We stood around and looked at the deer for a while.
“How ’bout some coffee?” Clint said.
“How ’bout some whiskey?” Cal giggled and then coughed.
“How ’bout some of both?” Miller chuckled. “I think this calls for a little bendin’ of the rules, don’t you?”
“Soon as I see to my horse.” I grinned at them. I walked over toward Ned, and my feet felt like they weren’t even touching the ground, I felt so good.
25
I got up at the usual time the next morning and had breakfast with the others. I felt a little left out now. The night before had been fine, with everyone going back to look at the deer and all. Even with the skin off and the carcass in a large mesh game bag to keep the bugs off, it looked pretty impressive. Clint and I had salted the hide and rolled it into a bundle with the head on top. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, but this way I’d be able to make the decision later. After the big spiel I’d given Clydine the day I’d left about not being a trophy hunter, I was about half-ashamed to keep the head and all, but I knew I’d have to have it in case of a game check. I thought maybe I could have the hide tanned and made into a vest or gloves or something — maybe a purse for her.
At breakfast I watched Cal carefully. He was coughing pretty badly, but he insisted on going down. I noticed that he didn’t eat much breakfast.
We all walked on down to the corral, and I watched the others saddle up. Ned came over and nuzzled at me. I guess he couldn’t quite figure out why we weren’t going along. I patted him a few times and told him to go back to sleep — that’s what I more or less had in mind.
“Go ahead and loaf, you lazy bastard,” Jack said.
Miller chuckled. “Don’t begrudge him the rest — he’s earned it.”
“Right,” I said, rubbing it in a little bit. “If you guys would get off the dime, you could lay around camp and loaf a little bit, too.”
“Of course, all the fun’s over for you, Dan,” Sloane gasped.
I’d thought of that, too. We went back up to the tents so they could pick up their rifles.
I stood with my back to the campfire watching them ride off into the darkness. The sound of splashing came back as they crossed the little creek down below the beaver dam.
“More coffee, boy?” Clint asked me.
“Yeah, Clint. I think I could stand another cup.”
We hunkered down by the fire with our coffee cups.
“Now that you’ve shown them fellers how, I expect we’ll be gettin’ a few more deer in camp.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “If they’ll just get off that damn nonsense about that white deer.”
“Oh, I expect they will. I got about half a hunch that all you fellers shootin’ at ‘im the other day spooked ‘im clear outa the territory.”
“I sure as hell hope so,” I said.
“Knew a feller killed one once,” he said. “He gave me some steaks off it. I dunno, but to me they just didn’t taste right. The feller give up huntin’ a couple years later. I always wondered if maybe that didn’t have somethin’ to do with it — ‘course he was gettin’ along in years.”
I wasn’t really sure how much Clint knew about what had happened that day, so I didn’t say much.
“What you plannin’ on doin’ today?” he asked me.
“Oh, I thought I’d give you a hand around camp after a bit,” I said.
“You’d just be under foot,” he said bluntly.
“We can always use more firewood.” He grinned.
“Then I might ride old Ned around a little, too. I wouldn’t want him to be getting so much rest that he’s got the time to be inventing new tricks.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry none about mat. I think you and him got things about all straightened out.”
“But the first thing I’m gonna do is go back to bed for a while,” I said, grinning at him. “This getting up while it’s still dark is plain unhealthy.”
“It’s good for you.” He chuckled. “Kinda gets you back in tune with the sun.”
The more I thought about that, the more sense it made. Whatever the reason, when I went back to bed, I rolled and tossed in my sleeping bag for about an hour and a half and then gave it up as a bad job. I got up, had another cup of coffee, and watched the sunrise creep down the side of the mountain.
I finally wound up down by the beaver pond, watching the trout swim by.
“You wanna give ’em a try?” Clint hollered from camp.
“You got any gear?” I yelled back.
“Has a duck got feathers? Come up here, boy.”
Miller was sitting by the fire mending a torn place on the skirt of one of the saddles. “Old Clint never goes no place without his fishpole,” he said. “He’d pack it along on a trip into a desert — probably come back with fish, too.”
The little guy came back out of his tent putting together a jointed, fiber-glass rod. He tossed me a leather reel case. I opened it and took out a beautiful Garcia spinning reel.
“Man,” I said, “that’s a fine piece of equipment.”
“Should be,” he growled, “after what I paid for it.”
Somehow I’d pictured him as the willow-stick, bent-pin-and-worm kind of fisherman.
“How you wanna fish ’em?” he asked me.
“What do you think’ll work best? You know a helluva lot more about this kind of water than I do.”
He squinted at the sky. “Wait till about ten or so,” he said.
“Sun gets on the water good, you might try a real small spoon — Meppes or Colorado spinner.”
“What bait?”
“Single eggs. Or you might try corn.”
“Corn?”
“Whole kernel. I’ll give you a can of it.”
“I’ve never used it before,” I admitted.
“Knocks ’em dead sometimes. Give it a try.”
We got the pole rigged up, and I carted it and the gear down to the pond. I’d never used com before, and it took me a while to figure out how to get it threaded on the hook, but I finally got it down pat. After about ten minutes or so I hooked into a pretty nice one. He tailwalked across the pond and threw the hook. I figured that would spook the others, so I moved on down to the lower pond, down by the corrals.
The lower pond was smaller, deeper, and had more limbs and junk in it. It was trickier fishing.
On about the fourth or fifth cast, a ranker about sixteen inches or so flashed out from under a half-buried limb and grabbed the corn before it even got a chance to sink all the way to the bottom. I set the hook and felt the solid jolt clear to my shoulder. He came up out of the water like an explosion.
I held the rod-tip up and worked him away from the brush. It was tricky playing a fish in there, and it took me a good five minutes to work him over to the edge.
“Does nice work, don’t he?” Clint said from right behind me. I damn near jumped across the pond. I hadn’t known he was there. When I turned around, they were both there, grinning.
“He’ll do,” Miller said.
I lifted out the fish and unhooked him.
“Want to try one?” I asked, offering the pole to Clint.
I saw his hands twitch a few times, but he firmly shook his head. “I get started on that,” he said, “and nobody’d get no dinner.”
“Shall I throw him back?” I asked, holding out the flopping fish.
“Hell, no!” Clint said. “Don’t never do that! If you don’t want ’em, don’t pester ’em. Put ‘im on a stringer and keep ‘im in the water. Catch some more like ‘im and we’ll have fresh trout for lunch — make up for that liver you blew all to hell yesterday.”
“Yes, sir!” I laughed, throwing him a mock salute.
“Don’t never pay to waste any kinda food around Clint here,” Miller said.
“I went hungry a time or two when I was a kid,” Clint said. “I didn’t like it much, and I don’t figger on doin’ it again, if I can help it.”
The hollow roar of a rifle shot echoed bouncingly down the ridge.
“Meat in the pot,” Clint said.
There were three more shots, raggedly spaced.
“Not so sure,” Miller said, squinting up the ridge.
“We going up?” I asked, gathering up the fishing gear.
“Let’s see what kind of signal we get,” Miller said.
We waited.
There finally came a flat crack of a pistol. After a minute or so there was a second.