Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

Fair Game John Cortez

Not so long ago a relative asked me if I’d like to go hunting with him. I was about to say yes when a line in this story, which fortuitously I was reading at the moment, leaped out at me: “... there’s no thrill like shooting your own.”

She had a kind of sad face. The gray eyes were set wide apart and they had a way of taking on a gaze as though she were thinking of something far away and forever lost. Her high cheekbones gave her the hollow look of pining away and the long, rose-colored lips were almost always grave. She seldom smiled. Still she was beautiful, beautiful in a haunting, unforgettable way. I know.

She was not tall or short for a woman, and she was slim, very slim. You could see the fine bone structure beneath the skin when she closed her hands. She was like a piece of delicate china. Even her voice had a fragile quality, like the last echo of some forgotten whisper.

Every time he took her in his arms, it seemed as if he would crush the breath, maybe even the life, out of her for he was a big brute of a man; but I suppose he could be gentle because she seemed to like it. These were the few times that something like a smile would touch her lips and she’d hug him in return and then kiss him. I always tried not to watch, but no matter how quickly I averted my eyes the picture was there, sharp and lasting.

She had seen us coming and had stepped outside and was standing there, bare-headed, in the snow. She waved and that was enough to send him on ahead with long, fast strides. I hung back looking out over the hard rippling blue of the lake which was still unfrozen after this first light snowfall of November.

I heard them murmur things to each other, sweet, tender things, I imagine, and I tried to pay no attention to them.

What’s eating you, Ludlow? I asked myself. Why let it get you like this? There’s been nothing, not even a hint of it, between you and her. She scarcely knows you’re alive. Besides, she’s married, and he’s a good joe.

I circled around them and heard her say, “Please, Elroy,” and sensed her pushing away from his embrace, then I was on the steps, which she had swept clean, stamping snow from my boots. I looked to the south and west, seeing the expanse of leaden sky and the endless stretch of the evergreens for this was what we call big country up here, miles and miles of wilderness.

Endicott said: “Aren’t you coming in, Ludlow?”

I shut the door behind me. Endicott had shed his red hunting jacket and she took it from him and hung it on the rack. His big chest swelled as he inhaled deeply.

“That coffee sure smells good, Rosemary,” he said. “Get the whiskey, won’t you, hon? I feel like a good stiff slug of it.”

I stepped into the room where I bunked and unloaded my rifle and stood it in a corner. I dropped my jacket and cap on the bed and then sat down on the edge. I don’t know how long I sat there like that with my hands clasped between my thighs, staring at the floor.

Endicott’s voice brought me out of it. “Coffee, Ludlow?” he called from the next room.

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

He had a cup half full and the whiskey bottle in his hand. “Hold it,” I told him. “I’ll take mine plain.”

His brows went up. “I’ve seen you drink coffee royals before. How come?”

“I don’t feel like it today.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

I could feel her watching me, like she often did, but I pretended to be unaware of it. She went on staring, however, and finally she said, “No luck today either, Sam?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know whether to be sorry or glad,” she said. “Those poor little deer aren’t hurting anybody. Why must you men be so brutal? Why must you slaughter them?”

“Don’t mind her, Ludlow,” Endicott said. “Never known anyone as soft-hearted. She’ll walk around a bug on the ground rather than step on it.” His laugh boomed in the room. “You’ve got to get more spunk, hon.”

“It isn’t that, Elroy,” she said. “You know it. I just can’t stand the thought of anything being killed.”

Endicott’s laugh boomed again. “You’ll get over it. Just come out with me and watch me knock one over. That’ll cure you.”

She shuddered. “You know I couldn’t stand that, Elroy. I’d be sick for a week, I hope you don’t even get a shot at one.”

He was a big man and, I suppose, like a lot of big men he was attracted to women who were small or seemingly helpless. If that was all there was to it then I guess they were a perfect match. But he was much older than her, fifteen or twenty years older, I’d say.

There you go again, Ludlow, I told myself, getting mad. What business is it of yours their difference in age? Just because she looks at you sometimes— He’s crazy in love with her. Can’t you tell?

