Tracker (5 page)

In the clearings the snow hung on top of the matted swamp grass and it made hard going. His foot came down through the snow and then on past another eight inches to the peat beneath the grass. It was slow, stumbling work.

And in the willows he had to weave back and forth, so while it was easier walking—the grass
was not so deep in the willows—it was still slow.

By midmorning he had only gone two miles, moving with the tracks. He had not seen the deer again but knew several things about it just the same. It was either a doe or a small buck—he could tell that by the size of the tracks, but he was not yet good enough to tell its sex. Older hunters could, but he wasn't sure of it; it had something to do with the way the foot came down.

He knew the deer wasn't unduly frightened. After he had jumped it out of the bed it had bounded for two hundred yards but then it had settled down to an even pace, just walking-running ahead of him easily. It wasn't panicking or running hard, the way deer did when the wolves got close.

He knew this deer was healthy. The steps were even, the weight came down evenly—it didn't limp or weave.

And he knew the deer wasn't a yearling, or a first-year fawn, which he wouldn't have shot even if he'd gotten a chance. His grandfather didn't kill first-year animals and he didn't either. If it had been a yearling it would have been all over the place, wandering as it fed, and probably running in spurts if it felt that it was being followed.

It wasn't until he reached one of the pine and spruce islands in the swamp that he came close to the deer again.

The island was about a hundred yards long, shaped in a large oval, and John worked across another clearing to get to it, wading through the snow-grass, stopping often to listen and watch.

It was easy to follow the tracks. The snow was all new and there didn't seem to be any other tracks in the area, except for rabbits. They had moved during the snow storm and left a patchwork of trails.

As he entered the pines on the island he stopped once more and listened, letting his eyes work ahead through the underbrush. It was like a make-believe land, what his grandmother would have called a fairy place; a place shot with silver and beauty.

The sun was as high as it was going to get now, an orb in the midsouth sky, and the light came down through the pines to make diamonds of the snow. Light sparkled all around, caught in the ice crystals as he stepped, showering his way with gold. He'd never seen anything like it and he looked down to see the snow move away from his legs in fire and when he looked up he saw her. A doe.

She had been in back of a spruce, all covered with snow and looking like a picture on a Christmas card and when he looked up she stepped out and saw him and was gone, that fast, but she left an image in his mind the way the snow had. When she jumped out from in back of the spruce the snow showered out and around and caught the fire from the sun and took the light to make her something other than what she was.

He held his breath. It had only lasted part of two seconds and yet he held his breath for half a minute, thinking of it. The rifle had come up of its own accord, settled against his shoulder, then gone down. There was no real time for a shot.

Then he breathed. It was over, over and gone and his breath came in a burst. He'd never seen anything like it. A shower of gold around a golden doe; beauty splashed through the woods.

After another minute he shook his head and continued. There was much beauty in the woods. His grandfather had told him the woods were
all
beauty. But that didn't change the basic fact: he had to make meat. They needed the food. And a doe was the best meat.

But something nagged at him, something he didn't understand. There was a mixing of things in his mind, or the start of a mixing that he
couldn't quite pin down. As he walked the doe's tracks he started thinking of other things again; of his grandfather, of the way they lived, of what was coming for his grandfather. And the lines between the thoughts got blurred; the doe mixed with his grandfather and they both mixed with him.

He had to fight to concentrate on hunting.

He moved on.

As she left the spruce island, the doe had taken great bounds—twenty and thirty feet from print to print, the initial getaway jumps that all deer take when in danger, whether from man or wolf. But inside half a mile the tracks eased down and by the time John had followed another mile, through two more clearings and across two more spruce islands, she had calmed again.

It was when she'd settled into another bed that he finally got a chance to kill her.

EIGHT

John had read several books about deer and deer hunting. One writer would say all deer do this, another would say all deer do that. But in truth the deer didn't read the books and they did just as they wanted.

Some deer slept at night and fed in the day, some bedded down during the day and fed at
night. Still others slept and fed intermittently all day and all night. There was not a normal way for deer, John knew—only the deers' way.

The deer that John was following bedded often during the day. In a normal twenty-four hours she might make four or five beds—some in darkness, others during the warm part of the day where the sun could get her.

After her second near brush with John she went farther. She was not yet really alarmed, that much John could see from her tracks. They were still full of purpose, though for half a mile she stretched them out and covered distance with some speed.

By the time John was well into the first half mile of tracks the doe was two miles away. And this distance gave her time to get out of the escape mentality—he could see the tracks settle down, get steady.

In nature, John knew, danger came with great suddenness. A mouse could be feeding peacefully on a stem of grass one second and be in a fox's belly the next instant. Two grouse could be performing the mating ritual and within a heartbeat come under an owl's silent slashing attack.

But if danger comes suddenly it also leaves
quickly. If the fox misses the mouse, it seldom persists; the owl looks for another meal. It takes too much precious energy to chase food that is forewarned; it's much easier to find prey that can be taken without so much effort, off guard.

By the time she'd gone those two miles the doe had forgotten about John. Her tracks settled down and John followed them slowly, carefully.

He knew he could get her, knew by her tracks. She would move ahead of him and stay there for a time but she would forget and all he had to do was stay on the tracks and he would get a shot. And if he got a shot he would get her.

