Hunters by Chet Williamson

Game Commission or
the Forest Service open the roads immediately, something that was
impossible. Most of the WCO's and deputies were snowed in
themselves, and the county's plows were already losing the struggle
just to keep the main and secondary roads plowed.
    By the time the snow ended early Wednesday
morning, it measured three feet deep over most of north central
Pennsylvania, and that meant three feet worth of bad news. During
the next four days, volunteer snowmobilers drove back through the
woods to cabins that were believed to be still occupied, and took
the hunters out one at a time. Amazingly enough, though there were
several cases of frostbite, there had been only six fatalities, two
of which were heart attacks suffered when overweight and under fit
men tried to walk out of their camps through the heavy snow. The
other four men were found dead in their isolated Moshannon State
Forest cabin. Propane from their stove had leaked during the night,
and they had all been asphyxiated, something that might have
occurred even without the heavy snow.
    Everyone said it was a miracle that no one
froze to death, but the State Forest Service and Game Commission
sharply criticized those hunters who had not heeded the warnings to
leave their camps, and so made the costly and dangerous rescues
necessary.
    There hadn't been an incident like it since,
but looking up at the gray, glowering sky, Ned wondered if there
could be a recurrence this week. He hoped not. Most hunters liked a
little snow, since it was easier to spot dark deer against
whiteness than against the camouflaging trees. But too much snow
would turn a hunter's dream into a WCO's nightmare.
    Ned walked until he came to the two ruts that
the Forest Service called a road, and began to follow them south
until the woods began to grow less dense. Another half hour of
walking brought him to a point he knew to be only a few hundred
yards from where his Blazer was parked, along with the cars of the
hunters.
    He started to whistle a few notes, then
stopped. Even though he was close to the road, some might be
still-hunting, that cat-and-mouse method of looking for deer by
slowly walking through the woods, then waiting for a long time,
walking again, waiting, walking, and waiting. It was a tedious
method, but one that many hunters swore by, and though it was
likely that the deer had been driven deeper into the forest by the
sound of gunshots, there was always the possibility of a hunter
who, for health or safety reasons, wanted to stay near civilization
badly enough to plant in probably barren ground. Ned would not make
their odds even longer by making noise.
    The silence that he wished to grant to others
was abruptly scarred by a shrill whistling, like an incredibly fast
hornet that whizzed past his head, followed an infinitesimal moment
later by the sound of a gunshot. He froze instantly, then realized
that he had been shot at, and that he might be shot at again.
    He went down on one knee, teeth clenched,
eyes narrowed against the anticipated second shot, but it did not
come. A hundred thoughts crowded his mind, most of them having to
do with his own death. At any other time, he would have considered
the shot accidental, an unavoidable hazard of being in the woods
with over a million hunters, a small minority of whom would shoot
at anything they saw moving.
    But today, he heard the bark of the shot and
felt the angry wake of its passing as revenge for what he had done
the day before. He knew with all his pounding heart that he had not
been mistaken for a deer, but that he had been targeted. He had
become prey.
    Ned also knew that he should hug the dirt and
scurry into whatever protecting brush he could find, but a reckless
pride would not let him. He had no weapon, and if he were to die,
he would die facing his killer, not trying to dig a hole into earth
that could not hide him. So he waited and tried to pray.
    But only silence followed. The sound of the
shot that had rung so