It was a clammy, overcast day in early spring when The Unthinkable happened. Billy Ross, hunter, stalker, outdoor action man of almost Hemingway proportions, fell off his horse during a common or garden backwoods hack, and broke both legs, incapacitating him for months.It was a bad fall. A ridiculous fluke. But it wasn’t the pain that got to him, just the sheer boredom. Clacker took good care of him. Shecooked and nursed and cleaned his little hunter’slodge on the edge of Mason’s Forest, 200 square miles of redwoods, pines and beech trees. She was a priceless legacy from his mother for whom she had also selflessly toiled for three decades before she passed away from pneumonia, God rest her, in the bitter winter of ’76.

She saw to most of his needs but the pair grated on each other like glass on stone. How she put up with his constant whingeing he’d never know, especially now he needed her so desperately. But she came every day to the lodge, scrubbing, fussing and chattering and cooking up three square meals
each one of which he ate propped up in bed,trying to block out the endless gossip about who had insulted whom in the nearby community of Feathersfield.
“Already heavy into summer and ne’er a sign of bluebells in the woods,” she warbled as she ensured his tray was safely balanced and fluffed up his pillows.
“It’s a portent. A mysterious May. Something dreadful’s going to happen, mark my words.”

Ross, today as on all days, wasn’t listening. He was grateful enough to Clacker and knew he couldn’t survive the endless weeks without her since the nurse had stopped her regular fortnightly visits.
“You’ll have to pull through on your own now,” Nurse Piggott had told him rather sharply.
“Doctors have done all they can. Now you must let time tend to the mend.”
So, day in and day out, that’s exactly what he did. His dreams were tantalising cameos of hunting and fishing, chasing down a hare on theprairie on the edge of the woods, stealthily creeping close enough to a buck to get a shot. But when he awoke he was still stuck here in his three-room, timber home with no better game to look forward to than a leg of Clacker’s roast chicken.

From his bed he could enjoy a clear view across the half a mile of meadowlands to the woodland he loved so much, tortured daily by the sight of the beckoning track that led into the deep, dark heart of the forest he had known since boyhood.

After a restless mid-morning slumber, he stared wistfully at it now, the daisy mottled greens of the grasslands gradually giving way to the sparser terrain of the outer woods, the trees at first lonely sentinels keeping watch but deeper in, the forest blooming into its true dark majesty. He could almost smell the heady scent of the rhodies at the outer edge, and the heavier, earthy, damp smells within. Not for the first time during this enforced imprisonment, he sighed heavily.

It had been two months so far and he had been told he wouldn’t walk at least for another four weeks, and only then with the aid of crutches. It would be a long time before he was out there hunting in the woods again.
He fidgeted in the bed and wondered how long before Clacker let herself in at the front door to come and fix his midday meal. She had warned she might be a little late today because of some business at the Feathersfield community hall. She was probably helping to organise some fete or other, or perhaps making an official complaint about someone’s unruly dogs.

He winced and softly swore at the dull ache in his hips that had become so familiar to him. As he lay there totally immersed in his own self pity something half caught his attention. A tiny figure, a young girl, heading across the meadow towards the woods.She was something like 800 yards away, but even at that distance Ross could see she was very young, perhaps eight or nine at the most. “What the hell?” he whispered out loud. It was strange to see anyone approaching the woods from this side, most visitors hiking in from the Feathersfield end three miles away, and stranger still to see a lone little girl.Ross strained his eyes to see if there was an adult following close behind but no...oh yes, there, a woman trailing some 100 yards away high up on the rising meadow. Ross reached for the field glasses by his bed and focused first on the girl and then swept to the right to her mother, a casually elegant woman in a light summer dress. She appeared to be carrying something, a bag maybe. Yes, probably a picnic hamper. But no sign of any Dad.

Ross sighed again. When will these city folks realize that the woods can be a dangerous playground?
He couldn’t recognise the figures but with his trained hunter’s eyes, would have expected to be able to do so even at this distance. He reasoned they were probably trippers from out of town,possibly Vermont.
He trained his binoculars back on the girl, skipping happily across the grass towards thewoods. There hadn’t been any bear sightings around here for years, but they did exist in the forest and could be dangerous too.

