There are some who say hunting animals for sport is cruel and barbaric. I agree. After all, animals cannot fully comprehend the fact that they are being hunted from afar, and when the knowledge of a threat finally emerges—if ever, given modern high-powered rifles and scopes—they react with thoughtless instinct. Where’s the fun in that?
But humans… that’s a different matter altogether. Stalking prey as cunning and dangerous as you are, who could easily turn into predator if given the chance… what greater challenge could there be?
I will never kill an animal for sport. But a man? Why not? It’s as much my life at risk as his; our commonplace, barbaric, primal fight for survival elevated to a game of wit and daring.
And if someone’s too blind, too civilized, too soft, dimwitted, or slow to recognize me as a deadly threat when I have them in my sights, then they really are just dumb animals, deserving of whatever fate befalls them. Boring as chasing a rabbit into a snare. I prefer my game armed with wits, desperate enough to resort to teeth and claws, as capable of killing me as I am them.
It makes victory taste all the more sweet…
Magruder County, Idaho is known for many things. The least miles of paved roads per capita. Not just in the state; in the entire US of A. The highest concentration of wolves, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions in the lower forty-eight. The lowest rate of violent crime in the tri-state area. The most arrests for poaching—although the citizens of Magruder County refuse to acknowledge hunting slightly out of season to put food on the table as a crime, the federal government that manages the three wilderness areas and two national forests that occupy most of the county still does.
The least accessible county seat in the state. The highest number of private airstrips—there being no paved roads beyond Poet Springs, the county seat. The lowest number of hospital beds, being zero since the nearest hospital is two hundred twelve miles away in Lewiston or east over the mountains to Missoula.
And the most flavorful huckleberries in the whole damn world. At least that was Sheriff Bill Beachey’s opinion as he strode through a patch of fireweed, skirted a mound of bear scat that was at least a day old, and made his way to the clearing at the top of the cliff overlooking Blanco Canyon.
He snatched a handful of the tiny indigo berries and dribbled them into his mouth one at a time, savoring the moment when their skins burst open, releasing their flavorful juice. Huckleberries were even better when his wife, Deena, baked them into pies or the bread that she used to make French toast on Sunday mornings, or boiled them into jam she’d save for the winter months to remind them of these glorious summer days.
Winters were harsh here on the western slope of the Bitterroots, where arctic winds pounded their fists against unyielding granite peaks, howling, trapped in the mountains’ embrace until the air shed tears of thick, wet snow that some days felt as if it would never stop. But when Deena brought out the huckleberry jam, one taste magically made summer seem not so far away.
It had been a hot July, and now, the first week of August, the berries were ripening quickly. He’d bring Deena here this weekend, Bill thought. Just like when they were first courting—and with Deena, unlike the girls who’d come before, it had definitely been courting, from the first moment he met her, forty-one years ago when they were both just high school kids. Pick some berries, then fall asleep with his head in her lap as she read aloud from whatever book she had handy, the summer breeze teasing her long, dark hair across his face, the last thing he’d see before he closed his eyes. Sheer heaven.
Couldn’t have days like that back in Denver—not without his phone going off, interrupting them with a callout to a crime scene. After thirty years working the city streets, he’d thought he wanted to retire, come back home to these mountains, take up fishing or the like. But it turned out sitting around all day trying to learn how to relax was more stressful than working a triple homicide with the leads gone dry. He’d been slowly going crazy. Until Sheriff Langer had his heart attack—a mild one, a wake-up call, the doctors had told him—and asked Bill to fill in until the election.
Funny thing was, returning to law enforcement—even in a sleepy county like Magruder, where ninety percent of his time was spent in his Jeep, driving from one minor call to the next—had probably saved Bill’s life. It had definitely saved his sanity and his marriage. He loved the job so much that last week he’d actually filed the paperwork to put his name on the ballot come November—the only name on the ballot so far, the county clerk who also functioned as their department’s dispatcher and the county postmistress had told him.
The last drop of berry juice eased its way down his throat. Bill smiled and pushed the brim of his Bronco’s ball cap up to better let the sun graze his face. He moved through the meadow to the edge of the cliff, facing east over the valley carved out by ancient glaciers and past it to rows of jagged white peaks towering over forests green with balsam, cedar, and pine, then beyond them to more peaks, these just across the state line in Montana.
He’d ask Deena to read him some poetry during their picnic, he decided. Yeats or Yates or some other dead Irishman. She’d love it.
He slid his phone from his shirt pocket and took a few photos for Deena. Loose pebbles cascaded down the sheer cliff face, bouncing off the boulders below. An innately cautious man—it was how he’d survived thirty years on the job in Denver—Bill stepped back.
Which was how he was caught off balance. A lightning strike of electricity surged through him, freezing his muscles, pain ripping down every nerve. Then a shove from behind pushed him over the cliff’s edge.
At first he flew, his cry of surprise filling the air. Then he hit the rocky scree-covered slope and his howl was cut short. His body bounced and skidded against cruel blades of granite, not a tree or bush in sight for a handhold; the rocks offered no purchase, only more damage to his hurtling body. He flailed his arms up to protect his head but was held captive by gravity, and he hit the ridge with a sickening crack of bone that echoed across the gorge.
And then there was silence. As if the entire forest had paused, waiting to see if Bill were dead or alive.
For a long time, no sound came. Slowly, timidly, afraid to draw the attention of the predator on the cliff, the forest came alive once more. Then, amid the buzzing of insects and the rustling of leaves in the breeze and a variety of small animals intent on gathering food and the soft padding of carnivores stalking their prey came a foreign sound from the cliff’s edge: human laughter.