17. Hunted
SEVENTEEN
Hunted
CARTER
A solid boot to the frame rattled the whole bunk and kicked my brain from dead asleep to awake in half a second. Trig stood over me in the dark, already dressed, carrying a flashlight and a burlap sack in his hand.
“Get up. All hands on deck.”
“What time is it?” I croaked, sitting upright.
“Time to move. Jackalopes and wolfagators have been spotted.”
Around the bunkhouse, men pulled on boots and grabbed jackets, hurried and urgent. I didn’t need to be told twice. Jake was already at the door, with two other guys behind him. I got my boots on without a clue what we were in for.
Outside the bunkhouse the cold hit like a wall, the yard lit only by the headlamps the guys had already clicked on. Four ATVs idled at the edge of the equipment path. Trig organized people with the quiet authority of a man who’d run this kind of operation before.
“Carter, you’re with Jake and Pete. Stay tight when we hit the treeline.” He pointed at the woods at the far edge of the property, a dark mass against the darker sky. “They’ll be nesting at the edge. We move in, flush them out, bag what we can before they scatter.”
I climbed in beside Jake. “What exactly are we hunting?”
“Jackalopes and wolfagators.” He said it like this was a fact of ranch life he’d been living with for years. “Nasty things. Get in with the livestock and they can do real damage.”
“What do they look like?”
“You’ll know when you see one.”
Pete, in the back seat, nodded with great seriousness, although I thought I heard him snort, too.
The ATVs moved out in a line, headlamps cutting through the dark.
In any other context—Manhattan, say, or the corporate lobby of any building I’d ever walked into—I would have known something was off.
But out here in the dead dark of a Montana night with four ATVs, men who all seemed to know exactly what they were doing, some animal part of my brain had decided this was real and was running accordingly.
“Have you done this before?” I asked Jake.
“Many times.”
“Do people get hurt?”
“Occasionally.” He was far too calm for this. “That’s why we move in groups.”
We parked at the treeline and cut the engines.
The headlamps went out. My eyes adjusted slowly to the moonlight enough to see shapes: the dark columns of the trees, the clouds of breath of the surrounding men.
Trig passed down a stick and a burlap sack.
The stick was about the length and weight of a decent baseball bat.
“I’ve never actually hunted,” I said.
The silence that greeted this was absolute.
Trig turned from about ten feet away. “Never heard of a cowboy who hasn’t hunted. Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
“Fuck no.” The low-grade tension that Trig had been producing in me since day one continued.
He held the look for one more second. Then he turned back to the trees. “Gotta stay quiet as we approach the nest. Follow me.”
In the moonlight, I could just make out the other men. Everyone of them looked dead serious. They moved with the tight, focused energy of men who’d done this before and understood the stakes.
I gripped my stick and followed Jake into the trees. The woods at night were a different country entirely. Every snapped twig underfoot sounded catastrophic in the quiet.
We moved in single file, spaced out, the only sounds our own careful footsteps and the distant creak of the trees. I kept my eyes roaming, but I had nothing to anchor to, no profile to look for, no description of the thing I was supposed to be hunting.
Jake raised a fist. We stopped.
Somewhere ahead in the dark came a sound I hadn’t expected: a yowl, then another, then a series of them, low and odd and coming from somewhere in the brush. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Every man around me crouched.
I crouched.
More sounds came, not just yowling but something moving through the undergrowth, snapping small branches, getting closer. Whatever was coming through those trees was worth taking seriously.
Holy shit.
Trig’s voice cut the darkness like a knife. “Attack!”
I launched forward.
One of them broke through the brush ahead of me, big, furry, moving fast with what I could just make out in the fractured moonlight between the trees.
And then I saw it. The jackalope’s antlers.
I went for it on pure instinct and closed the distance.
Both arms surrounded a solid body, thrashing about and absolutely determined not to be caught.
A brief and undignified wrestling match ensued. The creature, almost as big as me, fought against my hold. I held on. It twisted. I held on harder. Then it found an angle I couldn’t counter and was gone, crashing back into the underbrush.
It left me on my back in the snow with the cold ground beneath me and something in my right hand. I held it up. An antler. A single arm of it, broken clean off.
I lay there for a moment, staring up at the trees.
Then the whooping started.
It came from everywhere at once, all the guys breaking from whatever serious crouch they’d been holding for the better part of an hour.
Jake appeared over me, arm extended to haul me up. “We scared off the entire herd! You’ve got the antler as proof!”
From further in the trees, Trig’s voice: “My crew chased off the wolfagators! Both packs are gone!” More whooping.
I let Jake pull me to my feet. The sky showed signs of pre-dawn, enough that I could see the surrounding faces clearly for the first time. Grinning, all of them. Pete was actually wiping his eyes.
Jake slapped me on the back. “Brave soldier. Seen no one go after a jackalope that fast before.”
“You went in there like you knew exactly what you were doing,” Pete yelled.
The other men were coming back through the treeline, Trig at the front, the entire group loud and loose and morning-cold. His expression of a man who had executed a plan and was satisfied with how it went.
“Not bad for a pretty boy,” he called.