He had asked her to get chow ready but he did most of the cooking. “My only chance, Ludlow,” he said, winking and grinning. “At home she won’t even let me in the kitchen.”

After we’d eaten he washed the dishes while she wiped. I went to my room. I lay down on my blankets with a magazine but I couldn’t read. I could hear them talking, low and soft, and his pleased chuckles and once the sound of scuffling followed by her tone of reproach and his light laugh. I lay there, pretending not to hear, remembering how I’d got into this.

When he’d offered me an even hundred bucks rent plus my wages as a guide during the nine-day deer season I’d marked him for what he obviously was, a rich guy from the southern part of the state who owned a construction business down there or was it a small factory? I never bothered to make sure. He paid the rent in advance and that was enough for me. When he said his wife would be along I said okay because I figured it would be someone middle-aged like him and probably built like a tank, but then it turned out to be her.

I had put the magazine aside and was lying there staring, just staring, at the ceiling when she looked and then came in.

“Am I bothering you?” she said in that small, almost timid voice.

“Not at all,” I said. I swung my legs over the side of the bunk and sat on the edge.

She stared at my carbine and my rifle, both of which were leaning against a corner. She pointed a long, slim finger. “How come you’ve got two guns?” she asked.

I cursed the quickened beating of my heart. She’s just bored, I told myself, she’s just tired of being alone during the day while you and Endicott hunt. She’s probably used to shows and night clubs. She’s not used to being cooped up way out in the wilderness miles away from any doings.

I tried to be flippant about it. “I’m a two-gun man,” I said, “like in the western movies. One for each hand.”

She glanced at me sharply and showed me that shadowy smile. “You’re making fun of me,” she said, reproachfully. “I’m really serious. Is there any difference between the two?”

I went over and picked one up. “One’s a rifle,” I told her. “This is a carbine. It’s a little shorter and lighter and so it’s easier to carry around in the woods all day. I prefer the rifle, though. There’s no difference in caliber. They’re both .30-.30s.”

“Would you show me how it works?”

I stared at her.

For a moment a little color showed under the becoming pallor of her features. “I... I’d really like to know. Because of Elroy. He likes so much to hunt and I... I’d like to be a part of that. I like sharing things with him. But he won’t take me seriously. He makes fun of me when I ask him certain things and that gets me rattled. Would you show me how that gun works?”

I went on staring at her. Her glance started to shift but then she brought those gray eyes back and the moist appeal in them decided me.

“When the hammer’s back slightly like this it’s on safety,” I said. “When you want to shoot you cock it with your thumb like this. Then you squeeze the trigger. To eject the empty shell and get a fresh one in the breech you work the lever like this. Then you squeeze the trigger again or if you aren’t shooting any more you let the hammer down like this and set it back on safety. See?”

She nodded.

“Here,” I said. “Take it and try. It’s unloaded.”

Her eyes went wide as if I had thrust a poisonous snake at her. “Oh, no, Sam. I can’t make myself touch one.”

“Then how are you going to learn to shoot?”

“Give me time. Will you do that? When I’m alone tomorrow I’ll try. You’ll leave it unloaded, won’t you? I’ll try when I’m alone so no one will make fun of me. I know it’s silly to be like this but that’s the way I am. I so much want to learn to shoot a gun — for Elroy. You’ll teach me, won’t you?”

I knew a moment of a strange, new loneliness and a hopeless yearning. “Okay, Mrs. Endicott,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”

The deer came out of the thicket and stood still a moment. I caught him in the sights and then I hesitated, thinking, if he’ll go over that rise he’ll be set up just right for Endicott. After all, that’s what he’s paying me for. I could drop it for him but there’s no thrill like shooting your own.

The deer was a big buck with a large rack of antlers but he was far enough away so that I couldn’t count the points. Probably as tough eating as an old inner tube, but he’d make a fine trophy. I tightened my finger around the trigger. If he wasn’t going to move soon I’d shoot.

Just then the buck stirred and started up the slope. He moved without hurry, ambling up the hill. A moment he was silhouetted against the gray sky. Then he was gone.

