mean, if I were to suddenly go into the business of suicide prevention, it wouldn't give me much to go on, would it?"

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully, "the girl just seemed to think of herself in the past tense somehow. Even that creepy Helen talked about what she planned to do next week or next year. Sandy just never did. She didn't have any future. A woman always thinks about the future — always. When you find one who doesn't, watch out."

"As simple as that?"

She nodded. "Along with a good healthy gut-feel for it. Being around her was like being at a funeral. It wasn't anything recent, because she had gotten pretty well used to it by then. She was just waiting for the right time."

"I should have warned Jack," I said.

"He couldn't have stopped her."

"That's not what I meant. He got tangled up in it, and it's tearing him all up inside."

"He'll come out of it," she said. "He's too much of an egomaniac not to."

"Why, you heartless little witch!" I said.

"Oo, poo," she said.

"Poo?"

"All right then, shit!" she snapped. "Your brother's got all the sensitivity of a telephone pole, and about as much compassion as a meat grinder. He'll make out."

There was no point pushing the issue. She didn't like Jack, and she wasn't about to waste any sympathy on him.

That night I had the dream again. I caught flashes of a sad-eyed old dog rolling over and over in the snow and of the white deer lying huddled at the foot of that gravel bank, the masculinity of his antlers sheared off by his fall and his deep red eye gazing reproachfully at me through the film of dust that powdered it. And Sandy was there, too, standing nude by the sink in that house out in Milton, her nudity sexless — even meaningless, and her voice echoing back to me:

"It doesn't matter. It's only for a little while, just a little while."

Epilogue

I didn't get the chance to get back up to the Methow Valley that spring. The money ran short on me. I wrote to Cap, of course, telling him how sorry I was, and through the stiff formality of his letters, I could sense his disappointment as well.

I guess I had talked up the high country to my little Bolshevik to the point that she finally got a bellyful of hearing about it because she finally put her foot down.

"This is it," she said in early July, delivering her non-negotiable demands. "We are both going to take two weeks off and go up there. I'm going to meet the great Cap Miller and his crotchety but lovable sidekick Clint. I am also going up to look at that damned Valhalla of yours."

"We can't afford it."

"Chicken-pucky we can't. We've both got a steady income during the school year and good steady jobs this summer. The office I work in shuts down for the first two weeks in August so that all the regular people can take their vacations, and that crazy Swede boat builder you work for is so convinced that you're the greatest thing since sliced bread that he'll probably give you the two weeks with pay."

"Chicken-pucky?"

"Oh, shut up!"

We argued about it for a week or so, but my heart wasn't really in it.

When I approached Norstrom, my boss, he screamed for twenty minutes about how he couldn't possibly spare me and wound up trying to convince me that I ought to go fishing up the inside passage instead.

I had to lie a little in my letter to Cap, and I didn't like that at all. Though I knew he wouldn't have said anything, I also knew that he probably wouldn't have approved of the irregularity of Clydine and myself going off into the hill without benefit of clergy, as it were. I told him we were going to elope, and that this was going to be our honeymoon. It was a big mistake because he insisted on furnishing everything for our trip at no charge. I felt like a real shitheel about it.

Anyway, on the third of August, Blossom and I were batting along on the highway north to Lake Chelan, headed for Twisp. It was about eight o'clock in the morning and we were both a little sleepy.

"I don't see why we couldn't have slept a little later," she complained. We'd spent the night at a motel in Cashmere.

"It takes a good long while to get up there," I said. "It's not exactly a roadside campground, Tulip."

"Couldn't we at least stop someplace? I'm starved."

"We'll be there in another hour," I told her. "You'll need all the appetite you can muster to get even partway around the kind of breakfast Clint cooks up."

She grunted and curled back up in the seat.

I woke her when we got to Twisp, and she insisted on stopping at a gas station. I fidgeted around for the twenty minutes or so that she was in the rest room with her overnight bag, wondering what she was up to.

When she came out, she looked like a different girl. She'd put in her contact lenses, caught her hair in a loose coil at the back of her neck, and she was wearing a white blouse and tailored slacks. She'd even put on lipstick, for God's sake!

"Wow," I said.

"Oh, be quiet."

"You're gorgeous, Rosebud. I mean it."

She looked at me to see if I were kidding her, and when she saw that I wasn't, she actually blushed.

"All right," she said, "let's go meet your family."

What she'd said didn't really register on me until we were a ways out of town.

"Why did you say that?" I asked her.

"Say what?"

"About meeting my family?"

"Just a bad joke," she said. "Forget it."

