Chaneysville Incident (39 page)

T
HE STORM HAD ENTERED ITS MIDDLE PHASE.
The change had come almost gently; the mass of moisture-laden air had come drifting up from the south, and the snow had begun to fall almost as if by afterthought. But the gentleness was deception. Soon the snow would come driving down. Soon the south wind would blow. But not just now. Just now everything was silent. Just now everything was still. No strong wind came whistling down from the high ridges to stir the branches and rattle the briers. No squirrel chattered. No bird called. The only sound came from the snowflakes drifting down, invisible in the mist, tinkling as they fell like ten thousand tiny bells. It was just about sunup; just before or just after. There was not much light, but enough to see that more light would not have done any good; the air was full of fog and falling snow, and it was all too thick for any real vision. I could easily have been lost, for all the landmarks were shifted and changed by the grayness. But I was not lost; a hunter is never lost so long as there is a track to follow. And, amid all the grayness and all the quiet, the tracks were there, sharp and bright and clear and plain and crisp as cracking ice.

I sat on my heels and studied them. They were fresh, of course—the snow was falling fast enough to obliterate a trail in minutes; I would have to follow swiftly, or lose the spoor. But I did not hurry. Because it is patience, not impulse, that follows tracks; it is knowledge, not haste, that saves time.

In three minutes I knew what the tracks had to tell me. I knew he was a male, because of the way he dragged his feet; a female would have pranced more, stepped more precisely. I knew he was not large, perhaps ninety pounds, and I knew he was alone, which made him young; not a yearling, but no more than two or three. And I knew, too, that I had a chance to catch him, depending on what he did and on how well I remembered old lessons. Not a good chance, but a chance.

I stood up and invested a few minutes in stretching. It had been a long night—I had covered forty miles since sundown—and now my muscles were cramping and my mind was as gray as the forest around me. I could not afford either. Cramped muscles make for jerky, unnatural motion which in turn makes for abrupt, unnatural sounds; the kinds of sounds that alert any game. And a tired mind makes for mistakes that, with a gun in hand, can be fatal. So I stood up carefully and massaged my shoulders and arms and especially my legs, and washed my face with snow. In a few seconds I felt wide awake, although my hands were cold—almost numb. The alertness was temporary; the numbness was not. But for the time being I would be all right. I shrugged into my pack, retrieved my rifle from where it rested against a tree, and checked the safety and then the bore, to be sure I had not somehow clogged it. Then I loaded. And then I started off after him.

He was headed south, moving nose-to-wind as they almost always do, along an old game trail etched into the mountainside a hundred yards below the ridge. I moved along behind him, sticking to the trail, not only because the going was easier there, but also because that trail had been a whitetail highway for as long as I could remember; if he heard my movements coming from that direction, he would think I was another deer. I was dressed properly, in cotton and in wool, so that the sounds my clothes made against the brush were soft and natural; I was not overly worried about noise. I was worried about the wind. There wasn’t any to speak of—just a light northward drift—and that meant I was at the mercy of chance. Wind, even a strong wind, is not a constant in the hills; the pattern of the land, the presence of water or bare rock, any one of half a hundred things, can set up minor eddies of the air which, unopposed by strong currents caused by weather or sun, could go almost anywhere. One of these could carry a ravel of my scent to him. And then he would be gone.

But if the relative stillness of the air worked against me, the storm, at least, was with me. It deadened hearing and obscured vision, but he was the one that most needed to hear and see. And the snowfall provided a constant gauge of my progress; after twenty minutes of trailing I knew that I would catch him: the tracks were getting fresher.

