Counting Coup

W.E. Turner

When the rain started it was only a mist, hardly distinguishable from the low clouds scudding by just above the tops of the Osage Orange and cedars in the windbreaks. But soon the big drops began to fall, cold and stinging in their iciness, then smaller and steadier and harder and more insistent and with the rain, wind.

Through the grayness of the storm, the three hunters walked or ran as best they could toward the abandoned farmhouse, the weight of their Baretta and Savage shotguns slowing them as they made their way through the milo stubble. Jim Weidner, the Chicago lawyer who owned the two German Shorthairs, blew long and short blasts intermittently on his whistle as he ran, calling the dogs. Soon the two pointers appeared, loping through the field with their pink tongues lolling out the sides of their mouths as they cantered through the mud.

When the men got to the building, they entered through the side porch. The screen door, minus most of its screen, hung cockeyed from its one remaining hinge and the wood-paneled door into the kitchen was open. Some transient, perhaps, seeking a warmer, dryer place to spend the night, had long ago kicked the door open, breaking the latch on the doorjamb. Each man paused in the doorway to carefully unload his weapon. Inside, the air was cold and damp and musty. Old, broken furniture, trash and rabbit droppings littered the floors.

At first, the dogs didn't want to enter, wary of strange smells inside, but Jim grabbed their collars and pulled them into the house by force. The dogs huddled in one corner of the kitchen, frightened at being indoors.

"Where's Leon?" Vince Tesio asked. Tesio worked for the same law firm as Jim. He blinked his eyes, trying to grow accustomed to the half light inside. "Anybody see him?"

Jim Weidner and Harvey Buckley, a tax accountant and Jim's next door neighbor, looked out the mostly-glassless windows on the north side of the house. Nothing but grayness. The cold wind and spray stung their faces as they peered into the gloom. "Well," Harvey said, stating the obvious, "he was blocking the field up there at the north end...."

"Could be he just stepped into the treeline when this stuff started," Jim said. "Got in behind a big tree or something."

Tesio grunted. From the middle of the room, he tried to look north into the wind and rain, too. "Yeah," he said. "He was wearing his raincoat."

"Slicker," Jim corrected. "He calls it a slicker."

"Whatever. And that big old cowboy hat. Said he wore that to keep the rain out of his face. I thought farmers always wore baseball caps these days."

"Feed caps," Jim said. "They call them 'feed caps.' Always have a logo from a seed company or tractor maker on the front."

Tesio gave Weidner a sour look. "Why the hell are you always correcting me, Jim?" he asked. "We aren't in the office, now, you know."

"Why are you always using the wrong word?" Jim smiled at Tesio. "Hell, you're a lawyer. You should know how much trouble you can get into using just one wrong word." He looked over at his neighbor. "Besides," he said, "Harvey and I are supposed to pick on you. You're the new guy around here." Jim and Harvey had been coming to Leon's farm to hunt for the past four years. This was Tesio's first trip to western Kansas.

"Is that why you sided with Leon this morning? Because I'm the new guy?"

"No," Jim said. "I backed him up because he was right. You shouldn't have tried a shot like that. Not swinging around behind you like you were. I don't give a damn where that pheasant was going. You don't fire until you know you have a safe shot."

Tesio gave a grunting laugh. "What is that?" he asked. "Young Hunter Safety Clinic, lesson number twenty-two?"

"No," Jim said. "More like lesson number one. You don't fire until you know it's safe to do so."

"Yeah, yeah," Tesio muttered. "It was an accident, I tell you." He fell silent for a time. "But I got the bird, didn't I?"

Jim and Harvey looked at each other. Both had their mouths set in thin, hard lines.

"Well," Harvey said, looking back out the window. "Leon said it was going to rain. Guess he knew what he was talking about."

"Yeah," Jim said. "He knows what he's talking about, all right. Hell, I can't ever remember hearing him make a weather prediction he wasn't right on." He shook his head. "But we came all this way for opening day. Shit. Goddam rain. I guess we should have stayed at the farm, like Leon suggested. Watched football."

"You think he's still mad about that thing this morning?" Tesio asked.

Both Jim and Harvey looked over their shoulders at the younger man.

"Hell," Harvey said. "Wouldn't you be? Somebody tried to blow your head off?"

"It was an accident." Tesio's voice was strident, but not convincing.

