The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig Read Free Book Online

to the Black Eagle smelter but in a spotless office where his engineeering and metallurgy degree hung on the wall, and Vic would play basketball for the barnstorming Carlisle 'Skins from one end of the continent to the other.
    You could dream those types of dreams when the rifle in your hand was of civilian make. The whole batch of them tramped their legs off in the rough country there below the mountain reefs for a couple of days, never even seeing a deer but honing in on one another in high spirits. When Vic and Dex stopped to catch their wind on a sharp slope, Jake, who was mass and momentum combined, blew them a fart in passing and went on up the trail telling the world two halfbacks did not add up to a fullback. How lucky, the puffing pair agreed between themselves, to have someone the size and mentality of a horse along to pack out all the meat the two of them were going to get. It was Ben's country, there along the continent-dividing upthrusts west of Gros Ventre, and he was content to guide and grin until his face ached and try to stay on the lookout for deer. The last afternoon, a fine four-point buck strolled out of the timber on the ridgeline above them, nicely silhouetted but at extreme range. The other three looked at Vic, who had grown up on rifle-taken venison. Dex Cariston in particular stood back; his family, pioneer Helena merchants risen to various kinds of financial dominance, could have bought the Rocky Mountains as a hunting preserve, and he went out of his way never to appear presumptuous. "I'll give him a try," Vic accepted the general vote of confidence and flopped down to settle his .30-06 across a downed tree. But he was rusty—a man can't spend his autumns playing major college football and keep his shooting eye up too—and after he fired, the buck simply turned its head, antlers tipped a bit to one side, as if quizzical about all the noise. Ben and the others crouched waiting for Vic to touch off a second shot, but instead he clicked the safety on his rifle and looked up at them, poker-face serious. "Isn't that the damnedest thing you ever saw? A dead deer standing there looking at us." They all were laughing so hard they could not get their rifles up before the deer bounded off into the jack pines.
We'll never get him now, will we, Vic, old kid.

    Ben threw the flat tire on top of the other one in the trunk of the car and dusted off his hands. Some night soon, he knew, he and Jake would meet at the Officers' Club to do their best to drink away what had befallen Vic, and the next morning they would put on their unbloodied uniforms the same as always. He winced at the next thought: Dex was another story.
    Right now the puzzle was geography. Stumps of a mountain range that they were, the Sweetgrass Hills sat wide on the prairie and Ben knew he could not afford to waste miles circling East Butte the wrong way. He guessed west—traveling by wagon, Toussaint might have come cross-country from that way—and aimed the Packard in that direction on the loop road around the sprawling butte, hoping. This time the first place he asked at, a wind-peeled farmhouse, paid off. The farm couple, the Conlons, were acquainted with Toussaint Rennie, not necessarily by choice; for as long as they could remember, he passed through their place at this time of year, nodding politely and heading on up to elk territory. If they had to guess, they would say he might be somewhere up the old mining road to Devil's Chimney. Something tingled at the back of Ben's neck: east again.
    He jounced the car up the steep rocky road, praying for the tires with every jolt, as far as he dared, then set out on foot. He skirted timberline above a creek that dropped with a pleasant-sounding rush down through a coulee filled with tall grass and wild roses. He had never seen a more likely place for elk to browse, and there wasn't a one in sight. Nothing wanted to cooperate today. Dreading the moment when he would have to abandon the oldest