P Deutermann - Spider mountain

The slope facing us went back uphill at a fairly steep angle. I chambered a round, slipped the safety off, and then began to scan the forest on the other side through the Leupold VX-III scope, looking for anything out of place. Greenberg was doing the same thing with his binoculars, and he had his SIG. 45 out on a rock beside him. I realized that there could be someone approaching from behind us, but trusted the dogs to detect that problem. They’d hear footfalls and twigs breaking long before we humans would.

So what was over there? A deer? A bear? Or some of Grinny’s crew with an armful of shotguns? I lay on my side and began to methodically traverse the barrel of the rifle degree by degree, studying the scope picture for anything that didn’t look like a tree trunk or a boulder. The scope wasn’t as powerful as the telescope, but if I suddenly saw a man aiming a gun in our direction, I wanted to be able to shoot first.

The first puffs of the late afternoon breeze were stirring leaves across the way, and the pines were making that sweet whistling sound above us as their tops bent to welcome the cooler air coming down from the higher slopes. While my left eye studied the scope picture, my right eye saw that both shepherds were still interested in something across the way. Their ears were erect and not moving. I kept looking, tree by tree, across one line of elevation, and then back, slightly higher. There were no bird sounds other than what sounded like a large woodpecker working on something across the way. I kept searching the tree line, studying the shadows and the bushes, the reticles of the scope seeming to drill into the greenery. I was looking for a face, a hat, the glint of steel, eyes.

Eyes?

I steadied the scope and centered on a gleaming reddish eye looking back at me. My finger came off the trigger guard and settled on the trigger. I cleared my throat quietly, and Greenberg looked over at me. Seeing the rifle steadied, Greenberg swung his binoculars around, trying to locate the target. For an instant I lost it, and then the bushes moved slightly and I saw it again-a single red eye, surrounded by what looked like a black Brillo pad. The woods were silent except for the clatter of the woodpecker. I pulled the butt of the rifle in tight.

“Animal,” I whispered.

“What kind?” Greenberg asked. The shepherds were still down, but they sensed our excitement and were leaning forward.

“Can’t-” I began, and then I fired, almost involuntarily, as a four-hundred-pound black boar exploded out of the bushes in front of us and charged down the hillside in our general direction, grunting and growling and coming down like a four-legged avalanche, knocking down bushes and small trees and coming faster than I had ever seen any pig move. The shepherds launched forward, barking furiously.

“Tree!” I yelled to Greenberg, as I slung my rifle and leaped into the lower branches of the nearest pine tree. Greenberg did the same, and we both scrambled as high as we could get, dislodging a hail of dead branches, pine needles, and a few thousand startled insects as we pushed our heads up through the dense foliage. The furious pig blasted right past the shepherds and headlong into the tree Greenberg had climbed, shaking it from roots to tip and almost dislodging the scrambling DEA agent.

I swung around my own sticky trunk, unlimbered the rifle, and tried to get a shot, but by now the shepherds were circling the beast, barking and snapping, while the pig got down on its haunches and circled with them, tearing up great gouts of dirt and pine needles with its hooves while making a continuous roaring sound. I finally got a shot and fired down into the pig’s back, but the monster merely grunted once and kept circling. It lunged at Frick, who barely escaped being disemboweled by a whipping tusk, but the move allowed Frack to get a jaw-full of the pig’s right hind leg. The dog backed hard, pulling the squealing pig right off its feet. As it tried to bend around to get at the shepherd, Frick closed her jaws over the pig’s snout and began to pull back in the other direction. The pig thrashed hard enough to flail the two shepherds like furry rags, but the moment gave me a second shot. This time I aimed for the back of its head and the pig collapsed instantly. The two shepherds continued to pull and snarl until they finally heard me calling them off. The pig’s stubby legs twitched uncontrollably for about a minute and then it expired with a long, wet gasp that sprayed a flat cone of bright red blood onto the pine needles.

I swallowed hard and looked over at Greenberg, who was staring down at the black, hairy body below. His face was white as we watched the two shepherds sniffing around the body.

“What the fuck is that thing?” he asked.

“Wild pig,” I said. “I should have recognized the warning she was giving-remember the woodpecker sounds?”

Greenberg nodded, not taking his eyes off the pig, as if to make very sure that the thing was really dead.

“She was snapping her jaws at us, warning us to go away. There’s probably a litter up there.”

“Litter same as smaller?”

I laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. The yellow tusks sticking out of the pig’s mouth were at least twelve inches long. Okay, two. But the dogs had been lucky.

Dogs?

We both heard it at the same time-a long, melodious baying sound from the ridge behind and above us. Then another dog joined in. The pack was coming to the sound of our gunfire.

“Rock and roll,” I said, and slid down the pine tree in a shower of sticky bark and outraged pine beetles.

Forsaking any semblance of caution, we grabbed our gear and took off down the slope to the brook. Greenberg slapped his side and turned around to go back and retrieve the gun he’d left in the grass. I waited anxiously on the other side, trying to wipe pine pitch off my hands. I reloaded the rifle, and then we were off again, trotting right along the edge of the firebreak to make better time. From the sounds of it, there were even more dogs behind us now and they were onto a solid scent. The shepherds were ranging out ahead again, occasionally looking behind to see where that dog pack was.

“That dead pig will slow them up for a few minutes,” I said, trying not to puff. We were climbing again, and the branch-littered ground made for rough going.

“Can we make it to the lake before they catch up?” Greenberg asked. He seemed to be doing just fine physically, without any signs of being out of breath. Of course, he wasn’t carrying as much gear as I was. That had to be it.

“If the men keep the dogs with them, on tracking leads, then we can beat them. If they turn them loose, I don’t know. We get over this spine, it’s all downhill from there.”

“That’s good,” Greenberg said.

Actually it wasn’t. The slope was much steeper going down, and my thighs were burning within a few minutes of starting down that hillside. The footing on Rockslide Mountain was loose shale, rocks, and tufted grass, and I felt as if I were falling forward more than running down the hill. Greenberg started to slow down, as I had thought he might. It was always much harder to go down than up. The dogs weren’t doing too much better. Frack lost his balance and tumbled for ten yards before getting back up, and then he did it again. Behind us the noise of the dog pack seemed louder, but I kept telling myself it was just the acoustics caused by the rock walls above us. The bad news was that it didn’t sound like the dead pig had slowed anyone down.

We finally reached the bottom, which was a jumble of large boulders in front of a tangled pile of winter-killed pine trees. The line of debris stretched hundreds of feet in both directions along the base of the mountain. Greenberg collapsed in front of a big rock.