The Hunt

Read an Excerpt

The Hunt

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By David Francis

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 David Francis
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-1231-5

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Chapter One

The Brittany Woke the old man early. It was a chilly October morning. The first frost of the season had settled in on the valley. Elmer was already half-awake. It was hard for him to sleep. When the weather changed he grew restless. The arthritis made sleeping difficult. The arthritis made a lot of things difficult. He sat up in bed and switched on the lamp sitting on the nightstand. A mirror across the floor resting on a dresser took in the figure on the bed. Two crease marks from a pillow ran down a scruffy face. A thin tuft of hair stuck up awkwardly off a lonely bald top. Deep-set eyes squinted under bushy salt and pepper eyebrows. He set his eyes on the mirror, and the eyes in the mirror looked back. The eyes in the mirror were frequent guests early in the morning, but that was about the only time they met. The old man had no faith in the mirror and little reason to care for the increasingly unfamiliar site that gazed awkwardly back at him. Turning to the clock on the nightstand, he waited for the little hand to come into focus, and then sighed when it eventually did.

"Only quarter after five, Bo. You usually make it till at least quarter to six."

He rubbed thick fingers and a calloused hand, swollen at the joints, back and forth over the tuft of hair while he collected his thoughts.

"Well, I guess we're both getting old. Can't hold it in like we used to."

He folded the covers back and hung a pair of pale white feet, long and bony, over the edge of the bed. Daybreak had yet to poke through the windows. The room was cold. He conveniently fell into a ratty pair of corduroy slippers when his feet met the floor. Wearing a pair of long johns and slightly bent at the back and knees, master and servant slowly marched out the room and down the hall to the kitchen door. The old man's bones cracked as the dog's nails clicked on the wooden floor that creaked under their weight. Together they played as an orchestra of the aged. The Brittany got to the door first and sat patiently with a stiff closed muzzle and serious eyes that followed the old man to the door and watched him fuss with the black iron latch. He pulled open the door and pushed open the weathered, rickety white-framed screen.

"Go on, Bo."

He looked down at his old dog, which sat still and stared up earnestly at the old man. He was a nine-year-old Brittany spaniel, with white fur and rust-colored patches about the face and body. He may have been older. Elmer had to guess his age.

Five years earlier, only days after Elmer's wife Violet was put in the ground, the dog appeared at his door. He was a mangy looking animal with matted fur and burs knotted about the neck and ears. He smelled worse than a dead snake and with ribs slightly exposed under the matted fur, looked like he was well on his way to becoming a corpse of the undead. The old man cast him out, although he felt bad. His grieving heart had no time to care for a sick, wandering pup, he thought. But the dog would not leave. One morning while chopping some wood in the field behind the house, he saw the dog running around half-crazed in the woods. When Elmer went to investigate, he found the Brittany frozen, his nose pointing to the base of a fallen hickory tree that lay rotted and forgotten. As the old man approached, a rabbit darted out from under the tree as if its fluffy white tail was on fire. The dog didn't run after but instead turned and stared back at the old man intently, as if to say, "Why didn't you shoot?"

The two stared at one another. A connection was made. The dog had obviously made a living on hunting whatever he could find, but for how long the old man couldn't figure.

"Well, I guess I ruined your breakfast. Come on with me back to the house and I'll get ya something from the cupboard. May not be as good as fresh rabbit, though."

The Brittany followed the old man back to the house. The old man disappeared inside, and the dog patiently waited on the porch. When he returned it was with a plate of leftover stew. He placed it on the porch.

"Here ya go, boy. I think this might satisfy you for a little while."

The old man believed in providence. Sure, it could have been just a dumb coincidence that this sick and lonely pup came into his yard only days after Violet's death, but the old man didn't think so. Violet, he believed, guided this poor homeless creature to him. She knew how lonely he would be without her. She always knew, he thought. He watched intently with folded arms as the hungry dog licked the plate clean.

"You came to me homeless and beggin' for food, and I cast you out. You came to me like an ol' bohemian!"

Bo, as this wandering creature came to be called, had found a home, and the old man had found a friend and hunting partner.

Bo continued to sit stone-faced and frozen as Elmer peered out the kitchen door. The night was giving over ever grudgingly to the morning. The pumpkins on the porch were frosted over. He took one last look back at his old companion, but still the Brittany would not move.

"I don't know what your problem is."

He flicked the kitchen light switch to the right of the door and sat at the table. Again he rubbed his hand back and forth over his bald head and thought for a moment.

