David Eddings - High Hunt

HIGH HUNT

David Eddings

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-87613 ISBN 0-345-32887-6

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is

purely coincidental.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Ballantine Books Edition: March 1986 Third Printing April 1990

For JUFELEE

The more things change

The more they remain the same.

Prologue

When we were boys, before we lost him and before my brother and I turned away from each other, my

father once told us a story about our grandfather and a dog. We were living in Tacoma then, in one of the

battered, sagging, rented houses that stretch back in my memory and mark the outlines of a childhood

spent unknowingly on the bare upper edge of poverty. Jack and I knew that we weren't rich, but it didn't

really bother us all that much. Dad worked in a lumber mill and just couldn't seem to get ahead of the

bills. And, of course, Mom being the way she was didn't help much either.

It had been a raw, blustery Saturday, and Jack and I had spent the day outside. Mom was off

someplace as usual, and Dad was supposed to be watching us. About all he'd done had been to feed us

and tell us to stay the hell out of trouble or he'd bite off our ears. He always said stuff like that, but we

were pretty sure he didn't really mean it.

The yard around our house was cluttered with a lot of old junk abandoned by previous tenants — rusty

car bodies and discarded appliances and the like — but it was a good place to play. Jack and I were

involved in one of the unending, structureless games of his invention that filled the days of our boyhood.

My brother — even then thin, dark, quick, and nervous — was a natural ringleader who settled for

directing my activities when he couldn't round up a gang of neighborhood kids. I went along with him

most of the time — to some extent because he was older, but even more, I suppose, because even then I

really didn't much give a damn, and I knew that he did.

After supper it was too dark to go back outside, and the radio was on the blink, so we started tearing

around the house. We got to playing tag in the living room, ducking back and forth around the big old

wood-burning heating stove, giggling and yelling, our feet clattering on the worn linoleum. The Old Man

was trying to read the paper, squinting through the dime-store glasses that didn't seem to help much and

made him look like a total stranger — to me at least.

He'd glance up at us from time to time, scowling in irritation. "Keep it down, you two," he finally said.

We looked quickly at him to see if he really meant it. Then we went on back out to the kitchen.

"Hey, Dan, I betcha I can hold my breath longer'n you can," Jack challenged me. So we tried that a

while, but we both got dizzy, and pretty soon we were running and yelling again. The Old Man hollered

at us a couple times and finally came out to the kitchen and gave us both a few whacks on the fanny to

show us that he meant business. Jack wouldn't cry — he was ten. I was only eight, so I did. Then the

Old Man made us go into the living room and sit on the couch. I kept sniffling loudly to make him feel

sorry for me, but it didn't work.

"Use your handkerchief" was all he said.

I sat and counted the flowers on the stained wallpaper. There were twelve rows on the left side of the

brown water-splotch that dribbled down the wall and seventeen on the right side.

Then I decided to try another tactic on the Old Man. "Dad, I have to go."

"You know where it is."

When I came back, I went over and leaned my head against his shoulder and looked at the newspaper

with him to let him know I didn't hold any grudges. Jack fidgeted on the couch. Any kind of enforced

nonactivity was sheer torture to Jack. He'd take ten spankings in preference to fifteen minutes of sitting in

a corner. School was hell for Jack. The hours of sitting still were almost more than he could stand.

Finally, he couldn't take anymore. "Tell us a story, Dad."

The Old Man looked at him for a moment over the top of his newspaper. I don't think the Old Man

really understood my brother and his desperate need for diversion. Jack lived with his veins, like Mom

did. Dad just kind of did what he had to and let it go at that. He was pretty easygoing — I guess he had

to be, married to Mom and all like he was. I never really figured out where I fit in. Maybe I didn't, even

then.

"What kind of a story?" he finally asked.

"Cowboys?" I said hopefully.

"Naw," Jack vetoed, "that's kid stuff. Tell us about deer hunting or something."

"Couldn't you maybe put a couple cowboys in it?" I insisted, still not willing to give up.

Dad laid his newspaper aside and took off his glasses. "So you want me to tell you a story, huh?"

