The Searcher(82)
“What’s going on?” Cal says. He clicks the safety on, but keeps his finger ready. Whatever that creature was, it went somewhere.
“I was right about that yoke coming after P.J.’s sheep next, is what’s going on. And there was you doubting me. You’ll know better next time, won’t you?”
“What was it?”
“Ah,” Mart says ruefully, “that’s the only hitch. I didn’t get a good look. I was otherwise occupied, you might say.”
“Did you get it?” Cal asks, thinking of the creature’s lopsided run.
“I hit it a coupla good skelps, all right,” Mart says with glee, slapping his hurling stick against his leg. “There I was, sitting up in your bitta woods, thinking I was outa luck again. I’ll be honest with you, I was almost nodding off there. Only then I heard a bit of a kerfuffle down among P.J.’s sheep. I couldn’t see a feckin’ thing in this dark, but I snuck down there nice and quiet, and sure enough, there was a sheep down, and something on it. So busy it didn’t even hear me coming. I caught it a great aul’ clatter, and it let a howl out of it like a banshee. Did you hear that?”
“That’s what woke me up,” Cal says.
“I was aiming to knock it out, but I must not have got it right. I took it by surprise, though, anyhow. I got in another skelp before it worked out what was happening.” He hefts the stick, savoring the weight of it in his hand. “I was afraid I mighta lost the knack with the hurl, after all these years, but it’s like riding a bike: it never leaves you. If I’da been able to see that creature, I’d say I’da took the head clean off it. Sent it flying halfway to your door.”
“It do anything to you?”
“Didn’t even try,” Mart says, with contempt. “Maiming sheep is all it’s fit for; the minute it was up against something that’d fight back, it turned tail and ran. I went after it, but I have to face facts, I’m no T. J. Hooker. All I did was banjax my back.”
“Shoulda thrown the stick at it,” Cal says.
“Last I saw, it was heading your way.” Mart looks up at Cal, his face creased into a guileless squint. “You didn’t happen to get a good look at it, did you?”
“It didn’t come close enough,” Cal says. Something about Mart’s look bothers him. “It was pretty big, is all I saw. Coulda been a dog, maybe.”
“D’you know what it looked like to me?” Mart says, pointing his stick at Cal. “If I didn’t know better, I’da thought it was a cat. Not a little pussycat, like. One of them mountain lions.”
The way it moved didn’t look like a cat to Cal. He says, “Main thing I noticed was it looked like it was limping. You musta got it pretty good.”
“I’ll get it better if it comes back,” Mart says grimly. “It won’t, but. It’s had its fill.”
“How come you decided on that?” Cal asks, nodding at the hurling stick. “Me, I’da brought my gun.”
Mart giggles at him. “Barty’s right about you Yanks. Ye’d bring your guns to mass, so ye would. What would I want a gun for, at all? I’m out here trying to save P.J.’s sheep, not shoot the poor feckers because I can’t see a yard in this dark. This yoke here did the job grand.” He examines the hurling stick with satisfaction. There’s a wide dark smear near the tip that could be mud, or blood. Mart spits on it and wipes it on his pants.
“Guess it did,” Cal says. “How’s the sheep?”
“Dead. The throat’s taken out of it.” Mart arches his back experimentally. “I’d better go give P.J. the news, before this stiffens up on me. You go back to your bed, now. The excitement’s over for tonight.”
“Glad all that waiting paid off,” Cal says. “Give P.J. my condolences on his sheep.”
Mart tips his cap and heads off, and Cal turns back towards his house. Inside the garden gate, he switches off his flashlight and moves into the thick dark under the rooks’ oak tree.
The night is so still that the patches of stars and cloud don’t even shift in the sky, and the cold has an edge that cuts through the sweatshirt Cal has taken to wearing in bed. After a few minutes, a light goes on in P.J.’s house. A minute after that, two flashlight beams bob and crisscross their way across the fields, stop and focus in on something on the ground. Cal hears or imagines he hears, very faintly, the low, anger-filled rhythms of their discussion, and the restless jostling of the unsettled sheep. Then the two beams work their way back to P.J.’s place, more slowly. Mart and P.J. are dragging the dead sheep, a leg each.
Cal stays where he is and watches the land. A few late moths whirl in the light from his windows. Nothing much else is moving, only the usual small things in the hedges and the occasional call from a nightjar or a hunting owl, but he waits and watches anyway, just in case. Whatever Mart met, it might have taken cover when Cal came out, and it might be patient.
The unease that started with Mart’s innocent inquiring look has grown and worked its way to the surface. Mart knew that, out of all the sheep in Ardnakelty, this creature would go after P.J.’s.
The more Cal thinks about it, the less he likes that hurling stick. Only a fool would risk getting up close and personal with something that rips the soft parts out of sheep, when he has a perfectly good shotgun that would let him keep a safe distance. Mart is no fool. The only reason he would have left his gun at home was if he was expecting to meet something he wouldn’t shoot. Mart was sitting up in that wood waiting for a human being.