His fourth shot hit no one, however, because Macurdy threw his heavy sheath knife, taking Hannigan between the fourth and fifth ribs on the left, barely missing the breastbone and plunging into the heart. Hannigan shot into the floor as he fell.
Macurdy used an Ozian shaman’s version of first aid to hen p Axel and the sheriff. The deputy and Hannigan were beyond help, though Macurdy wouldn’t have helped Hannigan anyway.
He had no idea what Hannigan had done for him, nor had Hannigan.
5
Mary Preuss
Lars sent the crew to the woods anyway. Axel wasn’t dead, he said, Hannigan was, and dead or alive, the sonofabitch wasn’t going to shut down Severtson’s camp.
Production wasn’t up to standard that day, of course, except by Klaplanahoo and Macurdy. There was a lot of talking, much of it about Macurdy: how quickly he’d moved, how accurately and powerfully he’d thrown.
Two days later a deputy arrived with a court order: Macurdy was to come in for a hearing. Lars demanded to know why. Because, the deputy told him, anyone who willfully killed someone, even with good cause, had to have a court hearing, to establish in law that the act had been necessary. That way, he explained, no one could ever claim he’d done wrong by it.
Lars explained back that that was a lot of bullshit-at no one could ever say there was anything wrong with what Macurdy had done. But he took the deputy out to Roy’s and Macurdy’s cutting strip, and Macurdy left for town in the sheriff department’s new 1933 Ford V-8, with a radio like the police car in Miles City. Macurdy wasn’t worried; the deputy’s aura reflected friendly admiration.
In town, the sheriff, Fritzi Preuss, sat behind his desk with his right arm and shoulder in a cast. His face was drawn, his aura marked by trauma and the strong analgesic he’d been given for pain. Hannigan’s bullet had smashed through his humerus, an injury much more traumatic than a flesh wound or ordinary fracture. Nonetheless he got to his feet, shook left hands with Macurdy, and with a mild German accent, asked some routine questions. One was where he’d come from-county, state, and home address-Fritzi writing the answers slowly in careful, left-handed block letters.
Having come to Oregon to keep from being traced, the questions made Macurdy uncomfortable. “I’d rather my folks don’t get word of this,” he said. “They’d worry.”
Fritzi grunted. “Your address I need only for the record. I’m not going to write to your family. But the law says I also have to contact the county there, to find out if you have a criminal record.” He paused, fixing Macurdy with his eyes. “Do you have a criminal record?”
Macurdy shook his head. “No sir.”
Fritzi smiled lopsidedly. “Good! I tell you what: We kill two birds with the same stone. I tell them I want the information because I’m considering hiring you as a deputy. I am, you know; to replace Marvin. You should make a good deputy. You are big; that helps when loggers are in town. You think quick; that’s always good for a lawman. And after what you will have a reputation. They will talk about you in camps all the way to Canada, to California.”
Macurdy stared.
“It’s a better job than logging,” Fritzi continued calmly. “I know. I have done both. There won’t be lay-offs, you won’t have to live in a bachelor camp, the work isn’t as hard, and you don’t get rained on so much.” He half smiled again. “It’s safer, too.”
“I don’t know,” Macurdy said. “I like logging.”
The sheriff grunted. “Axel says you are new here. Do you know we get seventy inches of rain a year? Sixty of it between October and May. All you’ve seen is the dry season.”
A phone rang. Fritzi ignored it; a deputy picked it up. “Well,” Fritzi went on, “you don’t have to decide right now. But I’ll handle it that way with your county back east.”
“Excuse me, sheriff,” the deputy said, “it’s Onni Hautala. That fire on Devils Creek has crowned and crossed the ridge; spotted all over the next drainage. He says he’s got a bad blowup on his hands, and wants you to shut down all the logging in the county till we get some rain.”