"With cowboys," I said again. "Be sure you don't forget the cowboys."

"I don't know that you two been good enough today to rate a story." It was a kind of ritual.

"We'll be extra good tomorrow, won't we, Dan?" Jack promised quickly. Jack was always good at

promising things. He probably meant them, too, at the time anyway.

"Yeah, Dad," I agreed, "extra, extra, special good."

"That'll be the day," the Old Man grunted.

"Come on, Dad," I coaxed. "You can tell stories better'n anybody." I climbed up into his lap. I was

taking a chance, since I was still supposed to be sitting on the couch, but I figured it was worth the risk.

Dad smiled. It was the first time that day. He never smiled much, but I didn't find out why until later. He

shifted me in his lap, leaned back in the battered old armchair, and put his feet upon the coffee table. The

wind gusted and roared in the chimney and pushed against the windows while the Old Man thought a few

minutes. I watched his weather-beaten face closely, noticing for the first time that he was getting gray hair

around his ears. I felt a sudden clutch of panic. My Dad was getting old!

"I ever tell you about the time your granddad had to hunt enough meat to last the family all winter?" he

asked us.

"Are there cowboys in it?"

"Shut up, Dan, for cripes' sakes!" Jack told me impatiently.

"I just want to be sure."

"You want to hear the story or not?" the Old Man threatened.

"Yeah," Jack said. "Shut up and listen, for cripes' sakes."

"It was back in the winter of 1893, I think it was," Dad started. "It was several years after the family

came out from Missouri, and they were trying to make a go of it on a wheat ranch down in Adams

County."

"Did Grandpa live on a real ranch?" I asked. "With cowboys and everything?"

The Old Man ignored the interruption. "Things were pretty skimpy the first few years. They tried to raise

a few beef-cows, but it didn't work out too well, so when the winter came that year, they were clean out

of meat. Things were so tough that my uncles, Art and Dolph, had to get jobs in town and stay at a

boardinghouse. Uncle Beale was married and out on his own by then, and Uncle Tod had gone over to

Seattle to work in the lumber mills. That meant that there weren't any men on the place except my dad

and my granddad."

"He was our great-granddad," Jack told me importantly.

"I know that," I said. "I ain't that dumb." I leaned my head back against Dad's chest so I could hear the

rumble of his voice inside my head again.

"Great-Granddad was in the Civil War," Jack said. "You told us that one time."

"You want to tell this or you want me to?" the Old Man asked him.

"Yeah," I said, not lifting my head, "shut up, Jack, for cripes' sakes."

"Anyhow," the Old Man went on, "Granddad had to stay and tend the place, so he couldn't go out and

hunt. Dad was only seventeen, but there wasn't anybody else to go. Well, the nearest big deer herd was

over around Coeur d'Alene Lake, up in the timber country in Idaho. There weren't any game laws back

then — at least nobody paid any attention to them if there were — so a man could take as much as he

needed."

The wind gusted against the house again, and the wood shifted in the heating stove, sounding very loud.

The Old Man got up, lifting me easily in his big hands, and plumped me on the couch beside Jack. Then

he went over and put more wood in the stove from the big linoleum-covered woodbox against the wall

that Jack and I were supposed to keep full. He slammed the door shut with an iron bang, dusted off his

hands, and sat back down.

"It turned cold and started snowing early that year," he continued. "Granddad had this old .45-70

single-shot he'd carried in the war, but they only had twenty-six cartridge cases for it. He and Dad

loaded up all those cases the night before Dad left. They'd pulled the wheels off the wagon and put the

runners on as soon as the snow really set in good, so it was all ready to go. After they'd finished loading

the cartridges, Granddad gave my dad an old pipe. Way he looked at it, if Dad was old enough to be

counted on to do a man's work, he was old enough to have his own pipe. Dad hadn't ever smoked

before — except a couple times down in back of the schoolhouse and once out behind the barn when he

was a kid.

"Early the next morning, before daylight, they hitched up the team — Old Dolly and Ned. They pitched

the wagon-bed, and they loaded up Dad's bedding and other gear. Then Dad called his dogs and got

them in the wagon-bed, shook hands with Granddad, and started out."

