Isle of Man

CHAPTER 13

The Hunt



Just a hint of blue dawn rims the eastern horizon.

Wearing borrowed wool coats, our bellies filled with eggs and hot tea, and our ears filled with wishes of good luck from Riley, Jimmy and I join the men at the stables.

The horses stand in a row stomping the cold ground and snorting smoke from their black muzzles while the men work at cinching saddles and looping metal bits into their mouths. I’ve never seen a horse in the flesh before, and I stand a safe distance away and smell the manure and leather and hay.

Finn comes down from the castle, leading the deerhounds on a leash. Junior takes up the rear, trotting along untethered. Finn smiles at us as he passes, apparently pleased that we took him up on his invitation. He hands the hounds off to one of the men and walks the row of horses, inspecting them. Then he takes the leash back and mounts the lead horse and ties the leash to its saddle horn. The men wait for his nod, then mount their horses and sit atop them, looking down on Jimmy and me.

Two horses remain unseated.

Jimmy steps forward, places his foot in the stirrup, and swings into the saddle as if he’d done it a hundred times before. I approach my horse more cautiously. Just as I get my foot in the stirrup, the horse sidesteps away, and I have to hop along to keep from falling. The men laugh. It takes me three tries to get up. When I finally do, Jimmy has to reach over a hand to keep me from sliding off the other side.

“Grip with yer knees,” he whispers.

“You’ve done this before?”

He shakes his head no.

Is there anything he can’t do, I wonder.

Finn sets his horse moving down the snow-covered road with the deerhounds prancing along at his side. The other men fall in behind him. Jimmy and I take up the rear, our horses fortunately needing little direction from us. Junior runs back and forth along the line, visibly excited to be on an adventure.

We leave the castle road where it turns east, cutting due north instead and slugging across a snowy field toward the hills rising in the distance. The snow has frozen over in the night, and the horses’ hooves crunch through it with high steps that kick up little showers of crystal powder. The deerhounds lope through the deep snow with their long legs, and Junior is smart enough to trail behind in the path already trampled.

As we climb to higher ground, the snow thins, and soon we enter a narrow gorge surrounded by rocky ridges and follow a stream upward. I try to do what Jimmy told me and grip with my knees. But when Finn holds his hand up, the procession comes to a halt, and I fall forward and nearly slide off my horse. I regain my balance in the saddle and follow everyone’s gaze up to where the ridgeline is backlit by the rising sun. There stands the silhouette of a stag, its horns reaching like branches into the pink morning sky. We hold our ground and watch for a while. I smell the wet grass beneath the melting snow. The only sound is clinking tack, the horses’ deep breathing, and the soft trickle of water running down the stream.

Then I blink and the stag is gone.

When we reach the ridge where the stag had stood, a world of highland beauty opens up before us. Hills of heather, their summits blown free of snow. Gorgeous outcroppings of rock standing like sentinels in the treeless land. Glens and valleys, shaded purple with deep drifts of snow. Pink light hovers over it all, making the scene appear like something from a dream that might slip away any moment. But there’s no sign anywhere of the stag.

The sky fades from pink to orange and then to blue as we ride the morning into afternoon. We cross numerous valleys and crest countless hills, each time scanning the horizon for any sight of the stag. The deerhounds are surprisingly quiet. Never once do I hear them bark. The men are quiet, too. They mostly communicate with hand gestures and nods, leaving Jimmy and me to silently puzzle out what they mean, not daring to even talk amongst ourselves as we ride along behind them.

Then we crest a high hill, and Finn holds up his hand to stop us again, easing his horse backwards and pushing us down off the top of the hill. He dismounts and signals for us to do the same, and we creep to the summit on foot, keeping low and quiet. Sure enough, the stag stands just on the other side, in a wide glen, browsing among the exposed plants.

“Lord, I tell ya,” one of the men whispers, “he’s got ten points if he’s got a single one.”

