Blood Trail

high-powered rifle simply for the twisted fun of it? How would you like it if somebody killed your pet dogs and cats, or your little sisters or brothers . . . simply because they loved doing it? It’s the same thing, believe me.”

Sheridan stopped sketching, realizing she had been idly working on a scene of a falcon dropping from the sky to hit a rabbit. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she moved her arm over the drawing so no one could see it.

As Klamath Moore went on, Sheridan found herself looking at the woman with him, who she assumed was his wife. The woman sat on a chair next to Mrs. Whaling’s desk with her hands in her lap, her eyes on Moore. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones, obsidian eyes, and long dark hair parted in the middle. She wore jeans and a loose chambray shirt over a white top and little makeup because it wasn’t necessary. Sheridan guessed she was Native, and she had a kind of calm serenity about her that was soothing to behold. She’d not said a word, but her presence seemed to bolster Moore’s message in a way that was hard to explain. As her man spoke, she would occasionally look down into the stroller next to her and brush her sleeping baby’s apple-red cheeks with the back of her fingers. Sheridan resented Klamath more—and her teacher—for not introducing the woman and baby as well.

“Hunting is a dying activity in the United States, I’m happy to say,” Moore said, “but it isn’t dying fast enough. Most studies say less than five percent of Americans hunt. That’s around fifteen million hunters. Around here, I’d guess the percentage is much higher, maybe thirty percent? Fifty percent? Too damned many, that’s for sure. But whatever the number, these so-called sportsmen kill over two hundred million birds and animals every year. Two hundred million! That includes four million deer, two hundred thousand elk, twenty million pheasants, and over twenty-five thousand bears. Think about this kind of slaughter on a mass scale—it’s horrendous! My mission in this life is to hasten the overdue death of blood sports and to raise awareness about what it really is, what it really does. I firmly believe that every time a rich man pulls the trigger and an animal dies, we as human beings die just a little bit as well. In nature, predators kill only the sick and weak. But hunters kill the biggest, healthiest, and strongest in the herd, which plays hell with the balance of nature. We will never achieve moral greatness until this practice is abolished.”

From behind Sheridan, a male voice mumbled, “What bullshit.” It was Jason Kiner. Jason’s father, like Sheridan’s, was a game warden. Sheridan had fought with Jason the year before but they’d mended fences, just like their fathers had. Sheridan still wasn’t sure she liked him, but she felt a growing kinship with him as Moore went on because he, like her, felt their fathers were being attacked here in their classroom.

“Ah,” Moore said, stopping and raising a stubby finger in the air. “I hear some dissent. That’s okay, that’s okay. I encourage it. It’s the American way and I’m all for the American way. And I expect it, here in the heart of what I like to call the Barbaric States. Do you know what a barbarian is?”

No one raised a hand.

“The definition I like is thus: lacking refinement, learning, or artistic culture. That pretty much describes a hunter, I’d say. Think of him out there,” he said, gesturing out the windows toward the Bighorns, “swilling beer, farting, trying to keep his pants up because he’s so fat, using high-tech weapons to kill Bambi and Thumper so he can cut their heads off and stick them on his wall. Do you know how the word barbarian came to be?”

Again, no hands.

“The ancient Romans came up with it to describe the hordes of slimeballs who were trying to take them down. They spoke a different language which, to the Roman ear, sounded like ‘Bar-bar-bar-bar.’” He said it in a stupid, drooling way that made several kids laugh. “That’s what I hear when so-called hunters tell me why they do it. They get all high and mighty and say they’re honoring the animal they killed, or they’re getting right with nature, or some other kind of nonsense. But when they go on and on all I can hear is—” He stopped, made his face slack and his eyes vacant, opened his mouth to appear like an idiot, and said, “Bar-bar-bar-bar-bar.”

Sheridan noticed how his wife did a well-practiced smile, and how several kids laughed, getting into it. Mrs. Whaling seemed a little uncomfortable with the way things were going, Sheridan thought. Her teacher’s eyes darted around the room more than usual.

“Do you know what hunters actually do?” he asked. “Do you know what takes place? I’ve got no doubt some of your relatives probably hunt, this being the Barbaric States. But how many of you have actually been there?”

He paused. The silence started to roar.

Finally, Jason Kiner raised his hand. Moore nodded at him, as if approving. “Any more?” he asked.

Two boys in the back cautiously raised their hands as well. One was Trent Millions, a Native who split his time between his father’s house on the reservation and his mother’s house in town. Trent appeared puzzled by the question, since hunting on the reservation was done without controversy and was a matter of course.

Taking a deep breath, Sheridan raised her hand.

“Four of you?” Moore said. “Just four? I would have thought more. I guess hunting is dying out even in the bloody heart of the Barbaric States.”

Then he looked at the kids one by one with their hands up and said, “You’re all murderers.”

Which startled Mrs. Whaling and made her turn white. “Mr. Moore, maybe—”

He ignored her.

“If you kill an animal for the joy of killing, you’re a murderer,” he said. Sheridan felt the eyes of most of the room on her now, but she kept her hand up. She felt her face begin to burn with anger and, surprisingly, a little shame. “Okay,” he said, “you can put your hands down now if you want.”

He shook his head sadly, said, “Blessed are the young for they know not what they do.”

Sheridan kept her hand up.

“Right now as I speak to you,” Moore said, pointing out the window, “there is a man up there in those mountains who is killing hunters. Unlike the innocent animals hunters kill, this man seeks and destroys other men who are armed and capable of fighting back. But this man who does to hunters what hunters do to innocent wild animals is considered a sicko, a mad dog, and that’s why I’m here. I’m here to support him in his noble quest to raise awareness of what is happening over two hundred million times a year in this country. If we condemn him and say his methods are brutal and deviant, how can we turn around and say what hunters do is not? This man, whoever he is, should be celebrated as a hero! He’s fighting for the animals who can’t fight back themselves, and I, for one, hope he’s just getting started.”