He was so close now that he could see the rabbit's whiskers. Gordie edged carefully around a lemonade berryīush, looking out of the corner of his eye. If you only looked at it sideways, if you walked kind of zigzag while slowly getting closer and closer.Īs long as its ears stayed down, instead of up and swiveling, you were safe.

The trick was to make the rabbit think you didn't see it. He knew how to sneak up on a rabbit, get so close he could practically catch it with bare hands. Little desert cottontail sunning itself near a squat of grass. A sage-covered slope rising toward a stand of oak and sycamore trees, with some good brush piles underneath for cover. Gordie just liked to come up here and kick them out of the bushes. He'd gotten a moose last year.īig game like that was worth observing, studying, planning for. A chase that had only ended when he woke up dripping sweat. Just once Gordie had dreamed that he was on the other side of the rifle sights, the one with dogs snapping behind him, the one being hunted. He even hunted in his dreams.įor one instant, as he made his way along the dry creek bed, a memory flickered at him, like a little tongue of flame. ' Every night in bed Gordie thought about the very best ones, remembering the stalking, the shooting, the electric moment of death. It was like his dad said: 'Good hunts never end. Twelve, and his dad took him on a real hunting trip, going after white-tailed deer with an old. When he was nine, it had been ground squirrels with a shotgun. When he was seven, he'd gotten robins and starlings with his BB gun.

Gordie preferred big game, but rabbits were always available-if you knew how to dodge the rangers. It was the wet, plopping sound when lead met flesh. It wasn't the wild-flower-splashed hills, the sky blue lupines, or the fragrant purple sage. That was why he was cutting school even though he wasn't sure he'd get away with forging his morals signature on another readmit. That was what brought Gordie Wilson out to the Santa Ana foothills on a sunny May morning like this.

Forbidden game house lj smith