By then I knew even more about him. I knew he was a little larger than I had thought, because when he went through higher drifts his chest caught on the snow, turning his trail into a trough. That meant he was older; definitely a three-year-old. He was smart too; he had read the weather, had felt the air moving in from the south, and had known—as I had—that here at last was the big storm that had been threatening. And now he sensed—as I sensed—that this storm would not sweep through, but would stall and hang over us, dumping its entire load of moisture before its air became light enough for it to float away over the mountains. Then there would be hell to pay. Then the temperature would fall and the winds would come driving out of the west, whipping the snow into monster drifts. He sensed that, as I did, and so, even though he had left off his feeding in order to go in search of shelter, he was stopping now and then to browse, storing up against what could be a long fast. That helped me make up ground, of course. But it wasn’t certain that that would do me any good, because I also knew from his tracks that he was, like most of his kind (at least those who reach advanced age), a paranoid. There were times when he would stop, not to browse, but to wait in heavy cover, looking over his backtrail. The odds were he would hear me or scent me long before I could detect him. I would come up on him, but I would probably not get a shot.

But I followed along anyway, trying to be quiet, trying to listen for the little tattletales that can give things away—the chirp of a bird, the chatter of a squirrel. But mostly I concentrated on my breathing, on keeping it even and slow and deep and quiet, because the panting of a man is a sound unlike any other, and it can be heard a long, long way. And it was hard not to pant. Not because I was moving so swiftly; because I was excited.

For I was coming up on him, bit by bit. Every step brought me closer—that excited me. But what excited me even more was that with every step I was getting better. The old knowledge was coming back, the old tracking sense, the feel for which way a branch would spring, for where, below the snow, lay rock or clear ground. I began to feel the heat running in my veins. Not blood lust; trail lust. I was getting good, and I was getting close. And then, suddenly, he left the game trail and moved up towards the crest of the ridge. I stopped dead.

I didn’t know why he had done that. It could have been something done out of habit—deer are creatures of habit—but it could have been something else. There was not a lot of time to consider; I moved on up the trail, crouching low, acting on the assumption that he had gone up there towards the ridge so that he would have a good vantage from which to examine his backtrail. It was not a familiar tactic, but it could be effective; perhaps he had learned it at the hoof of some venerable stag, just as I had learned at the foot of Old Jack. The fact that he had used it did not have to mean anything—he could simply be being cautious before heading into some protected bedding ground. But I thought not. I thought I knew what was happening: he was aware of me.

A hundred yards up the trail I stopped and waited a few minutes, and then I slid off, climbing up the slope parallel to the track he had taken. I stopped short of the ridge, stopped and waited and listened. And I heard him, moving away to my left; over the ridge. I had just missed him. But he had missed me too. I still had my chance. I would have to be doubly careful now, though, because he was alerted, not to me, maybe, but to something. I moved off, going easily, going patiently, with no expectation, as Old Jack had taught me.

He came down off the ridge on the other side, and angled off to the south again. The breeze was stronger here, on the eastern face of the hill; the hill curved away to the west a bit, so his line would bring the scents from the valley to him. I wondered if he had known that, if he had consciously run the risk of the move up to the ridge in order to gain, eventually, a greater security. There wasn’t much point in thinking it: if he was that smart, I’d be lucky if he didn’t end up chasing me. But whether he knew what he was doing or not, I was in a bad position.

I slipped quickly off the track, moving upslope, removing the danger that he would scent me. It was a smart move. But it was a mistake; it took me away from the tracks. I could see them, but not well enough to read them. And so I did not know precisely when he sensed me.

He had stopped to check his backtrail, and it might have happened then, but I didn’t notice it until I had to move down again to avoid a shelf of scree. When I came down to the tracks I saw that they had changed.

I knew what had happened; he had become aware of me. Not just something; me. He hadn’t spotted me, or scented me, and he wasn’t aware of what I was, but there was no doubt in his mind that there was something back there behind him where nothing ought to be, and so he was moving more sharply, bellied down in the snow. But I still had my chance. Because he wasn’t running.

I was not surprised; I knew him well now. He was old enough to be wise, but young enough to be foolish. He was old enough to be cautious, but he was young enough to be curious. And he had pride. Too much pride for his own good. He would not go bounding off in healthy alarm. Not until he knew what it was on his backtrail.

