The Brave Cowboy (26 page)

Something burst into action above him, on his right; he glanced up and saw the blurred gray rump of a jackrabbit bounding over a log to crash and disappear into the snapping brush beyond.

He moved on, crouching a little as he advanced from tree to tree, circling around open areas where the cover was too meagre, making good time on occasional stretches of almost level ground where piñon trees had forced out the juniper and scrub oak. He had gained rapidly on the deer, though they were still out of range, perhaps three hundred yards away. So long as they continued to move he could not hope to get much
closer without attracting their attention; only when they stopped would he have time for the slow, painstaking stealth of a stalking approach.

The ground tilted more steeply under his feet as the slope began to merge with the nearly perpendicular wall of the canyon. He had to angle downwards now, toward the rock ledges and sand floor of the canyon. As he worked his way down, going slow and carefully, he watched the deer: they had a similar choice to make—climbing back and up over the crest of the ridge or descending into the canyon. They chose to go down— and Burns smiled gratefully.

But he had another worry: light and time: He knew by the amber richness of the light that the sun was low in its arc; he looked back once to the west and saw the sun was low in its arc; he looked back once to the west and saw the sun about to fall into the crater of a volcano, separated from the black horizon by only a sliver of yellow sky. The river and the city—what he could see of its northern extension—where already caught in a shadow that was now sweeping on a broad front across the mesa, toward him and the shining mountain. While he watched the sun dropped lower, suddenly, like the twitching of the hour hand on a big clock, and the silhouette of the volcano cut a chunk from its blinding gold disc.

He turned and continued his diagonal descent, going forward across the face of the slope as much as the terrain permitted. He saw the deer still going down, headed apparently for a thicket of willows and bear grass that darkened a pocket in the floor of the canyon. Probably another spring or seep of water there, he noted, and good cover for the deer as well. But the place might also be a trap: the pocket of green ended at the base of a twenty foot water-slide of smooth bare polished stone.

He went more slowly than ever now, though the light passed far above his head and the shadow of the horizon surrounded him. He saw the three deer spring
onto the sand of the canyon floor and merge, not quite totally disappearing, with the thicket of willows and high grass. He advanced another hundred yards or so on his feet, taking advantage of every bit of cover, and then, being within three hundred yards of his prey, he went down on his hands and knees and crawled forward, taking the most extreme pains to avoid being seen or heard, stopping often to listen and to study the arrangement of the rocks and cactus and trees ahead. He was now well down on the slope of the canyon, not far from the floor, and as he was anxiously aware, upwind from the deer: at any moment they might catch his scent, leave off their grazing and drinking and go leaping upward across the far slope and over the ridge and not stop until the smell of man was left miles behind. But there was nothing Burns could do about it now; hours would be required in climbing up the slope, going around behind the canyon wall and coming down again from above and farther up the canyon. Already the twilight was spreading over the canyon; thousands of feet above, the rim reflected the final rays of the sun. He had to get closer to the deer as quickly as it was strategically possible and when he was close enough, shoot accurately—there would be little chance for a second shot.

He crept ahead over the stony slope, over dead limbs of piñon, under the low boughs of junipers and around the cholla and yucca near the canyon floor. There he sank down flat on his belly and inched his way forward, keeping his head and butt down, pulling the rifle along by his side, until he was within a hundred yards of the deer.

Only then did he estimate that he was close enough for a decent shot—considering the now-treacherous quality of the light. He peered around the righthand corner of a rock and stared into the clump of willows until he could make out clearly and with certainty the outline of two deer—the third was hidden, probably lying down in the grass. Very gently he pulled back
the hammer of the rifle, pressing the breech against his chest to muffle the click of the gunlock. Even then one of the does seemed to hear it; she lifted her head quickly and faced toward him. He was not yet ready to aim and fire, the carbine on its side and partly underneath his body; he waited for the doe to forget the sound and lower its head again. He had to wait about five minutes before that happened; then he was able to slide the rifle forward a little more, get the butt into his shoulder and the stock under his cheek. He aimed.