The other two men looked away again.

"To hell with this," Harvey said after a while. "I'm going to look for something to cover up these windows." He began searching around the inside of the house.

Jim stared back out through the rain for a while, then turned around. He kicked some trash away from one wall and sat down. They were in what seemed to be the living room of the house. Tesio wrapped his arms around himself, shivering in his wet clothes.

"So," Tesio asked with a shudder, "what do you think that dumb-ass farmer's going to do? He already told us he can't lease to us next year, since he might get foreclosed. So what else can he do?"

"He can always tell other farmers around here not to lease to us, either," Jim said. "Tell them not to because we aren't safety conscious."

"Do you think he'd do that?"

Jim shrugged. "I don't know. Farmers around here get a wild hair up their asses every once in a while. Start making noises about not selling hunting leases to people from back east any more." He shook his head. "Usually, though, what they're pissed off about is taxes. State taxes. Stuff like that. Always think the tax burden's too heavy on farmers. Think people in cities don't pay enough." Weidner paused and smiled, ruefully. "But, usually, they change their tune when somebody starts offering lease money."

"Yeah," Tesio grunted. "Shouldn't affect us, anyway. We don't live in this goddam state. Thank God. Kansas. No wonder Dorothy and Toto bugged out. But I know what you mean. People like these'll do about anything for a few extra bucks." His voice fell into a burlesque Hispanic accent. "Hey, Meester. You wanna fock my seester? She a virgin."

Jim smiled in spite of himself and shook his head. "Shit," he said again. "Fucking rain. Great opening day." He watched as Tessio reached in under his hunting vest with one hand and drug out a cell phone.

Tesio flipped the phone open and peered at it, frowning. "Still no signal," he muttered. "Outta fucking range."

"I thought we weren't going to bring our phones with us," Jim said.

"Hell," Tessio said. "You can be out of touch with the world if you want to be. But I don't want to." He frowned and shook his head. "God damned Kansas," he said. "Middle of fucking nowhere." He put the phone back into his inside pocket.

Harvey returned to the living room with some empty cardboard boxes. He measured the bottoms against a window pane, then began tearing one box down the sides. He paused occasionally to remeasure his handiwork. Finally, he pushed one piece of cardboard into place and began working on another.

"That's going to make it awful dark in here," Tesio said.

Tesio looked around the room. His eyes stopped their survey when they came to the fireplace. "Hey," he said. "I wonder if that thing works." He walked over to the brickwork on the west wall and inspected the hearth. "All right" he said. "It's a woodburner. I was afraid for a minute, there, it was one of those goddam gas log jobbers. Hate those fucking things." He looked at the few pieces of broken furniture in the room, as if assessing how well they would burn. "Let's start a fire," he said. "I'm fucking well freezing." He grabbed a broken bent-wood chair and tried to pull its legs off like it was a giant wishbone.

"Old Leon might not like it if you go around busting up his furniture for a fire," Jim said.

"What?" Tesio asked. He held the chair out in front of him and looked at it. "This shit?" He put the chair back on the floor and resumed his search. Other than a few sticks and the broken leg from the bentwood chair, he found nothing.

"There's a woodbox in the kitchen," Harvey said. "I saw it when I was looking for something to cover these windows. Still has wood in it, I think."

Tesio disappeared into the kitchen.

Where the hell is that old son-of-a-bitch, anyway?" Harvey asked. "Think he's still mad?"

Jim shrugged. "I don't know." He thought for a moment, then an ironic, mirthless smile slowly formed on his mouth. "I don't really blame him for not wanting to hunt with us after Vince's little trick, though. God, he was pissed." He watched Harvey at work on the cardboard box. "Don't blame him at all. Bet it took ten years off his life, staring down the muzzle of Vince's shotgun." He leaned back against the wall and sighed. "Shit," he said again. "I wonder what he's doing out there."

Tesio reappeared with four split logs and a few pieces of kindling. "This is all there was in that woodbin," he said. "Probably been in there for years. Drier than hell. It's going to burn real quick. We'll need to find some more." He began placing the wood in the fireplace. He put it directly on the hearth since there were no andirons. He placed the largest piece deep in the hearth to act as a back log, then put the smaller pieces and some of the sticks he gathered in front of it.