And I knew just what he would do. He would move along quickly, opening up some distance, and then he would turn and circle upslope, accepting the risk of having the wind at his back just long enough to come around, then he would backtrack downwind of his trail until he crossed my trail line and scented me. It was a good set of moves for him, but it could be his undoing. Because if I was good enough, if I had managed to somehow get my trail sense back enough, I could counter him, and his good moves would bring him to me, bring him right across my sights.

I took my time. I didn’t have much of it, but I took what I had and I used it, thinking hard and furiously, then mentally backing away from it, letting the thing roll out, checking to see how it looked. When he turned I would have to turn too, turn and climb far enough to get above his return line, and then move forward just far enough to be well in advance of where he would first begin to sense my trail. Then I would have to still-hunt, not moving at all, hardly breathing, so that when he came prancing back, full of curiosity, I would get my shot from above. It would not be an easy shot, but it would be a shot. It would be my only chance.

I followed him, going quickly, letting my intuition work on the first problem: guessing when he would make his turn. I had to turn then too, as soon as he did, because if I waited too long his strategy would work or catch me out of position, and if I turned too soon he might never cast back far enough to reach me. The situation was logical, but the solution was beyond logic; I just moved, waiting to
know
when he turned. But it was a long time, and despite everything I could do, I started thinking that surely I had come too far, surely he had turned by now, surely…

I made my move without thinking. I climbed easily and quickly, keeping quiet, breathing as heavily as I dared from the very beginning, not letting the carbon dioxide build up in my lungs and force me to pant. I was working on a new question now, trying to sense how high up to go to come out above him, but close enough to see him. And then I knew that too, and I turned and headed south again, working on the next problem, using a little logic too now, choosing the spot that felt right but also estimating how quickly he would move, how far along the slope the wind might take my scent. I found the right spot. I stopped. I waited. And I listened.

I listened, it seemed, forever. My ears grew tired from listening. And I did not hear him. I should have, but I didn’t. And I felt my stomach knot, for I knew that I had guessed wrong; he had never turned at all, or he had turned a long time back and had crossed my line and moved away without my knowing, or… And then I knew he was there. I couldn’t see him; I could feel him. He was up there. But he wasn’t circling. He was listening, just as I was. He had his strategy—I had been right about that—but he was too wise to commit himself until he was certain that he was not being stalked. And what he would do was teeter for a while, and hearing nothing, come to believe that there was nothing behind him, or come to know that what there was behind him was deadly, because it had taken such pains to hide. Either way he would be gone. And so I reached out and broke a twig.

The sound was not loud. The twig was damp and the slight crack it made in breaking was muffled by the snow and the heavy air. But it reached him; I knew it reached him. And almost immediately he started to circle. I couldn’t see him and I couldn’t hear him, but I knew. And, with the excitement boiling within me, I swung the gun up and braced myself to hold it there as long as I needed to. And then I waited for him to come within my range.

I do not know how long I waited there; it was not a question of time. There
was
no time. There was only the slow shifting of sensations: the sting of the snowflakes falling on my face; the slow ache of my arm muscles as they grew tired from the weight of the gun; the growing numbness in my hands. At first none of it mattered, but slowly I became aware of the little things that usually go unnoticed: the beginnings of a blister on my right foot; the harsh tickle in the back of my throat which could only be cleared by a cough; the slight, almost pleasant ache in the small of my back; the droop of eyelids. I waited. Awareness became discomfort. I waited. Discomfort turned to pain. I waited. The pain became boredom. Then it was dangerous. Because then my mind began to drift, began to doubt, began to think it was all a bunch of silliness, mushing through the pinewoods like some half-witted Daniel Boone, trying to kill something wild that I would have to dress out and butcher and pack out, taking the risk of running afoul of the game warden, when I could just buy my meat at the A&P like normal people…. And then I heard him move. He was closer than I had thought he would be—the storm had deadened sound so that he was on top of me before I heard him. And he was not below me, sniffing on his backtrail: he was coming straight at me.