We drove along the twisting, narrow road out toward Miller's place. The road looked different with the poplar leaves all green instead of the gold I'd remembered from the preceding autumn, but the whole stretch of road was still breathtaking.

"It's really beautiful, isn't it?" she said finally, touching nervously at her hair.

"Wait till we get up higher," I said. "It gets even better."

I slowed the car and turned into Miller's driveway. The colt was a yearling now, but he still loved to run. He galloped alongside us, tossing his head.

"I didn't know horses chased cars, too," she said.

I laughed. I hadn't thought of it that way.

"Oh, dear," she said, her voice faltering.

Cap was waiting for us out in the yard, and he looked even more rugged than I remembered him. Then he grinned and it was like the sun coming up.

The two of them almost fell all over themselves charming each other, and I got a helluva big lump in my throat watching the two people in the world I cared most about getting along so well. Then Clint came out, and the party really got started.

Finally we went on into the big, musty old dining room and sat down to breakfast. Miller bowed his head and said grace, probably in Clydine's honor, just a few simple words, but it moved me pretty profoundly.

"My wife always used to like havin' grace before a meal," he said. "Me and Clint kinda got out of the habit since we take a lot of our meals standin' up."

"Let's eat it before it gets cold," Clint said gruffly. He'd outdone himself on the whole meal. I knew damned well he'd been at it since about four that morning. He'd even shaved in her honor.

"I'm real sorry, Dan," he said with his eyes sparkling at me, "but I just couldn't manage to whip up a big mess of that whatever-it-was you fixed for us that time. I just never got around to gettin' the recipe from you."

"All right, smart-aleck," I said.

"Besides," he said, "we're runnin' a little short of pack-horses."

"What's this?" Clydine asked.

They told her.

"What was in it?" she asked me.

I explained how I'd made it.

"No wonder it tasted like stewed packhorse," she commented blandly.

I thought Cap and Clint were going to fall off their chairs laughing.

After breakfast we went on back outside.

"I figured Old Dusty would be about the best horse for the little lady," Cap said. "That's the one the Professor rode up there. He's pretty easy goin', and he's good and dependable."

I nodded.

"We knew you'd want Old Ned again." He grinned.

"You're all heart, Cap."

He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.

We loaded the horses in the stock-truck and the camping gear and saddles in the pickup and drove on down the driveway again, Cap in front in the pickup, then Clydine and me in my car and Clint bringing up the rear in the stock-truck.

"Oh, Danny," she said, nestling up beside me, "I just love them both. They're wonderful."

I nodded happily.

"Do you think they liked me at all?"

"They loved you, dear."

"That's just because of you," she said.

"No," I said. "They can't do that. Not either one of them. They don't know how."

"I guess they couldn't, could they?"

"No way."

"You love them two old men, too, don't you?" she said suddenly.

I nodded. I probably wouldn't have put it exactly that way, but that's what it boiled down to.

The sun was very bright and the sky very blue. The whole world seemed as if it had been washed clean just that morning.

We turned off the highway and started up the long gravel road toward the beginning of the trail. When we came around that comer and caught the first full glimpse of Glacier Park looming white above us, she gasped.

"Pretty impressive, huh?" I said.

"Wow!" was all she could say.

We all stopped when we got to the road-end and went through the ritual of unloading the packhorses first again.

"Boy, did you get lucky," Clint said as we climbed up into the truck after Dusty.

"How's that?"

"That wife of yours. Now, I just know you ain't been good enough to deserve somebody like her. You ain't got it in you."

I laughed and the little old guy grinned at me.

We led Dusty out and saddled him.

"Just ride 'im up and down the road kinda easy like, honey," Cap told Clydine after he'd helped her get aboard.

The three of us watched her amble the patient old horse on down the road.

"She sets a saddle well, too," Cap said approvingly. "I think you got yourself a good one, son."

"She'll do," I agreed happily.

Then Clint and I got Ned out.

The big gray glared at me with suspicion and then sniffed at me a couple times. I scratched his ears.

"I think the damned old fool remembers you," Clint said.

"We'll find out in a minute or so," I said, swinging the saddle up on Ned's back. I cinched it good and tight and then climbed on.

"Just how big a head of steam have you two let him build up?" I asked them.

Then they really started to laugh.

"Hell, boy," Cap said, still laughing, "we worked him every day this week. We weren't about to let him break one of your legs for you on your honeymoon."

"Everybody's a comedian these days," I said dryly and rode off down the road to catch up with Clydine.

"Did you see his face?" I heard Clint howl from behind me.

