Miller stopped suddenly, and I froze. Slowly he pointed up the side of the draw and then passed the flat of his hand over the top of his big hat. No horns. Doe.
She stepped out from behind a tree, and I could see her. Miller and I both stood very still until she walked on up out of the draw. Then he motioned, and we went on.
The trees were fairly far apart, and there wasn’t much underbrush even this close to the creek. The floor of the forest was thickly covered with pine needles, softened and very quiet after the rain from the day before.
A faint pink glow of sunlight reflected off the snow-fields above began to filter down between the tree trunks. The air was very clean and sharp, cold and pine-scented. I felt good. This was my kind of hunting.
We walked on down the creek-bed for about a half hour or so, spotting seven or eight more deer — all does or small bucks.
We went around a bend, and Miller froze. He poked his chin straight ahead.
I couldn’t see the deer. Apparently Cap couldn’t either, at least not clearly. He kept moving his head back and forth as if trying to get a clear view between the trees. He lifted his rifle once and then lowered it again. He held out his hand toward me, the fingers fanned out. Five-point.
Then he pointed at me and made a shooting motion with his hand, his forefinger extended and his thumb flipping up and down twice. He wanted me to shoot. Shoot what, for God’s sake?
I put my scope on the woods ahead, but I couldn’t see a damn thing. Then the buck stepped out into an open spot about a hundred yards away and stood facing me, his ears up and his rack held up proudly. I started doing some quick computations. I leaned the rifle barrel against a tree to be sure it would be steady and drew a very careful aim on a point low in the deer’s chest, just between his front legs. I sure didn’t want to mess up this shot with Cap watching me.
I slowly squeezed the trigger. When a shot is good and right on, you get a kind of feeling of connection between you and the animal — almost as if you were reaching out and touching him, very gently, kind of pushing on him with your finger. I don’t want to get mystic about it, but it’s a sort of three-way union — you, the gun, and the deer, all joined in a frozen instant. It’s so perfect that I’ve always kind of regretted the fact that the deer gets killed in the process. Does that make any sense?
The deer went back on his haunches and his front feet went up in the air. Then he fell heavily on one side, his head downhill. The echoes bounced off among the trees.
“Hot damn!” Cap yelled, his face almost chopped in two with his grin. “Damn good shot, son. Damn good!”
I felt about fifteen feet tall.
I jumped the creek again, and the two of us went on up toward the deer.
“Where’d you aim, son?”
“Low in the chest — between the legs.”
He frowned slightly.
“I’m sighted an inch high at two hundred,” I explained. “I figured it at a hundred yards, so I should have been four to six inches above where I aimed. I wanted to get into the neck above the shoulder line so I wouldn’t spoil any meat.”
“Or the liver.” He chuckled.
“Amen to that. I’d get yelled at something awful if I shot out another liver.”
“Old Clint can get just like an old woman about some things.” He laughed.
The deer was lying on his side with blood pumping out of his throat. His eyes blinked slowly. I reached for my pistol.
“You cut the big artery,” Cap said. “You could just as easy let ‘im bleed out.”
“I’d rather not,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he said.
I shot the deer through the head. The blood stopped pumping like someone had turned off a faucet.
“You always do that, don’t you, son?” he said.
I nodded, holstering the pistol. “I figure I owe it to them.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said thoughtfully.
We stood looking at the deer. He had a perfectly symmetrical five-point rack, and his body was heavy and well-fed.
“Beautiful deer,” he said, grinning again. “Let’s see how close you figured it. Where’d you aim?”
“About here,” I said, pointing.
“Looks like you were about eight inches high,” he said. “You took him just under the chin.”
“I must have miscalculated,” I said. “I’d figured to go about six high.”
He nodded. “You was shootin’ uphill,” he said. “You forgot to allow for that. It was a hundred yards measured fiat along the ground — only about seventy yards trajectory though.”
“I never thought of that.”
He laughed and slapped my shoulder. “I don’t think we’ll revoke your license over two inches,” he said.
“Tell me, Cap,” I said, “why didn’t you shoot ‘im?”
“Couldn’t get a clear shot,” he lied with a perfectly straight face.
“Oh,” I said.
“Well, son, let’s gut ‘im.”
“Right.”
With two of us working on it, it took only a few minutes to do the job.
“Why don’t you go get the horses while I rig up a drag?” Cap said.
“Sure.” I leaned my rifle against a tree and took off. We were only a short distance from the horses really, and it took me less than ten minutes to get them. I rode on back, leading Miller’s big walnut-colored Morgan.
“You move right out, don’t you, son?” Cap said as I rode up.
“Long legs,” I said.
“I’m just about done here,” he said. He was sawing at a huckleberry bush with his hunting knife. I got off and handed him the big knife. He chopped the bush off close to the ground.
“That’s sure a handy thing,” he said. “Almost like an ax.”
“That’s what I figured when I got the set,” I said.
He’d rigged up a kind of sled of six or eight of the bushes packed close, side by side, and lashed to a big dead limb across the butts and another holding them together about three feet or so up the trunks. He doubled over a lead-rope and tied it to the limb across the butts. Then we lifted the deer carcass onto the platform and tied it securely with another lead-rope. He tied a long rope to the doubled lead-rope at the front of the drag and fastened it to his saddle horn.
“You want me to hook on, too, Cap?” I asked him.
“Naw,” he said. “Trail’s too narrow, and old Sam here’s big enough to pull the bottom out of a well if you want ‘im to.”
We stood for a moment beside the place where the deer had fallen.
“Good hunt,” he said finally, patting me on the shoulder once. “We’ll have to do ‘er again some time.”
I nodded. “This is the way it ought to be,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “let’s get on back, shall we?”
We mounted and cut across up to the trail.
“Damn nice deer.” Clint grinned when we got back to camp.
“Look at that shot,” Miller said. “Right under the chin at about seventy or eighty yards uphill. The Kid there could drive nails all day with that rifle of his at about two hundred yards. Made the gun himself, too. Restocked one of them old Spring-fields.”
“He fishes OK, too,” Clint said, “and it don’t seem to me he snores too loud. Reckon we oughta let ‘im stay in camp?”
Miller looked at me for a minute. “He’ll do,” he said. We all grinned at each other.
“How ’bout us all havin’ a drink?” Miller said. “I’ll buy.” He went into his tent and came out with a fifth of Old Granddad. He poured liberally into three cups and we stood around sipping at the whiskey.
“I ain’t had so much fun in years,” Cap said. “It was a real fine hunt.”
“I ain’t too much for all that walkin’ you’re partial to,” Clint said, slapping one of his crooked legs.
Cap chuckled. “I told you that rodeoin’ would catch up to you someday. Any action up there on the hill this mornin’?”
“Heard a couple shots earlier,” Clint said. “No signals though.”
“Probably missed,” Cap said sourly. “Them two are each so worried that the other one’s gonna get that damn freak that they can’t even shoot anymore.”
Just thinking about Jack and Lou almost spoiled the whole thing for me. I tried not to think about them. The morning had been too good for me to let that happen.
29
At lunchtime I rode up the ridge to pick up Jack and Lou. Jack just grunted when I brought him his horse, and McKlearey took off down the hill ahead of me. They’d both moved uphill a ways, McKlearey onto my old post, and Jack up to Stan’s.