The Jump-Off Creek (12 page)

They didn't make a light. Tim went past Blue struggling in the dark to button his pants, reached high to the five-point rack above the lintel of the door, and brought down the first gun his hands touched, knowing it by the feel, passing the Marlin back to Blue who was standing now at his elbow. He reached up again for the Miller. In the darkness, sightlessly, they counted the loads.

They went out to the porch, each taking hold of a dog, hauling scruff of neck back into the house, pulling the latchstring through to shut the dogs inside. The frenzied barking kept up, coming muffled a little from behind the door.

Tim looked over at Blue and then out across the fenced field where the horses were standing in a nervous huddle away from the trees. It was dark under the trees, flat blackness. He had already made a pretty good guess what it was, from the noise the dogs were raising. They didn't generally bark much, they'd been trained away from that. And they'd gone crazy but they hadn't left the yard; they hadn't gone that crazy. So he figured he knew. Blue would have made a guess too. But neither of them said anything.

They went bare-soled across the wet grass, past the horses to the edge of the evergreens.

“We ought to have brought a lantern.”

“Yeah.”

They stood listening a moment, and then Tim said, “We'd better let him know we're coming.”

“Hey!” Blue said, loud, quick. Tim felt the muscles jump in his arms.

They went carefully into the blackness beneath the trees. In the darkness, barefoot, Tim stepped gingerly, holding his rifle in both hands. The bottoms of his feet itched with cold and the thorns of trailing blackberry vines. He couldn't see a damn thing, could hardly even make out the dark bars of the tree trunks and
the horizontal line of fence cutting across in front of them. His head felt light, trying to listen. He heard the slight draw of his own breath, the springing of the ground under his feet.

At the fence they found where the bear had broken down a rail and gone over into the forest. It was too dark to see anything else.

“Long gone,” Tim said, but for a while they stood waiting, looking up the little slope into the trees.

“Well hell, I'd better go back for a light,” Blue said finally. He looked at Tim. Then he started back. Tim saw him break into a trot, going across the grass under the starlight.

Tim waited alone, standing beside the fence line. He kept his back to the house, kept looking out under the trees. He listened but he could only hear the faint sounds of the dogs crying from inside the house, and the horses not settled down yet, blowing air. As he stood still, waiting, he began to shake a little with the cold. He hadn't put on any shirt over the thin cotton undershirt. But his hands holding the rifle were warm, sweaty.

Blue came back across the grass, walking long strided inside the swing of yellow lantern light. He carried the Marlin in his free hand, not resting it across his shoulder or in the crook of his elbow. He had let the dogs out, and they sprinted across the grass ahead of him, silent now, and stopping along the fence to anxiously smell and pee where the bear had been.

In the light from the lantern Tim and Blue found the sign and squatted to peer at the bear's prints there in the soft ground.

“Shit,” Tim said. The hair had risen along the back of his neck.

“Big grizzly. Pretty damn big grizzly,” Blue said.

Tim touched one of the prints with the tips of his fingers. There was a little dark dribble in it, maybe it was blood. “He might have a bad foot.”

“Leg-hold trap.”

“I bet. Maybe he chewed out of it or muscled it open.”

They fell silent, standing looking out at the trees. Blue slapped
the front of his undershirt looking for tobacco. Not finding any, he leaned against the fence and then stood up straight again, finally bent and fiddled with the lantern, trimming the flame a little.

They had had a couple of run-ins with grizzlies before this. Once along the Sprague River when they were with the Crazy W a bear had come through the roundup camp and killed a horse. A little man named Weedy, or Wiley, had lost half of his face—one eye and an ear, all the flesh off his cheek. Blue had been sitting right next to him before the bear came in there. He'd killed it with a shotgun at about six feet.

In a moment Tim said, “Maybe we ought to run him down tomorrow.”

Blue looked over at the dogs. Then he looked at Tim again, smiling slightly. “The dogs don't look too happy with that idea.”

