"Robert F. Young - The Leaf" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

THE
LEAF
By ROBERT F. YOUNG
Even his present desperate situation couldn't spoil his memories of
other
days in the woods: like the lovely, lazy day he shot eleven squirrels....

Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA


HE COULD REMEMBER the afternoon as if it were yesterday. It wasn't, of courseтАФactually it
had been several years back. It had been around the middle of autumn, about the time when the last
incarnadine leaves were making their fluttering journeys earthward. He had taken his .22 and gone into
the woods where the hickory trees were, and he had settled himself comfortably against the shaggy trunk
of one of the hickories, the .22 balanced across his sprawled knees. Then he had waited.
The first red squirrel had come out on one of the high limbs and posed there. That was the word all
rightтАФposed. It had sat there on its haunches with utter immobility almost as if it had been painted on
canvas against a background of leafless naked branches and milk-blue sky.
He had raised the .22 lazily and sighted along the slender barrel. There was no hurry. There was all
the time in the world. He didn't squeeze the trigger until he had a perfect right-between-the-eyes bead,
then he squeezed it ever so lightly. There was the sharp sound of the report, and then the small body
falling swiftly, bouncing and glancing off limbs, tumbling over and over, making a rustling thump in the dry
leaves at the tree's base.
He hadn't even bothered to go over and examine it. He knew he'd got it right where he'd aimed.
They didn't die instantly like that unless you got them in a vital spot. They thrashed and kicked around
after they hit the ground and sometimes you had to waste another shell on them if the noise bothered you.
Of course if the noise didn't bother you, you could save the shell for the next one, but it was better in the
long run to get them right between the eyes because that way the others wouldn't be frightened away by
the thrashing sound, and you didn't have to get up.
That had been the first one.
The second one had been coming down the trunk of the same tree, spiraling the trunk, the way
squirrels do, stopping at frequent intervals and studying their surroundings with their bright beebees of
eyes, looking right at you sometimes but never seeing you unless you moved. This one had stopped, head
down, and was looking off to one side when he got it. The force of the bullet, striking just below the ear,
where he'd aimed, tore the small red body right off the trunk, spun it around several times, and dropped it
into a wild blackberry thicket.
He hadn't bothered to look at that one either. He had lit a cigarette and leaned back more
comfortably against the hickory. It was a pleasant afternoon, mild for NovemberтАФa time for wandering
in woods, a time to it a little easy, a time to knock off some of the scavengers and pests you'd neglected
during the first days of pheasant and rabbit season, a time to get your eyes down to hair-line fineness for
the first ecstatic day of deer. Red squirrels were easy, of course, a little beneath the dignity of a true
hunter, but when you tried to bore them in vital spots you got some pretty good practice out of it.
He yawned. Then, out of corner of his eye, he caught a red wisp of movement high in the tree to his
right. He brought the .22 over casually. He hardly needed to turn his body at all. The stock fitted his
shoulder snugly, lay cool against his cheek. There was no recoil, only the sharp ripping sound, and the,
the dark red body falling, hitting limbs, caroming, dropping, dropping, making the familiar thrilling rustling
sound in the dead leaves.
That had been the third.
The fourth and the fifth had been about the same.
After the fifth, he had become a little bored. He decided to vary the game a little. He drew his knees