Uncertain Justice

Chapter 45

The boy added the incident to a list of grievances he didn't even know he was compiling. One day, the collected injustices would cause an irreconcilable split between them.

A rancher with a spread well south of IH-70 glimpsed the big rump of the grizzly as it disappeared into an overgrown thicket on his west range. His eyes weren't as strong as they had been, though. He decided the shadows had exaggerated the size of the animal and he resolved to make that appointment with the eye doctor that he'd been avoiding for the longest time.

He told some cronies what he thought he'd seen at the American Legion dancehall the following weekend. He was judged the best liar in the state.

An encounter with a female black bear and her two cubs over the carcass of a young fawn pushed him even further south. For some reason, the usually timid black bear sow decided to defend the kill. Her nearly grown offspring ranged themselves at her side.

Triple the size of the biggest black bear ever born, the grizzly would normally have chased them off easily, but the incapacitating wound he'd suffered weeks earlier was still fresh in his mind. There was a tiny doubt in his mind whether he could overwhelm the trio fast enough to avoid further injury. He broke away and shuffled off, pausing every so often to look wistfully back at the kill that had been his.

As he ambled across a small clearing several weeks later and many miles further south, a crying child in the campground a hundred yards away stopped him in his tracks. Thousands of years of losing encounters with humans have bred an instinctive avoidance reaction in the psyche of bears. The grizzly stood undecided for a moment.

An irritated male voice, louder and more forceful than the child's, made the decision for the huge brown bear. He turned west, moving deeper into the mountains. The wounds were healing well and he could handle the rougher terrain now.

The human voices faded until the bear could hear only tree limbs bumping against each other in the wind. Ahead he could see brilliant flashes as lightning sparked around distant peaks. He was confident now he could handle any trouble he encountered. Sometime in the next few hours, he would decide he'd gone far enough for the day and stop inside a dense thicket to sleep until dawn.

§

In the early days of his stay, there was only an occasional need to cross the stream that divided the valley floor. There was plenty of food and other resources on this side.

In time though, Miles began to spend more and more time in the larger fields and forests on the other side--but still seldom more than a few hundred yards from the ford. Usually he brought back a field-dressed carcass of a young buck with him ... including one today that had a mildly deformed hind leg. Certainly, it hadn't been able to run well. Miles had made a sixty-yard shot with his crossbow to bring the slowly moving animal down. He congratulated himself on really getting a feel for the weapon.

Between the venison that he prepared in every way he could imagine and the easy fishing along the banks of the stream, life was good in the little valley. Miles was immensely satisfied ... genuinely happy for the first time in a really long time.

The events of the past year seemed remote and hard to recall.

The day came when he'd studied old Zeb's journal so well he could recite whole pages to audiences of trees and rocks. The cabin was watertight, cool in the afternoon sun and warm at night ... everything had been repaired as well as he could manage with the tools on hand. He watched the sunset so many times he could predict how far the shadows would creep over the valley floor by a certain time.

He was getting bored and restless. It was, he decided, high time he explored more of the valley. He slept better that night than he had in a week, dreaming he was with Zeb as the old mountain man saw the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains for the first time.

§

At the last moment, he decided to take the crossbow with him and kill a deer. Last night a big bobcat, judging from the tracks, had gotten across the river and found its way into the smokehouse behind the cabin. The animal had eaten pounds of smoked venison and spoiled even more. Though not yet critical, it left him shorter in food supplies than he liked to be. He swore more than once as he rebuilt the smokehouse, using heavy timbers and making sure there was no easy way inside.

Choosing six bolts from the eighteen he'd brought with him, he put them in the rawhide quiver he'd made. Slung across his shoulders, the bow was out of the way but convenient to hand when he needed it. It was slow to c**k and load though. His pistol was a much faster weapon to get into action and it was holstered on his right hip. It always was when he was outside the stone house.

Crossing the stream was no longer the chore it had been at first. There was only one place, a hole gouged by the current downstream of the boulder out in the middle, that he had to avoid while fording the running water. Eddies from the current washing around the boulder had gouged a deep hole there whose dimensions he had measured by trial and cold, wet error.

The icy water at the ford came above the middle of his thigh, chilling him to the bone in the few minutes it took to cross to the other side. It felt like the water came directly from melting snow on the surrounding peaks. He shivered and pushed faster across the current, prodding at the river bottom ahead of him with his combination hiking stick and spear.

Once across, finding a deer wasn't terribly difficult. Deer like to follow trails they make themselves with repeated trips to and from favorite feeding grounds. It's a survival trait in winter when their small hooves would otherwise break through the crust of snow and trap them in deep drifts. The trails through the snow give them safe passage through the woods but it made them highly predictable in warm weather or cold, and much easier to find and stalk.

