Роберт Артур - Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

Just then the buck stirred and started up the slope. He moved without hurry, ambling up the hill. A moment he was silhouetted against the gray sky. Then he was gone.

I waited. The shot cracked out loud and sharp in all that stillness. The echoes rolled past me and beyond me, far into the evergreens and into silence. Then came another shot and on the heels of that a third one. These echoes, too, rolled and faded and died.

A strange reluctance gripped me as I started up the slope. I could not understand it. All I knew was that it unnerved me. Was it the temper of the day, the low, dismal clouds, the first hush of winter like the deep, eternal silence of the tomb? Then her image crossed my memory and I knew what it was.

I stopped on the crest of the hill. He was there below, sitting on a stump with his back to me. I stood there and watched. And I felt it begin in me, mildly at first, just swirling around in the dark depths of me and I didn’t know what it was, then something nurtured it and it grew and I felt it rise overwhelmingly in me and at the last moment I caught myself and forced it back to whatever depths had spawned it. I lowered the rifle from my shoulder, aware that I was trembling all over.

When I had myself in hand again I went down to him. He heard me coming and he rose to his feet and picked up his rifle. His face wore a disgusted look.

“Missed him,” he said bitterly. “Three shots and every one a miss. I suppose you heard?”

I said nothing.

“He came over that rise,” Endicott went on, “walking slow and easy. I couldn’t have asked for a better target. But I missed and he really took off. I tried two more on the run but what can you expect when I can’t even hit a walking target?” He peered at me. “You listening, Ludlow?”

I hauled myself out of it, out of the black thoughts and the fear, the numbing fear of the great and dark evil that I had never known existed m me until a few minutes ago.

“I heard you shoot,” I said woodenly. “Tough. But you’ll get another chance. Better luck then.”

He was still peering at me. “You don’t look so good.”

I stared off at the green ring the balsams and spruces and hemlocks made around this clearing. “I’m all right.”

“You look all in,” he said. “I’m pretty well bushed myself. How about calling it a day?”

I didn’t like the thought of going back to the cottage and seeing her move around and hearing her voice and feeling her eyes on me every now and then. I didn’t like that at all but there was no way to run from it.

So I said, “Okay, Endicott. Let’s start back...”

That evening I didn’t even try to read. I lay on my blankets with my hands under my head and my eyes closed and straining everything in me to keep from remembering the incident of that day and trying not to pay attention to their voices beyond the curtain.

They were playing cribbage and she squealed delightedly every time she won and he grumbled but you could tell it was good-natured grousing and that he was really glad she had won. Maybe he had even let her win. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for her.

I didn’t hear her come in. My eyes were closed and it was the fragrance first of all, and then an awareness of her and I opened my eyes and there she was, staring at me with that grave, faintly wistful look in her eyes, the lamplight turning the ends of her dark hair to golden brown.

Endicott was moving about in the next room and the radio began to blare, loudly, and though I’ve always hated loud radios somehow I liked it loud right then.

“Aren’t you feeling well, Sam?” she asked, and I thought there was something special in her voice for me, something like concern, but then I told myself it was just my imagination.

I sat up on the edge of the bed. “I’m all right.”

“You hardly ate anything tonight.”

“I wasn’t very hungry.”

“Could I make something for you?”

“I’m all right. You needn’t bother.”

“I’d like to fix you something.”

To change the subject I said, “How about the carbine? Did you try it today? It would be just right for you, a light gun like that.”

She shuddered. “I tried. I tried real hard, Sam. I actually picked it up once but that’s all. I put it down right away. Guns make my skin crawl. They always have. I don’t think I could ever force myself to shoot one.”

“There’s really nothing to it,” I said. “I don’t know why you should be so afraid.”

“But I am,” she said, and shuddered again and hugged herself with her arms. Her eyes widened and stared off into that secret, sad somewhere that only she could see. “Call it a phobia. Maybe something that happened when I was a child and which I can’t remember.” She uttered a small, nervous laugh, her lips twitching stiffly. “Maybe I should go see a psychiatrist. Are you sure you don’t want me to fix you something?”

“I’m very sure. Thanks anyway.”

“Well, good night, Sam.”

“Good night, Mrs. Endicott...”

There was something about those tracks that disturbed me from the moment I saw them but I had no idea what it was. My mind was too full of other things, of hopelessness and frustration and disgust with myself and that fear of the ugly evil I had not known I possessed.

I left Endicott in a clearing while I made a circle around through the woods to see if I could scare up something to drive past him but there was no deer sign today. Only the wilderness was there, green and somber and patient, full of awesome silence, full of lonesome brooding.

I doubled back finally and started up that hill, remembering yesterday and the dark impulse and the rifle at my shoulder and the sights staring at Endicott’s back; and in the midst of all this frightening remembrance I noticed the tracks. They paralleled mine except that they went up the hill whereas mine had gone down. I noticed where, just before reaching the crest, they veered off to the left and seemed to have headed for the timber.

He was seated on the same stump below with his rifle across his knees, smoking a cigarette. I forced myself to continue without breaking stride or pausing. That could have been yesterday’s mistake, the stopping and the thinking and then seeing her in my mind.

I made enough noise so that he heard me coming. He rose to wait for me. I could feel his eyes examining me. Did he know? Did he suspect about yesterday?

He glanced at his wrist watch. “You’ve been gone a long time,” he said, and the concern in his voice sounded genuine. “I’d begun to worry about you.”

“What’s there to worry about?”

He gave me that peering look again. “I don’t know. You just don’t seem to be yourself the last couple of days. If you don’t feel so hot we could knock off hunting for a day or two.”

I began to breathe easier. It wasn’t what I had thought it was. “I’m okay.”

“So I don’t get my buck. I can come back next year, can’t I? Stay in, tomorrow at least. I can hunt close to the cottage and along the roads. I won’t get lost. Don’t knock yourself out just because I hired you. You’ll get paid anyway.”

I almost screamed at him. Why do you have to be such a right guy? Aloud I said, “I never felt better in all my life. Come on, let’s get back and have a drink.”

She sat between us, slouched a little with her thighs together and her hands clasped in her lap. Her face looked pale in the glow from the dashboard light, paler than I remembered. The shadows caressed her features and I envied them for I dared not touch her.

“Turn left up ahead,” I said. These were the first words I had spoken since we had left the cottage.

Endicott braked the car and turned off the road. There were several cars parked in front of the tavern and as I got out I could hear the juke box going and the sound of voices. I hung back, letting her and Endicott enter first. There was a small vestibule just inside the entrance and we hung our jackets there. I still remember what the juke box was playing because it fitted in with the way I felt inside: