Wild Life (6 page)

The sun shone brightly in the cloudless sky, and Erik shaded his eyes against the glare. As he looked around at the miles of unpopulated countryside stretching as far as he could see, a feeling of exhilaration rose in him. From this moment on, he realized, every decision was his to make. Not only that, these were going to be
real
decisions, important ones, having to do with staying alive. He had one simple job, he told himself, to live off the land.

The challenge quickened his blood.

First decision: which way to go?

He adjusted the pack on his back, shouldered the shotgun, and called to Quill, who seemed to have caught the scent of his excitement and was racing happily across the driveway toward the road. When she returned, he explained to her that they would be staying away from roads, crossing them only when necessary and when they were certain they wouldn't be seen. This wasn't nearly as difficult as it would have been back home, because the roads out here were few and far between. He'd noticed that, for the most part, they ran north to south and east to west, dividing the land into huge blocks that were several miles long on every side. That made a lot of space in which a boy and a dog could disappear. Also, in those wide-open spaces he could see or hear a car coming miles before it got close enough to worry about.

First, he decided, they would head for the cover of the line of trees he had spotted the night he arrived. From the car, the land had appeared flat and empty to him. But now, as he moved across it on foot, it told a different story. There were subtle dips and gentle mounds in the earth, and places where the rain had washed deep ditches. There were low spots where cattails and brush grew around the edges of little ponds, called potholes.

At home, that meant a hole in the road that caused the car to lurch and his father to say bad words. But his mom had told him about prairie potholes, which were rounded depressions in the earth that had been left behind by glaciers. Nowadays they held rainwater and snowmelt. Some of them were the size of a backyard swimming pool, others as far across as a football field.

There were patches of scrubby trees and small stands of woods, and gullies and ravines. There were odd objects people had left behind: rusty farm implements, an old watering trough, the foundation of a building long gone, a pile of rocks cleared from a field. Erik noted with satisfaction that all of these provided cover where he and Quill could hide, if need be. He imagined that pheasant and deer hid in those same kinds of places.

Erik was also pleased to see that Quill, with her mottled coat, blended in well with the rocks and dirt and grass, and he congratulated himself on his own clothing: faded jeans, a gray T-shirt, Dan's camo jacket, and his own favorite camo-print baseball cap.

When they reached the trees, he turned to the south. He didn't have a compass, but he'd noticed where the sun had come up the past two mornings, and where it had set, so he knew which way was south.

He figured they'd move carefully, far from the eyes of anyone driving on the road, and use this first day to put as much distance as they could between themselves and his grandparents' farm house. He chose south as their direction because he knew that Canada wasn't far to the north. Back in New York, when he'd gone to Canada with his parents for a weekend vacation, they had crossed a big bridge where they'd had to show their passports to the guards and answer questions about where they were born and what they were planning to do in Canada. He didn't know what the border was like out here, but he wasn't taking the chance of being spotted or questioned.

When Erik looked back, his grandparents' house was already no more than a speck in the distance. A V of geese flew high overhead, honking urgently to one another, reminding Erik of the question framed in the picture his mother had drawn. He had found the answer.
This
, he felt sure, was how he was meant to live his one wild life: with his gun on his shoulder and his dog by his side, free to go where he pleased in a wide and wild place, with no grownups to give orders and hold him back. He had only the supplies he could fit in his pack and his own wits and courage, and that was all he needed.

When they were safely out of sight of the road and the farm house, Erik began to relax a little. He'd been so busy with his own thoughts that he hadn't been paying attention to what Quill was doing. Now he realized that Quill wasn't just ambling along in front of him.

She was hunting.

With her nose to the ground, she raced along until she caught an interesting scent that either halted her in her tracks for further investigation or sent her off in a new direction. Sometimes she stopped, lifted her head, sniffed the air, and chased after a scent borne by the breeze.

Erik knew that his puny human nose was at least a million times less discriminating than Quill's, which was why he had no idea what the tantalizing odors were that were riveting her attention. But he found it fascinating to watch her.

She was running along the border between a brushy hedgerow and a field of wheat stubble. The grain had already been harvested, but a fair number of wheat kernels had been left behind on the ground. Suddenly Quill's body became tense, her attention more focused. Her tail, which had been wagging happily, began to beat back and forth so quickly it was almost a blur. Then she made a quarter turn and slammed to an absolute standstill. Her gaze was fixed straight ahead, at the hedgerow. Her tail stood out horizontal and motionless now, and her right paw was lifted as if she'd been asked to “shake.” She looked exactly like the etching on Dan's gun.

