A sharp volley of gunshots echoed through the trees, off the ridges and from the corner of his eye he caught movement—gray—a shadow darting up the ridge where it wasn’t supposed to be. Could be a deer. Or…Harry crouched alert. His rifle was back by the body.
His eyes scanned the treeline. “There could be more of them,” he muttered.
“What do you mean?” said Bud, wide-eyed.
“That guy Cox…” Harry’s voice trailed off. He stared at his rifle buried yards away. A cliché from detective movies about disturbing evidence. Better leave it for the cops. He reached for Bud’s rifle. “I heard two shots and saw him fire once. Either of those first two yours?”
“Never got it off my shoulder. Dropped it when—”
“You sure?”
“Fuck yes, I’m sure. He fired three times and missed twice. Christ, if he hadn’t jammed up after the second one—”
“You’d be one dead-stupid-fucking-drunk millionaire, getting me up here in all this. Serve you right, damnit.” Fingers trembling, Harry broke open Bud’s rifle and sniffed the chamber. The cold steel bolt smelled greasy of solvent and oil. Not fired. He unloaded the rifle and quickly assembled a cleaning rod from his pack and rammed the plug of snow from the barrel, flung the rod aside and reloaded the rifle, shoved a round in the chamber and checked the surrounding woods.
“Don’t do that,” wailed Bud. “You’re scaring me.”
Harry set the safety and laid the rifle across Bud’s chest.
Bud clutched it. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t carry you out of here. I gotta go get help,” said 70 / CHUCK LOGAN
Harry. “Until I get back, that weapon is the only friend you’ve got.”
Bud’s eyes bulged at the woods. “Harry, don’t leave me!”
“Fuck you, you been shot before. Worse than this. Why’d you call me in the middle of the night, damnit?”
“I was scared. I dunno. Just a feeling. I just wanted you along.”
“You sonofabitch, you gotta talk to me. What was that argument about?”
Bud shut his eyes. “I don’t know. It’s nuts…I caught him with some stuff he stole. I told him he had to go to the police and turn it in. It was all settled, we were going to the sheriff, but he wanted to go hunting first. He said the sheriff’d never let him hunt after he turned the stuff in.”
“What did he steal?”
Bud gulped for air. “Guns.”
“Jesus, we went hunting with a drugged-up kid who steals guns?
Where is your fucking brain?”
“He went wild. Said to get off his back or I’d never live through deer season. He threatened me, the little asshole, threatened me with a gun. So I tried to take it away from him.” Bud panted, caught his breath and continued. “Shot right at my head, can you believe that? I grabbed at the gun but got tangled in the snowshoes and he stuck it right against me and shot again.”
Harry shook his head. “Man, you don’t know how close you came to checking out.”
Bud swallowed. “I don’t believe how quick it happened.”
But Harry wasn’t thinking about making the shot. He was thinking about the charms of Jesse Deucette.
“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Harry thought out loud.
“What?” asked Bud, gray-faced, eyes huge with confusion and pain.
Harry shook his head. Not now. His head wasn’t working real good beyond the immediate situation. The immediate situation called for a medic and the cops.
Harry turned and walked up the slope to the sagging HUNTER’S MOON / 71
brambles where Chris lay. He lifted the torn coat and stared into the lifeless face. Looked diminished. The dead always did. Like leftovers. Just a kid. Jesus.
Don’t think about it. Do your job. Get help.
“What are you going to tell her?” Bud moaned in agony as he hugged the rifle to his chest.
“The truth,” said Harry, as he took a last, unflinching look at the boy’s corpse. Gently, he let the coat drape over the face. Then he gathered himself and began to run through the deep snow.
12
Panic played its clumsy slow-motion joke and tripped him in the underbrush and the knee-deep snow. Snowshoes? No time. Keep going. Brambles whipped his face and he lost his footing again and this time he went ass over end downhill. Getting up, he saw Becky bent over her skis on the snowmobile trail. Her breath came in tortured clouds and she was sticky with snow to her waist.
“Becky,” he yelled.
She turned with a waxen expression when she saw him coming full tilt down the ridge. Her face was all wrong, but then he realized that he was smeared with blood. In a frenzied movement she fastened the bindings and grabbed her ski poles.
“Go,” he yelled. “Get to a phone. Get an ambulance! Bud’s shot!”
The muscles of her back and buttocks bunched against the clingy metal-gray fabric of her wind suit and rippled as she sprinted down the trail in long strides and her voice filled the woods with an eerie, high-pitched cry. “Mom! Moooommmmmm!”
And he was spent and he couldn’t keep up and he staggered and tripped again and got up and tried to run on wobbling legs. Finally he came between the log cabins and fell to all fours in front of the porch steps. “Ambulance.” He gasped and coughed as he wiped spittle from his chin.
72 / CHUCK LOGAN
Becky stalked back and forth on the porch with her face twitching and her fingers pulling at her hair. Jesse ran down the steps. “I called the hospital…” Her face was bright with slow horror and her jeans were still wet from their romp in the snow. “You’re bleeding,” she said.
Thinking with his hands, he seized her shoulders and shook her.
“Bud’s shot,” he said in an icy voice. “And if I’d of spent another ten minutes doing it like dogs, he’d be dead.”
“Oh God,” Jesse’s eyes went vacant.
“Not that bad. He’ll be all right,” he
