THE HUNT
47
sickness drove us down to nothing. Have to eat the cookstove
soon."
A tall dark girl with the broad hips your whole .body ached
to stroke stood at the door. The old man heaved up. She flash–
ed past to help him at the stool. They heard the old man's
thunder as they went thru the kitchen.
Hub stopped in a broken shed to piss. Gordon's words
lumped out of his mouth as he told about the gang at McFar–
lane's. Hub snorted,
"If
Pusley and the rest ain't careful, we'll
be down on them first." He looked at Gordon as if he were
waiting for more. Gordon said nothing. Hub buttoned up and
went ahead.
The iron sky hung low. The wind cut across like a knife–
bar. Gordon braced his shoulders and gulped the strong air.
They walked abreast. In a clearing burdocks. Hub picked at
the snow. Fresh cock pheasant droppings. "Hard winter all
right if they got to hammer burdock balls. Not half so hard as
'twas for us. Been living on squirrel."
The dark brooding Hub trudged ahead tracking the cock.
They moved up to a patch of briers. A cackle and explosion.
Gordon swung his Damascus too late. Hub's rifle cracked with
a sound as if he had smashed into an empty bushel basket. The
cock curved its tail and then coasted clear into the woods again.
Hub raised his rifle as if he were going to break it in two
on his knee. He rushed ahead. They needlethreaded over the
edge of a bank. The snow came up to their bellies, stabbing
thru their pants. They beat about. All they found in the end
were a few bloody feathers.
Hub's buck teeth flared in his dark face. "Need a shotgun
for pheasants. We sold everyone one of our good guns. They
got the hunting license on, and you ain't supposed to hunt even
a louse except it's in season and you got the tag. There was
hunting and traplines so a fellow could get a living. That was
before Ted and me was took to war. But down in the valley
all the trenches they ever seen is under a skirt. Jimpson's boy
wasn't took, Ed Pusley got away with it."
Gordon said, "The bastards." Hub looked at him. All
that Gordon said again was, "Bastards."
Hub spat bitterly. They filed down a hard cowpath. Hub
told how he had shot silver fox. Last snowshoe rabbit killed in
this part of the country; was his-ears steel gray, long hair to
