I didn’t really count him until later. I just saw the flaring rack and the calm, almost arrogant look on his face, and I knew that he was the one I wanted. He was big and heavily muscled. He was wary but not frightened or timid. It was his mountain.
He stood broadside to me and seemed to be looking straight across at me, though I don’t really think he saw me. Maybe he just knew that I was there, as I had known that he would be.
I put the cross hairs of the scope just behind his front shoulder and slipped off the safety. His ears flicked.
I slowly squeezed the trigger.
I didn’t hear the shot or feel the recoil of the rifle. The deer jerked and fell awkwardly. Then he stumbled to his feet and fell again. He got up again slowly and kind of walked on back over the other side of the ridge, his head down. It didn’t occur to me to shoot again. I knew it wasn’t necessary.
I stood up, listening now to the echo of the shot rolling off down the side of the mountain. I jacked out the empty shell, slipped the safety back on and slung the rifle. Then I started down into the ravine. I could hear the three does scrambling up through the brush on the far side.
The going was pretty rough, and it took me about ten minutes to get to where he’d been standing. I looked around on the ground until I found a blood spot. Then another. I followed them down the other side.
He’d gone about a hundred yards down the easy slope of the far side of the ridge and was lying on his side in a little clump of brush. His head was still raised but wobbling, as I walked carefully up to him. His eyes were not panicky or anything. I stepped behind him, out of range of his hooves, and took out my pistol. I thumbed back the hammer and put the muzzle to the side of his head between his eye and ear. His eye watched me calmly.
“Sorry I took so long to get here, buddy,” I said.
Then I pulled the trigger.
The gun made a muffled kind of pop — without any echo to it, and the deer’s head dropped heavily, and the life went out of his eye. I knelt beside him and ran my hand over his heavy shoulder. The fur felt coarse but very slick, and it was a kind of dark gray with little white tips shot through it. He smelled musky but not rank or anything.
I stood up, pointed the pistol up toward the top of the mountain, and fired it again. Then I began to wonder if maybe I’d given the wrong signal. I put the pistol back in the holster and slipped the hammer-thong back on. Then I leaned my rifle against a large rock and hauled the deer out in the open. I walked back on up to the ridge and hung my jacket over a bush to mark the spot for whoever came up with a horse.
I went back to the deer and started gutting him out. I wasn’t nearly as fast as Clint was, but I managed to get the job done finally. I did seem to get a helluva lot of blood on my clothes though, but that didn’t really matter.
I was trying to get him rolled over to drain out when Clint came riding down the ridge, leading Ned and a packhorse.
“Damn nice deer,” he said, grinning. “Six-pointer, huh?”
“I didn’t count him,” I said. I checked the deer. “Yeah, it’s six points, all right.”
“Have any trouble?” He climbed down.
“No. He came out on the ridge, I shot him, and he kind of staggered down here and fell down. I’m afraid I busted up the liver pretty bad though.” I pointed at the shredded organ lying on top of the steaming gut-pile.
“Where’d you take him?” he asked.
“Right behind the shoulder.”
“That’s dependable,” he said. “Here, lemme help you dump ‘im out.”
We rolled the deer over.
“Heavy bugger, ain’t he?” Clint chuckled.
“We’re gonna get a rupture getting him on the horse,” I said. “Say, how’d you get above me anyway?”
“I come up through the meadows and then across the upper end of the ravine at the foot of the rockslide. Gimme your knife a minute.”
I handed it to him.
“Better get these offa here.” He cut away two dark, oily-looking patches on the inside of the deer’s hind legs, just about the knees. “Musk-glands,” he said. “Some fellers say they taint the meat — I don’t know about that for sure, but I always cut ’em off on a buck, just to be safe.” Then he reached inside the cut I’d made in the deer’s throat and sliced one on each side. “Let’s turn him so’s his head’s downhill,” he said.
We turned the deer and blood slowly drained out, running in long trickles down over the rocks. There really wasn’t very much.
Clint held out his hand. I wiped mine off on my pants, and we shook hands.
“Damn good job, Dan. I figure that you’ll do.”
It was a little embarrassing. “Hey,” I said. “I damn near forgot my coat.” I went on up to the ridge-top and got it. The sun was just coming up. I felt good, damned good. I ran back down to where Clint was standing.
“Easy, boy,” — he laughed —”you stumble over somethin’ and you’ll bounce all the way to Twisp.”
“OK,” I said, “now, how do we get him on the horse?”
“I got a little trick I’ll show you,” he said, winking. He took a coil of rope off his saddle and dropped a loop over the deer’s horns. We rolled him over onto his back, and Clint towed him over to a huge flat boulder with his horse. The uphill side of the boulder was level with the rest of the hill and the downhill side was about six feet above the slope. Then he led the pack-horse over and positioned him below the rock. I held the pack-horse’s head, and Clint slowly pulled the deer out over the edge.
“Get his front feet on out past the saddle, if you can, Dan,” Clint said.
I reached on out and pulled the legs over. When the deer reached the point where he was just balanced, Clint got off his horse and came back up.
“You’re taller’n me,” he said. “I’ll hold the horse, and you just ease the carcass down onto the saddle.”
I went around onto the top of the rock and carefully pushed the deer off, holding him back so he wouldn’t fall on over. It was really very simple. Once the deer was in place we tied him down and it was all done.
“Pretty clever,” I said.
“I don’t lift no more’n I absolutely have to.” He grinned. “Fastest way I know to get old in a hurry is to start liftin’ stuff.”
“I’ll buy that,” I said. “Which way we going back down?”
“Same way I come up,” he said. “That way we don’t spook the deer for the others. You ’bout ready?”
“Soon as I tie on my rifle,” I said. I went back and got it and tied it to the saddle. Ned shied from me a little — the blood-smell, probably.
“Steady, there, knothead,” I said. He gave me a hurt look. I climbed on and we rode on up to the top of the ridge. We cut on across the foot of the rockfall and out into the meadows.
“Cap was gonna come up,” Clint said, “but somebody oughta stay with the Big Man, and I know these packhorses better’n he does.”
I nodded.
We rode on slowly down through the meadows toward camp. I could see the others over on the ridge, standing and watching. I waved a couple times.
“God damn, boy,” Miller said, “you got yourself a good one.” He was chuckling, his brown face creased with a big grin.
“Had it all gutted out and ever-thin’,” Clint told him.
Sloan came out of his tent. He was still breathing hard, but he looked a little better.
“Hot damn!” he coughed. “That’s a beauty.”
I climbed down off Ned.
“I fixed up a crossbar,” Miller said. “Let’s get ‘im up to drain out good.”
Clint slit the hocks and we slipped a heavy stick through. Then we led the packhorse over to the crossbeam stretched between two trees behind the cook-tent. Miller had hooked up a pulley on the beam. We pulled the deer up by his hind legs and fastened him in place with baling wire.
“Damn,” Miller said, “that’s one helluva heavy deer. Three hundred pounds or better. Somebody in the bunch might get more horns, but I pretty much doubt if anybody’ll get more meat.”