I came up to the corral about the time Lou was getting off his horse. Jack was waiting for him.
“Now look, you son of a bitch,” he started. “I told you to do your goddamn shootin’ in your own territory.”
“Fuck ya!”
“I mean it, goddammit! That goddamn deer came out right in front of me, and you were at least five hundred yards away. You didn’t have a fuckin’ chance of hittin’ ‘im. You shot just to run ‘im off so I couldn’t get a clear shot.”
“Tough titty, Alders. Don’t tell me how to hunt.”
“All right, motherfucker, I can see the whole hillside, too, remember. I can play the same game. And even if you dumb-luck out and hit ‘im, I’ll shoot the son of a bitch to pieces before you can get to ‘im. You won’t have enough left to be worth bringin’ out.”
McKlearey glared at Jack, his face white. They were standing about ten feet apart and they were both holding their rifles. Jack’s hand was inching toward the butt of his automatic.
“That’s just damn well enough of that kinda talk,” Miller’s voice cracked from behind them.
“This is between him and me,” Jack said.
“Not up here, it ain’t,” Miller said. “Now I don’t know what kinda trouble you two got goin’ between yourselves back in town, but I told you the first day to leave all that stuff down there. I meant what I said, too.”
“We paid you to bring us up here,” McKlearey said. “not to wet-nurse us.” His eyes were kind of wild, and he was holding his rifle with the muzzle pointed about halfway between Jack and Cap.
I’m still not sure why I did it, but I slipped the hammer-thong off my pistol. I think Lou saw me do it because he slowly shifted his rifle until it was tucked up under his right arm so there was no way he could use either of his guns.
Miller had thought over what Lou had said. “I guess maybe we better just pack up and go on back down,” he said. He turned his back on them and walked back up to the fire.
“We paid for ten goddamn days!” McKlearey yelled after him.
I hawked and spit on the ground, right between them.
“He can’t do that,” Jack said.
“Don’t make any bets,” I said flatly. “You guys made a verbal contract with him that first day. He told you that if there was any trouble in camp, we’d all come out. You agreed to it.”
“That wouldn’t stand up in court, would it?” Lou asked.
I nodded. “You bet it would. Particularly around here. If you were going to take him to court, it’d be in this county, and the jury’d all be his neighbors.” I wasn’t that sure, but it sounded pretty good.
“Well, what the hell do we do now?” Jack demanded.
“You might as well go pack your gear,” I said. “He meant it about going back down.”
“Who needs ‘im?” Lou said. “Let ‘im go.”
“It’s twelve miles back to the road, McKlearey,” I said, “and he’ll take the horses, the tents, and all the cooking equipment with him. Even if you got that damned freak deer, how would you get him out of the woods?”
He hadn’t thought of that.
“You sound like you’re on Ms side,” Jack accused me.
“How ’bout that?” I said. I walked off down toward the pond. It was a helluva goddamn way to wind up the trip.
I guess both Jack and Lou did a lot of crawfishing, but Miller finally relented. I suppose he really didn’t want his first trip as a guide to wind up that way. Anyway, they managed to talk him out of it.
Much as I wanted to stay up there, I still thought Miller was making a mistake. I went back to camp and moved all my gear into the empty tent.
“You don’t have to do that, Dan,” Jack said quietly as I started to roll up my sleeping bag.
“We’ll both have more room this way,” I said.
“Christ, Dan, you know how McKlearey can rub a guy raw.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but you’re grown-up now, Jack. You’re not some runny-nosed kid playing cowboys and Indians.” I stopped in the doorway of the tent. “One other thing, old buddy,” I said, “keep your goddamn hand away from that pistol from now on. There’s not gonna be any of that shit up here.” I went on out of the tent. McKlearey was standing outside. I guess he’d been listening.
“That goes for you, too, shithead,” I told him.
Christ! I was right in the middle again. How the hell do I always get myself in that spot?
It took me about fifteen minutes to get settled in, and then we ate lunch. Nobody talked much. Both Jack and Lou went back to their tents after we finished.
“I probably shouldn’t have changed my mind,” Cap said quietly. “I got a feelin’ it was a mistake.”
“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.