"Ol' Bohemian, you got that urge, don't you. Why you been acting like this all week. I know what your problem is. You're telling me it's time to do some hunting. Old dogs like you and I always get that urge with the weather change. Well, I think you're probably right, and I'll agree with you more if we can find some birds to hunt. I don't know why you gotta wake me this early ta tell me though. That's not right!"

Bo stared back at the old man intently with excited brown eyes and a head slightly cocked to one side. His nails slid on the kitchen floor, and he had to readjust his footing every now and again. But aside from that, his stare was intense and unbroken.

"Well, let me get my clothes on and get some breakfast. Ol' Bo, you haven't let me down in all the years I known ya! I still wish ya wouldn't wake me so early though. Maybe we'll go over ta Jenkins' farm and wake him up."

The old man walked on down the hall back to the bedroom to make ready for the day.

Chapter Two

The old man opened the door of his pickup, and the Brittany jumped upon to the seat. His master followed him in and cranked up the cold engine. They drove south down Clinton Corners Farm Road and at the fork veered left onto Pancake Hollow. It was less than a four mile journey, and the old man knew it all too well. The road was narrow and uneven with a high bow in the middle. The road was filled with potholes and the old man knew every one of them, zigzagging the truck this way and that. Much of the road had nothing more than remnants of pavement. Up a rise and slight bend in the road and over a one-lane iron bridge the truck putted along. The land opened up with fields on either side. The road graded upward jagged and quick, and without warning appeared the driveway of the Jenkins Homestead and the apple farm behind it. Sprawling hills of trees bearing luscious, deep red fruit rose aptly up a grand hill and a formidable mountain loomed large behind it.

Now, the old man loved to hunt, and in his younger years was well known throughout the county as a darn good hunter and tracker. He learned how to hunt from his father, who considered it, as many do, a rite of passage from boy to young man. The old man could recall countless hunts and expeditions with his father and brothers and the big deer that ran the hills of Jenkins Mountain, or as should be said, were stopped from running those great hills. But now he was old, and his legs could not climb so well, and his hands would ache from carrying the heavy rifle for so many hours on cold November days. For this reason and others, the old man reserved much of his attention for hunting grouse during the fall months with his trusty companion Bo, although the urge to go after the big game nudged him this way and that every so often.

Elmer parked the truck in the usual spot, a small section of yard to which he gave little consideration and to which Bo usually gave even less. This spot was to the right of the driveway and directly under the fully extended branches of a two-hundred–year-old maple tree. The tree was at its peak color, and upon getting out of the truck, the old man took a moment and gazed in amazement at the majestic site before him. The moment was of course interrupted by Bo, who cocked a leg to its base; this being the common ritual of a man and his dog.

Jenkins' farmhouse was just on the other side of the driveway. It was a white stone house that dated back before the American Revolution. Abraham Jenkins, the patriarch of the apple farm, was fond of telling stories of how his great-grandfather, five generations removed, gave food and shelter to patriot troops who passed through one winter. Elmer had heard the story many times, but some of the details were a tad shade of gray, possibly from Abe Jenkins' own literary license for detail and the blurriness created between fact, fiction, and storytelling. But the old man took solace in the one clear fact that everything does get better with the retelling. The farm had a past, and that was the important thing, and so did this mountain. For Elmer this would always be true.

Pulling his gun from the truck, the old man broke open the barrels and blew into them, giving them a quick cleaning.

"C'mon, Bo. Let's go."

They walked up a dirt driveway that was just to the right of the old farmhouse, until the driveway turned into a dirt tractor road. It was muddy and rocky. From many years of use from horses to heavy wagons and tractors, the road had sunken in some areas. They followed the road to a small wooden bridge. Big, thick wooden beams, about thirty of them lying side by side, made up the bridge and were barely distinguishable because the land had seemed to swallow them. In fact, the bridge wouldn't have been noticed at all if not for the ends that stuck straight out and of course the pancake hollow brook that ran underneath it.

Bo took the lead and trotted over the bridge, and the old man followed. On the other side of the brook and to the left of the dirt road was a barn. It was a wooden barn in need of much repair. A rusted tin roof sat upon heavy creosote beams and both were supported by a stone foundation built about the same period as the farmhouse. It was a rundown old barn that looked more like a shack than a barn, but it had sheltered everything from soldiers to plow horses, wagons to tractors, and smelled of hay, creosote, horse manure, and rotten apples. The road winded its way up a small hill and around to the other side of the barn where in a corral stood a handsome gray plow horse. Upon seeing the old man and the Brittany, the horse slowly meandered out to the fence line to investigate, each hoof carelessly pounding into its muddy domain. The old man pulled an apple out of his hunting coat and held it out between the fence posts. The horse consumed the whole apple in one bite, shoving its massive cold snout into the man's hand. The old man ran his hand up and down the long white mane from its forehead to its snout.