Quill was on point!

Erik was so entranced by her performance that for a full minute he just stood, watching. Quill's concentration never wavered. Erik scanned the brush where the dog's gaze was pinned. For the life of him, he couldn't see anything but grass and browning weeds. Time stood still in the warm, quiet air.

“What is it, girl?” he whispered. “Is something there?” He took a tentative step forward. Quill looked over at him for one split second, an expression on her face that seemed to say, “You smell that, too, right? Are you ready?”

And—
pptttttrrrrrrrr!
In a flurry of wings, a pheasant rose into the air, cackling in outrage. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment. Even if its roosterlike cry hadn't given it away as a male, Erik got a clear look at its long trailing tail feathers and the gleam of green, red, and white on its head. It flew swiftly into the far distance and out of sight, leaving a single white dropping as a protest.

Erik was so startled he nearly lost hold of his gun. He gasped and watched as the bird disappeared. Quill had flinched slightly and taken a few steps when the bird first took off, but now she was back on point.

“It's gone, girl,” said Erik when he had recovered from his surprise.

Quill ignored him.

“That was a great point, Quill, but the bird's gone. It flew away.”

Quill continued to stare into the hedgerow, her paw lifted and her entire body quivering. Erik moved closer to her, wondering if there was a command he was supposed to give to release her. Hadn't she seen the bird fly? How long would she stay like this? What was she doing?

“Quill,” he began, and, at that moment, a hen pheasant—then two, then
three, seven, ten more
!—broke from the cover of the hedgerow. Smaller than the male, dull brown in color, and silent except for the furious whirr of their wingbeats, they flew off in all directions.

Erik's amazement was quickly followed by dismay.
Some hunter you are,
he thought.
Your gun wasn't even loaded.
Even if it had been, he'd been utterly unprepared when the birds had flown. Worse, he'd doubted Quill, who, unlike him, seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

“I'm sorry, girl,” he said, bending down to give her a pat. “From now on, I promise I'll try to hold up my end. Beginning with”—he grimaced to himself—“loading my gun.”

He put shells in the chamber and put the safety on, wishing he'd had a chance to go hunting, even just
once
, with Mr. Holt and Hot Spots, in order to get a little experience. As it was, he would have to learn from Quill and the birds themselves. What had they just taught him?

Quill had clearly been saying, “Watch me! Stick with me! I'll tell you where the birds are!” All Erik had to do was pay attention. It was almost as if the dog had performed a magic trick, conjuring pheasants out of thin air. Without Quill, Erik would have walked right by them, never suspecting they were there.

As for the birds, the rooster had flown solo, before the hens. If that was usually the case, it was important information to know. Hunters were only allowed to shoot roosters, not hens. If the males were generally the ones to spook and fly first, he'd have to stay on his toes.

He wondered what the birds had been doing when Quill pointed them. Had they been just hanging around in the hedgerow enjoying the nice day? Somehow, Erik doubted it.

He looked about in the wheat field and saw some more pheasant poop, as well as several tracks left in low spots where the earth was smooth and damp. Erik guessed they had been eating the grain that had been left behind on the ground. Since the wheat stubble was only about four inches high, they would be easy for a predator to spot. He figured that when they'd seen him and Quill approaching, they'd scuttled over to the hedge row to hide.

If he was right, it was another important piece of information. He'd remember to keep his eye out for fields like this one.

Erik was about to move on when he realized he was hungry and thirsty. He didn't have a watch—
who needed a watch, anyway? A pioneer boy would know how to tell time by the sun
—but he thought they'd been walking for about two hours.

He tipped the canteen up and let the water run down his parched throat. Quill watched him, her tongue hanging out, panting. He quickly poured the rest of the water into the lid of the mess kit, which doubled as a bowl, and she drank. When the water was gone, she looked up, still panting thirstily.

Earlier, he'd seen her take a long drink from a medium-sized pothole. The water, which was brown with green algae around the edges, had looked disgusting to Erik, but Quill hadn't seemed to mind it in the least.

The pothole was far behind them, though, and he would need to find water for her, and for himself, too, pretty soon. He was going to have to plan ahead and boil water to fill his canteen each morning. That meant he was going to have to camp near water. Okay, good, that would be part of his plan from here on.

He took the food from his pack and made two bologna and cheese sandwiches. Quill devoured hers in two seconds flat, but Erik took his time, savoring the flavor, thinking that never before in his life had a bologna and cheese sandwich tasted quite so fine. He and Quill each had a cookie, then Erik ate one of the apples. To his surprise, Quill eagerly chewed up the core.

