Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Is he going to be all right?”

“Your father is as strong as ten horses and he has faced and beaten many enemies in his long and hard life. He’ll beat this one, too.”

“What is it, Mommy?” Nikki asked.

“It’s a terrible disease called post-traumatic stress disorder. It has to do with the war he was in. He was in heavy fighting and many of his very close friends were killed. He was strong enough to put that behind him and build us a very fine and happy life. But sometimes there are things that just can’t be kept away. It’s like a little black dog has escaped from the secret part of his brain and come out. It barks, it bites, it attacks. His old wounds are hurting, but also his memory keeps recalling things he thought it had forgotten. He has trouble sleeping. He is angry all the time and doesn’t know why. He loves you very, very much, though. No matter what happens and how he acts, he loves you very much.”

“I hope he’s all right.”

“He will be. He needs our help, though, and he needs the help of a doctor or something. He’ll understand that eventually and get some help, and then he’ll be better again. But you know what a stubborn man he is.”

The two rode on in silence.

“I don’t like it when he yells at you. It scares me.”

“He’s not really yelling at me, honey. He’s yelling at the men who killed his friends and the men who sent him over there to fight that war and then walked away from it. He’s yelling for all the poor boys who got killed and never came back to the lives they deserved and were forgotten.”

“He loves you, Mommy.”

“I know he does, honey. But sometimes that’s not enough.”

“He’ll be all right.”

“I believe he will be, too. He needs our help, but he needs mostly to help himself, get some medication, find a way to take advantage of his very special skills and knowledge.”

“I can ride Western. I don’t mind.”

“I know. It’s not about that, really. It’s about how mad he is at things he can’t stop. We just have to love him and hope that he sees how important it is to get some help.”

They were out of the trees. The high chaparral was desolate, rock strewn, clustered with primitive forms of vegetation. Ahead, in the shadow of the snowcaps, the cut in the earth between mountains that was called Widow’s Pass beckoned, and beyond it, after a course on a shelf of dirty rock and broken slope, a precipice from which could be seen as much beauty as has been put on earth. Julie loved it and so did Nikki. Bob loved it too. They rode here nearly every morning; it got the day off to a fine start.

“Oh, here we go, baby. Be careful.”

The track was tricky, and Julie was speaking more to herself than to her nimble daughter or to her daughter’s horse, the better athlete of the two animals.

She felt the tension come into her; this was delicate work and she wished her husband were here. How had they ended up like this?

Nikki laughed.

When the noise came, it didn’t shock or surprise the sniper. He had waited in the dawn for targets before. He knew it had to come, sooner or later, and it did. It didn’t fill him with doubt or regret or anything. It simply meant: time to work.

The noise was a peal of laughter, girlish and bright. It bounced off the stone walls of the canyon, from the shadow of a draw onto this high plain from close to a thousand yards off, whizzing through the thin air.

The sniper wiggled his fingers, finding the warmth in them. His concentration cranked up a notch or so. He pulled the rifle to him in a fluid motion, well practiced from hundreds of thousands of shots in practice or on missions.

Its stock rose naturally to his cheek as he pulled it in, and as one hand flew to the comb, the other set up beneath the forearm, taking the weight of his slightly lifted body, building a bone bridge to the stone below. He found the spot weld, the one placement of cheek to stock where the scope relief would be perfect and the circle of the scope would throw up its image as brightly as a movie screen. He cocked one knee halfway up toward his torso to build a muscular tension into his position, as he had been trained to do.

The child. The woman. The man.

“Hey, there!”

She turned at the voice to see her husband riding toward her and her heart soared.

But then it subsided: it was not Bob Lee Swagger but the neighboring rancher, an older widower named Dade Fellows, another tan, tall, leathery coot, on a chestnut roan he controlled exquisitely.

“Mr. Fellows!”

“Hello, Mrs. Swagger. How’re you this morning?”

“Well, we’re just fine.”

“Hello there, honey.”

“Hi, Dade,” said Nikki. Dade was an occasional hanger-on at the ranch, welcome for his knowledge of the area, his sure way with animals and guns.

“Y’all haven’t seen a dogie or two up this way? My fence is down and I’m a little short. They’re so stupid, they might have come this way.”

“No, it’s been completely quiet. We’re riding through the pass to see the sun come across the valley.”

“That is a sight, isn’t it?”

“Would you care to join us?”

“Well, ma’am, I’ve got a full day and I’d like to find my baby cows. But, hell, why not? I ain’t seen the sun rise in quite a while. I’m up too early.”

“You work too hard, Mr. Fellows. You should slow down.”

“If I slow down, I might notice how old I got,” he laughed, “and what a shock that would be! Okay, there, Nikki, you lead the way. I’ll follow your mother.

Nimble Nikki took her big chestnut along the climbing path, and it rose between the narrow canyon walls until they seemed to swallow her. Then she sunk into shadow where the pass was really deep. Julie was close behind, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw her daughter break clear, into the light. At the end of the enfilade was a shelf of land that ran along the mountainside for half a mile, gently trending upward, and then it reached a vantage point on the far valley.

Nikki laughed at the freedom she felt when she emerged, and in a second had freed her horse to find its own pace; it preferred speed and began to gallop. A fear rose in Julie’s heart; she could never catch the girl, nor stay up with her if she had to, and she felt the urge to call out, but suppressed it as pointless, for there was no stopping Nikki, a natural-born hero like her father. The eight-year-old galloped ahead, the horse’s bounding grace eating up the distance to the vantage point.

Julie then came into the light and saw that, safely, Nikki had slowed to a walk as she neared the precipice. She turned back and called, “Come on, Mr. Fellows! You’ll miss it.”

“I’m coming, ma’am,” he yelled back at her.

She cantered ahead, feeling the rise of the mountains on either side but also the freedom of the open space ahead of her. Its beauty lightened her burden and the mountains looked down solemn and dignified and implacable. She approached Nikki, even as she heard Fellows coming up behind her, driving his horse a bit harder.

“Look, Mommy!” Nikki cried, holding her horse tight between her strong thighs, leaning forward and pointing out.

Here, there was no downslope beyond the edge, just sheer drop, which afforded a vista of the valley beyond, the ridge of mountains beyond that as the sun crested them. The valley was green and undulating, thatched with pines, yet also open enough to show off, sparkling in the new sun, its creeks and streams. Across the way there was a falls, a spume of white feathery water that cascaded down a far cliff. Under the cloudless sky and in the pale power of the not yet fully risen sun, it had a kind of storybook quality to it that was, even if you’d seen it a hundred-odd times, breathtaking.