Both deer raised their heads, alert and sniffing, and took a few steps toward the far slope. The third deer sprang up out of the grass and then all three began to move, not fast yet but with the tense electric grace of creatures about to break into sudden motion. Burns cursed in silent despair, unable in that gloom to follow his target over the sights; he rose to his knees, swearing quietly, and just as the deer were about to break and run, he shivered the silence of the canyon with a sharp whistle. Instantly they stopped, all three of them, and stared at him in mild surprise. He aimed at the nearest, at a point just behind its shoulder, and fired. The crash of the discharge rang through the air, shocking in its violence; at the same moment the doe leaped forward with spasmodic energy, going from sight behind a boulder, while the two others danced up the slope and vanished in seconds. Echoes of the shot were falling from every direction as Burns ran forward, rifle in his hands, ejecting the empty shell and reloading as he ran. He crossed the canyon floor near the thicket, panting a little, his boots crunching into the damp sand, and scrambled up among the rocks and cane cactus on the other side.

Behind the big rock, sprawled on its side and quite still, he found the doe—a small tan faded heap of hide and flesh and bone dropped carelessly on the ground. He uncocked the carbine and set it down, pulled the jackknife from his pocket, opened it and stepped close
to the deer. Although certain it was dead, he approached it from above, away from the sharp little hooves. He knelt and raised the doe’s head with its big glazed bewildered eyes and pressed the point of his blade into the warmth and softness of its throat There he held it for a moment, not yet pushing through the skin.

“Sleep long, little sister,” he said softly, holding the warm head on his lap. “Don’t be mad at me—I’m gonna make real good use of you. Yes sir…” He forced the blade through the skin and cut straight across the throat; the warm bright blood came gushing out with alacrity, as though meant to spill on that barren ground. Burns placed his hand under the cut and caught a palmful of the blood and drank it; then he lowered the head and raised the hindquarters, speeding the drain.

When the flow of blood began to lessen he rolled the doe on its back and gutted it, making a straight incision from the ribs down to the pelvic bone, taking care not to puncture any of the internal organs. He laid the knife down, spread the cut hide apart, and carefully and tenderly removed the paunch—severing and setting aside the liver— and handling the slippery mass gingerly, like a paper bag bloated with water, he dragged it some distance away and covered it with brush. He went back to the carcass, squatted down, wiped some of the blood and slime from his hands onto the hide, and ate part of the raw, hot, smoking liver. When he had had enough he threw the rest up the hill and looked around for a tree to hang the carcass from. There was nothing around him now but boulders and cactus; he saw that he would have to pack the doe back across the canyon floor and up to one of the piñons on the other slope.

He got up and walked a few steps away and urinated, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand and listening to the crickets down in the willows. The twilight had deepened into evening; a solution of dense violet light, like an intangible rain, filled the canyon from wall to wall.

Burns went back to the deer, lifted it over his shoulders, picked up his rifle and stumbled down the slope, across the sand and up the other side to the tallest of the nearby piñons. He opened his knife again and cut a stake about two feet long, sharpening each end, then spread apart the doe’s hind legs and braced them with the stake, piercing the shanks with the pointed tips. Now he could have used a piece of rope; since he had none he broke a branch from the limb he had chosen and hung the carcass to the stub. The limb bent slightly under the weight and the doe’s fore-hooves, swinging a little, grazed the black carpet of needles on the ground.

The cowboy built a small fire next, his mind on supper—he had eaten just enough of the liver to really rouse his appetite. He brushed off a level spot among the rocks, pulled up some dry bunch grass and crushed it into a ball, sprinkled with pine needles and shreds of bark and a handful of broken twigs, and added a flaming match. When the tinder caught fire, crackling brightly and sending up a thin gray fuse of smoke, he got up and prowled around for a while gathering fuel—dead juniper, a few skeletal stalks of cane cactus. He broke these into short lengths, set several on the flames and in a few minutes had a comfortable little squaw fire blazing away.

He was thirsty; for the first time in over an hour he discovered himself with nothing immediate and urgent to do, so he went down to the willow thicket and through it to the rock face. He found water dripping from fissures in the rock, filling a natural stone basin on the first ledge. He put one hand on the rock, still faintly warm from the sunlight, and bent down and drank, sparingly, and then went back to his fire and the deer, brushing drops of water out of his whiskers. As he approached, something black and awkward, like a ragged mop, rose out of the piñon tree and paddled slowly away down the canyon, each ponderous stroke of its wings accompanied by a swish
of air. Burns cursed himself—tentatively—and hurried forward to examine the interior of the carcass. He was relieved to find no sign of the scavenger anywhere on the meat; he had returned in time to save the deer, not from much actual pillage, of course, but from what he considered a particularly odious kind of defilement.

