Hunters (33 page)

Through the afternoon, they played backgammon
and cribbage, and read quietly for a couple of hours. When Ned got
tired of the silence, he asked Megan if she would play her fiddle.
She happily complied, and there followed a half hour's assortment
of Scots, Old Time, and even some Cape Breton tunes, a style Megan
was just learning. She ended with
Ashokan Farewell
, the song
Ned had first heard her play. Before the final chorus, she slipped
a small but heavy brass practice mute over the strings to make the
sound even softer.

When the last note died away, she took off
the mute, slipped it into her shirt pocket, and set the fiddle and
bow on the desk. "I could go for a walk," she said. "How about
you?"

"A walk? In this? We'd be lost in the first
hundred yards. It's bad enough getting to the outhouse."

"Oh, Pinchot won't let us get lost. And I'm
sure he'd be up for a frolic in the snow. How about it?"

Ned grinned and stood up. "I'm game—as long
as we have our trusty canine guide...
and
high boots."

"We've got both," Megan said. "Let's do
it."

They put on their coats and pulled on their
boots, Ned humming Megan's last tune as he laced his up. Hats and
gloves followed, and soon they were at the door. Pinchot had
divined their intentions quickly, and was batting his tail against
the heavy Dutch door, his front paws galloping in place, as excited
as a puppy.

When Ned opened the door, it was as though
someone tossed a bucketful of snowflakes through it. "Good lord,"
he laughed. "It's like that W. C. Fields movie—'tain't a fit night
out for man nor beast!'"

"Well, both man and beast are going out!"
said Megan, pushing him from behind as Pinchot thundered past.

He let them both through, then pulled the
door shut from the outside. "Think we ought to lock it?" he said
over the wind.

"Oh yeah—burglars..." Megan grabbed his
gloved hand in her mittened one, and they stepped off the porch
into a nearly four foot depth of snow.

"Great jogging weather," Ned said, trying to
stay upright.

"This is
great
!" Megan crowed. "You
ever remember it like this?"

"Maybe when I was a kid," Ned said. "It's
incredible." They moved on, side by side, feeling lilliputian in
the deep snow, like six-year-olds in snowsuits. The first foot of
snow was packed fairly hard under their feet, and grasped them like
sucking mouths where they sank through it. But the most recent,
colder snowfall had been light and powdery, and parted easily
before the lunging prows of their legs.

It was fun, Ned thought, even when the
crusted snow beneath gave way, and they toppled over, sometimes
falling alone, sometimes grabbing the other, so that
two
trees fell in the forest, and both heard each other's laughter.
Pinchot body surfed his way through the top, fluffy layer,
sometimes barking happily, other times giving excited little growls
of pleasure.

Megan led the way, ignoring Pinchot's
innumerable, deviant side trips, and slowly they drew nearer the
tower. The cab was barely visible, and the steps were crusted with
ice and snow. The four bases were covered with white, making it
appear that the steel beams went directly into the earth. Ned
looked straight up, but could not be sure if he saw the tower
swaying, or if the sense of movement was due to the swirling wind
and snow.

"Wanta go up?" Megan said with a mischievous
grin.

"In neither of our lifetimes," Ned replied,
and pushed her so that she toppled over.

She laughed as she pushed herself to her
feet, and pointed toward the edge of the cliff, twenty yards away.
"Let's go see what we can see." She started toward the edge, arms
akimbo as though she were on an oversized ski machine, and Ned
followed. There would be no sense of height, he knew, since
visibility was near zero, but they would have to be careful that
they didn't slide over the edge.

Megan stopped. Several yards away Ned saw the
surface of snow drop away smoothly, like a waterfall pouring over
the edge of the world. He stopped next to Megan, and felt her arm
slip through his. It was fine here. There was nowhere to fall. You
scarcely knew you were on a cliff's edge. Ned wondered how far a
drop it was. He really hadn't looked down from the tower the day
before. Maybe Megan had.

"How steep's the cliff?" he asked her.

"Ohhh," she sighed in admiration. "I couldn't
really tell, but it looked like a beauty. Relief maps have it as a
four hundred foot drop, eighty degree slope. Not many that extreme
around here."