He visualized it. She would move and then stop and he would put the bullet through her shoulder and she would stagger sideways and down with the impact. The life would go out of her, out and out, leaving the gray film on her eyes and he would cut her throat and the red would flow out on the snow, warm and rich and steaming …

He shook his head. It was wrong to project when hunting. Nothing came the way it was supposed to come and planning didn't work. You might stand and watch a clearing for hours, waiting for the deer to come out, and it would pass ten feet in back of you and you wouldn't know it.

He washed his mind clear, took a mouthful of snow to wet his tongue and replace some of the moisture he was losing by perspiring. He was not warm, but he knew he was sweating into his clothes because that's what always happened when he worked in the winter.

It was noon now. The sun was peaking and he turned his face toward it as he walked, let the heat warm his cheeks. It would get cold tonight, very cold. Maybe fifteen or twenty below. He would have to be sure to get the doe early so he could start back. If he was out much after dark he would either have to keep moving or stop and build a fire and ride the cold out. He had matches and the sandwiches and his grandparents wouldn't worry. He knew how to handle himself in the woods—he'd had a good teacher in his grandfather. Still, he didn't relish the discomfort of standing over a fire all night.

He would get the doe early, he decided. Work a little harder and catch up, get a shot. He grunted a bit as he stepped over a windfall—a large poplar the wind had torn out of the swamp, with a disk of roots sticking in the air. His leg came down and went through the deep snow and grass and threw him over at an angle, put him in an
awkward position and he looked up and there she stood.

She had made a bed on the far side of the windfall where the sun could warm her, protected by the roots from any wind. John's eyes took it all in. The small cupped bed in the grass, still warm and steaming, the sudden flurry of movement, a blur of red-brown as she got up and the freeze, the freeze as she stood.

John was leaning to his left and while it threw him slightly off balance to stand that way, it did not keep him from being able to use the rifle.

She stood frozen, eyes wide open, staring at him. He'd caught her somehow, off guard. He was on top of her and she panicked and froze and stood now, stood waiting for death.

The rifle came up, floated up to his shoulder in a fluid movement, a movement he'd known many times. It happened with great speed but he visualized it always in slow motion; the rifle coming up, his thumb pulling the hammer back, the bead of the front sight nestling into the sloping buckhorn of the back, the bead coming perfectly to rest on the doe's shoulders where, in back of the hair and muscle, he knew the heart pulsed, pumping, beating.

His finger tightened on the trigger and that, too, was automatic, all part of the same motion, all natural and flowing. The gun up and the hammer back and the sights on target, on her heart, on her death and his finger squeezing and squeezing the trigger to give her that death, to blow her over and down and make her into meat.

But he didn't shoot.

The moment hung for hours, burned into him, became part of him. The doe standing side-on to him, so close he could see her hairs, eyes wide and clear, little puffs of steam from her nose, a twitch in her back leg from a ready muscle held in check. All of it seen over the blue black of the rifle barrel. Two seconds that lasted hours.

Just pull the trigger,
he thought.
Pull it and let the sear drop and that will let the hammer fall and set off the primer which will ignite the powder and send the bullet out to take her life.

His finger was tight on the trigger, knuckle tense and white under the mitten.

But he didn't shoot.

Why am I not shooting? We need the meat and there it is and I've hunted this deer to give her death and make her meat and it's all here for me, for us, and still I don't pull the trigger. Why?

The doe moved.

Her back foot lifted and stepped forward a couple of inches and settled into the snow again but her head was still.

It's the same doe,
he thought suddenly, finger still tight on the trigger.
It's the doe from the other night.

And with that thought came another one:
She knows me.

She remembers me from the stoneboat and spreading manure and the horses that night. She knows who I am and that's why she isn't running, isn't trying to leave.
And he knew that had she moved at first he would have fired and killed her, and he knew that it was getting harder and harder to kill her.

Knowing her made it hard to finish the trigger squeeze and having her know him made it still harder, and still the moment hung, suspended—time in the cold—frozen time.

He had not breathed for twenty seconds now and more, holding only half a breath, and he let it out in a burst that made an explosive sound.

“
Whewwwgh
!”

She jumped. With no gathering of muscle she exploded up and away and came down thirty feet
to the side in a great burst of snow and then two more bounds and she was out of sight and gone.

And still he did not shoot.

The snow was still hanging in the air, drifting down like traces of white flour when he lowered the rifle, staring after her, seeing the image of her still, etched in his eyes: the doe standing and the rifle sights on her—and he not shooting.

It made no sense.

He was still leaning over the windfall in a bad position. It took him a few seconds to get his leg loose and drag it over the log, then another two or three to brush the snow off his leg and clean out the top of his boot and when he looked back down the trail he thought he saw the outline of her standing in the willows. He couldn't be sure but he saw the markings of a deer in the vertical gray, caught in the sun, and then it was gone.

He shook his head. Part of all this didn't make sense. Why should he not shoot, and why should she stand to him, stand for death that way?

John looked around, as if trying to see the answer, then up at the blue sky and down at the rifle in his hands and then he started to walk.

He followed her trail in the new snow, followed the part of her that was left behind.