I listened for a while, but I kind of felt as if I were intruding on something pretty private. I guess they were willing to share it, or they wouldn’t have talked about it, but I’ve never much enjoyed that kind of thing. I’d a whole lot rather take people as I find them and not know too much about their past lives.
“Well,” I said, standing up, “I guess I’d better get back to work if we’re going to have trout for supper.”
“Work?” Clint chuckled. “Who are you tryin’ to kid?”
I laughed and went on down to the lower pond.
It was a lot slower now, and the fish seemed sluggish. I let my mind drift. I don’t think I intended to. Usually I kept a pretty tight grip on it.
It had been on a day like this that I’d taken off from the Old Lady that time. I could still remember it. I’d gotten a job at one of the canned goods plants when I’d gotten out of high school, and when I came home from work that day, I’d found her in bed with some big slob. I’d yelled at him to get the hell out of the house, but he’d just laughed at me. Then I’d tried to hit him, and he’d beaten the crap out of me.
“Hit the little snot a time or two for me, Fred,” my mother had yelled drunkenly.
After he’d finished with me and gone back into the bedroom, I had packed up a few clothes and taken off. I’d only stopped long enough to paint the word “whore” on the side of the house in green letters about five feet high and swipe the distributor cap off Fred’s car. Both of my little revenges had been pretty damned petty, but what the hell else can you be at seventeen?
There was a shot up on the ridge. Then another. Then three more from a different rifle. The echoes bounced around a lot, muffled a little by the still lightly falling rain.
I stood waiting for the pistol-shot signal, but one never came. ‘Trigger-happy bastards,” I said and went back to fishing.
I caught three more pretty good-sized ones just before the sun went down, and I cleaned the whole bunch and carted them up to the fire. By then the rain had stopped, and the sky was starting to clear.
“Got a mess, huh?” Miller said.
“Best I could do,” I said.
When Lou and Jack came back, they were both soaked and bad-tempered.
“Keep your goddamn shots off my end of the hill, McKlearey,” Jack snarled as soon as Lou came in.
“Fuck ya!” McKlearey snapped back.
“That’s about enough of that, men,” Miller said sternly. “Any more of that kinda talk and we’ll break camp and go down right now.”
They both glared at him for a minute, but they shut up.
Clint fried up the trout, and we had venison and beans to go along with them. I was starting to get just a little tired of beans.
McKlearey had taken to sitting off by himself again, and after supper he sat with his back to a stump a ways off from the fire, holding his bandaged hand with the other one and muttering to himself. He hadn’t changed the bandage for a couple of days, and it was pretty filthy. Every now and then I’d catch the names “Sullivan” and “Danny,” but I wasn’t really listening to him.
We all went to bed fairly early.
“Goddammit, Jack,” I said, “Miller’s not kidding. He and Clint have just about had a gutful of you and McKlearey yapping at each other about that damned white deer. Now I know a helluva lot more about what’s happening than they do, and I’m starting to get a little sick of it myself. If you’re going to hunt, hunt right. If you’re not, let’s pack it up and go down the hill.”
“Butt out,” he said. “This is between that shithead and me.”
“That’s just the point,” I said. “You two are slopping it all over everybody else.”
“If you don’t like it, why don’t you just pack up and go on down? You’re all finished anyway.”
“Then who the goddamn hell would be around to keep you and McKlearey from killing each other?”
“Who asked you to?”
“I invited myself,” I said. “In a lot of ways I don’t think much of you, but you’re my brother, and I’m a son of a bitch if I want to see you get all shot up or doing about thirty years in the pen for shooting somebody as worthless as McKlearey.” Maybe I came down a little hard. Jack’s ego was pretty damned tender.
“As soon as they get those saddles out of there,” he said, “I’ll move over to Sloane’s old tent.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” I said. “I’ll be all moved out by noon.”
“Whichever way you want it,” he said.
We both rolled over so our backs were to each other.
28
After he got back from taking Jack and Lou up the hill next morning, Miller came up to where I was sitting by the fire. “Feel like doin’ a little huntin’, son?” he asked me.
I looked up at him, not understanding what he was talking about.
“Somebody ought to fill the Big Man’s tag for him,” he said. I’d forgotten that.
“Sure,” I said, “I’ll get my rifle.”
“We’ll poke on down the trail a ways and hunt in the timber. That way we won’t bother them two up on the hill.”
The sky had lightened, and the pale light was beginning to slide back in under the tree trunks.
“Try not to shoot up the liver this time,” Clint said, faking a grouchy look.
“OK, Clint.” I laughed.
Miller and I got our rifles and went on down to the corral. I saddled Ned and we started on out.
“We’ll go on down into the next valley and picket the horses,” he said after a while. “Do us a little Indian huntin’.”
“You’d better field-strip that for me,” I said.
“Put our noses into the wind and walk along kinda slow. See what we can scare up.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s my kind of hunting.”
“Get restless sittin’ still, is that it, son?”
“I suppose,” I said.
“If I’m not bein’ nosy, just how old are you?”
“Twenty-five last April,” I said.
He nodded. “‘Bout what I figured. ‘Bout the same age as my boy woulda been.”
I didn’t push it. He and Clint had said a few things about “the accident” the day before. I hadn’t known he’d had any kids.
“Lost him the same time I lost my wife,” he said quietly. Then he didn’t say any more for quite a while.
We rode on down into the valley and got into the pine trees.
“Creek there,” he said. “Wind’ll be comin’ up the draw this time of day.”
“Good little clearing right there for the horses,” I said pointing.
“Should work out about right,” he said.
We went on, dismounted, and hooked Ned and Miller’s big Morgan to a couple of long picket-ropes. We unhooked our rifles and went on down into the creek-bottom. Miller’s rifle was an old, well-used bolt-action of some kind with a scope that had been worn shiny in a couple places from being slid in and out of the case so many times. It had obviously been well taken care of.
“I see you brought that hog-leg along,” he said, nodding at my pistol belt.
“Starting to be a habit,” I said. “Besides, I keep extra rifle cartridges on one side, and my knives are on it,” I said. I still felt a little apologetic about the damned thing.
“Can you hit anything with it?” he asked me.
“Not at any kind of range.”
“You shootin’ high or low?”
“Low.”
“You’re pushin’ into the recoil just before you shoot,” he said. “Clint always used to do the same thing.”
“How do you mean?”
“Just before you fire. You push your hand forward to brace your arm for the kick.” He held out his right forefinger pistol-fashion and showed me.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, trying to remember the last time I’d fired it at a target.
“Get somebody to load it for you and leave a couple empty. Then shoot it. You’ll be able to spot it right off. Barrel dips like you was tryin’ to dig a well with it when you click down on an empty chamber.”
“How does a guy get over it?”
“Just knowin’ what you’re doin’ oughta take care of most of it.”
I nodded.
“Well, son,” he said, grinning at me, “let’s you and me go huntin’, shall we?”
“Right, Cap,” I said.
“You take the left side of the creek, and I’ll take the right. We’ll just take our time.”
I jumped the creek, and we started off down the draw, moving very slowly and looking around.