High Hunt (16 page)

Clydine sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Danny,” she said in a long-suffering tone. “You're so smart about some things and so hopeless when it comes to women.”

“I manage to get by,” I said, slipping my hand up under her sweatshirt and grinning at her.

“Do you want to play or do you want to listen?” she asked tartly. “Somehow I've never been able to believe a man's seriously listening to what I'm saying if he's fondling me at the same time.”

I pulled my hand out. “OK,” I said, “all serious now. No fondling. Shoot.”

“All right. One: Wifey doesn't want Hubby to go out and shoot Bambi—right?”

“No—Wifey doesn't want Hubby to get off the leash.”

“Whatever. Two: Hubby is jealous of Wifey's good-looking round bottom, right?”

“OK,” I said.

“Three: Wifey knows there's bad blood between Hubby and Creepy Jarhead, right?”

“Go on.”

“Four: Wifey figures that if Creepy Jarhead makes big pass at Wifey's good-looking round bottom, Hubby will blow his cool, punch Creepy Jarhead in the snot-locker and stay home and hold Wifey's hand instead of going out with the bad old hairy-chested types to dry-gulch poor little Bambi, right?”

“Wrong,” I said. “Creepy Jarhead did
not
just make pass.
Creepy Jarhead threw the blocks to Wifey's little round bottom. It shoots your theory all to hell.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “Not at all,” she said. “Wifey moves in those circles where when a lady says no, the men are polite enough to stop. Poor little Wifey underestimated the Creepy Jarhead, and that's why she got blocks in her bottom.”

I blinked. By God, she had it! “You are an absolute doll,” I told her. “Now tell me, since this went gunnysack on her, what position is Wifey in now?”

“Little Wifey's got her tit in the wringer,” Clydine said sweetly. “She can't scream rape—it's too late for that, and besides, Hubby might go to the Fuzz and then the Creepy Jarhead would spill his guts about her being the one who made the first move. She is, if she's a normal Establishment woman, feeling guilty as hell about now for having committed adultery with a man she doesn't even like. I'd say she screwed herself right out of action—literally. Hubby can go out and exterminate the whole deer population and she won't be able to raise a finger. End of analysis. Satisfied?”

“It all fits together perfectly,” I said. “You know, my little pansy of the proletariat, you are absolutely beautiful.”

“I'm glad you noticed,” she said, snuggling up to me. “Now you may fondle, if you like.”

O
N
Tuesday night we gathered at Sloane's with all our gear. Jack and I got there a little late, and the others were already sitting around the kitchen waiting for us. Stan's face looked grim, and McKlearey was already a little drunk. Sloane seemed relieved to see us, so I imagine things had been getting a bit strained.

“There they are,” Sloane said as we walked in. “Where in hell have you guys been?”

“I had to get cleaned up,” Jack said. “I've been crawlin' around under a fuckin' trailer down at the lot all day.”

“Have a beer, men,” Sloane said, diving into the refrigerator. He came up with a fistful of beer cans and began popping tops. “You guys bring your gear?”

“Yeah,” I said, “it's out in the car.”

“Why don't you go ahead and bring it on in,” he said. “I've got the list of all the stuff we'll each need, so I'll check everybody off.” It was sort of funny really. Sloane was such a clown most of the time that you hardly took him seriously, but when Mike had dropped out, he'd taken charge, and nobody questioned him about it.

“What we'll do,” he went on, “is get everything all packed up, and then we'll store it all here. That way nobody forgets anything, OK?”

We all agreed to that.

“Then tomorrow night, we all take off from here. Stan is going to ride with me, right Stan?”

Stan nodded.

“We can swap off driving that way,” Sloane said. “Dan, you and Jack are going in his car, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And Lou wants to take his own car, I guess. Damned if I know why, Lou. There'd be plenty of room in either of the other cars.”

“I just want to take my own car,” Lou said. “Does anybody have any objections to me takin' my own fuckin' car?” He was sitting off by himself like he had that first night, and his eyes looked a little odd. I thought maybe he was drunker than I'd figured at first.

“It just seems a little unnecessary, that's all,” Sloane said placatingly.

“Does anybody have any objections to me takin' my own fuckin' car?” Lou repeated. He really had a bag on.

“Take the motherfucker,” Jack said. “Nobody gives a shit.”

“All right, then,” Lou said. “All right, then.” His voice was a little shrill.

“All right, calm down, you guys,” Sloane said. “If we start chipping at each other, we'll never get done here.” Everybody seemed to be in a foul humor.

Jack and I went back out to the car to pick up our gear. “That fuckin' McKlearey is gettin' to be a big pain in the ass,” Jack said as he hauled out his sack. “I wish to Christ we'd included him out.”

“We needed the extra guy to make the deal with Miller,” I said.

“We could have found a dozen buys that would have been better.”

“He's a first-class shitheel, all right,” I agreed, lifting out my rifle. “He tapped me for five bucks the other day.”

“Oh, no shit?” Jack said. “Didn't I warn you about that? Well, you can kiss that five good-bye.”