I waited. The shot cracked out loud and sharp in all that stillness. The echoes rolled past me and beyond me, far into the evergreens and into silence. Then came another shot and on the heels of that a third one. These echoes, too, rolled and faded and died.

A strange reluctance gripped me as I started up the slope. I could not understand it. All I knew was that it unnerved me. Was it the temper of the day, the low, dismal clouds, the first hush of winter like the deep, eternal silence of the tomb? Then her image crossed my memory and I knew what it was.

I stopped on the crest of the hill. He was there below, sitting on a stump with his back to me. I stood there and watched. And I felt it begin in me, mildly at first, just swirling around in the dark depths of me and I didn’t know what it was, then something nurtured it and it grew and I felt it rise overwhelmingly in me and at the last moment I caught myself and forced it back to whatever depths had spawned it. I lowered the rifle from my shoulder, aware that I was trembling all over.

When I had myself in hand again I went down to him. He heard me coming and he rose to his feet and picked up his rifle. His face wore a disgusted look.

“Missed him,” he said bitterly. “Three shots and every one a miss. I suppose you heard?”

I said nothing.

“He came over that rise,” Endicott went on, “walking slow and easy. I couldn’t have asked for a better target. But I missed and he really took off. I tried two more on the run but what can you expect when I can’t even hit a walking target?” He peered at me. “You listening, Ludlow?”

I hauled myself out of it, out of the black thoughts and the fear, the numbing fear of the great and dark evil that I had never known existed m me until a few minutes ago.

“I heard you shoot,” I said woodenly. “Tough. But you’ll get another chance. Better luck then.”

He was still peering at me. “You don’t look so good.”

I stared off at the green ring the balsams and spruces and hemlocks made around this clearing. “I’m all right.”

“You look all in,” he said. “I’m pretty well bushed myself. How about calling it a day?”

I didn’t like the thought of going back to the cottage and seeing her move around and hearing her voice and feeling her eyes on me every now and then. I didn’t like that at all but there was no way to run from it.

So I said, “Okay, Endicott. Let’s start back...”

That evening I didn’t even try to read. I lay on my blankets with my hands under my head and my eyes closed and straining everything in me to keep from remembering the incident of that day and trying not to pay attention to their voices beyond the curtain.

They were playing cribbage and she squealed delightedly every time she won and he grumbled but you could tell it was good-natured grousing and that he was really glad she had won. Maybe he had even let her win. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for her.

I didn’t hear her come in. My eyes were closed and it was the fragrance first of all, and then an awareness of her and I opened my eyes and there she was, staring at me with that grave, faintly wistful look in her eyes, the lamplight turning the ends of her dark hair to golden brown.

Endicott was moving about in the next room and the radio began to blare, loudly, and though I’ve always hated loud radios somehow I liked it loud right then.

“Aren’t you feeling well, Sam?” she asked, and I thought there was something special in her voice for me, something like concern, but then I told myself it was just my imagination.

I sat up on the edge of the bed. “I’m all right.”

“You hardly ate anything tonight.”

“I wasn’t very hungry.”

“Could I make something for you?”

“I’m all right. You needn’t bother.”

“I’d like to fix you something.”

To change the subject I said, “How about the carbine? Did you try it today? It would be just right for you, a light gun like that.”

She shuddered. “I tried. I tried real hard, Sam. I actually picked it up once but that’s all. I put it down right away. Guns make my skin crawl. They always have. I don’t think I could ever force myself to shoot one.”

“There’s really nothing to it,” I said. “I don’t know why you should be so afraid.”

“But I am,” she said, and shuddered again and hugged herself with her arms. Her eyes widened and stared off into that secret, sad somewhere that only she could see. “Call it a phobia. Maybe something that happened when I was a child and which I can’t remember.” She uttered a small, nervous laugh, her lips twitching stiffly. “Maybe I should go see a psychiatrist. Are you sure you don’t want me to fix you something?”

“I’m very sure. Thanks anyway.”

“Well, good night, Sam.”

