“Hey, Jack,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You remember Dad?”
“Sure.”
“He liked to hunt, didn’t he?”
“Whenever he could. The Old Lady was pretty much down on it. About all he could do by the time you were growin’ up was to go out for ducks now and then. He used to sneak out of the house in the morning before she woke up. She wouldn’t let him go out for deer anymore.”
“Whatever happened to that old .45-70 Granddad left him?”
“She sold it. Spent the money on booze.”
“Shit! You know, I’ve got a hunch we’d have been raised better by a bitch wolf.”
“You’re just bitter,” he said.
“You’re goddamn right I am,” I said. “I wouldn’t walk across the street for her if she was dying.”
“She calls once in a while,” he said. “I try to keep her away from the kids. You never know when she’s gonna show up drunk.”
“How’s she paying her way?”
“Who knows? Workin’ in a whorehouse for all I know.”
“I wonder why the Old Man didn’t kick her ass out into the street.”
“You and me, that’s why,” my brother said.
“Yeah, there’s that, too, I suppose.”
We passed through Cashmere about five and swung north toward Lake Chelan. The sky began to get pale off to the east.
“God damn, that’s nice, isn’t it?” Jack said, pointing at the sky.
“Dawn the rosy-fingered,” I said, misquoting Homer, “caressing the hair of night.”
“Say, that’s pretty good. You make it up?”
I shook my head.
“You read too goddamn much, you know that? When I say something, you can be pretty goddamn sure it’s right out of my own head.” He belched.
We drove on, watching the sky grow lighter and lighter. As the light grew stronger, the poplar leaves began to emerge in all their brilliant yellow along the river bottoms. The pines swelled black behind them.
“Pretty country,” Jack said.
“Hey,” I said, “look at that.”
A doe with twin fawns was standing hock-deep in a clear stream, drinking, the ripples sliding downstream from where she stood. She raised her head, her ears flicking nervously as we passed.
“Pretty, isn’t she?” he said.
We got to Twisp about eight and hauled into a gas station. Sloane went in and called Miller while we got our gas tanks filled.
“He’s got everything all ready,” he said when he came back out. “He told me how to get there.”
“How far is it?” Lou asked. “This bucket is gettin’ pretty fuckin’ tuckered.” He slapped the fender of his car with his bandaged hand.
“About fifteen miles,” Sloane said. “Road’s good all the way.”
We paid for the gas and drove on out of town. Twisp is one of those places with one paved street and the rest dirt. It squats in the valley with the mountains hulking over it threateningly, green-black rising to blue-black, and then the looming white summits.
The road out to Miller’s wasn’t the best, but we managed. The sun was up now, and the poplar leaves gleamed pure gold. The morning air was so clear that every rock and limb and leaf stood out. The fences were straight lines along the road and on out across the mowed hayfields. The mountains swelled up out of the poplar-gold bottoms. It was so pretty it made your throat ache. I felt good, really good, maybe for the first time in years.
Sloane slowed up, then went on, then slowed again. He was reading mailboxes. Finally he signaled, the blinker on his Caddy looking very ostentatious out here.
We wheeled into a long driveway and drove on up toward a group of white painted buildings and log fences. A young colt galloped along beside us as we drove to the house. He was all sleek, and his muscles rolled under his skin as he ran. He acted like he was running just for the fun of it.
“Little bastard’s going to outrun us,” Jack said, laughing.
We pulled up in the yard in front of the barn and parked where a stumpy little old guy with white hair and a two-week stubble directed us to. He was wearing cowboy boots and a beat-up old cowboy hat, and he walked like his legs had been broken a half dozen times. If that was Miller, I was damn sure going to be disappointed.
It wasn’t.
Miller came out of the house, and I swear he had a face like a hunk of rock. With that big, old-fashioned white mustache, he looked just a little bit like God himself. He wore cowboy boots and had a big hat like the little white-haired man, and neither of them looked out of place in that kind of gear. Some guides dress up for the customers, but you could tell that these two were for real. I took a good look at Miller and decided that I’d go way out of my way to keep from crossing him. He was far and away the meanest-looking man I’ve ever seen in my life. I understood what Mike had meant about him.
We turned off the motors, and the silence seemed suddenly very solid. We got out, and he looked at us — hard — sizing each one of us up.
“Men,” he said. It was a sort of greeting, I guess — or maybe a question. His voice was deep and very quiet — no louder than it absolutely had to be.
Even Sloane’s exuberance was a little dampened. He stepped forward. “Mr. Miller,” he said, “I’m Cal Sloane.” They shook hands.
“I’ll get to know the rest of you in good time,” he said. “Right now breakfast’s ready. Give Clint there your personal gear and sleepin’ bags, and we’ll go in and eat.” I never learned Clint’s last name or Miller’s first one.
We unloaded the cars and then followed Miller on up to the house. He led us through a linoleumed kitchen with small windows and an old-fashioned sink and wood stove, and on into the dining room, where we sat down at the table. The room had dark wood paneling and the china was very old, white with a fine-line blue Japanese print on it. The room smelled musty, and I suspected it wasn’t used much. There was a wood-burning heating stove in the comer that popped now and men. Miller came back out of the kitchen with a huge enameled coffee pot and filled all our cups.
The coffee was hot and black and strong enough to eat the fillings out of your teeth. The stumpy little guy came in and started carting food out of the kitchen. First he brought out a platter of steaks.
“Venison,” Miller said. “Figured we’d better clean up what’s left over from last winter.”
Then there were biscuits and honey, then eggs and fried potatoes. There were several pitchers of milk on the table. We all ate everything Miller ate; I think we were afraid not to.
But when the little guy hauled out a couple of pies, I had to call a halt.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll have to admit that you guys can out eat me.” I pushed myself back from the table.
“The Kid just can’t keep up.” Jack laughed.
“Well, you don’t have to eat it all,” Miller said. “We just figured you might be a little hungry.”
“Hungry, yes,” I said, grinning, “but I couldn’t eat all that if I was starving.”
“Better eat,” the man Miller had called Clint growled. “Be four hours in the saddle before you feed again.”
“I think I’m good for twelve,” I said. I lit a cigarette and poured myself another cup of coffee.
“After a few hours in the high country,” Clint warned, “your belly’s gonna think your th’oat’s been cut.” He sounded like he meant it.
The others finished eating, and Clint poured more coffee all around. Miller fished out a sheet of paper from one of his shirt pockets and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses out of another.
“Guess we might as well get all this settled right now,” he said, putting on the glasses. “That way we won’t have it hangin’ fire.”
We all took out our wallets. Clint went out and came back with a beat-up old green metal box. Miller opened it and took out a receipt book.
“Ten days,” Miller said, “fifty dollars a man.” We all started counting money out on the table. He looked around and nodded in approval. He started filling out receipts laboriously, licking the stub of the pencil now and then. He asked each of us our names and filled them in on the receipts. Clint took our money and put it away in the tin box.
“Now,” Miller said, squinting at the paper, “the grub come to a hundred and fifty dollars. I got a list here and the price of ever-thing if you want to check it. I already took off for me and Clint. Your share come to a hundred and fifty and a few odd dollars, but call it a hundred and fifty. I figured it out, and its thirty dollars a man. You can check my figures if you want. I kept it down as much as I could. We won’t eat fancy, but it’ll stick with us.” He looked around, offering the paper. We all shook our heads.