"Hey, Ol' Gray, have you seen any birds, huh? Any birds out here this morning?"

The horse gave a low, guttural whinny and flipped its long, shaggy tail, showing its gratitude for the attention.

Man and dog continued on, walking the dirt road until it turned into more of a trail than a road, as the grass had grown over much of it, leaving just a rut of muddy tire tracks on either side. It twisted and turned and ascended up the hill, splitting the north and south orchards of Jenkins farm. On each side of the trail was a stone wall covered in high grass and wild rose bushes. The wall acted as a cemetery for discarded machinery and equipment. There was an old, abandoned tractor and other assorted tools; a tire; a rusted out crow bar; a half-rotted wooden cart wagon; fifty or so wooden pallets; the rusted out carcass of a pickup truck, and some two dozen or so half-rotted apple crates that made up the graveyard of Jenkins' apple farm. The display was testament to over two hundred years of a working farm. Past each stone wall lay the four hundred acres of apple trees that encompassed Jenkins' property.

The two made their way up the great hill about a half-mile to the wood line of Jenkins Mountain and stopped at the point where the trail snaked into the woods. The old man was winded and needed a rest. He looked back at the hill he had climbed. Down in the valley was Jenkins' house and the massive spread of his farm. The sun had risen up over the mountain and shone bright, wishing the valley a good morning. The old man stood in the shade of the hill, pulled a handkerchief out of his hunting coat, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"I'm still in pretty good shape!" He rolled up the handkerchief slowly, giving him some time to catch his breath. He stuffed the handkerchief back into his coat. He took one last glance down at the fields and then disappeared into the woods.

Together the old man and the Brittany worked their way up through some cedars and to the first ledge of the mountain. On top of the first ledge was a large cluster of spruce trees and beyond that was a blowdown, a clearing in the woods where the trees were blown over by storms and strong winds. It created a nice hiding place for many small animals and birds, and it was here that Bo's keen instincts took over and the old man knew it. He watched carefully as Bo worked his way through the spruce, nose low to the ground, sniffing the earth for the scent of a grouse. Several times the dog went on point, moving slowly and looking carefully in through the branches, his nose getting lower and lower. The old man kept his Browning out in front, his finger gently resting on the trigger. Bo moved carefully, his paws touching down lightly, almost weightless on the leaves. The blowdown spread across a large area, and the cover was extremely thick with briars and bur patches. The Brittany worked his way through it, and the old man followed patiently but attentively a short distance away. The Brittany made his way through the thicket of brush when suddenly a rabbit darted through to the right of the dog. The man quickly raised his Browning and followed right, but was instantly drawn away by a thrashing raucous as three deer, a buck, and two does that were bedded down jumped up and took flight with great, powerful leaps over downed trees and brush. The brush shook and the branches crackled, breaking under the hoofs of the deer, as simultaneous flashes of tan and white moved against the green and gray backdrop of the blowdown. Shaking and dancing branches made all objects blend together in a fury of excitement that made the forest come alive. The dog out in front now, leaped and bit at the air as the man drew his Browning back to his left and crouched slightly, pulling it up to his shoulder, finger getting tighter on the trigger, bearing down just ahead of his trusty companion. Eyes wide now, a blur bursting up from the ground rocketing left, fanning wings, gun barrel out in front and squeeze into a thundering, booming echo as a fat ball of feathers torpedoed into a thicket of bramble. Leaves fluttered from the low leaning branches to the ground, sounding the death rattle. The forest breathed and then fell still and silent once again.

The old man's heart raced and with an unsteady hand he broke his gun open and pulled from the smoking barrel the empty casing. He reloaded and snapped the barrel closed as Bo forced his way through the brush to the downed bird. Carefully gripping the grouse in his mouth, the dog walked over to his master, who by this time was crouched on one knee awaiting his prize. The Brittany laid down to the left of the old man and dropped the bird at his paws, not wanting to give the bird over so quickly.

"Good job, Ol' Bo."

The old man pet the dog and scratched him under his chin and around his ears.

"Good boy, Ol' Bo. You did a great job. And I would have to say that I did a fine job as well, so how about that?"

With that he picked up the grouse and held it in his hands.

"This is a fine bird, Bo."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Hunt by David Francis Copyright © 2010 by David Francis. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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