We went on inside with the gear.

“Let's take it all into the living room,” Sloane said. “We've got room to spread out in there, but for Chrissake don't spill any beer on Claudia's carpet! She'll hang all our scalps to the lodge-pole if somebody messes up.”

“We're all housebroke,” Jack said. “Quit worryin' about the goddamn carpeting.” He was in a particularly lousy mood tonight for some reason.

“OK, you guys, spread out and dump out your gear,” Sloane said. For some reason he reminded me of a scoutmaster with a bunch of city kids.

“Sleeping bag,” Sloane said.

Each of us pushed his sleeping bag forward.

“Gear-bag—or clothes bag, or whatever the hell you want to call it.” He looked around. We each held up a sack of some kind. Looky, gang, Daddy's going to take me camping. “OK, now as we check off the items of clothing and what-not, stow them in your sack, OK?”

He went down through the list of items—clothing, soap, towels, everything.

“OK,” he said, “that takes care of all that shit. You'll each be wearing your jackets and boots and all that crap, so we're all set there. Now, have you all got your licenses and deer-tags?”

“I'll pick up mine tomorrow,” Lou said.

“McKlearey,” Jack said angrily, “can't you do one fuckin' thing right? We were all supposed to have that taken care of by now.”

“Don't worry about me,” Lou said. “Just don't worry about me, Alders. I'll have the fuckin' license and tag.”

“But why in hell didn't you take care of it before now, you dumb shit?” Jack shouted. “You've had as much time as the rest of us.”

“All right,” I said. “It's no big deal. So he forgot. Let's not make a federal case out of it.”

“Dan's right,” Sloane said. “You guys are touchy as hell tonight. If we start off this way, the whole thing's gonna be a bust.” He could feel it, too.

“Let's get on with this,” Stan said. “I've got to get home before too late.”

“Keepin' tabs on that high-class wife of yours, huh?” Lou snickered.

“I don't really see where that's any of your business,” Stan said with surprising heat. I guess that McKlearey had been at him before Jack and I got there.

“McKlearey,” I said, trying to keep my cool and keep the whole thing from blowing up, “you're about half in the bag. You'd be way out in front to back off a little, don't you think?”

“You countin' my fuckin' drinks?” he demanded. “First your shithead brother, and now you, huh? Well, I can get my own fuckin' license, and I sure as hell don't need nobody to count my fuckin' drinks for me.”

“That's enough,” Sloane said sharply, and he wasn't smiling. “You guys all got your rifles with you?”

We hauled out the hardware. Sloane had the .270 he'd tried to sell me, Stan had the Remington, Jack had that Mauser, Lou had a converted Springfield, and I had the gun I'd been working on. All the rifles had scopes.

“Two boxes of ammunition?” Sloane asked. We each piled up the boxes beside our rifles.

“Hunting knives?”

We waved our cutlery at him.

“I guess that's about it then.”

“Say,” Jack said, “how about the handguns?”

“God damn”—Sloane giggled—“I almost forgot. I've got them in the closet. Let's see. Dan, you and Stan each have your own, don't you?”

Stan nodded. “I have,” he said quietly. He reached into one end of his rolled sleeping bag and after some effort took out a snub-nosed revolver. He fished in again and came out with a belt holster and a box of shells. Somehow the gun seemed completely out of character. I could see Stan with a target pistol maybe, but not a people-eater like that. And he handled it like he knew what he was doing.

“Christ,” I said, “that's an ugly-looking little bastard.”

“We had a burglar scare last year,” he said, seeming a little embarrassed.

“What the hell can you hit with that fuckin' little popgun?” Lou sneered.

“It's a .38 special,” Stan said levelly. “That's hardly a popgun. And I've had it out to the range a few times, and I can hit what I shoot at.” He gave Lou a hard look that was even more out of character.

Lou grunted, but he looked at Stan with an odd expression. Maybe the son of a bitch was thinking about how close he'd come to getting a gutful of soft lead bullets for playing silly games with Monica. I hoped he'd get a few nervous minutes out of it.

“You got yours, haven't you, Dan?” Sloane asked.

I nodded. I'd rolled up the gun belt, holster, and pistol and brought them over in a paper sack. I pulled the rig out and laid it across the sleeping bag. The curve of the butt and the flare of the hammer protruding from the black leather holster looked a little dramatic, but what the hell?

“Jesus,” Sloane said, almost reverently, “look at that big bastard.”

Nothing would do but to pass the guns around and let everybody fondle them.

“You got ours here, Cal?” Jack asked. He sure seemed jumpy about it—like he wasn't going to relax until he got his hands on that pistol.

Sloane got up and went out of the room for a minute. He came back with three belts and holsters. The .357 Ruger of his was almost a carbon copy of my old .45, a little heavier in the frame maybe. His holster and belt were fancier, but the leather was new and squeaked a lot. McKlearey's .38 M & P had a fairly conventional police holster and belt, but Jack's .45 auto was in a real odd lash-up. It looked like somebody had rigged up a quick-draw outfit for that pig. I don't know how anyone could figure to get an Army .45 into operation in under five minutes, but there it was.