"Sorry you won't get a chance to climb
it."

"We can always come back someday," she said,
nestling against him.

"Yeah, but by the time all this snow melts,
you'll be too old to climb cliffs."

She dug into his ribs with her elbow. "Take
it back," she snarled, in what Ned assumed was her best impression
of Leo Gorcey.

"And what if I don't," he said in his best
Huntz Hall.

She pushed him over, and they both went down,
laughing and blowing out the snow that got in their mouths. She was
on top, and grabbed a handful of snow. "I'll wash your face,
mister!" she said, pushing the cold, wet snow against his
cheek.

He gave a mock cry of anger and twisted away,
trying to pin her beneath him. The crust beneath shattered, and
they plunged deeper into the soft layer, their faces turning red
from their exertion and their laughter.

Now Pinchot got into the act, barking and
jumping up and down as best he could in the deep snow. They felt
his paws against their backs, heard his puzzled and frantic
barking, and it made them laugh all the harder. "If we're gonna
roll," Ned managed to get out, "let's roll
away
from the
cliff..."

Finally they staggered to their feet and did
impressions of Pinchot for a minute, shaking off the snow that
clung to their jackets, hats, and hair. Then Megan looked at Ned,
threw out her arms, and fell straight back to land in the snow.
"Snow angels!" she said, moving her arms and legs back and
forth.

He let himself fall then, directly on top of
her, thrusting his arms into the snow so that his whole weight
would not come to bear on her. His face was inches away from hers,
and he kissed her. Her cheeks felt cold and wet and fresh, and her
mouth warmed quickly to his. "Snow lovers," he said softly, and
kissed her again.

"Is it possible," she said, "to be aroused
wearing thirty pounds of clothing in the middle of a snowstorm with
the temperature fifteen degrees?"

He closed one eye to show that he was giving
it careful thought. "It's possible to be aroused," he said, "though
I think doing something about it would cause frostbite."

"Good point." She nodded briskly. "There. Not
aroused anymore."

"You sure?" he said, kissing her again.

After the kiss, she thought it over and
nodded again. "Yep, I'm sure. Come on." She pushed him off and got
to her feet. "I think I got snow down my neck."

Ned twisted uncomfortably inside his heavy
clothes. "If that's all, you're lucky."

"Shall we go back and dry out?"

He nodded, and they started back to the
cabin. It was not as heavy going as before, since the canals they
had made through the snow on their way out were still there. The
wind and snow were filling them up quickly, however, and by the
time they were at the cabin their previous trails showed only as
indentations on the surface. "Get lost out here," Ned said, "you
wouldn't get found until summer."

They stamped their feet on the covered porch,
and brushed each other off as best they could. Then Ned pushed open
the door and stepped back so that Megan could precede him through,
but Pinchot beat them both in.

The dog stopped dead, however, just a foot
inside the door. Megan nearly tripped on him. If she had, she would
have fallen directly into the puddle of blood on the floor.

It was a small puddle, roughly six inches in
diameter, and the rough floorboards had soaked up part of it, but
there was still enough liquid to glisten in the pale light that
came through the doorway.

"Ned..." Megan said in a shaking voice.

He saw, and reached around the doorway to the
light switch and flicked it on. The naked bulb showed the blood,
the melting snow, and Megan's fiddle, now lying broken on the
floor. She gave a little cry when she saw it, and started toward
it, stepping around the blood. But Ned grabbed her shoulder and
said, "Wait."

He quickly went into the bedroom and dug
through the clothes in his suitcase until he found the revolver and
shells he had brought along. He loaded it quickly with five rounds
and brought the hammer down on the empty, then went back into the
living room and closed the door.

Megan had gone to her broken fiddle, and was
cradling it like a dying pet, her gaze darting between the fiddle,
the blood, and the windows. Ned checked the kitchen first, then
drew the curtains over all the windows. "Ned?" said Megan. "What is
it? Are they here?"

He didn't have to ask her what she meant by
they
. "I don't know."