The fire had burned down to a hot, incandescent heap of charcoal; Burns reached into the abdominal cavity of the deer with both hands and cut away a long tender roll of the loins and laid it on the fiery coals. While the meat seared and crackled, gracing the air with its fragrance, he went back to the carcass, cut out the heart, the lungs and the diaphragm, threw the latter two organs away and set the heart down on the edge of the fire, intending to roast it. He cut a chunk from the half-raw half-burnt sirloin and ate it while considering what to do next.

The evening thickened about him, a lavender fog of gloom; he began to think that there was not much time or light left for moving camp—that is, for loading his gear on the mare and leading her up the canyon. It would be quite dark by the time he could climb back down to the spring and the cottonwoods where he had left her; coming back up with only a few stars for light would be a difficult and exhausting task. On the other hand, to carry the deer down there was out of the question; he had no intention of jerking all that meat in a place where the smoke could be seen from miles away in several directions.

He ate some of the sirloin, leaving most of it still on the coals, got up off his heels and staggered down to the canyon floor. Working fast, he cut and broke off a big solid armful of greasewood, scrambled back up the steep slope to the piñon and packed his rough materials into the deer’s gaping bellycase, making it a firm, thorny, bristling mass that only a fly could penetrate. That done, he went back to the fire, squatted down and ate the rest of the seated meat, feeding himself steadily and seriously but not fast; he took his time.

The fire was low, a flicker and shimmer of red, blue, violet embers; he shoved the tough heart into the center of the fire and with a stick heaped coals over it. He added a few knots of juniper, then lay back on the ground, half-gorged, immensely satisfied, and sleepy. There was only one thing more that he desired: he searched through his pockets for tobacco, found the pipe and tobacco that Jerry had given him, and filled the pipe. He sat up again, leaned toward the fire, picked up a burning coal and dropped it on top of the bowl of the pipe. He puffed slowly, tasting the unfamiliar, highly aromatic tobacco with caution; he decided that he liked it, stretched out on the ground again, and smoked freely.

Looking up at the strip of sky between the canyon walls, he saw a faint blinking formation of stars that looked like the Seven Sisters—the Pleiades—and this reminded him that the night was coming on. He belched, lying on his back, and considered the possibility of not going down after the mare and his equipment. He would miss his sleepingbag a little, if he did not go down, but then it would not be the first time he had slept on the ground and covered himself with nothing but his shirt and his own back. But there were two serious disadvantages in leaving things as they were: first, the possibility that his horse or gear might be discovered by some Ranger or prowling police officer; second, the certainty that if he waited till dawn to get his outfit he would find the deer riddled with blowflies when he came back up the canyon.

Burns puffed again on the pipe, watching the gray smoke drift toward the stars, picked some fragments of meat out of his teeth, and then sat up, grunting. He straightened the hat on his head, picked up his Winchester and hauled himself heavily to his feet; he started down the canyon, weaving a little in the uncertain light, belching again and wiping his greasy mouth on his shirtsleeve. A locust, dry and brittle as glass, rattled out of the brush and struck him on the chest; he slapped
at it in surprise, broke it and brushed it off, then shuffled on over the firm sand, following the narrow winding floor of the canyon. He came to the first big rock ledge and climbed, slid and jumped down the face of it, landing in greasewood and sand again; he marched past a stand of pampas grass, silvery and graceful, and around a bend in the canyon, and suddenly, unexpectedly, the view opened wide and the whole western world lay before him: the canyon dropping down step by step like an imperial stairway for gods, the gaunt purple foothills, the mesa rolling out for miles, the faint gleam of the river, the vast undulant spread of the city ten miles away, transformed by the evening dusk into something fantastic and grand and lovely, a rich constellation of jewels glimmering like the embers of a fire—and beyond the city and west mesa and the five volcanoes another spectacle, a garish and far more immense display of clouds and color and dust and light against a bottomless, velvet sky. Burns stopped for a moment to stare and admire, belched gently, and continued his descent.