"I'll betcha he was scared," I said.

"Grown men don't get scared," Jack said scornfully.

"That's where you're wrong, Jack," the Old Man told him. "Dad was plenty scared. That old road from

the house wound around quite a bit before it dropped down on the other side of the hill, and Dad always

said he didn't dare look back even once. He said that if he had, he'd have turned right around and gone

back home. There's something wrong with a man who doesn't get scared now and then. It's how you

handle it that counts."

I know that bothered Jack. He was always telling everybody that he wasn't scared — even when I

knew he was lying about it. I think he believed that growing up just meant being afraid of fewer and fewer

things. I was always sure that there was more to it than that. We used to argue about it a lot."

"You ain't scared of anything, are you, Dad?" Jack asked, an edge of concern in his voice. It was almost

like an accusation.

Dad looked at him a long time without saying anything. "You want to hear the story, or do you want to

ask a bunch of questions?" It hung in the air between them. I guess it was always there after that. I saw it

getting bigger and bigger in the next few years. Jack was always too stubborn to change his mind, and the

Old Man was always too bluntly honest to lie to him or even to let him believe a lie. And I was in the

middle — like always. I went over and climbed back up in my father's lap.

The Old Man went on with the story as if nothing had happened. "So there's Dad in this wagon-bed sled

— seventeen years old, all alone except for the horses and those two black and tan hounds of his."

"Why can't we have a dog?" I asked, without bothering to raise my head from his chest. I averaged

about once a week on that question. I already knew the answer.

"Your mother won't go for it." They always called each other "your mother" and "your father." I can't

think of more than two or three times while we were growing up that I heard either one of them use the

other's name. Of course most of the time they were fighting or not speaking anyway.

"Well, Uncle Dolph had loaned Dad an old two-dollar mailorder pistol, .32 short. Dad said it broke

open at the top like a kid's cap gun and wouldn't shoot worth a damn, but it was kinda comfortable to

have it along. Uncle Dolph shot a Swede in the belly with it a couple years later — put him in the hospital

for about six months."

"Wow!" I said. "What'd he shoot him for?"

"They were drinking in a saloon in Spokane and got into a fight over something or other. The Swede

pulled a knife and Uncle Dolph had to shoot him."

"Gee!" This was a pretty good story after all.

"It took Dad all of three days to get up into the timber country around the lake. Old Dolly and Ned

pulled that sled at a pretty steady trot, but it was a long ways. First they went on up out of the wheat

country and then into the foothills. It was pretty lonely out there. He only passed two or three farms along

the way, pretty broken-down and sad-looking. But most of the time there wasn't anything but the two

shallow ruts of the wagon road with the yellow grass sticking up through the snow here and there on each

side and now and then tracks where a wolf or a coyote had chased a rabbit across the road. The sky

was all kind of gray most of the time, with the clouds kind of low and empty-looking. Once in a while

there'd be a few flakes of snow skittering in the wind. Most generally it'd clear off about sundown, just in

time to get icy cold at night.

"Come sundown he'd camp in the wagon, all rolled up in his blankets with a dog on each side. He'd

listen to the wolves howling off in the distance and stare up at the stars and think about how faraway they

were." The Old Man's voice kind of drifted off and his eyes got a kind of faraway look in them.

The wood in the stove popped, and I jumped a little.

"Well, it had gotten real cold early that year, and when he got to the lake, it was frozen over — ice so

thick you coulda driven the team and wagon right out on it, and about an inch of snow on top of the ice.

He scouted around until he found a place that had a lot of deer-sign and he made camp there."

"What's deer-sign, Dad?" I asked.

"Tracks, mostly. Droppings. Places where they've chewed off twigs and bark. Anyhow, he pulled up

into this grove, you see — big, first-growth timber. Some of those trees were probably two hundred feet

tall and fifteen feet at the butt, and there wasn't any of the underbrush you see in the woods around here.

The only snow that got in under them was what had got blown in from out in the clearings and such, so

the ground was pretty dry."