The food he had brought wasn't going to last long, though, not with two of them eating. They had enough for dinner that night, and for breakfast and possibly lunch the next day. But very soon he and Quill were going to have to find some more game. And he was going to have to shoot it.

That made him wonder: When he did actually shoot something, would someone hear the noise and come to investigate? Just as this new worry entered his mind, he heard the sound of a faraway gunshot, then another and another. He remembered Dr. Bob saying that the season was open for sharp-tailed grouse as well as pheasant. For all Erik knew, it was open season for deer, squirrels, rabbits, ducks, and geese, too. That meant other hunters would be shooting, not just him. People would be used to the sound and probably wouldn't pay much attention.

That was good because he was going to be hunting illegally. He didn't have a North Dakota license.

Well, there was nothing he could do about that. He and Quill had to eat. And, anyway, he didn't intend to get caught.

When they came to their first paved road, Erik called Quill back to him and approached carefully. After making sure there was no sign of a vehicle coming from either direction, they crossed and moved quickly into the big field on the other side. Erik felt uncomfortably exposed in such open territory and kept an eye out, prepared to drop to the ground and lie flat if someone drove by. No one did.

He didn't know exactly what time it was, but he didn't think Oma would even have gotten home from church. No one would be thinking of looking for him yet. But if and when people began searching, he didn't want anyone to remember seeing a boy and a brown-and-white-speckled dog crossing this road or any other. If and when they looked for him, they'd have to look in all directions, and he and Quill had only gone in one. Also, he imagined, if they did search for him, they'd likely assume that he'd gotten lost and
wanted
to be found. They wouldn't expect him to be purposely eluding them.

As he and Quill traveled through the afternoon, Quill went on point three more times. Each time a group of birds flew, with the roosters flushing first and the hens holding a bit longer. Erik shot each time,
blam blam blam blam blam
, emptying the chamber of all five shells, but hitting nothing.

The first two times, Quill raced around, searching in all directions for the downed birds. When there were no birds for her to retrieve, she seemed confused. When no birds fell the third time, either, she glanced over her shoulder at Erik with mild reproof.

“I'm sorry, girl,” he said miserably. “It's not your fault.”

Real hunting was turning out to be quite a bit different from shooting clay targets, and he was getting worried. Each box of shells held twenty-five cartridges, and he only had four boxes. He'd just shot off fifteen, and he had nothing to show for it. If he didn't improve his aim—and fast—he and Quill would be in big trouble. He had his wallet containing his allowance money, but he didn't want to risk going into a store.

A sudden exhaustion overcame him. With it came a whisper of fear that he had made a huge mistake.

This last thought made him even more disappointed in himself. What kind of wimp was he, anyway? He'd been out on his own for less than a day. Some pioneer.

He tried to recall what advice Mr. Holt had given him when they'd been at the target range.
Use your front hand to start the muzzle moving in the direction of the target. Then swing at the same time you bring the stock up and mount it near your face. When the bird is moving, you can't stop your swing to shoot at it. You have to come from behind the bird, swing your gun past it, and shoot ahead of it.

That was what he'd been doing wrong, he realized. He'd stopped his motion when he took his shots. What else had Mr. Holt said?
Plan with your head, then shoot from your heart. Do your thinking before you pull the trigger. Your eyes will never lie to your hands.
When he'd said that, Erik didn't get it. But now he thought maybe he did. He just had to relax and remember what he already knew. He'd do better next time. Squaring his shoulders, he shook off his trepidation.

Quill, as if reading his mind, shook herself all over, too. Then she looked at him with an eager doggy grin and ran ahead. As far as she was concerned, the missed shots were forgotten and she was ready to move on. Erik couldn't help but grin back. Some of the confidence and excitement he'd felt upon starting out that morning returned to him.

The next time he checked, the sun had moved far to the west. Although it still looked fairly high in the sky, Erik knew that when it started to drop, darkness would fall quickly. He was becoming seriously concerned about Quill. Her tongue lolled like a long, thick, pink balloon, and she was panting heavily. Her pace, which hadn't wavered all day long, was slowing, and her rear legs looked wobbly. Her eager expression was gone, her eyes glazed. When Erik felt her nose, it was hot and dry.

He was beginning to panic about finding water when they came over a rise and he saw a barn in the distance, with what looked like a fenced-in corral by its side. He headed toward it. A dirt drive led to the barn from a side road too far away for Erik to see. There was an old red gas pump, but the only vehicle in sight was a rusted-out truck with no tires. It seemed safe to approach.

