So he should have brought Rusty, and perhaps next year it would be too late. Bow season was only a week, but there would be rifle season after. They could do it next Saturday, maybe.

  He stood and took his bow out of the bow case as quietly as he could, then pulled out a broadhead quietly too, nocked it, and drew the bow just to satisfy himself (as he had so often before) that there was room enough up here, letting the bowstring go straight again without letting fly. The broadhead’s razor-sharp blades gleamed dully in the night, and he realized with a little start that the night was not quite so black as it had been. Soon—very soon, now—the sun would peep above the horizon and bow season would begin officially.

  There was talk of having a black-powder season, too, a week for black-powder hunters after regular deer season. It meant he would have to get a black-powder gun, a good one, just as he’d gotten the Ruger Redhawk for handgun season. Learn to load and shoot it before next year, to be safe. If there was overtime this winter, maybe he could, a long Kentucky rifle to get the highest possible velocity out of the feeble propellant. He’d—

  A thump. Not exactly loud but not soft either, not near and not far—middle distance and very, very impressive. Impressive enough to spook every deer in the county.

  He gnawed his lip as he tried to think what had made it so impressive, why he’d known at once that it was an important and a significant thump—that something big had happened not very far away. Without training in logic or any other science, he was of an analytical turn of mind, getting to the roots of things when he could, and when he couldn’t returning to them again and again to paw at the earth and sniff (he smiled to himself) like Dad’s coonhound. This one wasn’t too hard for him though, not nearly. Not rooted too deep for him at all.

  It had been because he’d felt the thump as well as hearing it. It had shaken the ground, if only a little, and the ground had shaken the tree, which might even have acted as an amplifier or a sounding board, like the back of the fiddle he’d built from a kit about the time he met Bet but never learned to play. The old fiddle collecting dust in the basement, not a very good fiddle really though something might be made of it now, stripped and refinished after some sanding and regluing. He was a whole lot more patient these days, a better worker.

  A craftsman.

  A supervisor had called him a craftsman back in July, and Dean and Juan had kidded him about it; but he had felt at the time that it was the greatest compliment he could ever get or would ever get, and if he died after that it would not really matter—would matter to Bet and Rusty, no doubt, but not to him.

  It had worn off a little since. He had come to realize in his analytical way that it didn’t really matter much whether the supervisor thought he was a craftsman, or what the supervisor said. What mattered was whether he was; and he had worked more carefully than ever after that, taking no more time than was needed to do the job, but always taking the time to do the job right, fixing any little thing he came across so nobody would have to come back and do it later, and leaving each machine clean and tight, running as much like new as he could make it.

  Dad… He hadn’t thought of his father much in probably a year, but here he was again. Dad had bought a used pickup and said later that if only the guy who’d sold it had told him what the little scraps of wire in the box under the seat were for it would have saved him a hundred dollars. But he didn’t like the kind of fixes you did with little scraps of wire. There was magic in the first drop of oil, and magic in a good, clean oily rag. Out past that it was what you knew and how much you were willing to think, making your mind go like the parts, not just replacing stuff and walking away.

  But what had the thump been? What could it have been? Trucks hitting out on the highway?

  Trucks hitting out on the highway couldn’t possibly have shaken the earth in which this tree stood on a wooded hillside three valleys away; but maybe he had been wrong about that.

  An explosion at the plant; but this had been closer, he felt sure. He tried to think whether there was another plant closer, or whether it could have been a truck blowing up; and decided it had not been an explosion at all. More like a tree falling, but that wasn’t quite it either.

  Now he could see the ground below, and the place where the game trail turned, the place where he would take his shot-twenty-two yards, he had measured it in July. An easy shot for a compound bow as powerful as his, a bow that could send an arrow straight and true a hundred yards easy.

  The little wind that had brushed his cheek once or twice in the dark could be seen playing all around now, shaking leaves and stirring the few dead leaves that had already dropped, leaves red and yellow or brown, sometimes with green patches on them, alive in death.