"They broke it," she said, tears in her eyes.
"That was my grandfather's violin, and they broke it." She held it
up to show him. The fiddle's body was shattered and splintered, as
though someone had stepped on it with a heavy boot. Melted snow
still wetted the surface. The strings hung like twisted wires, and
the fingerboard was broken clean in two.

Ned walked to the phone and picked it up. His
expression was easy to read. "Dead?" Megan asked, and he
nodded.

"It might be the storm," he said.

"Ned, the storm didn't do this." She held up
the fiddle, then pointed at the blood. "Or
that
."

Pinchot was whining, pacing back and forth
near the blood, coming forward, taking a sniff, then retreating
again. Ned knelt next to the puddle, took a tissue from his pocket,
and dabbed it into the liquid. He examined and smelled it, and
shook his head. "I don't think this is human. I think it's deer
blood." Ned stood up. "It could just be a hunter," he said, trying
to make his voice sound firm and unworried. "Got a deer, got lost,
stumbled in here to get warm, knocked over your fiddle..."

"And then stepped on it," Megan said,
straightening up. "And a puddle of deer blood dripped neatly onto
the floor, right there and nowhere else. Ned, you know that's as
lame as they come."

"Yeah," he said, nodding.

Suddenly, above the howl of the wind, they
heard three gunshots in quick succession, and they both crouched
involuntarily. But no bullets tore through the windows.

"That was close," Ned said, "but not aimed at
us—further away than that. Deer rifle too..." Then he thought that
maybe he
had
been right, but that the blood was human.
"Look, Megan, maybe my reason wasn't as lame as we thought. Maybe a
hunter was in trouble, shot himself accidentally, wandered in here,
bled on the floor, staggered around, and wandered right back out
again."

"Why would he go back out?"

Ned didn't know. "Delirious, maybe. But maybe
those shots are a distress signal." He thought for a moment, then
nodded. "I ought to be able to follow his trail."

She stopped him as he went for the door. "Not
without me."

"No. You stay here. If I'm wrong..." He
paused.

"And if it's those maniacs, then they'd get
me anyway. I'm not leaving you."

He nodded sharply. "All right, come on."

The shots sounded as though they had come
from the north, behind the cabin, and when Megan and Ned went
around the side they saw where the visitor had been. There was a
trough in the snow that his body had made when he came onto the
porch from the side, and it led off back into the woods. There was
no sign of blood, but Ned thought the blowing snow would have long
since covered up any drops.

"He's gotta be up this way," Ned said,
breathing deeply as he plowed through the snow. He held his pistol
in his ungloved right hand. "Stay with me!" he called to Megan, who
shouted that she was. Pinchot was with them too, barking as though
this were just another romp, the disquieting blood on the floor
forgotten.

The trail cut between sparsely grown pine
trees. If the snow had let him, Ned thought he could have seen
ahead a great distance. But the scant growth also made it easier
for the wind to fill in the unseen man's trail, and a hundred yards
behind the cabin, it faded to nothing, its manmade features lost
amid nature's patterns in the swirling dunes of white.

The wan, smothered light that had managed to
pierce the snowfall was fading fast. Night was coming, and Ned knew
that they wouldn't be able to stay outside much longer. He turned
east, thinking that he might be able to cross the man's trail again
if he was wandering about, and fifty yards away he found the
telltale indentation in the snow. "He was here," he told Megan.
"His trail's heading south again."

But as they followed the man's trail, Ned
noticed that it was wider now, as though he were moving with more
effort, and as the trail grew fresher, Ned saw pink streaks in the
snow. The man was bleeding after all.

Pinchot surged ahead, but Ned called him
back, and to Ned's surprise the dog obeyed. He didn't want Pinchot
to get to the man first. In his weakened and demented condition,
the hunter might think the friendly oaf of a dog was attacking
him.

The trail led behind the cabin, then around
to the opposite side of the porch from which they had begun. They
had walked, Ned realized, in a large circle.

"Hey!" he shouted as he stepped into the less
deep snow on the porch. "You in there?" He glanced back to see that
Megan was right behind him. Pinchot was at the door of the cabin,
which had been closed by whoever had entered. Ned held the pistol
in his right hand, and, with the left, pushed open the door.