Just before we left, she jumped down off her horse and kissed the two surprised old men and then hopped back up into the saddle. We rode off on up the trail towing a pair of pack-horses, leaving the two of them blushing and scuffing their boots in the dust like a pair of schoolboys.

When we stopped at the top of the first ridge to let the horses blow a little, we could see their tiny figures still standing down by the parked vehicles. We all waved back and forth for a while, and then Clydine and I rode on down into the next valley.

It was about three thirty in the afternoon when we came on down into the little basin. In spite of Cap's assurances, I'd been about halfway worried that we might find about a thousand sheep and a couple herders up there, but the camp was empty.

She sat in her saddle, looking around, not saying anything.

"Well?" I said.

She nodded slowly. "I see what you meant," she said simply.

"Let's get to work," I said. "We've got a lot to do before the sun goes down."

We got down from our horses and checked the corrals. They were still sound. I unsaddled the horses and turned them loose in the corrals and then we went on up to the tent frames. It took us a while to get the two tents up, but we finally got them squared away. The moss we'd all gathered the year before was gone — deer or something, I suppose — so we got to work and hauled in fresh stuff.

Miller or Clint — one or the other — had substituted, with some delicacy, a pair of sleeping bags that zipped together into a double for the mismatched pair that we'd brought, so I modified the log bunk frames in our tent to accommodate the double bag.

The beaver had scattered our firewood, but it didn't take long to get together enough for the night at least.

"I don't know about you, Bwana," she said finally, "but I'm starved again."

I kissed her nose for her. "I'll get right on it," I said. I dug out the big iron grill and got a fired started.

"Clint said he had supper all packed up for us," she said.

"Yeah," I told her, "it's that big sack right at the top of the food pack."

She fished around in the cook tent and came out with the big sack. She carried it over to McKlearey's table and opened it.

"Oh, wow!" she said. "Look at this." She ripped down the side of the sack. "There's a banquet in here. How am I supposed to cook all of this over an open fire? They even put in a bottle of champagne, for cryin' out loud."

"Oh, for Christ's sake," I said.

"What a pair of old sweeties," she said.

Clint had included a note, the first of a dozen or so we found tucked away in various places among the packs. It gave very specific instructions on how to fix supper.

"Well," she said, pulling up the sleeves of the sweatshirt she'd changed into as soon as we'd gotten into camp, "now we find out if I know how to cook out in the woods."

"I'll drop the booze in the spring," I said.

"Then see what you can do in the way of some chairs," she said.

"Chairs?"

"You may plan to eat standing up or all squatted down like a savage of some kind, but I sure don't."

Women!

I examined the construction of Lou's table and managed to fix up a kind of rickety bench. It was a lot more solid when I dug it into the ground.

"There's a tablecloth in that bag over there," she told me.

"A tablecloth?"

"Of course."

The sun had gone down and I built up the fire and cranked up the Coleman lantern to give us light enough to eat by.

We had steak and baked potatoes and all kinds of other little surprises.

"Well?" she said, after I'd taken several bites. "Do I pass?"

"You'll do, Blossom, you'll do."

"Is that all?"

"That's enough, kid." I kissed her noisily.

"Tomorrow night you get a big plate of whatever-it-was."

"Oh, God," I said, "anything but that."

We saved the champagne until it was good and cold. Then we sat by the fire and drank it from tincups. We both got a little fuzzy from it — maybe it was the altitude.

"Danny," she said drowsily after we'd finished the bottle.

"Yes, Rosebud?"

"Let's go to bed and make love."

"What brought that on?"

"Well, damn it, it is my honeymoon, isn't it?"

And so we did that.

The days drifted along goldenly. The biting chill of autumn had not yet moved onto the high meadows and, though the nights were cool, by ten in the morning the sun was very warm. As soon as she found out that there wasn't a soul for ten miles or more in any direction, my flower child turned nudist on me. Her skin soaked in the high sunlight, and she started to tan deliciously. All I managed was a sunburn.

She even tried swimming in the beaver pond, but only once. She was almost blue when she came out. I was just as happy about that, all things considered, since I had designs on the trout.

We hiked around a bit and went horseback riding and laid around in the sun and made love at odd intervals. It was strange, seeing her walking around in her pink, innocent nudity in the places where so many other things had happened.

One night, in our cozy double sleeping bag, it got down to confession time.

"Danny?" she said tentatively.

"Yes?"

"You remember that first night — the time when you picked up Joan and me at the theater?"

"Of course I do."

"I knew," she said in a small voice.

"You knew what, dear?"

"I knew you'd never been to prison."

"Oh? How was that?"