In the corral was an aluminum watering trough with a spigot above it. Erik went over to inspect it and couldn't believe his luck when the handle turned and rusty brown water poured out. After a while, it began to clear. He took off his pack, filled the bowl-like lid of the mess kit, and set it on the ground for Quill. She drank greedily. He refilled the bowl two more times before she stopped and lay down, tongue dripping. She was still panting, but she already seemed much better. He gave her a quick hug before filling his canteen and taking a long drink himself.

Thirst slaked, he took a look around. He could almost believe he was the only human being on earth, certainly the only one for miles in any direction. Although someone obviously owned the property, there were no animals in the barn or corral and there seemed no reason for anybody to come out here tonight.

He walked around to the far side of the barn and decided it was a good place to make camp. After spreading one of the large plastic bags on the ground, he unrolled his sleeping bag and tried to get Quill to lie on it while he collected wood for a fire. But she refused to leave his side. She even picked up a stick and carried it, dropping it on the pile Erik collected, as if she knew what he was doing. He laughed, shaking his head and telling her, for perhaps the twentieth time that day, what a good, smart dog she was.

When the fire was going, he made four thin sandwiches with the rest of the bologna and cheese. Quill gulped hers down as before, but once again Erik took his time, watching as the flames licked at the wood and the sky grew dark. He was still hungry, but he told himself that tomorrow he would hunt successfully, then cook and eat his fill of his very first game dinner.

All day he'd pushed from his mind any thoughts about what might be happening back at his grandparents' farm house. But they crowded in now that it was growing dark. Big Darrell was probably home, and Dr. Bob would have come for Quill by now. They would have no inkling that he had run away, but were undoubtedly concerned that he'd gotten lost.

He pictured Oma out in the yard, anxiously scanning the deepening shadows for a glimpse of him. He imagined her coming back inside, perhaps asking Big Darrell what to do. He saw Big Darrell sitting stone-faced in front of the snowy television screen, saying gruffly, “Boy'll come back when he's scared and hungry.”

That's where you're wrong,
thought Erik.

A group of pheasants landed in the overgrown field to the east of them. Erik listened as they called to one another, gathering together for protection in the deep cover.

Ducks and geese whistled and honked softly as they flew over on their way to seek their own refuge for the night. Erik pictured the change that was taking place all around him as the creatures of the day sought sleep, giving the prairie over to those that preferred the nighttime: owls, deer, skunks, bats, raccoons, opossums, and—

An eerie call filled the darkness, a mix of yips and barks ending in what almost sounded like the high-pitched scream of a person in pain. This call was followed by another and another and another, then all the voices joined together in a chorus—
Yip-yip-AAARROOOOOOOOO
—before fading into silence. Coyotes! Thrilled, Erik felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, as Quill stood and looked about, whining fretfully.

“It's okay, girl,” Erik whispered. “Coyotes don't mess with dogs or people.” After a moment he added, “I'm sure of that.” After another moment he murmured, “Pretty sure, anyway.”

Quill lay down beside him and curled up with her nose to her tail. Erik added sticks to the fire, breathing in its smoky tang, feeling its comforting warmth, watching as it hungrily devoured his offerings. From time to time he glanced upward, where stars were beginning to dot the sky in numbers he never saw back home. Quill let out a loud sigh and settled her head in Erik's lap. He stroked her head, his hands moving gently over her closed eyes.

When there was nothing left of the fire but a few embers, he wriggled down in his sleeping bag and closed his eyes, too. Quill snored lightly beside him, but Erik couldn't sleep. From time to time the coyotes howled, calling each other to the hunt. Bats swooped overhead in erratic flight, chasing insects, their squeaky chirps barely audible. Over and over again, an owl gave its mournful call:
Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo
. Then it stopped, and in the sudden hush, Erik heard the whisper of wing beats, followed by a rustle in the grass and the squeak of a small rodent.

The night was full of the sounds and movements of other nocturnal creatures Erik could only guess at. There were times when the noises in the dark sounded awfully close. Sometimes it seemed that whatever was making them had to be very big. But Erik wasn't afraid, and it wasn't apprehension that kept him awake. He'd never felt quite so alive, and he didn't want to miss anything on this first night of his new life.

A chill fell as the day's heat rose and disappeared into the clear, starry sky. Erik was profoundly grateful for the warmth of Quill's body and the comfort of her company. Alone out here, he might have been overwhelmed by the hugeness of the prairie. He might have felt defeated by his own smallness in the face of it. But with Quill, he felt anchored to the earth, part of it all.