Finn disappears downhill and returns a few moments later, leading the deerhounds. He sits them where only their heads crest the summit and faces them toward the stag. Their black eyes burn with hunger for the chase, flashing red as coals when their swollen tongues slide out to lick their chops. Their tails wag, their wiry coats bristle, their taut muscles shiver with fever. Still, they make no sound. Finn releases the buckle and slides the leash free from their collars, but the deerhounds sit quivering on their haunches, showing remarkable breeding for restraint. Junior, on the other hand, crouches beside them with his head on his paws, looking quite bored with it all.

The stag ceases its browsing and lifts its nose into the air, appearing to smell the breeze. Then it turns its head toward our hill and stands perfectly still, watching.

“Kill!”

Before the echo of Finn’s call can return, the deerhounds take off like arrows shot from a bow. They bound down the hill with long strides, heading straight for the startled stag. Junior scrambles after them. The stag jumps three feet off the ground, changes direction in midair, and lands running and leaping away across the snowy glen in a streak of brown fur and antlers.

And the chase is on.

The men swing back into their saddles and gallop off after the chasing hounds. It takes me a few tries to mount my horse, and thankfully Jimmy hangs back until we can set off together after the riders. I expect the hounds to bark, but they don’t. The chase is silent and must be followed by sight. Our horses seem to have done this before, following Finn’s lead on their own, and with no effort from me besides holding on for sweet life with my knees. We quickly rejoin the group.

We gallop across glades, leap over rocky knolls, climb steep bluffs, and stop to scan the horizon for the dogs. When Finn or one of the men spots them again, usually scrambling over some distant hill, we kick the horses into pursuit and race on, trying to keep them in sight by keeping to high ground. All afternoon we chase them through the highlands with hardly a moment’s rest, save the briefest of pauses to pass a canteen and look again for the lost dogs. A few times I catch a rust-colored streak amidst the bounding deerhounds, telling me Junior is keeping up pretty well.

After riding hard for thirty minutes or so in the direction of our last sighting of the dogs, Finn halts the group and cocks his head, listening. A distant baying carries to us on the breeze.

“He’s gone at bay,” Finn says, flashing the group a grin.

“No rush now,” one of the others says. “Those hounds’ll keep him bailed up for a week if we leave them to it.”

“Quite right,” Finn says. “But we’d starve to death and so would they. Besides, we’ve got a feast to prepare for.”

He starts us moving at a quick canter toward a distant river gulch and the sound of the baying hounds.

“What’s he mean by bailed up?” I ask Jimmy.

“Hell if I know,” he says. “But I’d guess by the sound of it those dogs got ’em pinned down somewheres.”

We follow the ridgeline down as far as we can and search for a path to descend into the gulch. It doesn’t look possible to me, but before I know what’s happening, Finn guides his horse over the edge and the rest follow, including mine. The descent is frightening, the ground steep and rocky. I close my eyes, lean back, and squeeze with my knees, trying not to imagine how far I’d fall or how many rocks I’d bounce off of before I stopped. But I don’t fall, and the horses all make it safely to the bottom of the gulch, and we take off following a widening brook down toward the ever-increasing howling of the hounds.

As we follow the gulch lower, tiny streams and trickling waterfalls join the brook until it widens into a shallow river, forcing us into a single-file line along its bank. Then we come upon a blind bend with a steep cliff ahead, and when we reach it and turn, the gulch opens into a kind of valley where the river spills into a shallow lake. Five meters off shore, the stag stands in water to its chest, using its antlers to defend against the dogs swimming circles around it. Several of the deerhounds stand in shallower water, catching their breath. Junior lies on the shore, soaking wet and panting. Jimmy dismounts to check on him.

Finn removes a rope from his saddle and drives his horse out into the lake and lassos the stag, catching it around the base of its antlers. Then he ties the rope off to his saddle horn and backs his horse from the lake and drags the stag, head-bent and bucking, into shallower water. The deerhounds leap all around it, yowling. The stag shakes its lassoed head and bellows.

Another rider drives his horse into the water from the side and slips another noose over the stag’s antlers and backs out farther up the shore, pulling the stag’s thrashing points still, locked now between the two opposing ropes.