Jim smiled at Tesio. "Hey, Vince, I think I figured out what Leon's doing," he said. He waited until Tesio looked in his direction. "It's got to be one of two things. Either he walked back to the road and is out there in the Land Rover right now, eating all the food and drinking our booze or...." He paused for effect. "He's waiting. Out there in the treeline. Waiting."

Jim smiled at the look of puzzlement on Tesio's face. "Ta-da-da, dum, dum." He imitated the first few bars of "Dueling Banjos." "He's waiting," he said again. "You've seen "Deliverance", haven't you, Vince?" He repeated the music, "Ta-da-da, dum, dum."

"Ta-da-da, dum, dum," Harvey said, taking up the echo.

"He's waiting, Vince. Waiting for you. And he's got his shotgun all ready. Ta-da-da, dum dum."

"Ta-da-da, dum dum."

"Oh, come off it," Tesio said. "He might have been pissed off, but...." He took off his hat, set it down beside the hearth and scratched his sparse blond hair. "Hell, he wouldn't do anything like that, would he? People don't really act like that, do they?"

"Hell, Vince," Jim said, "you've seen enough people in court to know they do. Some assholes will blow you away for looking at them wrong."

"Yeah," Tesio said. "Druggies and gang-bangers, maybe. But farmers?"

"You sure do have a purty mouth." Jim drawled out the words.

"Do you squeal like a pig, too?" Harvey asked.

Tesio did not laugh. He looked at Jim for a moment, then at Harvey. He shook his head and bent back toward the firewood on the hearth. He picked up the smaller pieces of wood and the sticks again, then reached over for some old newspaper on the floor. He wadded the paper and placed it on the hearth, adding some of the cardboard Harvey had torn from the boxes. He began breaking the twigs and branches. He placed these on top of the paper.

"Leon's part Indian, too, you know," Jim said. "He might just scalp you." He paused, looking pointedly at Vince's thinning hair, timing his punchline for Tesio and Harvey to get the full import. "Nope," he said. "Too late. Somebody beat him to it."

Tesio gave Jim a withering look. "He doesn't look like a fucking Indian," he said. "Not with those blue eyes and all."

"Oh," Jim said with a little chuckle. "He doesn't really have that much Indian blood. About an eighth, I guess. He told us, once, his great grandmother was a full-blooded Cheyenne. But he knows about the culture. Harvey and I sat up getting drunk with him one night a couple of years ago talking about Indians. Leon'll surprise you with how much he knows about it. Warrior societies. Counting coup. All that kind of stuff."

"Yeah, yeah," Tesio said, irritably. "As if anyone gives a shit, anyway." He looked up. "But if he's so much into Indian culture and all, how come he's trying to look like fucking John Wayne?" He scowled at Jim and all Jim could do was shrug his shoulders. "What's he going to do?" Tesio asked. "Huh? Challenge me to a gunfight?"

"Fill your hand, you son-of-a-bitch," Jim said with a smile.

"Yeah," Tesio said. "Is that what he's after?"

"Hell, I don't know," Jim shrugged again. He looked up toward the windows where Harvey was working. He sighed. "It's a different culture out here, you know." He shook his head. "I used to think people were pretty much the same, all over. But they aren't."

"Yes, they are," Tesio said. "Everybody's after a buck. The all-mighty dollar. They just go about it different ways. Some people sell cocaine and crack for it; some steal it; some try to swindle the government out of it...."

"Oh, hell, yeah," Harvey said. "That's where I make my money, all right."

Tesio shot Harvey a glance. "Then they hire lawyers like me and Jim to keep from going to jail." He looked at Jim, then at Harvey, as if trying to get the other men to disagree. "Then others.... They sell off hunting privileges to people like us. Just trying to make a buck. Trying to get all they can from what they have." He leaned back on his haunches. "Anybody got any matches?" he asked.

Harvey paused from placing the cover into the second broken window and pulled a cigarette lighter out of his shirt pocket. He tossed it to Tesio.

"And you guys can joke about that shit if you want to," Tesio said as he used the lighter to ignite the wadded newspaper, "but I think your buddy Leon's dangerous. You didn't see the way he looked up at me after I shot over his head."

"Over his head, hell," Jim said. "If he hadn't been so quick at dropping to the ground you would have blown his head off."

"Yeah, yeah," Tesio said. "But I didn't. I told you it was an accident, damn it. So lay off that shit." He picked up his cap and used it to fan the fire. The burning newspaper ignited the cardboard, then the sticks. Thick white smoke roiled up from the smoldering pile of kindling.