From where I sat with my head leaned against the Old Man's chest, I could see into the dark kitchen. I

could just begin to build a dark pine grove lying beyond the doorway with my eyes. I dusted the

linoleum-turned-pine-needle floor with a powder-sugar of snow made of the dim edge of a streetlight on

the corner that shone in through the kitchen window. It looked about right, I decided, about the way Dad

described it.

"He got the wagon set where he wanted it, unhitched the horses, and started to make camp."

"Did he build a fire?" I asked.

"One of the first things he did," the Old Man said.

That was easy. The glow of the pilot light on the stove reflected a small, flickering point on the

refrigerator door. It was coming along just fine.

"Well, he boiled up some coffee in an old cast-iron pan, fried up some bacon, and set some of the

biscuits Grandma'd packed for him on a rock near the fire to warm. He said that about that time he'd

have given the pipe and being grown-up and all of it just to be back home, sitting down to supper in the

big, warm, old kitchen, with the friendly light of the coal-oil lamps and Grandma's cooking, and the night

coming down around the barn, and the shadows filling up the lines of footprints in the snow leading from

the house to the outbuildings." Dad's voice got faraway again.

"But he ate his supper and called the dogs up close and checked his pistol when he heard the wolves

start to howl off in the distance. There probably wasn't anybody within fifty miles. Nothing but trees and

hills and snow all around.

"Well, after he'd finished up with all the things you have to do to get a camp in shape, he sat down on a

log by the fire and tried not to think about how lonesome he was."

"He had those old dogs with him, didn't he, Dad?" I asked, "and the horses and all? That's not the same

as being all alone, is it?" I had a thing about loneliness when I was a kid.

Dad thought it over for a minute. I could see Jack grinding his teeth in irritation out of the corner of my

eye, but I didn't really look over at him. I had the deep-woods camp I'd built out in the kitchen just right,

and I didn't want to lose it. "I don't know, Dan," the Old Man said finally, "maybe the dogs and the

horses just weren't enough. It can get awful lonesome out there in the timber by yourself like that —

awful lonesome."

I imagine some of the questions I used to ask when I was a kid must have driven him right up the wall,

but he'd always try to answer them. Mom was usually too busy talking about herself or about the people

who were picking on her, and Jack was too busy trying to act like a grown-up or getting people to pay

attention to him to have much time for my questions. But Dad always took them seriously. I guess he

figured that if they were important enough for me to ask, they were important enough for him to answer.

He was like that, my Old Man.

The wood popped in the stove again, but I didn't jump in time. I just slipped the sound on around to the

campfire in the kitchen.

"Well, he sat up by his fire all night, so he wouldn't sleep too late the next morning. He watched the

moon shine down on the ice out on the lake and the shadows from his fire flickering on the big tree trunks

around his camp. He was pretty tired, and he'd catch himself dozing off every now and then, but he'd just

fill up that stubby old pipe and light it with a coal from the fire and think about how it would be when he

got home with a wagon-load of deer meat. Maybe men his older brothers would stop treating him like a

wet-behind-the-ears kid. Maybe they'd listen to what he had to say now and then. And he'd catch

himself drifting off into the dream and slipping down into sleep, and he'd get up and walk around the

camp, stamping his feet on the frosty ground. And he'd have another cup of coffee and sit back down

between his dogs and dream some more. After a long, long time, it started to get just a little bit light way

off along one edge of the sky."

The faint, pale edge of daylight was tricky, but I finally managed it.

"Now these two hounds Dad had with him were trained to hunt a certain way. They were Pete and Old

Buell. Pete was a young dog with not too much sense, but he'd hunt all day and half the night, too, if you

wanted him to. Buell was an old dog, and he was as smart as they come, but he was getting to the point

where he'd a whole lot rather lay by the fire and have somebody bring him his supper than go out and

work for it. The idea behind deer hunting in those days was to have your dogs circle around behind the

deer and then start chasing them toward you. Then when the deer ran by, you were supposed to just sort

of bushwhack the ones you wanted. It's not really very sporting, but in those days you hunted for the

meat, not for the fun.

"Well, as soon as it started to get light, Dad sent them out. Pete took right off, but Old Buell hung back.