"You don't have any tattoos," she said, tracing designs on my chest with her finger. "Everybody who's ever been to prison has tattoos — even if it's only a few spots or something."

I hadn't thought about that. "Why didn't you just blow the whistle on me then?"

"I wasn't really sure until I got your clothes off," she said.

"You sure could have brought it all to a halt at that point," I said.

"I know," she said, her voice even tinier.

"Why didn't you?"

She buried her face in her arms. "I didn't want to," she said.

I kissed her on the ear. "I won't tell anybody if you won't," I said.

"There's something else," she said, her face still buried in her arms.

"Oh? I'm not sure how much truth I can take in one day."

"You remember how I used to talk — about orgies and all that kind of thing?"

"Yes."

"Well," she said, "I was kind of exaggerating. There was only one other boy really."

I didn't say anything. I'd more or less figured that out for myself.

"Are you mad at me?"

"For not being promiscuous?"

"No, dum-dum, for lying to you."

"Well," I said, "it's pretty awful."

She looked up, stricken, until she saw that I was grinning at her.

"You rat!" she said suddenly, pounding on my chest as I laughed at her. "You absolute, unspeakable rat."

I folded her up in my arms and kissed her soundly. It was one of the better nights.

I suppose I'd been putting it off, but I knew that sooner or later I was going to have to go up there. I'd brought the damned pistol belt along — I'd told myself it was for coyotes or something, but I knew that wasn't really it. I had to duplicate as closely as possible what it had been like, so the gun had to go along.

"I've got to go up on the ridge today," I told her as I came out of the tent that morning.

"Oh? I'll go along," she said.

"I don't think you should really," I said.

"Why not?"

"I'm going to see if I can find that deer," I told her.

"Whatever for? Won't it be all — well —”

"Probably."

"Then why on earth do you want to mess around with it?"

"It's not that I want to," I told her.

"I don't suppose there's any point trying to talk you out of it?"

"Not really."

"Well," she said, "have fun."

"That's not why I'm doing it."

"Men!" she snorted. We'd both taken to doing that a lot lately.

After breakfast I saddled Ned and came back up to camp. I went in and strapped on the pistol.

"Wow," she said, "if it isn't Pancho Villa himself."

"Lay off," I said. "I shouldn't be too long."

"Take your time," she said, stretching. "I'm going back to bed myself." She went on back to the tent.

I nudged Ned on around and on down to the lower end of the basin and across the creek. "Come on, buddy," I told him. "You know the way as well as I do."

He flicked his ears, and we started up the ridge. Even after this short a period of time, the ridge looked different. I couldn't be really sure if it was the fact that the leaves hadn't started to turn or what, but it took me quite a while to find Stan's old post. I figured that would be about the best place to go down. I tied Ned to a bush and climbed on down to the wash at the bottom of the draw.

I covered the wash from the place where I'd entered it that day the year before to the cliff where the deer had fallen. Apparently, there'd been a helluva run-off that spring, because the whole shape of the thing was different. I'd have sworn that I could have gone straight to the spot, but once I got down there, I couldn't find any recognizable landmarks.

I finally settled on a place that had to have been pretty close, but the shape of the banks was all wrong.

It was gone. There was no way I'd ever be able to verify for myself whether it had ever really been there or not. I suppose I'd dreamed about the damned thing so often that I'd begun to almost doubt my own memory of it.

Now, with the wash so changed from the way I remembered it, I was less sure than ever. And so the pale flicker in the brush that I remembered would always be a doubtful phantom for me. There in the shadows at the bottom of the wash, I felt a sudden chill. I climbed back up to the ridge and untied Ned.

"Struck out, old buddy," I said, climbing up into the saddle.

He flickered his ears at me, and we went on back down.

That evening, as the sun was going down, Clydine and I were sitting on a log near the edge of the beaver pond.

"It's just lovely up here, Danny," she said. "I think it's the most beautiful place in the whole world."

I nodded. I don't think I'd said more than three words to her since I'd come back down the ridge.

I suppose I'd been building up to the question for several months. I knew that it was inevitable that sooner or later I should ask it despite all its obvious banality under the circumstances. Even so, it surprised me when I heard myself say it —for one thing, it was badly phrased. You kind of halfway expect something a little more polished from somebody with my background.

"Don't you think it's about time we got married?" I asked her.

Just as I had known I was going to ask her, so she had known she was going to be asked. I guess every girl knows that even before the man has actually made up his mind. And so it was that she'd had plenty of time to devise an answer that would let me know how she felt and at the same time assert her independence.

She looked up at me, smiled, and squeezed my arm.

"Why not?" she said.

ÿ