Tesio tossed the lighter back to Harvey. The accountant finished with the window and stepped back to admire his handiwork for a moment. Harvey sat down against the wall, too, and started filling his pipe.

"But, anyway," Tesio said as he rocked back away from the fire. "The look in Leon's eyes. It was pure hate, I tell you. It was an 'I'm going to kill you, you son-of-a-bitch' type look." Tesio broke a few more sticks of kindling and placed them on the fire.

Jim shook his head again. "But you don't think Leon would really... Really try to do anything like that about it, do you? I mean, where's the profit in it? If you say that's all people are after... Where does that profit him?"

"Hell, you know him better than I do," Tesio said. "But people like that.... Shit, you can't tell." He was fanning with his hunting cap again, but now more to keep the smoke away from his face than to provide oxygen to the flames. "Where the fuck's the dampener on this goddam thing, anyway?"

"You'll find the damper," a deep voice growled, "up on the side of the chimney."

All three men turned toward the sound, startled at it's location and its sudden presence. It came from the shadows in the back of the room. They could barely make out the tall figure of a man standing there. He wore a slicker and a ten-gallon cowboy hat. In the crook of one arm he balanced a short, double-barreled shotgun. The man advanced to the fireplace and grabbed a handle on the side of the chimney. He pushed up on the handle and they could all hear the scrape of metal on metal. The smoke began going up the chimney, now, instead of traveling out into the room.

"Hey, Leon," Jim said. "Where'd you come from? Didn't hear you come in."

Leon surveyed the room with heavy-lidded eyes, then reached up and removed his cowboy hat. He lifted the hat high above his head, then swung it down forcefully in a wide arc. Water sprayed across the wall and floor.

"Told you it was gonna rain," he said. He gave the hat two more forceful shakes, then looked around the room as if searching for some place to set it down. Finding none, he placed the hat back on his head. "But you wouldn't believe me."

When Leon talked, his lips hardly moved at all, from what the other men could tell. Most of Leon's mouth was hidden by a thick, shaggy gray moustache and though they knew the sound was coming through it, its origin seemed to be somewhere deep within Leon's chest. "It's gonna keep it up all day," he said.

"How the hell you know that?" Tesio asked.

Leon looked at the younger man. "Well," he said, "could be I just know. Because I'm part Indian. We just know those kind of things." Leon reached up with one hand and squeezed the water out of his moustache by scraping down it with the skin between his thumb and forefinger. He shook the excess water from his hand. "Or it could be I watched the weather forecast this morning. Like ya'll should have done."

"How long have you been here?" Jim asked.

"Just now came in," Leon said. "Back door. I seen you boys runnin' for this place when the storm started. Knew the kitchen door was broke 'n you'd be able to get in OK. Went out to the road where your car's parked. Figured you boys'd be gettin' hungry. Got the picnic basket Beverly packed up last night, so's we can have lunch. After we eat, we can go back and get some more blankets and stuff. Whatever you guys have in there to keep warm with. Gonna have to stay here tonight and it's gonna get cold."

It took a few moments for the men to realize the import of what Leon said. They all began to talk at once.

"But, aren't we...." Jim started.

"What about going back to your farm?" Harvey asked.

"Well, I'm sure as hell not staying here all night," Tesio said.

Jim hushed up the other two with a quick wave of his hand. "Can't we just all go back out to the road and get the Land Rover?" he asked. "I know it's going to be too wet to hunt any more today, but...." Leon's shaking head and the look in his eyes made Jim's voice trail away.

"Your car's got two flat tires," Leon said.

The city men stood there, their mouths slightly agape, looking at Leon, then again casting quick, furtive glances at each other. Once more, all three men tried to talk at once.

"How the hell did that happen?"

"Two flat tires?"

"Just what the fuck did you do to our car, old man?" Tesio asked.

Tesio's question effectively quieted the other two. The only sounds to be heard in the house was the crackling of the fire and the wind outside and the rain pounding on the cardboard over the broken windows. Leon slowly raised his gaze from the fireplace to look at the younger man. The farmer's lively, bright blue, heavy-lidded eyes bored into the Tesio's for several seconds before Vince looked away.

"I didn't do anything to it. Mister Tesio."