In Montana they'd had a boss who raised dogs just for running bear, and ran bear just for the hell of it. They'd seen him bring in a big grizzly once. He was short three dogs when he came in, but happy as hell about that big hide. He had a bitch at home throwing new pups and he didn't give a damn about those dogs he'd lost. Right after that, they had quit the outfit. Maybe Blue was remembering that.

Tim shrugged. “Hell,” he said, looking away. “I'm not too happy about it myself.” But he was. When he looked at the prints, a prickly excitement crawled up the back of his neck and sang in his scalp.

Tim said, “If he wasn't gimped and mad, he'd probably go on over the Umatilla, maybe he'd go up to the hot springs and raise hell with those bathers who come east from Portland.”

Blue looked toward him, not finding anything funny in it. For a while he didn't say anything. Then he said, “Maybe he's going up to the high ground. He might not be that stove up. He might go up into the Wenaha country.”

Tim touched one of the dogs as it came and stood alongside
his leg. He bent a little and ruffled its yellow coat. “Maybe,” he said.

Blue held the lantern down again, close to the prints. “Shit, he's big,” he said. His eyes shone in the light.

In the morning they left the dogs behind and followed up his trail. He had gone away to the northwest, not fast. Probably he was lame, but in the daylight there weren't any dribbles of blood in the prints.

They trailed sign as far as the beaver marshes above Lick Spring. The way was bad there, sticky mud under a scum of green with a lot of old timberfall and close standing brush so they had to pull the horses long-necked behind them through the brake. The bear found the low way, on four feet, his puddled paw prints going along almost straight beside the muddy edge of the marsh.

They didn't follow him very far in.

“I don't know,” Tim said. He stood half under the neck of his horse in the close space and waited for Blue to come up behind him. “He's bound to come out of it on the north or the west, that's the way he's been going all day. We could go around and pick him up there, it'd be quicker.”

Blue made a wordless sound of agreement, but he said, “If we don't pick up the sign along the other side, we'll lose him.”

Tim looked up briefly to the low overcast. “It's about to rain. We're liable to lose him anyway, then.”

Blue shrugged. He didn't say anything else. He backed the roan out slowly through the brushwood until it opened up enough to turn around.

“I wondered how far you'd follow him in there,” he said. “Only a damn fool would follow a bear into that scrub.”

Tim shook his head. “Shit. You followed me in.”

The horses shied suddenly, bumping together. Tim heard the roan horse make a little sound, and then Tim could smell it too, or hear it, or just know it like the horses, and he tried to get the bay to come around, skittering, so he could grab for the rifle in
the saddle boot. He got hold of it but then a horse's heavy butt wheeled and knocked his teeth together and he was on the ground watching the bay taking off through the brush, kicking high sheets of mud. He scrambled around on his belly, half under the roan's feet, Blue's feet, laying his hands on the rifle again. Blue had hold of the roan's forelock and one stirrup, dancing with him, pulling at him to come around. Tim on his knees saw the red stripes in the roan's belly, the horse's legs scrabbling rubbery, disjointed. Blue kept hold of the roan's forelock, kept after his gun, his boots in a puddle of the horse's blood, yanking to get the Marlin out from under the fender of the saddle. Tim found the bear in the notched sight, he knelt slippery in the wet with the muddy rifle up against his cheek misfiring twice, three times, while across the sight he followed the big flat face, open-jawed, grinning solemnly. He only saw from the edge of his eye the one arm swinging wide, brushing Blue off the ground and then letting him down like the roan horse, wobbly. The last two hit dry enough to fire. A sudden neat red hole appeared in the bear's cheekbone below the right eye. The head ticked back slightly, briefly; when he opened his mouth, gouts of blood came out with the low sound, the sigh.

Tim kept kneeling where he was, waiting, starting to shake.

“Blue.”

“Yeah. Christ.”

Tim put the gun down in the mud and went, shaking, across the bloody wallow on his knees.

“I don't know,” he said stupidly, kneeling over Blue.

“Christ, you blew half his head off.” Blue lay on his belly with his cheek against the mud. “It's okay,” he said after a while. “I'm okay. He just clipped me. Those damn horses. Listen, Tim, I don't think old Jay is dead.”

