Joe turned his head just as he reached the truck. He looked at his wife, who was still as beautiful to him as the day they had been married. He felt a tug in his gut at leaving for ten days, but hunting was hunting and he did it every year. He was a creature of habit; he stood on tradition and kept schedules. Joe raised his hand in mock salute, his traditional reply. He opened the door of his truck and climbed in.
A small, cherubic face popped up from the floorboards on the passenger side. Joe clutched his chest and wheezed loudly in surprised. His daughter laughed delightedly, scrambling into his lap to grip the steering wheel and beep the horn. Joe scooped her up and tickled her until she screamed laughingly. To her, he was never Old Joe, the boring bookkeeper.
“Daddy, will you be home very soon?” Her big round eyes were somber.
Joe held up both hands, fingers spread wide. His four-year-old daughter counted each finger aloud, her rose bud mouth molding the words with a child’s lisp. She paused only for a second between seven and eight, then finished at ten with a flourish. Joe squeezed her in a bear hug and rubbed his Saturday morning whiskers lightly on her cheek.
“I love you, little pumpkin. Be good for mommy. Scoot!” He opened the door and the child scampered out. He took one last look at the two women in his life before pulling away.
His wife said a small prayer for her husband’s safe return and closed the door on the crisp November air.
Joe woke just before dawn on the third day. Whispers of a strange dream he’d been having were swept away like filaments of a spider’s web. He shucked his sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. In long johns and unlaced boots, he stood observing the frost that lay on the ground thickly. Movement some thirty feet away drew his eyes.
Ten yards to his right, in the middle of camp, stood a healthy, strong stag. Human and deer regarded each other gravely, then moved at the same instant. Joe dove for his rifle and the deer leaped away from the camp clearing into the woods.
Two shots shattered the stillness of the morning. The other men in camp awoke to the shots and shouted excitedly. Joe’s business partner Murphy poked his head out of his domed tent to see Joe push his way into the undergrowth, rifle in hand, clad in his pajamas and following a thick trail of blood on the frosty ground.
Murphy cried out, “Give ‘em hell, Joe,” then laughed at his own remark and returned to the warmth of the sleeping bag.
Joe’s feet thumped hollowly on the forest floor. He was past the thick underbrush and jogging along a deer run. The blood showed starkly against the frost, but even had there been no frost, the amount of blood would have been easy enough to track the stag in any conditions. He was sure both shots had hit the deer. One, he knew, had taken it high in the right front shoulder, while the other had shattered the stag’s back left leg. Joe swore under his breath, hoping it would have enough sense to lay down and die instead of leading him on a chase over wood and dale in his underwear.
Some distance ahead, turning and limping weakly through the trees, the deer was slowing considerably. Joe smiled grimly and thumped along a bit faster. He wasn’t close enough for another shot, but it was obvious the deer was winded and Joe himself wasn’t even breathing hard. The stag scented him and renewed the flight. Joe cursed loudly.
He jogged for another fifteen minutes over the narrow, uneven deer track. Joe passed an old oak with a bright red flag adorning its girth. A large sign was staked into the ground by the oak, red lettered with warning. “Zero trespass, zero hunting.”
Joe entertained no thoughts of defeat or surrender. Usually a stickler for law, his pride wouldn’t let him give up the chase. He’d followed the stag in his underwear, freezing his ass off, and was determined not to be thwarted by some liberal animal lover who hated hunting but thought it was okay for the animals to starve to death during the winter when there wasn’t enough food to supply the herd. But Joe was beginning to flag, his heart and lungs bumping and heaving away inside his chest painfully.
He slowed to a trot, then a walk, and finally a standstill. He heard a crash of brush and dried forest debris in a deadfall just ahead past a small hillock. The stag lay dead, it’s heart burst from the stress of its blind flight. Joe stood over the corpse. He felt a passing satisfaction that was smothered as soon as he contemplated the long haul it would take to get it back to camp to be field dressed.
Joe cried out in surprise as a hand dropped onto his shoulder. He whipped around to face a thin, old woman nearly as tall as he. She looked frail and sickly, yet her grip was strong, painful. Long silver hair fell thickly down her shoulders and back. Her face was old yet her eyes, which were strangely clear and bright blue, didn’t appear washed out or tired. In her small wrinkled hand she gripped a gnarled walking stick, shaped by years of old forest growth. It was nearly as thick as her arm. She was dressed simply in shapeless pants, shirt and woods jacket. She had appeared noiselessly. As Joe took her in, he thought she must be at least seventy years old.
Joe realized he was wearing nothing but long johns and unlaced boots. He moved the butt of his rifle to cover his crotch.
