Clint, Stan, and Sloane left about two that afternoon. The rest of us stood around and watched them ride out. We’d tried to joke with Cal a little before he left, but he’d been too sick. His face was very pale, framed in the dark fur of his parka hood. The day seemed pretty warm to me, but I guess he felt cold. Just before they left, he gave Miller his tag.
“If you get a chance” — he gasped —”you might have somebody fill it for me.”
“Sure,” Miller said, “we’ll get one for you.”
“I think I’ll go on up a little early,” McKlearey said after they’d disappeared down the trail.
Jack looked at him narrowly. “Maybe I will, too,” he said.
“Not much point,” Miller said.
“We can find our way up there,” Jack said.
Miller looked at them. Finally he shrugged. “Just don’t stay too late,” he said.
“We both got watches,” McKlearey said, nursing his bandaged hand.
Miller walked away.
I felt like there’d been a funeral in camp. Jack and Lou went on up the hill, and I sat around watching Miller get things squared away for dinner. I offered to help but he said no.
“You take care of that fish?” he asked me.
“Oh, hell.” I’d completely forgotten the fish.
“Why don’t you see if you can get a few more?” he said.
“Sure.” I got Clint’s pole and went on down to the pond. It was a little slow, but I managed to get three more before the sun went down. I cleaned them and took them back up to camp.
“Enough to go around.” Miller grinned at me. He seemed to be in a better humor now.
“I guess if I was fishing to eat, I wouldn’t starve,” I said, “but I don’t think I’d gain too much weight.”
“Not many would,” he said. “Clint, maybe, but I sure wouldn’t. Maybe I just ain’t got the patience.”
“Maybe you just can’t think like a fish,” I told him.
He didn’t answer. He was looking on off toward the mountains.
“Weather comin’ in,” he said.
I looked up. A heavy cloudbank was building up along the tops of the peaks.
“Bad?” I asked him.
“Hard to tell. Rain, most likely.”
Lou and Jack came on down about dark, and we ate supper. There weren’t enough trout to make a meal of, so we just ate them as a kind of side dish.
With Clint, Stan, and Sloane gone, the group around the fire seemed very small, and it was a whole lot quieter.
“I think I seen ‘im today,” Lou said finally.
“Where?” Jack asked quickly.
“Up above me. I think I’ll move on up to Danny’s spot tomorrow.”
“You’ll have to walk that last bit,” Miller said. “That horse of yours ain’t that good.”
“I can do that, too,” Lou told him.
After that, nobody said much.
“Clint coming back tonight?” I asked Miller finally.
“More’n likely,” he said. “He’ll probably try to beat the weather.”
“Think we’ll get snow?” Jack asked him.
“Could. Rain more likely.”
“What’ll that do to the deer?”
“Hold ’em back at first. They’ll have to come out eventually though.”
I sat staring at the fire. I didn’t much like the way Lou and Jack were beginning to push on Miller. The whole situation had changed now. With the others out of camp, things were getting pretty tight. Before, Cal and Stan had been around to kind of serve as a buffer between these two, and, of course, Clint’s stories had helped, too. It was a lot grimmer now. I almost began to wish I’d gone down with the others. That would have left Miller right in the middle though, and that wouldn’t have been any good. He didn’t know what was going on.
“I suppose we might as well bed down,” Miller said finally. “I imagine we’ll get woke up when Clint comes in.”
We all stood up and went off to our tents.
“I wish to hell you and McKlearey would get off this damn thing about that stupid deer,” I told Jack after we’d crawled in our sacks.
“You know what’s goin’ on,” he said shortly. “I ain’t gonna back away from him like Larkin did.”
“Stan didn’t back away,” I said. “Stan finally got smart.”
“How do you figure?”
“Day before yesterday he took a shot at Lou. Sprayed dirt all over him.”
“No shit?” Jack sounded surprised.
“Scared the piss out of him.”
Jack laughed. “I wish I coulda seen it.”
“It’s not really that funny,” I said. “That’s why Stan left camp. He wasn’t sure he could make himself miss next time.”
“I sure wouldn’t a missed. So Lou was playin’ around with Stan’s wife, too, huh? I didn’t think he was her type.”
“He isn’t. She got stupid, is all.”
“Well, don’t get shook. I ain’t gonna shoot ‘im. I’m just gonna outhunt ‘im. I’m gonna get that deer.”
I grunted and rolled over to go to sleep.
McKlearey had another nightmare that night, screaming for Sullivan and for some guy named Danny — I knew that it wasn’t me. It took us quite a while to get him calmed down this time.
Then about two thirty or so Clint came in, and we all got up again to help him get the horses unsaddled. It had started to drizzle by then, so we had to move all the saddles into the now-empty tent where Stan and Cal had slept.
All in all it was a pretty hectic night.
27
It drizzled rain all the next day. Miller had told Jack and Lou that there was no point in going out in the morning if it were raining, so we all slept late.
Camping out in the rain is perhaps one of the more disagreeable experiences a man can go through. Even with a good tent, everything gets wet and clammy.
Ragged clouds hung in low over the basin, and the ground turned sodden. Clint and Miller moved around slowly in rain-shiny ponchos, their cowboy hats turning darker and darker as they got wetter and wetter. The rest of us sat in our tents staring out glumly.
The fire smoked and smoldered, and what wind there was always seemed to blow the smoke right into the tents.
“Christ, isn’t it ever gonna let up?” Jack said about ten o’clock. It was the fourth time he’d said it. I was pretty sure that if he said it again I was going to punch him right in the mouth.
“Piss on it,” I said. “I’m going fishing.”
“You’re outa your tree. You’ll get your ass soakin’ wet out there.”
I shrugged. “I’ve got plenty of dry clothes,” I said and went on out.
“Can I use your pole, Clint?” I asked.
“Sure. See if you can get enough for supper.”
“I’ll give it a try.” I picked up the pole and went on down to the ponds again. I’d kind of halfway thought I’d alternate between the two ponds, giving the fish time to calm down between catches, but I didn’t get the chance. The larger, upper pond was so hot I never got away from it. The top of the water was a leaden gray, roughened up with the rain and the little gusts of wind. Maybe it was just obscured enough that the fish couldn’t see me, I don’t know for sure, but they were biting so fast I couldn’t keep my hook baited. I caught seven the first hour.
It slowed down a little after lunch, about the time the rain slackened off, so I hung it up for a while and went on back up to camp. Jack and Lou took off for the ridge, and Clint, Miller, and I hunched up around the fire.
“Should clear off tonight,” Clint said. “Weather forecast I caught last night down at the place said so anyway.”
“I sure hope so,” I said. “With the other two gone down and the rain, it’s so damned gloomy around here you can carve it with a knife.”
“How many fish you get?” he asked me.
“Nine or ten so far,” I said. “I’ll go get some more after I dry out a bit.”
“There’s no rush, son,” Miller said. “You’re right about missin’ the other two though — I mean like you said. When a bunch of men start out on somethin’ together, it always kinda upsets things if some of ’em don’t make it all the way through.” He turned to Clint. “Remember that time the bunch of us went out to log that stretch up by Omak and old Clark got hurt?”
“Yeah,” Clint said.
“I don’t think old Clark had said more’n about eight words in two months,” Miller went on, “and he always went to bed early and stayed off by himself, but it just wasn’t the same without him there.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Clint said.
They started reminiscing about some of the things they’d done and some of the places they’d gone. They’d covered a helluva lot of ground together, one way or the other — particularly after Miller’s wife had died about twenty years or so ago.