As soon as Cap dropped us off, Jack went over to the edge of the ravine. I stayed with the horses until Cap came back from dropping off Lou.
“I sure hope they both fill today,” he said. “All the fun’s gone out of it now.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll remind Jack that there’s only three more days. Maybe that’ll bring him to his senses.”
“Somethin’ is gonna have to. See you about noon, son.”
“Right, Cap.”
He rode off down into the darkness, and I went over to find Jack.
“See anything?” I asked.
“Still too goddamn dark,” he said, and then, “I don’t know why I had to get stuck with the bottom of the hill like this.”
“Man,” I told him, “I got a five-point yesterday four miles below here. They’re all over the side of the mountain.”
“Not the one / want,” he said.
“Are you still hung up on that damn thing?”
“I said I was gonna get that white one, and I meant it.”
“Goddamn it, Jack, there are only three days left after today. You’re going to wind up going down empty.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, “I know what I’m doin’.”
We sat waiting for it to get light.
The sky paled and the shadowy forms of the rocks and bushes began to appear around us. Several does and a couple small bucks went down the ravine below our post.
“They’re starting to move,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I looked at the thin, dark man beside me with the wiry stubble smudging his cheeks and chin. Jack’s eyes were hollow, with dark circles under them. The red baseball cap he was wearing was pulled low over his eyebrows, and he was staring fixedly up the gorge. I tried to make out the shadow of the boy I’d grown up with in his face, but it wasn’t there anymore. Jack was a stranger to me. I guess I’d been kidding myself all along. He always had been a stranger. The whole business when I’d gotten back to Tacoma had been a fake. I suppose we both knew it, but neither one of us had had the guts or the honesty to admit it.
When the white deer came out, he was on top of that bluff that was opposite Jack’s old post. The rock face dropped about forty or fifty feet onto a jumble of rocks and gravel and then fell again into the wash at the bottom of the hill. Maybe Jack wouldn’t see him.
“There he is!” Jack hissed.
Damn it!
“What is it?” he demanded, his hands trembling violently. “Two hundred yards?”
“It’s pretty far,” I said, “and he’s right on top of that cliff.”
The deer looked around uncertainly, as if he were lost. Somehow he looked more helpless man ever.
Jack was getting squared away for a shot.
“Wait, for Chrissake!” I said. “Let him get away from that goddamn cliff.”
“I can’t wait. McKlearey’ll spot him.” His hands were shaking so badly that the end of his gun-barrel looked like the tip of a fishing rod.
“Calm down,” I snapped. “You’ll never get off a shot that way.”
“Shut up!” he snapped and yanked the trigger.
His Mauser barked hollowly. The deer looked around, startled. “Run, you son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
Jack was feverishly trying to work the bolt of his gun, his shaking hands unable to handle the simple operation.
“Calm down,” I said again.
“He’ll get away,” Jack said. “Oh, Jesus, he’ll get away!” He rammed another shell up the tube. He fired again, not even bothering to aim.
McKlearey’s gun barked from up the ridge. He must have been at least six hundred yards from the deer.
“Oh, Jesus!” Jack said, fighting with the bolt again. He stumbled to his feet.
“Jack, for Christ’s sake, calm down! You’ll never hit anything this way!” I put my hand on his arm.
“Get away from me, you bastard!” he screamed. He spun on me, pointing the rifle at me and still fighting with the bolt.
It was happening — it wasn’t exactly the way it had been that day in the pawnshop, but it was close enough.
I thumbed off the hammer-thong and left my hand hanging over my pistol-butt. “Don’t close that bolt with that thing pointed at me, Jack,” I told him.
Maybe some day you’ll be no good, and then I’ll shoot you. There it was again.
“I mean it, Jack,” I said. “Point that gun-muzzle away from me.” I felt very cold inside. I knew he could never close that bolt and get his finger onto the trigger before I got one off. I was only about five feet away from him. There was no way I could miss. I was going to kin my brother. It hung there, an absolute certainty — no fuss, no dramatics, nothing but a mechanical reflex action. I felt disconnected from myself, as if I were standing back, watching something I had no control over. I even began to mourn for my dead brother.
Then his face kind of sank in on itself. He knew it, too.
Then McKlearey fired again.
Jack spun back around and fired at the deer three times in a row from a standing position, his hand very smooth on the bolt now.
The deer had frozen up. I thought I could see him flinch with the sound of each shot.
McKlearey fired.
Jack fired his last round. His hand dove into his jacket pocket and came out jerkily with a handful of shells. He started feverishly shoving them down into the magazine.
McKlearey fired again.
The deer lurched and fell on his side, his sticklike legs scrabbling at the rocks and bushes.
“Aw, no!” Jack said in an agonized voice.
The deer stumbled to his feet, staggered a step or two and, with what looked almost like a deliberate lunge, fell off the cliff.
“Aw, God damn it!” Jack said, his voice breaking oddly.
The deer hit the rock-pile below and bounced high in the air. I could hear his antlers snap off when he hit. His white body plunged into the brush like a leaping trout reentering the water. I heard him bounce again and tumble on down the ravine.
“Aw, goddamn son of a bitch!” Jack sobbed, slamming his rifle down on the ground. He sat down heavily and buried his face in his hands. He was crying.
Up the ridge McKlearey gave a wild yell of triumph followed by a barrage of shots from his pistol. He must have emptied the thing. Maybe, with any kind of luck, one of them would drop back in on him.
31
I went straight on down into the ravine, leaving Jack on the ridge to get himself straightened out. The brush was a little tough at first, but I got the hang of it in a couple minutes. I just bulled on through, hanging onto the limbs to keep from falling — kind of like going down hand over hand.
I could still hear McKlearey screaming and yelling up on the knob at the top of the ridge.
I’d marked the last place where I’d seen the deer, and I hit the bottom a good ways below where that had been. I was pretty sure I was below the carcass.
The wash at the bottom of the ravine was about fifteen feet wide and six to ten feet deep. I imagined that when the snow melted, it was probably a boiling river, but it was bone-dry right now. Most of the sides were steep gravel banks with large rocks jutting out here and there. I finally found a place where I could get down into the wash. I seemed to remember hearing some gravel sliding after the deer had stopped bouncing. I started up the ravine.
The deer was about a hundred yards from where I’d come down. He was lying huddled at the foot of a gravel bank in a place where the wash made a sharp turn. He was dead, of course.
Only one of his legs was sticking out; the others were all kind of tucked up under him. The protruding leg was at an odd angle.
His head was twisted around as if he were staring back over his shoulder, and a couple of his ribs were poked out through his skin. His fur wasn’t really white but rather a cream color. It had smudges and grass stains on it — either from his normal activity or from the fall through the brush.
His antlers were shattered off close to his head, and the one red eye I could see was about half open. There was dirt in it.
A thin dribble of gravel slithered down the steep bank and spilled down across his shoulder. A heavy stick protruded from the bank just above him.
“You poor bastard,” I said softly. I nudged at his side with my toe, and I could hear broken bones grating together inside. He was like a sack full of marbles.