Leon stood there for several seconds more before he turned his eyes toward Jim. "Must have happened when you ran over that angle iron this mornin'. When you turned right instead of left, like I told you."

"When was this?" Harvey asked.

"Aw," Jim said, giving his head a shake. "This morning. I took a wrong turn about a mile up the road. Went into a pasture. There was some metal stuff there and I ran over it." He looked over at Tesio and Harvey. "I think you guys had gone back to sleep." He sighed. "That must have been when it happened."

"Well, this is just fucking great," Tesio said. He started to pace up and down on the litter-covered floor. "I just want to get the hell out of here. Get out of this fucking dump." He wrung his hands as he walked up and down.

Leon looked around him at the living room for a minute, then back at the fire. "Yeah," he said. "I guess it is kind of a dump, now. Didn't used to be. Hell, this was the house me and my wife lived in when we first got married." He nodded toward the back of the house. "My oldest boy was born in that bedroom back there," he said. Leon paused and looked at the room again, his eyes bright and lively, reflecting the light of the fire; piercing in their intensity. "But it ain't all that bad, really. Got a roof over our heads. Don't leak, much. Got a fire."

Leon walked up to the fireplace and put his shotgun on the narrow wood mantle above it, then squatted down and picked up the leg from the bentwood chair. He prodded the firewood in the hearth, moving the pieces of wood around, lifting the bigger pieces to ad sticks and branches under them. Soon the fire was bright and hot. "I built that fireplace, thirty years ago. Glad to see the chimney still draws."

As he watched the flames for a while, Leon's voice got quiet and dreamy. It's rough edge was replaced by a softer, gentler quality, almost as though he was talking to himself. Or a child. Or a lover. "That was a long time ago," he said. "Lifetime, almost. Back when things was simpler. Plow n' fertilize. Plant. Cultivate. Harvest. Run a few cattle. Do it all again, next year."

The fire crackled and popped. Leon prodded it again with the chair leg. "But that was before I got greedy," he said. "Diversified. Started buyin' up more land. Tryin' to get rich." He swallowed, then spat out the next word like a curse. "Business," he said. "Agribusiness. Now, there's a goddam word for ya. It means findin' out new ways o' goin' broke. Gettin' overextended. Before ever'thing started goin' crazy. Before the interest rates and the taxes.... Before all the government.... Lawsuits. Before the lawyers." He sighed. "Back when things was simple." His voice was barely audible.

Leon stood and looked around the room. He leaned over and picked up the broken bentwood chair, held it by the back, swung it whistling through the air and smashed it against the brick chimney. The chair splintered, pieces scattering across the room and falling to the hearth below. The other men flinched at the suddenness and ferocity of his actions.

Leon was left with only the bowed wood of the chairback in his hands. He pushed inward on both sides of the chairback until the wood cracked. He pulled outward and the chairback split in two. Leon shoved all the broken pieces of the chair into the fire.

The three city men watched, wide-eyed, as Leon tended the fire. Tesio had stopped pacing.

"Yeah," Leon said, standing up. He was panting slightly, breathing through his mouth. A few of the longer hairs of his moustache moved in and out with each breath. He looked around him again. "This used to be a real nice house." He reached over to the mantle and picked up his shotgun again. He nestled it back in the crook of his left arm.

"Well, I don't give a shit what this place used to be," Tesio said. "Right now, you.... This place.... Hell, it all gives me the goddam creeps. I just want to get the fuck out of here." He wrung his hands again as he watched the farmer. "Damn," he said, resuming his pacing. "We paid for five days room and board and hunting privileges. Five days. We paid for it. I just want to make sure we get our goddam money's worth. And that doesn't mean staying in this fuckin' dump."

Leon was positioned at one end of Tesio's pacing route. As Vince approached, Leon thumbed the breech latch of his shotgun and broke it open in the middle. Tesio stopped and watched as Leon pulled a 12-guage shell from the breech of each barrel. He stuck the shells in the pocket of his slicker then, with a quick flip of his wrist, closed the shotgun. The barrels snapped back into place with a loud, satisfying "click." He stood there, still looking pointedly at Tesio.