“You’re alright, Carter. Let’s go to town and get breakfast. I want coffee.” Jake led the whole crew and drove us back in the ATV. All the cowboys yelled my name, whooping it up. And for the first time since I arrived, I felt like I belonged to this band of brothers on the ranch.
The Copper Cup was just opening when we parked.
I noticed Sage flipping over the closed sign to open it .
We all piled in, eight ranch hands, loud, cold, and unreasonably pleased with ourselves.
I followed the group in still holding the antler because I had not yet figured out what else to do with it.
Sage was behind the counter and broke into a smile when she clocked the group. Even broader when she laid eyes on me.
“Morning.” She waved.
“Morning,” Jake pulled tables together so we could all sit. “Got a cold and hungry crew here today.”
She glanced over at me. I was aware all at once of the fact that I was grinning like an idiot and holding the antler for her to see.
She took one look at it, and her hands landed on her gorgeous hips—right where I’d like mine to be if we were alone. Hunting must do that to a cowboy.
Trig dropped into a chair and leaned back with his arms behind his head. “Sage. You are looking at the finest jackalope hunter these woods have seen in a long time.”
“Is that right?” Her voice was entirely dry.
I set the antler on the table like evidence, a huge goofy grin overtaking my face. “I wrestled it. But it got away. I got the antler, though.”
She stared at me, eyebrow cocked for a long moment. Then she glared at Trig. “You can’t be serious,” she said.
“Dead serious,” he guffawed.
“Carter went in there like a cowboy who knew what he was doing,” Jake added, slapping my back once again.
Sage turned back to me. “I suppose you chased off the wolfagators too?”
“Pretty eventful morning,” I gushed.
“Sweetie, I hate to tell you. But jackalopes are a myth. Wolfagators, too. Made-up creatures. They’re on the novelty postcards for sale over in our display.” She picked up the deer antler. “Deer shed these. You can find them all over the property.”
Laughter erupted from the men waiting for this exact moment since approximately three in the morning, and it hit all at once.
I’d been pranked.
Jake’s head flew back, Pete almost choked on his laughter, turning red. Another guy put his head down on the table. Trig looked at the ceiling, eyes bright, the closest thing to delighted I’d seen on his face.
I sat with it for a moment.
Then I set the antler carefully on the table in front of me, looked at Sage. “And the wolfagators? Made up?”
“Completely.” She started filling coffee cups from the coffee carafe. “Locals invented them years ago. The prank has gotten more elaborate every year. Although some people take it seriously. Like finding Bigfoot.”
“Hey, Bigfoot is very real. My uncle heads up the Bigfoot Society in West Virginia,” Pete said, which explained a lot.
“You should have heard it, Sage. We added sound effects this time,” Jake said, wiping his eyes. Still laughing.
Another wave of it hit the table. I took the coffee Sage set in front of me and drank it, letting the morning sink in. My heart rate was only now returning to normal.
“I have to admit. That was probably the best prank ever.” I joined them at last, laughing my ass off.
“Don’t go getting a big head about it,” Trig warned. “You might be one of us now, but you’re still a pretty boy.” But he said it with a smile so that had to count.
An hour and two rounds of coffee later, the group pulled on coats and got ready to head back to work. Trig stood, stretched, and walked out without further elaboration, followed by the others.
“Jake, I’ll be out in a few minutes.” I nodded toward Sage. She was restocking the pastry case and glanced up. He understood.
“Do all the new guys get that treatment?” I asked her, leaning over the counter.
The amusement returned to her face, directed at me rather than at the situation. “Every single one. Some of them never recover. You took it well, for the record. Some guys storm off.”
“Some guys probably needed more sleep before Trig kicked their cot.”
“True.”
I massaged my chin. “If I were going to get them back?—”
“Oh, good. You’re already thinking about it.”
“Purely hypothetically. What would you suggest?”
She set down the tongs she was holding and thought about it. “This one’s my favorite. You get yourself a taxidermy rat and leave it in Trig’s boot in the dark.”
“That’s… deviously perfect. Didn’t know you had it in you, good girl.
” Mm. The pink that rose to her cheeks. Too bad I didn’t have five minutes to take her to a closet somewhere and make out.
I grabbed her hands instead and squeezed them.
“Where exactly do I get a taxidermy rat on a ranch hand’s salary?
Keeping in mind I have very little time left to get him back properly before I leave. ”
She hesitated. “Yes, that could be an issue. Then you’d better make every minute count.”
To me, it was loaded more about us and our time together.
She was right. After Thanksgiving, I’d only have two more days on the ranch.
Then I’d have satisfied the terms of Dad’s challenge.
I could go back to New York a success and collect my huge paycheck, making all of this time in Montana worth it. She made it worthwhile.
“Will I see you on Thanksgiving at the ranch?” Her eyebrows lifted expectantly.
“Of course. I have a lot to be thankful for this year. For you, in particular.”
“Me?”
“I couldn’t have survived here without you, Sage.
Truly. See you.” I brought her hands to my lips and kissed them, and then headed for the door.
There, I stopped and glanced back at her face.
It shocked me to see her looking so devastated for one second before she plastered on a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
That face might haunt me for the rest of the day. So many things I wanted to say to her, but time was running out. How could I make every second I had left here count?