  Like Mom. Dad had been old and tired and dead, that was all, dressed up in his coffin in a fashion that would have embarrassed him if he had been alive; but some part of Mom had still been alive, had not given up until they had closed the lid and screwed it down, so that he had half expected to hear her rapping on it when they lowered her into the grave. Although she was dead, of course, and only some small part of her that death had not yet claimed still living in his mind, a green patch that worried about him and Bet and Rusty, and planned to bake more pies, to teach Bet stuff she already knew or did not want to learn, make another quilt with Dora Skinner, because a real cold winter might come someday when he and Bet would be grateful for a nice—

  Something was moving away down the slope, down where the little creek barely trickled along the valley. Something bigger than a deer but just about as quiet. Another hunter, probably. Not driving deer toward a partner, because anybody trying to drive deer would make more noise. Just prowling through the woods with his bow, pretty quiet, hoping to get a shot.

  It was too bad he wasn’t driving, whoever he was, because if he had been the deer might have run up here along the game trail. Probably would, in fact. And then he himself might have gotten a shot if he was quick enough.

  No does, he told himself again. No doe season this year, and he wouldn’t want to be caught with one—didn’t want to bag a doe anyhow. No little spike bucks, either. There were plenty of those every year; but they weren’t anything but meat, and Bet could buy meat at the meat counter. Let the little spike bucks grow up a few more years. Six points for him. Eight or ten if he was lucky, but he’d settle for six. A braggin’ buck.

  He grinned to himself, grinned to the little breeze and the silent wood.

  That other hunter was coming nearer now, and he might very well be driving deer even if he didn’t mean to. A deer heard better than a man, better even than most dogs. The lone hunter (Tom Hunter pictured a big man, middle-aged, moving quietly) was hunting upwind, which was the way to do it; deer had better noses than lots of dogs, too.

  A terrified deer was on the game trail, small hoofs trap-drumming the hard, dry soil. Tom drew his bow, but it made the turn too fast for him to have shot even if he had wanted to, coming straight at his tree for a moment and flashing past—a small doe, scared out of her wits.

  He got close to her, Tom thought. Got real close, probably kicked her up. Might have creased her with an arrow then. That would account for it.

  He himself had put an arrow completely through a deer two years before, and watched it run away. It had run for more than a quarter mile, and it had taken him nearly two hours to find it, following the blood trail. If the lone hunter climbing the hill was following a similar trail, he would see him soon.

  He listened for more, then for anything. This early in the morning, with the sun just rising, the birds ought to be making a fuss, but they were not. Had migration begun already? Even if it had, there should be plenty left.

  It was the explosion, no doubt. It had scared—

  Just then a jay started talking some distance down the hillside, the loud, hoarse danger-cries that warned all good birds of the presence of a cat or a man. Here he comes, Tom thought.

  And then, that does it—that wraps up the morning. I’m not going to get a damn thing. Not even going to get a shot.

  He had gotten up at three for this, left the house without breakfast. He returned the arrow to his quiver, put down his bow, and poured himself a cup of coffee, adding a few drops of rock-and-rye.

  He sipped, then swallowed greedily, admitting to himself that it tasted great.

  He would go home and eat, maybe take a nap. Bet would kid him, but it wouldn’t matter because he’d kid himself worse. And before sundown he’d be back in the blind again, and maybe he’d at least get a shot. For a moment he regretted not shooting at the terrified little doe, but he pushed the thought aside. He could have, and he had chosen not to, so no more complaining about not getting a shot.

  Maybe he should just go back to the van. He could sleep in the van for a couple of hours, then come back here. That way Rusty could make all the noise he wanted; this was Rusty’s day off, too, after all.

  He drank again, wiped his mouth on his right sleeve, and considered removing the wrist guard from his left. A wrist guard was there to keep the bowstring from slapping your wrist and to keep your sleeve from fouling the string. If he wasn’t going to shoot his bow, why wear it? Although it was just possible that he’d get a shot at something he wanted on the way back to the van.