“Good night, Mrs. Endicott...”

There was something about those tracks that disturbed me from the moment I saw them but I had no idea what it was. My mind was too full of other things, of hopelessness and frustration and disgust with myself and that fear of the ugly evil I had not known I possessed.

I left Endicott in a clearing while I made a circle around through the woods to see if I could scare up something to drive past him but there was no deer sign today. Only the wilderness was there, green and somber and patient, full of awesome silence, full of lonesome brooding.

I doubled back finally and started up that hill, remembering yesterday and the dark impulse and the rifle at my shoulder and the sights staring at Endicott’s back; and in the midst of all this frightening remembrance I noticed the tracks. They paralleled mine except that they went up the hill whereas mine had gone down. I noticed where, just before reaching the crest, they veered off to the left and seemed to have headed for the timber.

He was seated on the same stump below with his rifle across his knees, smoking a cigarette. I forced myself to continue without breaking stride or pausing. That could have been yesterday’s mistake, the stopping and the thinking and then seeing her in my mind.

I made enough noise so that he heard me coming. He rose to wait for me. I could feel his eyes examining me. Did he know? Did he suspect about yesterday?

He glanced at his wrist watch. “You’ve been gone a long time,” he said, and the concern in his voice sounded genuine. “I’d begun to worry about you.”

“What’s there to worry about?”

He gave me that peering look again. “I don’t know. You just don’t seem to be yourself the last couple of days. If you don’t feel so hot we could knock off hunting for a day or two.”

I began to breathe easier. It wasn’t what I had thought it was. “I’m okay.”

“So I don’t get my buck. I can come back next year, can’t I? Stay in, tomorrow at least. I can hunt close to the cottage and along the roads. I won’t get lost. Don’t knock yourself out just because I hired you. You’ll get paid anyway.”

I almost screamed at him. Why do you have to be such a right guy? Aloud I said, “I never felt better in all my life. Come on, let’s get back and have a drink.”

She sat between us, slouched a little with her thighs together and her hands clasped in her lap. Her face looked pale in the glow from the dashboard light, paler than I remembered. The shadows caressed her features and I envied them for I dared not touch her.

“Turn left up ahead,” I said. These were the first words I had spoken since we had left the cottage.

Endicott braked the car and turned off the road. There were several cars parked in front of the tavern and as I got out I could hear the juke box going and the sound of voices. I hung back, letting her and Endicott enter first. There was a small vestibule just inside the entrance and we hung our jackets there. I still remember what the juke box was playing because it fitted in with the way I felt inside:

We went up to the bar and Endicott laid a twenty down for the first round. I ordered whiskey and drank it in one gulp and then ordered a round myself right away. I saw both Endicott and Rosemary glance at me because they had not touched their drinks yet. I sat and listened to that song.

It was a hunter’s crowd, loud and jovial. The talk was almost all of hunting, of the deer they’d killed, the ones they’d wounded, the big ones they’d missed, good-natured ribbing and joking, everyone roughly dressed in heavy woolen shirts and red trousers, even the women; the men were unshaven and smelling of the woods, of spruce and pine needles and resin, and all of them talking loudly so as to be heard above each other, and in the background the juke box blaring.

It was not long before Endicott became one of them, engaged with two other hunters in a discussion of the best rifle for deer. I’d had three more whiskeys, quick ones, and the liquor was working in me, mellowing me. Some of the gloom lifted from my mind and I would have been glad except that I knew it would return once the effect wore off.

A couple of times I caught her eyes in the bar mirror and it was always me who broke the glance. Finally I turned and looked directly at her.

At the moment she was toying with her shot glass, drawing moist circles with it on the bar and studying the pattern with a withdrawn preoccupation. After a while she looked up and around at me and our eyes locked and I thought I read a message for me in hers.

“Would you like to dance?” I asked.

She fitted nicely into my arms and I realized that this, too, had been a mistake.

“What’s the matter, Sam?” she asked as we circled the floor. “I thought going out might cheer you up. In fact, I was the one who suggested it to Elroy. What’s the matter? Won’t you tell me?”

