“If they come this way, we’re done,” J.B. commented.
“Mebbe they’ll make their kill before they get close enough to pick up our scent.” Krysty beckoned to Michael, almost hidden in the branches. “Best come down now.”
“Still can’t see what they’re hunting. They’re well spread out. I think they’re all carrying guns.”
“Hand or long?” the Armorer queried.
“Rifles, and I think some shotguns.”
“Come down now. Might as well hide in those ferns and see what we can see.”
“Might it not be possible to ambush them from the cover of the forest?”
Despite the potential danger to all lof them, Ryan found himself grinning. “You bloodthirsty old If they were fewer and more bunched together, then we could.”
“But they aren’t and we can’t,” J.B. added, trying to judge from the noise of the dogs and the hunting horns just how much time they had left.
Michael scrambled down from the chestnut tree, jumping the last fifteen feet and landing with a casual elegance and ease that Ryan envied. “Less than a mile,” he said.
“Just our luck if the deer comes straight through here.” Mildred had her Czech blaster drawn. “What if you try and spot it first and take it out with the rifle, Ryan? Could keep them away from us.”
“I fear that such an act might also bring the ungodly down upon us like the Assyrians on the sheep in the fold, with their cohorts”
“Shut up, Doc!” Ryan snapped. “But he’s part right, Mildred. At the crack of the Steyr they’re going to get real interested in us. Best chance is hide and hush. Everyone down and everyone real quiet. Those tracking dogs can hear a flea farting at three hundred yards.”
The ferns were growing on the site of the small stream, the cool water seeping from beneath the roots of a lightning-scarred beech tree. They were so tall and luxurious that they had to be some kind of genetic mutation.
But they provided excellent cover. Ryan wriggled in last, wishing that there had been more time to try to conceal their trampled tracks all about the clearing. But if the dogs were that close, then they’d scent them anyway.
“Can see down here, Dad,” Dean whispered.
“What?”
“Sort of open place at the bottom of the slope where it’s double-oozy. I can see quite a way through the trees. Three trails all meet up.”
The seven friends huddled close, snug in the moist green cavern of the ferns. Ryan had eased himself to the front, alongside Dean, picking his way with great care as he became aware that the little spring had made the muddy earth loose and treacherous.
“Don’t get too close, son,” he warned. “If this lot gives way, we’re all in it, good and deep.”
Now the riders were much nearer, enough for Ryan to be able to catch the bright jingle of harness and the occasional crack of a whip.
Someone shouted, either man or woman, it was hard to say. The voice was distorted by the surrounding trees.
The horn blared again, longer notes, fading away at the end, seeming to send the pack of dogs into a frenzy. They barked louder and more fiercely.
Ryan waited, watching between two of the fibrous, saw-toothed leaves, wondering if he’d catch a sight of the prey, hoping that he wouldn’t. Perhaps it was the mother of the fawn that he’d shot down earlier.
He glanced behind him, seeing, as he’d expected, that J.B. was sitting with his back to the action, looking the other way, making sure they didn’t get cold-cocked by someone creeping up from their rear.
“Dad.” Fingers tugged at his sleeve to attract his attention.
But Ryan Cawdor’s keen eye had already spotted what his son had seen. The racketing fluster of a covey of ring-collared pigeons rose from a thicket about two hundred yards away, in a direct line from the noise of the hunters.
Something, presumably the prey, was heading straight toward them.
Through a gap in the trees, Ryan caught a glimpse of a blur of movement, dark brown, running fast.
“Deer,” he said quietly.
There it was. Not the small doe that they’d seen earlier. This was a magnificent full-grown stag, carrying at least twenty points on its spread antlers. It entered the open space below the hidden watchers, head turning from side to side, nostrils flaring, as though it could almost scent the watchers. The brazen horn shrieked out triumphantly and the animal turned and bounded away to the south at great speed.