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Show •f*L Hunting Season He shot from the aspen fringe at a solitary cow elk crossing, heard the flat whack of a hit, a shocked, breathy groan And she was gone, charging the timbered spine of the ridge, trailing spatters and shrieks of blood against the monochrome: snow furrowed by the track of fear in the half-light of heavy pines, evidence of his intention worked upon a warm body. She ran, she ran, she ran. All morning and most of the afternoon, he walked, trudged, slogged, plodded, cursed at each new rise, each net of deadfall, each cold nest molded by her body in the snow, dyed with the blown blood of a shattered lung. "Wounded elk can really travel. Deer and antelope, hell, they just flop right over." his friend said back at the lodge, heating coffee, broiling steaks from a cornfed, Kansas steer. After the necessary meal, the necessary whiskey, the ceremonial tales, he rolled tight in his blankets, blundered into sleep, hunting a goddess that turned hairy and bloody and fled through brooding forests of color hacked from night's rainbow. |
