Otherworldly Maine by Noreen Doyle Page B

trees that marked the limit of the cutting. Here forest took over once more, and where it began, Longtooth’s trail ended. “Now you seen how it goes,” Harp said. “Any place where he can travel above ground he does. He don’t scramble up the trunks, seems like. Look here—he must’ve got aholt of that branch and swung hisself up. Knocked off some snow, but the wind knocks off so much, too, you can’t tell nothing. See, Ben, he—he figures it out. He knows about trails. He’ll have come down out of these trees far enough from where we are now so there ain’t no chance of us seeing the place from here. Could be anywhere in a half-circle, and draw it as big as you please.”
    â€œThinking like a man.”
    â€œBut he ain’t a man,” said Harp. “There’s things he don’t know. How a man feels, acts. I’m going on to them caves.” From necessity, I followed him . . . .
    I ought to end this quickly. Prematurely I am an old man, incapacitated by the effects of a stroke and a damaged heart. I keep improving a little—sensible diet, no smoking, Adelaide’s care. I expect several years of tolerable health on the way downhill. But I find, as Harp did, that it is even more crippling to lose the trust of others. I will write here once more, and not again, that my word is good.
    It was noon when we reached the gorge. In that place some melancholy part of night must always remain. Down the center of the ravine between tangles of alder, water murmured under ice and rotting snow, which here and there had fallen in to reveal the dark brilliance. Harp did not enter the gorge itself, but moved slowly through tree-cover along the left edge, eyes flickering for danger. I tried to imitate his caution. We went a hundred yards or more in that inching advance, maybe two hundred. I heard only the occasional wind of spring.
    He turned to look at me, with a sickly triumph, a grimace of disgust and of justification, too. He touched his nose and then I got it also, a rankness from down ahead of us, a musky foulness with an ammoniacal tang and some smell of decay. Then on the other side of the gorge, off in the woods, but not far, I heard Longtooth.
    A bark, not loud. Throaty, like talk.
    Harp suppressed an answering growl. He moved on until he could point down to a black cave-mouth on the opposite side. The breeze blew the stench across to us. Harp whispered, “See, he’s got like a path. Jumps down to that flat rock, then to the cave. We’ll see him in a minute.” Yes, there were sounds in the brush. “You keep back.” His left palm lightly stroked the underside of his rifle barrel.
    So intent was he on the opening where Longtooth would appear, I may have been first to see the other who came then to the cave mouth and stared up at us with animal eyes. Longtooth had called again, a rather gentle sound. The woman wrapped in filthy hides may have been drawn by that call or by the noise of our approach.
    Then Harp saw her.
    He knew her. In spite of the tangled hair, scratched face, dirt, and the shapeless deer-pelt she clutched around herself against the cold, I am sure he knew her. I don’t think she knew him, or me. An inner blindness, a look of a beast wholly centered on its own needs. I think human memories had drained away. She knew Longtooth was coming. I think she wanted his warmth and protection, but there were no words in the whimper she made before Harp’s bullet took her between the eyes.
    Longtooth shoved through the bushes. He dropped the rabbit he was carrying and jumped down to that flat rock, snarling, glancing sidelong at the dead woman who was still twitching. If he understood the fact of death, he had no time for it. I saw the massive overdevelopment of thigh and leg muscles, their springy motions of preparation. The distance from the flat rock to the place where Harp stood must have been fifteen feet. One spear of