Dad finally had to kick him in the tail to make him get away from the fire."

"That's mean," I objected. I had the shadowy shapes of my two dogs near my reflected-pilot-light fire,

and I sure didn't want anybody mistreating my old dogs, not even my own grandfather.

"Dog had to do his share, too, in those days, Dan. People didn't keep dogs for pets back then. They

kept them to work. Anyway, pretty soon Dad could hear the dogs baying, way back in the timber, and

he took the old rifle and the twenty-six bullets and went down to the edge of the lake."

"He took his pistol, too, I'll bet," I said. Out in my camp in the forests of the kitchen, I took my pistol.

"I expect he did, Dan, I expect he did. Anyway, after a little bit, he caught a flicker of movement back

up at camp, out of the corner of his eye. He looked back up the hill, and there was Old Buell slinking

back to the fire with his tail between his legs. Dad looked real hard at him, but he didn't dare move or

make any noise for fear of scaring off the deer. Old Buell just looked right straight back at him and kept

on slinking toward the fire, one step at a time. He knew Dad couldn't do a thing about it. A dog can do

that sometimes, if he's smart enough.

"Well, it seems that Old Pete was able to get the job done by himself, because pretty soon the deer

started to come out on the ice. Well, Dad just held off, waiting for more of them, you see, and pretty

soon there's near onto a hundred of them out there, all bunched up. You see, a deer can't run very good

on ice, and he sure don't like being out in the open, so when they found themselves out there, they just

kind of huddled up to see what's gonna happen."

I could see Jack leaning forward now, his eyes bright with excitement and his lips drawn back from his

teeth a little. Of course, I couldn't look straight at him. I had to keep everything in place out on the other

side of the doorway.

"So Dad just lays that long old rifle out across the log and touches her off. Then he started loading and

firing as fast as he could so's he could get as many as possible before they got their sense back. Well,

those old black-powder cartridges put out an awful cloud of smoke, and about half the time he was

shooting blind, but he managed to knock down seventeen of them before the rest got themselves

organized enough to run out of range."

"Wow! That's a lot of deer, huh, Dad?" I said.

"As soon as Old Pete heard the shooting, he knew his part of the job was over, so he went out to do a

little hunting for himself. The dogs hadn't had anything to eat since the day before, so he was plenty

hungry, but then, a dog hunts better if he's hungry — so does a man.

"Anyway, Dad got the team and skidded the deer on in to shore and commenced to gutting and

skinning. Took him most of the rest of the day to finish up."

Jack started to fidget again. He'd gone for almost a half hour without saying hardly anything, and that

was always about his limit.

"Is a deer very hard to skin, Dad?" he asked.

"Not if you know what you're doing."

"But how come he did it right away like that?" Jack demanded. "Eddie Selvridge's old man said you

gotta leave the hide on a deer for at least a week or the meat'll spoil."

"I heard him say that, too, Dad," I agreed.

"Funny they don't leave the hide on a cow then when they butcher, isn't it?" the Old Man asked. "At the

slaughterhouse they always skin 'em right away, don't they?"

"I never thought of that," I admitted.

Jack scowled silently. He hated not being right. I think he hated that more than anything else in the

world.

"Along about noon or so," Dad continued, "here comes Pete back into camp with a full belly and blood

on his muzzle. Old Buell went up to him and sniffed at him and then started casting back and forth until he

picked up Pete's trail. Then he lined out backtracking Pete to his kill."

Jack howled with sudden laughter. "That sure was one smart old dog, huh, Dad?" he said. "Why work if

you can get somebody else to do it for you?"

Dad ignored him. "Old Pete had probably killed a fawn and had eaten his fill. Anyway, my dad kinda

watched the dogs for a few minutes and then went back to work skinning. After he got them all skinned

out, he salted down the hides and rolled them in a bundle — sold the hides in town for enough to buy his

own rifle that winter, and enough left over to get his mother some yard goods she'd wanted. Then he drug

the carcasses back to camp through the snow and hung them all up to cool out.

"He cleaned up, washing his hands with snow, fed the team, and then boiled up another pan of coffee.