Tim stood and walked wide around the bear to the long-legged roan horse. Jay's tawny eye watched him come up. He took the Marlin off the saddle. The stock was cracked. He stood holding
it, waiting a little bit, breathing through his mouth until his hands stopped shaking some. He shot the horse once behind the ear and then went back to Blue. He knelt on the soft ground, rocking back on his heels, putting his hands flat on his thighs. The horse, or Blue, had stepped on his hand. He sat looking down at the purply slow swelling.

“Blue.”

Blue opened his eyes. “Those damn horses,” he said.

“I got to tear your coat.”

“No, hell. I can get out of it.”

“It's rent anyway. Just let me cut it.”

“Well, hell.”

Tim put the blade of his knife to Blue's coat and sawed it up the middle of the back, that and the red shirt, laying them open tenderly. Blood ran down and puddled in the mud. Tim took off his own jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. It was his right hand that was sore. He worked the buttons slow, wrong-handed.

“We must be ten miles out, twelve,” Blue said. His eyes were closed again.

“Not that far.”

“The hell.”

“The bay won't go too far.”

“The hell he won't.”

“I'll find him. I got no plans to carry you on my back.”

He folded his shirt a couple of times until it made a long pad going out into the sleeves. He laid it against Blue, against the sheeted blood. “Can you suck in your gut so I can get this tied off?” He pushed the sleeves up under Blue, knotting the shirt around him. Then he put on his jacket again over his bare undershirt and squatted there thinking.

“What the hell,” he said. “I guess I'll give you a ride. I got to move you out of here.”

Blue kept his eyes closed. “I figured I'd just wait where I am.”

“It's pretty wet right here,” Tim said. Then he said, “You'd
draw more bone-pickers than a cemetery. You're laid up next to a lot of meat.” He waited, then he came around in front of Blue and put his hands under his armpits.

“Christ no, just give me a hand. I can get up.” Blue took a couple of long breaths. He pushed with one hand, rolling up on his side, drew his knees up like a kid, pushed on his hand again to come up to a sit. “Christ,” he said, letting his breath out.

Tim looked away. His belly was sour, aching. He looked at the big body of the bear, the bright place where the blood ran on the grass.

“Here,” he said, reaching his good left hand down to Blue. Blue took his hand and Tim pulled him grunting to his feet. He kept hold of him. He leaned in against him, bracing. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Wait a minute. Yeah.”

They went a couple of feet, scuffling.

“We'll be here all night,” Tim said. “I'm gonna carry you.”

“Yeah. Shit.”

Silently Tim bent and levered him across his shoulders belly down, crosswise. Blue made a huffing sound. Tim struck out through the brush, staggering a little, whistling breath in through his mouth. He put Blue down against a windbreak, a rotted cedar, clear of the thicket. The ground was spongy, there wasn't any drier place.

“I'll go back for the gear,” Tim said. Blue leaned sideways against the log. He said something, maybe it was
okay
, without moving his mouth.

Tim went back for the saddle and gear off the roan, and the empty Miller rifle, the broken Marlin. He lugged it all back and piled it next to Blue, put the stinking saddle blanket over him, leaned the loaded Marlin against the stacked-up gear. “It's got a busted stock,” he said.

Blue made an irritated grimace. “I paid forty dollars for that gun.”

“It's not broke. Just the stock.”

He didn't move to go yet. He looked out into the trees, silently nursing the sourness in his belly, holding his sore hand clasped in the good one.

“I guess my smokes are done in,” Blue said.

Tim went back to where he had left the bloody shirt lying in the mud, went through the pockets for the tobacco sack and the papers. There was blood on the papers but some of them, the ones on the bottom, were okay. He brought the stuff back and Blue made a slow, careful cigarette. His hands looked steady. Only there was blood drying in the palm lines and between the fingers of his hands.

Tim bent and unbuckled his chaps and let them drop there on the ground.

Blue began to smile, as he smoked and watched him through pinched narrow eyes. “Planning a long walk,” he said.

Tim shrugged. “Don't go anywhere until I get back.”

“I'll wait. A nickel says that horse beats you home.”

“I'll catch the horse, but hell, you won't be able to ride him.”