C. Box - Savage Run

Joe fired five shots in rapid succession, squeezing the double action until it clicked twice on empty chambers. The concussions seemed especially loud, and they echoed back and forth against the canyon walls until they dissipated and all Joe heard was a ringing in his ears.

He rolled onto his back, ejected the spent cartridges, and reloaded, keeping one cylinder empty for the firing pin to rest.

“Did you hit him?” Stewie asked.

“I doubt it,” Joe said. “But at least he knows we’ll fight back.”

“You bet we fucking will,” Stewie said.

They lay in the root pan depression for what seemed like an hour waiting for more rifle shots that never came. To Joe, the images and sensations of the last two days played back in his mind. He could not believe what he had seen and been through. His entire life had been reduced to one thing: getting away.

The first few raindrops smacked into pine boughs above their heads, sounding like gravel on a tarp. Thunder boomed. The sky was close and dark, the bank of thunderheads pushing out what little blue remained. Any possibility of a rescue by air was now remote.

Joe lay on his back with his.357 Magnum on his chest. The first drops on his face made him flinch. He closed his eyes.

The rain came.

You know, Joe, I learned a lot during that thirty days I spent crawling across the country after I got blown up by that cow,” Stewie said as they walked. “This is bringing it all back-the hunger, the elements, the cloud of absolute terror hanging over us.”

They were walking through the night in a steady but thin rain. Joe was soaked through, and rivulets of water streamed down from his hat when he cocked his head. The heavy clouds obscured the moon and stars, but there was enough ambient light for them to see by. Both Stewie and Joe lost their footing from time to time on rain-slick pine needles, and they had tripped over branches hidden in dark low cover. But they kept going; they kept bearing south. They stayed close together, within reach, so they wouldn’t run the risk of losing each other in the darkness. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Joe thought, they were descending the mountain toward the river valley. The terrain on this side of the mountains was easier to cover.

“So what does it bring back? one might ask if one were interested in the question posed,” Stewie said sarcastically, since Joe hadn’t spoken. “Well, I’ll tell you. What it brings back are feelings and theories I got when I was huddled up under a tree for the night or crawling beside a road hoping to find a particular residence I knew about. You see, Joe, I knew where a certain gentleman-one of the biggest contributors to environmental causes in the country-had a second home. I had been there once for a meeting. It had a helipad so the gentleman could get back and forth from San Francisco when he needed to. Anyway, this gentleman owns thousands of acres and a multimillion-dollar gated palace on an old ranch homestead. And I crawled all the way to his land.”

Stewie had conducted a series of monologues through the night as they walked. Joe didn’t mind, because they kept his mind off of his hunger and exhaustion. He likened it to listening to talk radio while he drove down the highway.

“But you know what happened when I got to his land, Joe?”

“What?”

“The son-of-a-bitch had put up a ten-foot buffalo fence and electrified it. I made the mistake of touching the fence and it just about cooked my ass off. I crawled around it for a day and couldn’t find a way in.”

Stewie spat angrily. “Here is a guy who gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups like One Globe so we can fight the bastards who are ruining the earth, but he buys a huge old ranch in the mountains and puts up an electrified buffalo fence to keep everyone out.”

“Isn’t that his right?” Joe asked.

“It’s his right, but there’s nothing right about it,” Stewie argued angrily. “It’s so fucking elitist and hypocritical. Think about it: He builds a castle where a little ranch house once was, he closes roads that had been open to the local public for years, he puts up ‘No Trespassing’ signs, he builds a helipad, and he shuts the world out. Tell me how this guy is any better than an oil company that moves into an area and sinks wells? Or a lumber company that comes in and cuts the trees? And he’s one of us! ”

“That is something I’ve always wondered about,” Joe said.

“I can see why,” Stewie agreed. “Some of our own behave worse than the ranchers they bought out and, in many cases, the companies who lease and exploit the land. They fight development because they’ve already got theirs. This kind of selfishness destroys the credibility of the movement.”

Joe realized he was now operating under the assumption that Charlie Tibbs was no longer following them. Joe no longer cared about the sloppiness of the trail they cut, and no longer felt it was necessary to do anything other than head straight south. He couldn’t envision Tibbs attempting to cross the canyon the way they had. Leaving his horse and the bulk of his equipment would lessen Tibbs’s advantage, and it was inconceivable that he would expose himself against the canyon walls the way Joe, Stewie, and Britney had done.

This assumption caused a lessening of immediate pressure, and Joe realized how hungry he was. His last meal had been breakfast on Saturday. It was now- what day was it? — Monday morning.

Joe wondered if it had been possible that one of his shots had actually hit Tibbs. He doubted it. At the range he was firing, the slugs would not have traveled in a true arc. They would have fluttered and tumbled end-over-end. But if Tibbs had been hit, Joe thought, the damage would have been devastating. Tumbling.357 Magnum slugs would make a big hole.

No, Joe decided, Tibbs wouldn’t attempt to follow them. He would have turned back. On horseback, it was possible that Tibbs could make it back to his truck before Joe and Stewie hiked down the mountain. Racing around the mountain range to meet Joe and Stewie would be difficult, given the time, but possible. Considering what they’d already seen of Charlie Tibbs-his ruthlessness, his tracking abilities-Joe opted to push through the night.

Joe, tell me about Marybeth,” Stewie said after nearly an hour of silence. “Is she still a babe?”

Joe stopped, and Stewie nearly walked into him.

“I thought we agreed that Marybeth was not a topic of discussion,” Joe stated.

“We did, but I was just thinking about how it was that you came to the cabin in the first place,” Stewie said in a reasonable tone.

“Think all you want,” Joe said, turning to walk again. “Just try to resist the urge to let everything you think about come out of your mouth.”

A long roll of thunder rattled across the sky.

“Yup,” Joe said, after a long pause. “She’s still a babe.”

The rain stopped and the sky opened up to reveal brilliant swirls of stars that lit the ground and gave shape to the dripping trees and brush. The fluttering sound of wings shedding rain in the shadows ahead signaled to Joe that they had come upon a flock of spruce grouse. The birds were nested in for the night, perched on low branches and downed logs, backlit in romantic blue by the stars and moon.

Spruce grouse were not intelligent birds-they were known as “fool hens” by local hunters. Joe and Stewie exchanged glances and came to an immediate understanding:

Get those birds!

Picking up a stout branch, Joe bounded into the flock and stepped into his swing like a hitter pulling a fastball, lopping the head off a grouse perched on a log. He stepped back and swung again, connecting with another grouse as it started to rise. Stewie killed one with a well-thrown stone. The rest of the flock, finally realizing the threat, rose clumsily through the trees. The three downed birds flopped and danced in the dark grass.