We sat around in a circle, passing the guns back and forth. My .30-06 got a lot of attention. Sloane particularly seemed quite taken with it.

“I'll give you a hundred and a half for it,” he said suddenly.

“Come on, Cal,” I said. “You can get a brand-new gun, scope and all, for that. You couldn't get more than a hundred and a quarter for that piece of mine, even if you were selling it to a halfwit.”

“I don't want to sell it,” he said. “I just like the gun.” He
swung the piece to his shoulder a couple more times. “Damn, that's a sweet gun,” he said.

Stan took the gun from him. “You did a nice job, Dan,” he said.

“Poor Calvin figures he got royally screwed on that deal,” Jack said, laughing.

“No,” Sloane said, “it was my business to look at the merchandise before I set the price. I screwed myself, so I've got no bitch coming.”

Lou went out and got another beer.

Jack held up his rifle. “This thing's a pig, but it shoots where you aim it, so what the hell?”

“That's all that counts,” Stan said.

McKlearey came back.

“We're all pretty well set up,” I said. “I was about half afraid somebody'd show up with a .30-30. That beast's got the ballistic pattern of a tossed brick. About all it's good for is heavy brush. Out past a hundred yards, you might as well throw rocks.”

“And we're not likely to be in brush,” Jack said. “You get up around the timberline and it opens up to where you're gettin' two- and three-hundred-yard shots.”

“Miller says we'll be camping just below the timberline,” Sloane said, “and we'll be riding on up to where we'll hunt, so it'll likely be pretty soon.”

“Good deal,” Lou grunted. “I've about had a gutful of fuckin' jungle.”

“Air gets pretty skimpy up there, doesn't it?” Jack asked.

“At six to eight thousand feet?” Sloane giggled. “You damn betcha. Some of you flatlanders'll probably turn pretty blue for the first couple days.”

We carried the gear into Sloane's utility room and piled it all in a corner and then went back into the breakfast room just off the kitchen. Sloane opened another round of beers, and we sat looking at a map, tracing out our route.

“We'll go on up to Everett and then across Stevens Pass,” Sloane said. “Then, just this side of Wenatchee, we'll swing north on up past Lake Chelan and up into the Methow Valley to Twisp.”

“I thought that was
Mee-thow
,” Lou said.

“No,” Sloane answered. “Miller calls it
Met
-how.”

Lou shrugged.

“Anyhow,” Cal went on, “if we leave here at midnight, we
ought to be able to get over there by eight thirty or nine. Some of those roads ain't too pure, so we'll have to take it easy.”

“We'll be leaving for camp as soon as we get to Miller's?” Stan asked.

“Right. He said he'd feed us breakfast and then we'd hit the trail.”

“Gonna be a little thin on sleep,” I said.

“I'm gonna sack out for a few hours after work,” Jack said.

“Probably wouldn't be a bad idea for all of us,” Sloane agreed.

We had a few more beers and began to feel pretty good. The grouchy snapping at each other eased off. It even seemed like the hunt might turn out OK after all. We sat in the brightly lighted kitchen in a clutter of beer cans and maps with a fog of cigarette smoke around us and talked about it.

“Hey, Danny,” Lou said suddenly, “you pretty fast with that old .45?”

“Oh, I played with it some when I first got it,” I said. “I guess everybody wants to be Wyatt Earp once in his life.”

“How fast are you?” he insisted.

“God, Lou, I don't know. I never had any way to time it. I could beat that guy on
Gunsmoke
—Matt Dillon—you know how he used to draw at the start of the program? I'd let him reach first, and then I'd beat him.”

“Pretty fast,” he said, “pretty fast. Let's see you draw.” He wasn't going to let it go.

“Aw, hell, Lou, I haven't handled that thing for two years. I probably couldn't even find the gun butt.”

“Go ahead, Dan,” Jack said. “Show us how it's done. You a gun-fanner?”

I shook my head. “I tried fanning just once—out at the range—and I splattered lead all over the country. That might be all right across a card table, but at any kind of range, forget it.”

“Let's see you draw,” Lou said again, prodding me with his elbow. Once again it was a little harder than necessary.

“Sure, Dan,” Sloane said, “let's see the old pro in action.”

Now don't ask me, for Chrissake, why I gave in. I don't know why. The whole idea of having pistols along had spooked me right from the start, and the more that things had built up between these guys, the less I liked it. In the second place, I don't like to see a bunch of guys messing around with guns. It's too easy for somebody to get hurt. What makes it
even worse is that this quick-draw shit starts too many people's minds working in the wrong direction. All things considered, the whole damned business may just have been one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life. I suppose when you get right down to it, it was because that goddamn McKlearey rubbed me the wrong way. He acted like he didn't believe I knew how to handle the damned gun. The fact that I didn't like McKlearey was pushing me into a whole lot of decisions lately, it occurred to me.