"There." She stabbed a finger at the ground.
Blood often looks like rust spots on leaves. Gray wet his thumb with spit and rubbed the leaf. It streaked. Blood. "He went up the left ravine."
"Why up?" she asked. "Maybe he stopped and then went back down."
Gray shook his head. "Confused, wounded deer always go uphill."
"How do you know?"
"I just know they do. And lost children usually walk uphill and lost adults go downhill. That's just how things work."
They marched through the pine, which gave way to an aspen grove. The soil was loose, almost a scree. Their toes dug into it, propelling them up the path. Cheat-grass stickers found their way onto Gray's socks, making his ankles itch. On a boulder a piping hare jerked up and down as it whistled, an outsized sound resembling a goat cry. Gray nodded a greeting to it.
A deep gurgling croak came from a ridge above Gray, followed by a roll of squawks and clacks, a riotous, unnerving sound in the high stillness. Ravens rose from behind the ridge, their enormous ebony wings beating the thin air. Several landed on the boughs of a scrubby ponderosa pine. Others disappeared again behind the outcropping of boulders and grass.
"The mule deer is behind those rocks," Gray called. "Maybe you shouldn't get any closer. It's not going to be fun to look at."
Adrian asked, "How do you know it's there?"
"The ravens are waiting for their dinner."
"Will they start tearing away at the deer before it's dead?"
"Ravens aren't known for their table manners."
They rounded the rocks. The ravens flew away, but not too far before landing on the scree to stare sullenly at the humans. Adrian looked sadly at the wounded deer. The mulie was lying on a blanket of bunch grass, its large white-patched ears moving independently of each other like a mule's. It was a doe, and it was breathing raggedly, blowing pink blood from its nostrils. A red smear ran along its flanks. The entry wound was high in front of its hindquarters. Blood trails mapped the animal's flanks and thighs, seeping onto the stones. The deer stared blankly at the humans. Its nostrils flared as it fought for breath. The ravens shrieked at the intruders.
Adrian said softly, "He's going to die, isn't he? He looks bad."
"It's a she. Yeah, she's in bad shape."
"There must be something we can do." Adrian Wade blinked back tears. "The poor animal shouldn't have to die."
Gray looked at her. Adrian had known loss, had been pushed to the brink by grief. Gray didn't want his small tour of his mountains to freshen those emotions. He said, "Maybe I can dig the bullet out. You never know about deer. She could make it." He stepped across the lichens and stones to the deer. It followed him with its black eyes, and raised one hoof, but did not have the strength to lever itself off the ground. "Too many of us around here will scare her. You head down the ravine. I'll catch up when I'm done."
A tear trailed down Adrian's face. Her gaze went between the deer and Gray, then she turned back down the mountain, down the loose stones toward the deer trail. She looked back at Gray to see him draw the bowie knife from the scabbard. Gray waited until she was out of sight before he brought the blade to the mulie's throat.
Three minutes later he caught up with Adrian.
She glanced at the bowie knife, which was back in its place on Gray's belt. "That deer might live?"
"Maybe." Gray stared down the valley. "You bet."
Gray looked over his shoulder at the ridge. The ravens had left their perch and were hidden by the crest of the ridge. It seemed to him their renewed croaking held a victorious note.
She said bitterly, "I thought you said you weren't going to lie to me."
After a moment he said, "I won't. Mostly."
Andy Ellison moved on his knees among the stalks, stopping at each one to sprinkle a small handful of fertilizer onto the ground, then using a hand to scratch the granules into the dirt. His stand was thick, and the pointed leaves brushed his face, a feathery sensation he associated with freedom. He dragged the paper sack of fertilizer along with him as he went from plant to plant.
His marijuana patch was hidden in a black cottonwood glen in Jefferson County, Montana, in the low foothills of the Rocky Mountains, two dirt-road miles north of the interstate highway. The glen bordered an open field, one of many pastures where the Rocking R Ranch's six thousand head of cattle grazed. Ellison's crop was protected by a barbed-wire fence. All marijuana plants favor sun, but this species, Chiang Mai red, craved it, and it was Ellison's despair that he could offer only light dappled by the cottonwood branches overhead. Otherwise DEA planes would quickly find the crop. Ellison had tried hiding his crops among Louisiana sugarcane (his arrest netted two years' probation), between rows of Washington State corn (two years at Walla Walla), and under grow lights in a California basement (four years at San Quentin). He had sworn he would never go back to prison, for those were hard years, particularly at the Walls, where Ellison was Booby Decker's girlfriend. Ellison still wore a tattoo on his buttocks that proved it. "If you reeding this, Booby kil you." Decker had pricked it onto Ellison's butt himself, smashing his fist into Ellison's ear each time Ellison howled. Booby was no artist, so the blue ink letters wiggled and bled, but the message was plain enough, and nobody at the Walls bothered Ellison except Booby. The tattoo had only humiliated Ellison. The misspellings had outraged him.
No, sir, Andy Ellison wanted no more to do with prison, and the next time the DEA or some local sheriff found him tending his crop Ellison would surely face six to eight years, being a three-time loser already. So he was careful. He limited each patch to twenty stalks, spending hours determining shadow patterns on the soil beneath the cottonwood boughs before he planted. Black cottonwood leaves — shiny dark green on top and white-green with rusty veins underneath — perfectly blended with the Chiang Mai red's leaves, especially when the wind roiled and blurred the foliage. No DEA plane was going to spot his crop, Ellison believed. He had fifteen such patches at the edge of the Rocking R land. The ranch's owner, a corporation based in Missoula, rented a homesteader's shack and barn to Ellison, one of the many busted-out spreads devoured by the corporation over the years. The corporation's concern were Herefords and tax codes, and it was not too attentive to the perimeters of its grazing land.
Ellison crawled along the ground, dropping the fertilizer and mixing it in. His plants were a bit leggy for lack of full sun, but the leaves were broad and green, a lot of product. A wren trilled in a cottonwood, its flicking tail seen at the edge of Ellison's vision. And a nearby towhee flicked aside leaves and twigs on the ground looking for insects, making a pleasant racket. Ellison whistled a Lovin' Spoonful song, keeping himself company. A nearby grasshopper rubbed its legs, squeaking along to Ellison's tune.
A small breeze brushed the stalks, but even so it was warm. Sweat dropped from Ellison's forehead onto his spectacle lenses. He took them off and wiped the lenses on his shirt. He had worn granny glasses since the Sixties, and the spectacles and his sandals and tie-dyed T-shirts he wore whenever he was tending his crop were his personal commemoration of the Sixties, that lost time that would never come again, that apex of Andy Ellison's life, those shimmering years of innocence and incense. And babes with no bras.
The intervening years had hardened Ellison, at least his appearance. He wore a ponytail tied with a rubber band, but the hair came from the sides and back of his head because he had lost most on top. Deep lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. In a jealous rage, Booby Decker had punched out one of Ellison's front teeth, and the replacement cap had yellowed and now showed a line of blackened gum above the tooth. Ellison was indifferent to food and had always been thin, but lately his rib cage had begun to show and the tendons and veins on the back of his hands looked like road maps. He made enough money growing dope to feed himself most of the time, but as harvest approached he was usually down to pocket change and he missed many meals.