Hunted by Emlyn Rees Read Free Book Online

he paraphrased, having listened to his daughter laughing along to enough Simpsons episodes to know better than to talk down to her now. ‘Meaning we also know it’s not spent its life in a cage either,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know about you, Lexie, but I think it’s going to taste a whole lot better for that.’
    Lexie didn’t reply. Danny didn’t push her for an answer either. She had an independent mind and he respected that. She’d reach her own conclusions in time, he knew. And he hadn’t brought her up here to mould her, just to hang out.
    She walked ahead of him, casting a long, thin shadow before her, to where he’d set the last snare.
    They’d walked the fence together with little Jonathan just before sundown the previous afternoon, with Danny pointing out the telltale tufts of fur snagged on the fence barbs and the smooth worn dirt of the rabbit runs beneath.
    As he’d tied the snares, he’d explained to his kids how settlers and farmers had been hunting this way for hundreds of years, knowing how each dusk and dawn the rabbits would come creeping out of their warrens in the high woods to feed on the lush green grass below.
    Danny had wondered when he’d woken today whether the snow might have deterred the rabbits from venturing out. Three inches had fallen overnight, and heavy flakes were drifting slowly down again now. But it seemed the snowfall had only made his snares that much harder for the rabbits to detect, because he already had two dead in the bag. And now a third. More than he’d hoped for. More than enough for the stew he’d cook and eat with Sally and the kids later on by the hearth.
    It irked Sally, Danny bringing Lexie out like this on his morning rounds whenever they were up here at the cabin. But Danny had been even younger when the Old Man had done the same for him.
    And Lexie wouldn’t be left behind. She’d always been like a shadow to Danny. She wasn’t afraid of anything that walked this earth. Not while she was by his side.
    The Old Man had shown Danny more than the dead catch too. Danny had been taught how to skin the rabbits himself by the time he’d been seven.
    No difference between this and peeling a banana , the Old Man had told him the first time he’d assigned him the responsibility of prepping and cooking supper on his own. Take a hold of it by its hind legs. Lift it up. Slit it up the belly from top to bottom, then hook out the guts. See … that way they tumble down over the head and don’t ruin the meat. Now snap back the head and see how smoothly the whole skin shucks off …
    The Old Man had been Chief Combatives Instructor at the United States Military Academy, where Danny’s half-Russian, half-English mother had lectured in modern languages. Death had been in his blood, and he’d wanted his boy brought up the same.
    But Danny was prepared to meet Sally halfway. He let Lexie come with him to collect the catch, but he always did the prepping alone, out back away from the cabin, only bringing the meat inside once it had been skinned and decapitated and washed of blood, so that it looked like it had just been bought from a store.
    He dropped the dead rabbit into his drawstring canvas bag, unhooked his bowie knife from its scabbard on his belt, and cut the length of cotton holding the snare to the fence, his fingers already too numb from the cold to unfasten the knot.
    He dropped the snare into his bag, on top of the other snares and the kill. No point in leaving traps out here when he was away. Not because they’d rust, which they wouldn’t, but in case another animal got itself tangled in such a way that it wasn’t killed outright and Danny wasn’t here to deliver the coup de grâce . No point in causing anything any suffering, unless you had no choice.
    A bird – a crow, he thought – launched itself up cawing into the sky over the trees near where the cabin was. Then another, a few metres to the left. Something must have startled them. Maybe snow