The record ended and we came to a stop. When the next one began she seemed to have read my mind for she made no move to resume dancing.

“It’s stuffy in here,” she said. “I think I’ll get some air.”

The cars were all frosted over from the cool, damp air coming off the lake. She stood there with her back to me like she was lost in those deep thoughts of hers again and at first I fought it; then I thought what the hell this might be all the chance I’ll ever have and it was a mixture of desire and frustration. I turned her around by the shoulders and took her in my arms.

I guess she struggled at first. Anyway, it felt like that but she was so slim and frail to begin with and I was so angry and bitter that I didn’t think about maybe being too rough. Her lips were cool and indifferent at first and then they moistened and warmed and I knew I had not been mistaken after all.

It was the sudden blast of sound as someone opened the door that brought us out of it. She noticed it even before I did and pushed away. I spun around, thinking it was Endicott, but it was just another couple. They passed us by and got into a car.

We went back inside.

The day was gray, as gray as my thoughts. The clouds hung low in dark swells and billows, the air had a damp, bitter feel, the smell of an impending snowfall lay over the wilderness.

I stood outside, waiting for Endicott to take his leave of her. They were always reluctant partings for him. He’d stand on the steps with her in the open doorway, hesitating like a high school kid saying good night to his first crush. It made me grit my teeth, this time, because I was remembering the night before with her in my arms.

“Didn’t you hear her, Ludlow?”

That brought me out of it. I turned away from my study of the lake and looked at them.

“She asked you if you think it’ll snow today?”

I caught her eyes but read nothing in them. She was too far away for that anyway. “I’m pretty sure it will.”

“Very much?” he asked.

“Could be,” I said.

He kissed her then, long and hard. “So long, hon,” he said.

“Be careful, dear.”

I started up the road.

“Good-by, Sam.”

For the briefest moment my step faltered but I didn’t stop or even look around. “Be seeing you,” I called to her.

He made no attempt to talk as we walked along and neither did I. The only sound was the soft scuffing of our boots in the snow.

Where the road divided I came to a halt and he stopped beside me. “Let’s do it different today,” I said. “Let’s both strike out on our own. You know the country fairly well now and you won’t get lost as long as you follow this railroad bed. It eventually crosses the fire lane again and you can come back that way or double back on this. I’ll scout the timber. Maybe I can knock something over. Okay?”

He looked at me without answering. Does he know? I thought. Does he understand the real reason behind this? Does he guess that I’m scared of myself, scared of what I might do?

A couple of vagrant snowflakes fell, drifting slowly between us, and then he said, “Okay, Ludlow.”

“You needn’t wait for me,” I told him. “Just return to the cottage when you’re tired of hunting. Only don’t go off into the woods. This is big country and you might never find your way out if the snow covers your tracks.”

He nodded and started off.

I took the spur that wound and twisted its way up and over the hills. In the old days it had been the geared Shay engines that had clattered and squealed their slow, tortuous way up and down these steep grades. Now they were only memories, eventually to be forgotten like I wished all my memories could be forgotten.

I picked up the deer tracks heading south. They looked fresh and so I turned off the logging spur into the timber. The snow was building up, the flakes were thicker. It would not be long before it was snowing full force.

It was not long before the deer tracks crossed the old main line. I could see the trail made by Endicott where he had passed earlier. When I saw the second pair of tracks following his I pulled up sharply. They were the same tracks I had noticed the day before and as I stared at them I realized with a sick feeling what it was about them that had disturbed me.

They were small — tracks made by a boy, or a woman. I followed them...

She was crouched behind a large stump, the remnant of what had once been a giant Norway pine, and she was so intent on aiming that she was not aware of my coming up quietly behind her. He had stopped some distance up the road to light a cigarette and his back made a nice red target.

In the vast stillness of the forest the click as she cocked the carbine was a distinct sound. She had taken the mitten off her trigger hand. I still wore mine. I clamped down on the action just in time. Startlement made her pull the trigger but my thumb was there and the hammer snapped down and caught some of my glove between it and the firing pin and that was what kept the carbine from going off. Surprise so unsettled her that I easily tore the carbine out of her grasp.

