The Jump-Off Creek Read Free

he smoked and then while he ate, and coming in quick for the leftovers when he stood to scuff out the coals. Blue, waiting for the dog, shrugged his shoulders to try to loosen the bunched-up muscles at the base of his neck.
    There was a little warning, a racketing noise like a breaking of limbs, and then a big steer cleared the rise in front of him, eyeing whitely down the steepness of its face and then pivoting to go along the backbone, running loplegged, clumsy. Blue was reaching for the bridle of his horse when the rifle reported through the sodden trees and the steer missed a step and went over, shoulder first, skidding up a comber of mud and pine needles. Before the steer had stopped good, a man burst through the trees along his backtrail, riding hard-trot on a little buckskin horse, holding a carbine high in his right hand. He was looking after the steer but he must have seen Blue there from an edge of his eye. His face jerked, showing pale twist of surprise and alarm. He yanked the buckskin around, slobbering, clanking the bit, and as he jabbed his spurs to send the horse back out of sight, Blue was grabbing at the roan, kicking past the dog to vault for his saddle. The dog made an offended, yowling sound, but by then Blue had booted the roan and was sailing the muddy water of the spring. The horse took the far slope in half a dozen grunting jumps. They cleared the steer’s carcass at the top of the ridge and started down through the trees after the buckskin. It wasn’t steep. He felt the roan’s off front leg skip cadence, that was all, then the flash of trees in a high wheeling spin.
    The rain came very meekly out of a low oyster-colored sky. For a while he lay where he was, in the rain, waiting for his breath. The dog came and smelled him and touched the back of his hand with his wet nose and then squatted to wait.
    All right
, he thought.
Get up.
    He took hold of his right shoulder with his left hand and rolled up to a sit. He began to sweat softly beneath the dampness of his clothes. When he had sat a while, he brought his legs under and came to a wobbly stand. He was still holding on to his shoulder. He’d broken the collarbone twice before. But under the squeeze of his hand, there was a bright ache, no scrape of bone, nothing grinding. Maybe it was okay this time, or would be. In a moment, blood dribbled from one of his eyebrows and ran down his cheek. He touched his face timidly, found a sticky wound above one eye.
Shit.
    He turned his head carefully, looking along the scarred slope where the roan, spilling, had raked a long gouge through the duff. The horse was waiting, standing patient, watching him. He limped down through the scrub to where the horse stood. “Jay,” he said, stroking the velvet muzzle once in apology. Then he squatted and ran his palm over the horse, each muddy leg in turn, then the ribs and chest, the shoulders. The roan’s wet shag fell out in hanks in his hand.
    Above him on the ridge, the dead steer lay in a skid of wet leaves. Blue stood resting his forehead against the horse’s neck. He thought of letting the steer lay up there, letting the coyotes have it. Then he grunted sourly and went up the ridge, knelt in the wet and unfolded his knife.
    Shit.
“Shit,” he said, and the dog, hearing aggravation, turned his eyes away under raised-up, anxious brows.

4
    They had come up gradually on the ridge. There was a line of pines along the creek but finally they could look across the tips
of them, and when they came out of the timber Lydia saw the trail ahead of Mr. Whiteaker was a little rocky line chased on the steep treeless face of the slope.
    Mr. Whiteaker waited, as he had only done the one other time, above the mud slide, judging the steep downhill. He looped one of his legs around the saddle horn and massaged the knee carefully, sliding his hand up under the edge of the stiff oilskin. He did not look back toward her. He watched the dog