  Or he could stay right here, hang in. The sandwiches he’d carried had been intended as his lunch. Was he going to tote them back to the van after carrying them out here? What would he think of himself—of the way he’d acted—when hunting season was over?

  The stainless-steel cup that doubled as the thermos bottle’s cap was nearly empty. As he swallowed the last drop, there was a sudden rattle as a deer broke just out of sight. Before he could grab his bow, it had flashed past, a little spike buck.

  He picked up his bow and nocked the arrow again.

  A minute passed, or an indeterminate time that seemed to him a minute or more; the playful wind carried the faintest possible odor of laundry day, a chemical smell from some factory miles away.

  Then it sounded as if a riot were in progress just out of sight, the rocketing roar of a pheasant practically lost among clattering hooves and breaking twigs as an entire herd flushed from a thicket. He drew his bow as the lead doe rounded the turn and made for his tree, mouth open and tongue lolling, covering a good twelve feet with every jump, a big doe sleek and fat with autumn going full-out and still picking up speed. Behind her the ruck of the herd, bounding fawns and leaping does, perhaps eight in all, perhaps ten or twelve.

  Last of all the buck covering their retreat, muscled like a wrestler and crowned more regally than any king, thick of neck and large of eye, frightened yet still in command of himself if not of his panicky harem. For an instant he halted at the bend, head high, to stare up at the tree-limb blind and the point of the arrow aimed at his heart. His tail twitched; he plunged ahead and was gone.

  “God damn!” Tom said under his breath. “God damn, oh, God dammit!” It was inadequate, but what would be adequate? The bow had turned to concrete in his hand, its string sticking to his fingers as though they had been dipped in glue. Buck fever, he told himself. I got buck fever again.

  After how many years? He tried to count back to his first hunt with Dad. Sixteen. No, eighteen.

  Buck fever.

  Yet it had not been. He’d seen buck fever, had experienced it himself. Your hands shook with eagerness, and as often as not you shot too soon. Or you gawked openmouthed instead of raising your gun, or knocked it over when you grabbed for it. His hands had been as steady as ever in his life; he had seen the buck and sighted, had known what to do. Something had stopped him.

  Had Dad’s ghost returned? Said spare this one, son, and for the rest of your life you’ll know he’s out there?

  No. Tom pushed the thought aside. Only women saw ghosts. Ghosts! Women and nuts. Flakes, and he was no flake, was a rock-solid sober family man and a good bow-hunter. Something in his own mind had stopped him, and not for any silly, sentimental reason. What had it been?

  When he rooted it out and held it up, he had to laugh. He had not shot because he might need the arrow—because something awful was coming. But the other hunter was merely a man like himself, and might easily be a man he knew, a man in a hunting cap and a camo shirt, walking along with his bow in his hand and his quiver on his back like anybody else.

  Down beyond the bend there was a flash of brown, rich and reddish among the grays and blacks of trunks, the green of leaves. Not a camo shirt. Some kind of a brown shirt, maybe an Army surplus wool shirt, but it hadn’t quite seemed like the Army color. A man—

  There it was, just passing in back of a bush then gone in the shadows, red-brown with a gray streak and bigger than a pony, bigger than any man, as big as a bull almost but not a bull or a cow or anything like that.

  A bear.

  Not a black bear, and not even the kind of a black bear they called a cinnamon. A grizzly, a bear like people went a thousand miles to hunt. A grizzly bear for sure, even if there weren’t any grizzlies in this part of the country and hadn’t been since the people here wore three-cornered hats and fought Indians.

  They said there weren’t, anyhow.

  There were coyotes now, and they said there weren’t any of those either. Coyotes were supposed to be Western animals like grizzlies, animals you saw on the prairie in Texas, and out in the desert. But there was a dead coyote on the road a while back about a half mile from the house.

  There it was again!

  He pulled the arrow to his ear, then relaxed. Too risky, even if it wasn’t too far. He’d only spook it, and this was the chance of a lifetime. Wait. Take your time. Even with a good shot, a big bear will need a lot of killing, and I mean to try and kill it, not just scare it away, and I sure wouldn’t want to have it go off into the woods and take two or three months to die.

