frost onit, and it looked like some huge glassy thing had tipped over and shattered. As Lucien looked across it to the Crazies, he wanted to shield his eyes. It was a beautifully farmed field that used all the flat ground; but it was wonderful to see the sage-covered remains of buttes and old wild prairie that wouldn’t submit to plowing. Lucien released Sadie and she cracked off on her first cast, ignoring the showering meadowlarks that broke into song exactly as his bird book described it: “
Boys, three cheers
!” To Sadie these were mere decoration, furniture. The undertow of game was stronger.
For a moment Lucien didn’t care whether Emily shot her husband, pissed up a rope or went blind. He had the sublime freedom of the hunt.
Presently they rode down among the thin, pale, jerky trunks of an aspen grove following a small stream toward its source. It must have been a spring because the stream’s stable mossy banks were obviously undisturbed by runoff. When they reached the spring, it was just a swamp, a small and beautiful swamp, though, from which snipe bolted in that down-angled hurtling flight that makes them seem so bold. The wet ground supported an even, refined stand of cattails, some brown and velvety, some wound with streamers of windy cotton.
“These moments, these long looks,” she said.
“How am I going to find any grouse without long looks?”
They had to go across some of the boggy ground. Sadie danced over the surface while they hunted dry spots and moldering logs. Once clear of the cattails and sedges, they could make out the shining granitic roof of the Crazies.
One of the miracles of the land was the isolation of water: as soon as they came out of the boggy ground theywere once more on the juniper and sage uplands, where the circulation of prairie air bore the feeling of distance and dryness and great shapes, quite different from the intimacy of spring bogs; it hardly seemed the two could exist side by side.
They followed a steep wash and, just below the line of wild roses at the crest, Sadie went on point. Lucien hoped the birds would hold, because it was almost a vertical climb. He started up, carrying the little L. C. Smith in one hand and looking for things to grab hold of as he went. He had to stop and blow like an old pack horse about halfway up; but she held the point, a brilliant mark on that ocher ridge.
Lucien arranged to come up on flat ground behind her and could see then that she was pointed staunch into ideal berry-filled cover. He was already anticipating the roaring flush. He glanced down to see Emily below him, watching with a slightly opened mouth. Lucien concentrated himself to shoot well, walked past Sadie to make the flush; but when the grouse went up he just watched them go, brown and mottled against the open sky.
6
Lucien slept, and during the night he dreamed or overheard—he’d never know—incessant activity, activity which must have gone on long into the night: the dragging of objects over the wood floors, the random opening and closing of doors, the shunting about of vehicles in the dark, the long cry of a horseleft in the wrong corral, then silence. When Lucien woke up, he found Emily awaiting him with breakfast on a tray. He was not warmed by this treatment and just leaned up on one elbow waiting for her to speak.
“It’s all yours,” she said, “but I’ll always be able to come back, now, won’t I?”
Lucien didn’t speak. He guessed his accepting the knowledge she was leaving made him an accomplice. “I’d like a picture of you,” Lucien said. “Portrait-style, with a good frame.”
He watched the light and clouds make changes in his window; he saw the revolving shadows in the peaks of the Crazies, and night arriving not simultaneously but in different places and at different times. He began to wonder what screwballs lived here in other days who had hidden whiskey bottles under the porch or made the dog graves by the creek. Then
Boys, three cheers
!” To Sadie these were mere decoration, furniture. The undertow of game was stronger.
For a moment Lucien didn’t care whether Emily shot her husband, pissed up a rope or went blind. He had the sublime freedom of the hunt.
Presently they rode down among the thin, pale, jerky trunks of an aspen grove following a small stream toward its source. It must have been a spring because the stream’s stable mossy banks were obviously undisturbed by runoff. When they reached the spring, it was just a swamp, a small and beautiful swamp, though, from which snipe bolted in that down-angled hurtling flight that makes them seem so bold. The wet ground supported an even, refined stand of cattails, some brown and velvety, some wound with streamers of windy cotton.
“These moments, these long looks,” she said.
“How am I going to find any grouse without long looks?”
They had to go across some of the boggy ground. Sadie danced over the surface while they hunted dry spots and moldering logs. Once clear of the cattails and sedges, they could make out the shining granitic roof of the Crazies.
One of the miracles of the land was the isolation of water: as soon as they came out of the boggy ground theywere once more on the juniper and sage uplands, where the circulation of prairie air bore the feeling of distance and dryness and great shapes, quite different from the intimacy of spring bogs; it hardly seemed the two could exist side by side.
They followed a steep wash and, just below the line of wild roses at the crest, Sadie went on point. Lucien hoped the birds would hold, because it was almost a vertical climb. He started up, carrying the little L. C. Smith in one hand and looking for things to grab hold of as he went. He had to stop and blow like an old pack horse about halfway up; but she held the point, a brilliant mark on that ocher ridge.
Lucien arranged to come up on flat ground behind her and could see then that she was pointed staunch into ideal berry-filled cover. He was already anticipating the roaring flush. He glanced down to see Emily below him, watching with a slightly opened mouth. Lucien concentrated himself to shoot well, walked past Sadie to make the flush; but when the grouse went up he just watched them go, brown and mottled against the open sky.
6
Lucien slept, and during the night he dreamed or overheard—he’d never know—incessant activity, activity which must have gone on long into the night: the dragging of objects over the wood floors, the random opening and closing of doors, the shunting about of vehicles in the dark, the long cry of a horseleft in the wrong corral, then silence. When Lucien woke up, he found Emily awaiting him with breakfast on a tray. He was not warmed by this treatment and just leaned up on one elbow waiting for her to speak.
“It’s all yours,” she said, “but I’ll always be able to come back, now, won’t I?”
Lucien didn’t speak. He guessed his accepting the knowledge she was leaving made him an accomplice. “I’d like a picture of you,” Lucien said. “Portrait-style, with a good frame.”
He watched the light and clouds make changes in his window; he saw the revolving shadows in the peaks of the Crazies, and night arriving not simultaneously but in different places and at different times. He began to wonder what screwballs lived here in other days who had hidden whiskey bottles under the porch or made the dog graves by the creek. Then
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