She strapped her release onto her right hand and settled into her seat. With her bow on her lap, she fitted her best arrow into the nock point, wrapped her left index finger over the arrow shaft to steady it on the rest, and waited.
Hunting with a bow during rifle season was a mix of science and fate. It would be difficult to bugle an elk in close enough for a shot. They weren’t as trusting once rifle season had started. For the most part, she would have to stalk the elk, knowing his feeding patterns, where he bedded down for the night. Do her homework. The day before when she’d first come upon the stand, she’d seen the signs of elk: the warm hollows in the timber where they’d slept, the rubbings on the juniper and pinyon, the pools of water saturated with prints and smudges from where they had wallowed, the scat, the urine. She’d been careful to remain upwind of the area. Yes, she was in a good spot.
Light rose from behind her like a blood-orange tide, slowly spilling its color through the clouds and between the branches of the timber. She circumnavigated the area with her eyes, identifying various landmarks for points of yardage. Running parallel about fifteen yards in front of her was a wall of four mature pinyon, the first two locking their branches together in an arc, creating an oblong ellipse through which Amy Raye could view the grassy clearing beyond.
With the light of dawn, the woods were no longer silent, a good sign. Amy Raye’s presence had gone unnoticed. Camp robbers flushed through trees, the swish of air against their wings like the heavy breathing and snorting of a bull elk. Squirrels ran up trunks, leapt from one branch to another, simulating the hooves of an elk breaking ground, snapping twigs and deadfall in its path. Amy Raye’s nerves felt like live wire conducting each sound. Keeping her head and body still, she swept her eyes back and forth over her surroundings.
Then a sudden slap in her lungs, that shortening of breath as she spotted him through the opening in the trees in front of her. Quickly, she did a range check, pinned her eyes on a landmark thirty yards to her left, and drew an imaginary border around the area’s circumference as if she were the compass point. The elk was directly in line, standing broadside, an exact thirty yards, she was sure. She gauged his brow tine at roughly ten to twelve inches and counted four points from each side of his rack. With the forty-five pounds she was pulling, he was within reach of a clean shot. She raised her bow. The thirty-yard pin on her scope locked on the branches in front of her. She calculated the arc of the arrow. It should rise the fifteen yards and clear the opening. She drew her bow, steadied her left arm. She wondered if her breath would skew her aim. She held the air tight in her lungs. The elk turned his head, his eyes frozen at a direct point with her own. Seconds moved between them like rainwater through mud. She flexed her shoulders, creating enough back tension to discharge the release. The arrow sailed, cleared the trees, and made contact with the animal, its impact like a sharp clap against plywood. The elk pivoted and sprang in one broad leap back into the wall of timber from which he had emerged, his body crashing through the woods, snapping and breaking limbs.
The noise pulled away from her, the distance and trees and soil absorbing it like a vacuum. Eventually, all that remained was time and silence. The rule was to wait it out a half hour at least before tracking an animal. An hour was better. To move too quickly, to track him now, would kick in the fight-and-flight. When an elk knew he was being chased, his adrenaline would push him farther than he would go on his own, and the stress before his death could have a negative impact on the meat.
Amy Raye looked for landmarks, anything to pinpoint where the elk had stood. She knew it would look different once she was on the ground, and to track him successfully would mean knowing at exactly which place to begin the search. She spotted a large rock and made a mental note of it, as well as the profile of trees into which the elk had disappeared. So she would wait. And she would pray, because that was what she had always done when she’d taken down an elk or a deer. She would say the Lord’s Prayer. “Say it like you mean it,” her grandfather had taught her. “Then when it’s time, climb down from your perch and find the damn thing.”
And so she began to pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. . . .” She prayed for the animal. She prayed for her children—Julia, whom she loved as her own, and Trevor. And she prayed for Farrell. “Bless him, Lord. Push his day along with a happy grace. Keep him safe.”
Farrell, as kind as anyone had ever been to her. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in his arms and against his warm skin. She missed him with a terrible ache. Wished she could take him to all the places she had known, take him back in time to something pure, to summer and horses, and the farm she used to love. To the sheep and meadows and milk thistle, and her grandfather reading war novels to her when she couldn’t sleep.
“Dear Lord, I don’t deserve him. Look after him, I pray.”
PRU