5.
They walked, quiet, for the next quarter mile. They stayed on the overgrown trail, stopping every so often for Cooper to show his son proof of the animal they were tracking: broken twigs, hoofprints in the mud, more crumbled deer shit. They were almost to the mouth of Bear Creek before Cooper said another word to Rye. He spoke in a whisper.
“You already made the deal, didn’t you?”
Rye felt more relieved than ashamed. It was finally out there. “Yes,” he said, “it’s done. They’re sending one of their people down with the papers today. I know you don’t see it now, but someday you’ll thank me for it. I promise you. You’ll see.”
Cooper stopped walking again.
“Come on, now, little brother, how long do we—”
“Shhhh,” Cooper said, and held a finger to his lips. He was looking past his brother at what Gareth had already spotted. Less than twenty yards to their right stood a massive eight-point buck drinking from the rushing water of Bear Creek. The sound of the small rapids covered up the men’s approach. Cooper silently motioned for his brother to move upstream while he set Gareth up for the shot behind a deadfall of rotten pine. Rye obliged. He crept through the woods, keeping his eye on the buck. Cooper dropped down next to his son, who already had his rifle trained on the deer. Cooper put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and reminded him to breathe.
“Relax, son. Put the crosshairs on the thick muscle under his neck. Where the fur turns white. Do you see where I mean?”
“Yessir. I see it.”
The buck looked up from the creek as if it heard them talking, and looked toward their position. Rye was about thirty feet to the left of Cooper and Gareth’s perch. No one took another breath until the deer dropped its head back to the water.
“When you’re ready, boy. Take the shot.” Cooper held his own rifle across the fallen pine, shoulder to shoulder with his son. Gareth was still and ready. As the boy’s finger squeezed the trigger, just like his father showed him, Cooper swung his own rifle to the left. Two shots echoed through the forest. Two shots that sounded like one. The big buck staggered backward from the impact, then bounded forward in an attempt to defy its fate. Its back legs quivered under its weight, and finally the animal fell.
Riley Burroughs didn’t stagger at all when Cooper’s high-caliber bullet pierced his neck. His body dropped immediately with a hard thud and he bled out into the clay.
6.
Cooper cocked his rifle and chambered another round before cautiously approaching Rye’s body. He gave it a hard kick in the gut. It was like kicking a sandbag. Once he was assured Rye was dead, he lowered his gun and looked back at his son. Gareth had already dropped his own rifle to the ground and was trying to process what just happened. There were no tears—not yet—just confusion and adrenaline. Cooper looked down at his brother’s graying hollow face and spit a stream of glistening brown tobacco juice across it.
And that was that.
Cooper propped his rifle against a tree and sat in the damp grass beside Gareth. The boy briefly considered running, but knew better. That thought left his mind as fast as it had come. Instead, he sat and watched his father pull the plug of chew from his lip and toss it into the brush.
“Look around you, boy.”
Gareth just stared at his father.
“I’m tellin’ you to do something, Gareth. You best listen. Now take a look around you. I’m not asking a third time.”
Gareth did. He looked at the deer he’d just shot on the bank of the creek, and then turned to the trail they’d come in by. He purposely avoided the direction of his dead uncle. Cooper fiddled with a foil pouch of chewing tobacco.
“What do you see?”
Gareth’s mouth was coated with chalk. He cleared his throat twice before he could speak.
“Trees, Deddy. Trees and woods.”
“That it?”
Gareth was frightened of saying the wrong thing.
“Yessir.”
“Then you ain’t seein’ the most important thing. The trees and the woods are only a part of it.”
The tears were starting to show now in the corners of Gareth’s eyes.
“It’s home,” Cooper said. “Our home. As far as you can see out in every direction belongs to us—to you. Ain’t nothing more important than that. Ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do to keep it so. Even if it means I gotta do a thing that ain’t easy doing.”
“Ain’t it Uncle Rye’s home, too?” Gareth squeezed his eyes shut and steeled himself for the backhand, but it didn’t come.
“Not no more,” Cooper said. He reached over to adjust his son’s cap again, then wiped the tears off the boy’s rosy chapped face. “I’ll give you this one time to cry, but then I won’t have no more goin’ on about it. You understand?”
Gareth nodded.
“Do you?”