“Aubrey,” Finn calls. “Come here.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

I kick my horse in its side like I’ve seen the others do, but it doesn’t budge.

Finn laughs.

“I meant on foot, kid.”

I dismount my horse and wade into the water and look up at Finn in his saddle. He unsheathes a long knife and hands it down to me.

“Guests do the honors.”

The stag stands trembling just a few meters away, pulling against the ropes, lungs heaving, eyes wide, nostrils dilated.

“Don’t worry,” Finn says. “He knows it’s already done. If he does come at you, we’ll pull his points there to the side.”

I wade out to the stag, holding the heavy knife in front of me. The blade wobbles as my hands shake. When I get close, the stag rears back against the taught ropes and bleats with fear, its sweat-drenched muscles quivering with panic. The rider on the shore tightens his rope, pulling the stag’s head to the side and exposing its muscular neck for the knife.

I look back. All the men sit on their horses watching me, waiting. Jimmy stands on the shore watching, too. I turn back to the stag and bring the knife point to its neck and prepare to thrust it in. The stag turns its amber eye to me, and I can see my face clearly reflected on its glassy surface. Its pupil dilates, the lens focusing on its final vision. Its golden lashes flicker.

No one says a word as I trudge back to shore. Jimmy takes the knife from my trembling hand, wades out past me, and slashes the stag’s throat. I hear its gurgling bellow and turn to see blood gushing from the gash. The stag lurches left and right against the ropes, then slumps forward, its head dropping as its neck goes limp, its antlers clacking against the shallow bottom, its open mouth hanging in the water for a moment, giving it the appearance of bowing for one final drink. Then its amber eyes go blank, and it falls over sideways with a splash.

I sit alone on a rock and watch them field-dress it. Within minutes, they’ve strung it up by its horns in the only tree beside the lake. The tree is small and not very healthy, and the branch bows heavily with its weight. They slit the stag open, tie off its rectum, remove its organs, and pull the intestines free. They let the tired deerhounds eat the castaway parts, with the exception of the bladder, which Jimmy pinches closed and carries several meters away and tosses into a bush. When they finish gutting it, the deer hangs considerably lighter from the limb.

Next, they cut a ring around its neck and legs and loosen the hide. One of the men bunches the hide at its neck and ties it to a rope. Then he ties the other end of the rope to his saddle horn and backs his horse from the stag. The rope goes taut, the hide stretches, the branch bends, and with a wet, ripping sound that makes me want to puke, the entire hide peels off until the stag is hanging free of its skin, swaying pink and naked like a giant newborn fawn from the tree. The man loops in the bloody hide, unties it, and stuffs it into a saddle bag. The other men let down the stag and quarter the body and load the pieces into meat bags that they hang over the backs of their saddles. Only the head remains un-mutilated.

Jimmy comes over and sits beside me.

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. They’re laughing at me, aren’t they?”

“No, they ain’t.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Maybe a little. But it ain’t no big deal. It’s a hard thin’ to do when you ain’t done it before.”

“But I killed rabbits. And other things.”

“It’s different though, ain’t it? When they’s big.”

“Yeah. It looked at me and it knew.”

“Whataya mean it looked at you?”

“Like it knew what I was about to do. In an intelligent way. Like it was judging me or something.”

“Let’s jus’ forget it and get on back.”

We mount up with the others and ride back up the gulch and out onto the highlands, heading into the long light of late afternoon, back the way we came, although in a more direct route. The deerhounds trudge along beside us, their energy long spent. One of them has a bloody gash in its side, presumably from the stag’s horns. Junior is too tired to keep up, and Jimmy scoops him into his saddle and carries him in his arms. I lag behind and feel less part of the group than when we left. Which is kind of hard to imagine.

The stag’s severed head is tied to the rear of Finn’s saddle, antlers up and facing back. And the entire way home it seems to stare at me with lifeless eyes, its frozen expression mocking me for foolishly thinking it makes any difference whose hand it is that moves the knife when the deed is already done.

“Dead is dead,” it seems to say. “Your day will come.”