  He put down his bow and wiped his sweating palms on his thighs. Where was it?

  The woods were quiet. Even the jay had stopped talking. The jay had been a ways down the slope, probably it was still there, and the bear had gone far enough uphill that the jay wasn’t worried, not that a bear would be much danger to a bird anyhow. The jay probably didn’t know—it was a big animal, so it was scary. It would eat a bird if it could catch one, that was for sure.

  The level sunshine streaked the woods with golden bars that seemed to him to obstruct his vision, illuminating a young sumac as though with a spotlight, leaving a clump of bayberries darker than they had been by night. If the bear was moving he couldn’t hear it. It couldn’t be snuffling; he would have heard that. No question about it.

  There! Behind the fallen log.

  Once more he drew his bow. The wind pushed aside a leafy branch, and a gleaming shaft from the sun struck the place on the other side of the log before his own shaft could. A few twigs and dead leaves lay there.

  Nothing else.

  The laundry smell had grown stronger. Air pollution! Even way out here, there was air pollution. He snorted, allowed the bowstring to straighten again, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  And the bear rose on its hind legs at the sound, as bears will, and held up both paws.

  No buck fever now. Back went the arrow to his ear. His release was clean and crisp, sending the long aluminum-shafted broadhead flying from his sixty-pound compound bow nearly as fast as a bullet.

  Yet the bear tried to dodge. He saw it in slow motion, like movie blood flying off the teeth of a chain saw, the silver arrow streaking, the bear (almost as short-faced as a man, and not like a black bear very much) trying to writhe away before the arrow got it, the long orange hair on its chest crossed on a slant by a gray streak that was probably from an old scar, a crease from somebody’s big-game rifle.

  Quick as the bear was, it wasn’t quick enough. The arrow hit it a little bit to one side of the breastbone, and buried the big steel head and half the shaft.

  He had nocked another before the bear fell, and he let it fly, not so sure of his aim this time. Somewhere among the bushes and fallen branches the bear moaned, a deep, suffering noise that sounded practically human.

  That first one got him good, and if you ask me the other one did, too.

  A grizzly! His grizzly!

  It seemed incredible. It was incredible. How many men in the whole damned country had taken a grizzly with bow and arrow? A hundred? Maybe. Maybe no more than a couple of dozen.

  A couple dozen, and he was one of them. God had somehow, for some unknowable reason of His own, chosen to bless him beyond and above most other men, and he finally saw the level sunbeams for what they really were, God’s fingers, and he thanked God for it, mentally at first, then muttering the words and half ashamed.

  Was the bear still there? He peered and squinted, but could not be certain. A cloud passed before the sun and God’s fingers were withdrawn, leaving the woods nearly as dark as they had been when he climbed into the blind. It was vitally important that he know; even a wounded buck could be dangerous.

  Patiently he waited, twice thinking that he heard something big moving through the brush, each time assuring himself that it was just the wind, just his imagination. Either the bear was there (as it almost certainly was), or it wasn’t.

  If it was, everything was fine; he had his bear. If it wasn’t, he’d have to track it and finish it off, if it still required finishing. He knew himself to be as good a tracker as anybody who hunted these woods, and knew too that he possessed a dogged persistence so great that his coworkers at the plant sometimes thought he was a little crazy, shimming and leveling, adjusting anew and trying again, working through break and then through lunch because doing it—getting it right—meant more to him than conversation or food. The bear would be found, if the bear was findable.

  But the bear was probably dead already, lying no more than eight or ten feet from the point where he had shot it.

  He took out another arrow just in case.

  By degrees that seemed more than painfully slow, the sunlight returned, a little higher than it had been. He leaned from the blind, squinting. The bear probably wasn’t—no, positively wasn’t—where it had fallen. He could see the place now, see it as clearly as if he stood there, and there was no big animal there, so it had crawled away; with his arrow in it, it wouldn’t crawl very far, not even if the second one missed.