She huddled there in the snow, pressed up hard against the stump, her balled right fist against her mouth. She had uttered a sharp, short gasp. That had been her only sound.

He never knew what happened behind him. When I glanced his way he was moving on, rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. He never once looked back. Soon he was out of sight.

I had known pain of mind and heart before but it was nothing compared to what I experienced now. Now it was the deep anguish of final disillusionment.

I looked down at her. There was hurt in me, lots of hurt, the kind of hint that fades but never dies, yet there was no hate and I was surprised at that. Even now when I finally knew her for what she really was I still couldn’t hate her. What I had felt for her had been too real, too deep to be replaced by hate.

“So you don’t know how to shoot,” I said, “and guns scare you and you’d get lost if you wandered more than ten feet from the cottage.” It was snowing steadily now and a wind had begun to blow. The tracks we’d made were filling in. “You wanted to make sure you’d never be suspected, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t try it yesterday, why you waited until today; today the snow would cover your tracks. And in case you were suspected you prepared for that, too. My carbine. If they dug the bullet out of him and had a ballistics done on it, it would be me, wouldn’t it, since you don’t know how to shoot?”

Two tears welled up in her eyes, trembled a moment on the lashes, then trickled down her cheeks. She shook her head mutely from side to side. Another time this might have touched me and moved me but I was suddenly old now and wise.

“Even last night,” I went on, “when you let me kiss you and be seen kissing you... it was all to set me up, wasn’t it? A motive for killing him. What would be a better one than his wife. Are you alone in this?”

She spoke now, her lips moving stiffly. They had lost their rose color, they were almost as pale as the snow that passed in front of her face. “I love you, Sam; I love you.”

“Do you? Or is it someone back home? Is that why you tried it? Or is he too old for you and you want to be free of him but you want his money, too?”

“I love you, Sam. I do. Please believe me.”

She saw it was no use. “What’re you going to do?”

“I won’t tell a soul, Rosemary. I won’t ever tell anyone. Who would believe me against you anyway? Let’s go.”

“Go? Where?”

“Back to camp...”

It would be my word against hers. Remembering how Endicott doted on her, I realized it would be useless to tell him anything. She would twist it around in her favor somehow. She would turn those big, sad, lost eyes on him and look frail and weak and persecuted and he would believe her rather than me.

And she would try it again. Not any more this way, perhaps, but some other way, some other time. I couldn’t tell him — he loved her too much.

I turned off the fire lane into the timber. She stopped and hesitated. “That isn’t the way back,” she said.

“Short cut,” I said.

Still she hesitated.

“Can’t you see how it’s storming? I want to get back as soon as I can. You coming?”

She followed. The timber closed about us. The wind moaned in the tree tops but down on the ground we hardly felt it. This was another world down here, a primeval world, a baffling world of trees and more trees, all of them alike, every direction alike, not even the sun to tell which way was which, nor the sky, for the snow swirled so thick and fast you could not see above the tree tops.

I quickened my pace.

“Sam,” she called, “please slow down, Sam. I can’t keep up with you.” Each word was a gasp.

I moved still faster.

“Sam,” she screamed finally, and began to run after me.

I broke into a run. “Sam, Sam, Sam,” and then she tripped and went sprawling and I kept on, running, running.

“Sam, Sam, Sam...”

Running, running, tripping, swiping my face against a low limb and behind me the shrill, terrified shrieking.

“Sam, Sam, Sam...”

Fainter and fainter until I knew it was only in my mind.

I was with the search party that found her and so was he. The storm had let up after two days and we found her huddled behind a windfall, all curled up on her side with one cheek pillowed on her folded hands. The sheriff brushed the snow gently from her face and she seemed to be asleep with her eyes closed and her lips a thin, sad line and that melancholy look on her features. I turned away and almost wept but no one thought anything of it because they all felt the same way.

“Why?” he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Why did she wander away? Why, when she was so scared of the woods? Will somebody tell me why?”