He fried himself a big mess of deer liver and onions and heated up some more of the biscuits. After he

ate, he sat on a log and lit his pipe."

"I'll bet he was tired," Jack said, just to be saying something. "Not being in bed all the night before and

all that."

"He still had something left to tend to," Dad said. "It was almost dark when he spotted Old Buell slinking

back toward camp. He was out on the open, coming back along the trail Pete had broken though the

snow. His belly looked full, and his muzzle and ears were all bloody the same way Pete's had been."

"He found the other dog's deer, I'll betcha." Jack laughed. "You said he was a smart old dog."

Beyond the kitchen doorway, one of my shadowy dogs crept slowly toward the warmth of the pilot-light

campfire, his eyes sad and friendly, like the eyes of the hound some kid up the block owned.

"Well, Dad watched him for a minute or two, and then he took his rifle, pulled back the hammer, and

shot Old Buell right between the eyes."

The world beyond the doorway shattered like a broken mirror and fell apart back into the kitchen again.

I jerked up and looked straight into my father's face. It was very grim, and his eyes were very intent on

Jack, as if he were telling my brother something awfully important.

He went on without seeming to notice my startled jump. "Old Buell went end over end when that bullet

bit him. Then he kicked a couple times and didn't move anymore. Dad didn't even go over to look at him.

He just reloaded the rifle and set it where it was handy, and then he and Old Pete climbed up into the

wagon and went to bed.

"The next morning, he hitched up the team, loaded up the deer carcasses, and started back home. It

took him three days again to get back to the wheat ranch, and Granddad and Grandma were sure glad to

see him." My father lifted me off his lap, leaned back and lit a cigarette.

"It took them a good two days to cut up the deer and put them down in pickling crocks. After they

finished it all up and Dad and Granddad were sitting in the kitchen, smoking their pipes with their sock

feet up on the open oven door, Granddad turned to my Dad and said, "Sam, whatever happened to Old

Buell, anyway? Did he run off?"

"Well, Dad took a deep breath. He knew Granddad had been awful fond of that old hound. 'Had to

shoot him,' he said. 'Wouldn't hunt — wouldn't even hunt his own food. Caught him feeding on Pete's

kill.'

"Well, I guess Granddad thought about that for a while. Then he finally said, 'Only thing you could do,

Sam, I guess. Kind of a shame, though. Old Buell was a good dog when he was younger. Had him a long

time.'"

The wind in the chimney suddenly sounded very loud and cold and lonesome.

"But why'd he shoot him?" I finally protested.

"He just wasn't any good anymore," Dad said, "and when a dog wasn't any good in those days, they

didn't want him around. Same way with people. If they're no good, why keep them around?" He looked

straight at Jack when he said it.

"Well, I sure wouldn't shoot my own dog," I objected.

Dad shrugged. "It was different then. Maybe if things were still the way they were back then, the world

would be a lot easier to live in."

That night when we were in bed in the cold bedroom upstairs, listening to Mom and the Old Man yelling

at each other down in the living room, I said it again to Jack. "I sure wouldn't shoot my own dog."

"Aw, you're just a kid," he said. "That was just a story. Grandpa didn't really shoot any dog. Dad just

said that."

"Dad doesn't tell lies," I said. "If you say that again, I'm gonna hit you."

Jack snorted with contempt.

"Or maybe I'll shoot you," I said extravagantly. "Maybe some day I'll just decide that you're no good,

and I'll take my gun and shoot you. Bang! Just like that, and you'll be dead, and I'll betcha you wouldn't

like that at all."

Jack snorted again and rolled over to go to sleep, or to wrestle with the problem of being grown-up and

still being afraid, which was to worry at him for the rest of his life. But I lay awake for a long time staring

into the darkness. And when I drifted into sleep, the forest in the kitchen echoed with the hollow roar of

that old rifle, and my shadowy old dog with the sad, friendly eyes tumbled over and over in the snow.

In the years since that night I've had that same dream again and again — not every night, sometimes only

once or twice a year — but it's the only thing I can think of that hasn't changed since I was a boy.

The Gathering

David Eddings - High Hunt

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