Finding fresh tracks along a well-defined trail, Miles followed them slowly until he caught sight of the herd steadily cropping fresh green shoots in a small clearing. A moistened finger held to the breeze confirmed he was already downwind of them, making the hunt an abbreviated one for once. He propped his hiking stick against a sapling.

Setting the front of the crossbow on the ground and pushing his left foot into the stirrup, he pulled the string up until the bow was fully c****d. He slid a bolt onto the track that would guide its flight. After loading it, the operation of the weapon was very similar to using a rifle. It didn't have the range of a firearm but it had the advantage of being much quieter.

The deer were busy eating as much as they could, accumulating the layers of fat that would carry them through the hard mountain winter to come. Preoccupied as they were, it was surprisingly easy for Miles to slowly approach the small band and keep them upwind all the while to avoid alerting them.

The leader of the band, a male with the beginnings of a big set of antlers he would use to battle other males in the fall's rut, actually walked closer to Miles when something attracted his attention. Miles went to one knee behind a bush, then slowly got down on his belly and held his breath as the deer came even nearer. After a moment, the deer lost interest and dropped its head to resume feeding.

Miles got back up to his knees and glanced down to check the bolt's contact point on the string. The tiniest misalignment would cause the bolt's flight to veer wildly off target. If the arrow had been jostled off the bead when he went down, he couldn't see any evidence of it.

Little more than thirty yards across the clearing, the deer turned so that it was nearly broadside and facing to Miles' left. The big male twisted his neck to the right to reach a particularly enticing bit of greenery, making it impossible for the animal to see the man behind the undergrowth. Miles stood to get the bow clear of the brush and lifted the stock to his shoulder. Taking a deep breath and letting half of it out, he waited for the deer to lift his left-front leg for the next forward step. When it came, he gently squeezed the trigger.

The twenty-inch bolt flashed out of the crossbow's guiding track at some three hundred feet and forty per second and knifed into the side of the animal less than three-tenths of a second later. The deer had no time to react to the humming thump of the bowstring before the broad head tip on the arrow tore through the space between two ribs and into the chest cavity.

The razor sharp arrowhead sliced through hide and muscle as if they weren't there. It ripped open the left lung and plowed into the heart, tearing big chunks from both organs. Pushing shredded tissue ahead of it, the bolt continued its violent course through the animal's body, slashing through the right lung and exploding out the animal's side. The exit wound was more massive than one from a high velocity rifle.

Blood poured in a torrent from the ruptured heart and punctured lungs collapsed almost immediately. The young male humped his back convulsively and tried to run but he stumbled only a few steps before the remains of his heart quit pumping. The deer fell ten feet from where it had taken its last bite.

Barely slowed by its penetration of the deer's chest cavity, the arrow's path was only slightly deflected when it nicked a rib on the animal's right side. Miles' eyes followed the bolt as it flew on in a spray of blood and soft tissue.

Twenty yards beyond, the arrow thumped into a young pine. Both the arrow and tree quivered as the bolt's energy dissipated. He marked the tree in his mind so he could cut the arrow out of the wood for reuse another day.

The small herd hadn't heard the metallic twang of the bow over the wind in the treetops; the heavy thud as the big whitetail crashed to the ground wasn't quite enough to send them racing away. They stopped feeding and swung around to watch the male as it struggled weakly and died. Two of them trotted a couple of yards toward the cover of the trees but it wasn't until Miles moved forward that they all fled in earnest. Once alarmed, they were out of sight in seconds.

Miles waited until all signs of life had faded and then strode to the dead deer. Standing over the proud animal for a moment, he looked at the deer's glassy eyes. Under no illusions about life and death in the wilderness, he hoped that somewhere, somehow, an accounting would be made. As any carnivore did, he had killed for food, not sport. No apology was required but Miles stood for a moment in respect for the extinguished life.

Miles stooped to prod the deer's left forelimb with his knife to make sure it was dead. Assured it was, he dragged it under the closest tree that was sturdy enough and prepared to field dress the deer. He tied the length of climbing rope he'd brought with him to the lower legs of the animal, threw the rope over a limb, and pulled hard on the rope to get the carcass off the ground.

The white-tailed deer was larger than the southern Texas mule deer he'd hunted in his youth and he strained to get the animal clear of the ground. With the carcass finally off the b****y grass, Miles tied off the rope and cut the animal's throat to let the animal finish bleeding out. The soft breeze carried the smell of blood south and east.

§

The scent was caught by four beasts that depended more on their sense of smell than sight. Hungry predators sniffed and calculated their chances of getting to the fresh kill and being able to scavenge a mouthful or two before competitors got there. Three who began to drift in that direction found a meal before they'd gone far. In the end, only one animal kept moving purposely toward the scent.