"Well," Leon said. "You could always go back to the house, Mr. Tesio." He stood there, gazing at Tesio through half closed eyes, a half-smile playing across his lips. "But that don't look like it's too practical, does it? Unless you want to start walkin'." He gestured toward the west with the index finger of his right hand. "It's five miles that way," he said, then jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, "then four mile north." He stood there a while longer, then turned slowly and walked over to the door into the kitchen. He picked up Tesio's Baretta shotgun by its slide. The slide was back, the breech open. With a quick flip with his wrist, Leon brought the slide forward. Another loud "click" resounded through the room. He tossed the weapon to Tesio.

Leon's hand had still been around the slide grip when he tossed the gun. The shotgun was unbalanced enough the movement should have been awkward, but the shotgun sailed on a perfect arc to Tesio, who caught it awkwardly.

"You might need this," Leon said. His voice was hoarse and deep and gruff. It was a hard voice. There was no humor in his tone. "In case you meet any lions. Or tigers. Or bears. Oh, my."

Tesio swallowed, hard, looking at the other two men, then back at Leon. Firelight reflected off the shells in Tesio's orange hunting vest and off the blued barrel of his shotgun. Leon stood across the room, his double-barrel still cradled in the crook of his arm. Firelight glistened off the yellow surface of his slicker, his eyes were hidden under the shadows of his hat brim. "You ain't got the drop on me, now," he said.

The wind blew with renewed fury outside, causing an increased draw of air up the chimney. The fire flared, hotter and brighter.

"Well, how 'bout it, Mr. Tesio?" Leon's quiet voice asked. "You wanna try?"

Tesio stood there with his mouth half open, his eyes on Leon, the shotgun held at an angle in front of him. He was trembling slightly, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else than where he was. The fingers twitched slightly as he let go of the shotgun stock with his right hand; the hand almost reaching for a shell in the vest, but not quite. He renewed his grip on the small of the shotgun stock with the right hand. He held on, tightly, the knuckles going white.

Another gust of wind made the rain smacking the walls, windows and cardboard sound louder and more solid. The rain was changing to sleet.

"Uh.... No," Tesio said, finally, looking away. "No. I'll.... I'll stay." He dropped the butt end of the shotgun, holding it now only by the barrel. He drooped slightly. "I'll stay. I'll stay here with you."

The nod of Leon's head was so slight it was barely perceptible. "Wise choice," he said. He turned and headed toward the back room, his boots clumping loudly on the hardwood floor.

Leon returned a few moments later with a heavy wicker picnic basket. He set the basket in the middle of the floor in front of the fire. He placed a folded blanket atop the basket and a low, three-legged stool beside it. He sat down on the stool, the ends of his slicker spread out around him like a tipi, then reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a tobacco pouch. As he rolled a cigarette, Leon looked very much like a caricature of a cowboy; the cartoon type seen at truck stops along interstate highways, on coffee mugs and in framed pictures with funny captions. But Leon acted as if he didn't care. Leon acted as though he didn't care about anything, now.

"Ya'll might as well sit down over here," Leon said. He struck a match on the leg of his levi's and lit his cigarette. "Have some lunch. Spread out that blanket there to sit on." He reached over and opened the picnic basket and looked inside. "Let's see what we got. Well," he went on, "we got ham sandwiches. Cheese. Potato chips. Coca-Cola. Carrot sticks." He reached into the basket and drew out a carrot stick. He held it between his thumb and forefinger and waggled it in the direction of the men. "So we ain't gonna starve." He took a bite of carrot. "And I even stuck a couple cans o' dog food fer your dogs and that bottle of Bourbon you boys had under the front seat o' your car in there," he said between chews. "Help take off the chill. There's plenty of firewood out there by the windbreak. I cut up two old, overgrown Bois D'arcs--hedge trees--this summer and left 'em out there to age. Wood might still be kind of green, but it'll burn all right. Then we can clean them three pheasants we got this mornin' and cook 'em up for supper."

He paused and listened to the wind howling outside the house. Smoke from his cigarette wafted up past his face to be caught under brim of his hat. The light from the fire illuminated his craggy face and his bright blue eyes glowed.

"It'll freeze tonight, after this rain clears off," Leon said. "That should make for real good huntin', come mornin'." He took another drag from his cigarette and puffed out little clouds of smoke as he talked.

"Well," Leon said, "we didn't get to kill many birds today." He paused and looked at the men, smiling, the deep creases in his face standing out in relief in the shadows cast by the firelight. "But we'll shoot hell out of 'em tomorrow."