Once again Ross found himself sighing. Absent mindedly he scoured the woodland path ahead of the girl as if to spot any predators laying in wait among the trees. The angle of the path lay obliquely south east from the lodge, giving him a reasonable view for around 100 yards before the trees and thicket hid everything from view. No bears, he muttered to himself and was about to focus back on the girl when he spotted something. Just the briefest movement among the bushes at the side of the track. The breeze? A bird?

He shifted his position in the bed to make himself more comfortable and to keep a steadier hand on the glasses. He peered as deeply as he could into the foliage.
Yes, there it was again. A face. He was quite sure. A man’s face. Someone was hiding in the bushes about fifty yards into the woods – right on the path the child was taking.
Ross, helpless to intervene, felt himself break out into a cold sweat. He fiddled in vain with the binocular settings to get a clearer view of the figure hidden in the trees. Then he lowered the glasses from his eyes as he remembered his hunting rifle hung on the wall. It had a telescopic sight twice as powerfulas the binoculars. And it was always kept fully loaded. You couldn’t be too careful living way out here in the wilds, three miles from town.

He hesitated a moment, mindful of the pain any muscle movement was certain to bring, but after a glance again at the progress of the little girl he began to clamber clumsily out of the bed and onto the floor.
She was nearly at the edge of the woods and would reach the figure hiding in the trees within minutes.
He grimaced as the hard floor took its toll on his pathetically fragile legs but resolutely began to crawl across the room to the far wall. Every inch was a nightmare ordeal, the pain shooting up both thighs until he could hardly bear it.

When he reached the gun he was sweating profusely and beads of perspiration poured from his eyebrows and forehead straight into his mouth, agape with the strenuous effort. Panting heavily, he leaned on a pine chest to heave himself up to a standing position and with his left hand reached out to release the rifle from its housing. As it came away he fell like a sack of potatoes back to the floor, clutching the gun to his chest. He wasted no time and desperately clawed his way to the window, his breath catching agonisingly in his throat every inch of the way. He pulled himself up against the ledge and had to momentarily put the gun down to struggle with the window catch.

The window up, he leaned the rifle over the sill and slipped the cover from the end of the sight.
He could see him now quite clearly, a man resolutely determined to stay hidden in the bushes and from his position, Ross realized, would easily be able to monitor the little girl’s approach. Ross slid the gun a few degrees to the right and was panic stricken to see that she was twenty yards or so into the woods, less than a minute away from her attacker, whose intentions were now chillingly clear to Ross.

Her mother was still coming more slowly, agonisingly slowly, down through the meadow. Both were oblivious to the danger hiding in the woods. Ross trained his scope on the man’s hidingplace and was this time rewarded with a glimpse of his expression; hard, resolved, malevolent. A hunter himself, he knew instinctively that the man’s prey was indeed the little girl. He fancied he could even see the gathering sweat on his brow as he hungrily eyed his innocent and unsuspecting victim.

Fractions of moments dragged past and suddenly she was there, almost alongside the assailant’s cover.
It was too far for Ross to yell and be heard by the girl or her mother. But his worst fears were realized as the man leapt out of the trees landing just inches from the girl.Ross, shocked, watched her raise her hands to her mouth in horror and he could also see the monstrous grimace on her attacker’s face. Instinct took over and Ross slipped the safety from the gun and fired a warning shot some 10 feet wide.At that distance neither the girl nor the man would have been anything other than dimly aware of the sound of the report but the whipping through the leaves and the ricochet off the trees would have been unmistakeable.

To his horror, Ross watched as the man, alerted by the shot, swept the girl up into his arms and leapt back into the bushes where he had been hiding. Ross, in a hunter’s frenzy, pulled the bolt to slide the next cartridge into its firing position. His only concern was that the man should not escape with his helpless prey.
He fired, knowing that a shot in the back at that distance would be fatal but would not penetrate all the way through the body. There was no chance of the bullet harming the girl. He watched the man slump forward,almost in slow motion, the girl still held tight in his arms. Ross knew his aim was true and she would be in no further danger.

He couldn’t see the girl’s face as she lay sprawled in the foliage; couldn’t see her look of horror as she stared in disbelief at the prostrate figure beside her, a six-inch bloody entry wound gaping in his upper spine.
Neither could he hear her anguished cry as she flung her arms around the sinister man who had been hiding in the trees.
“Daddy!” she screamed and the pitiful sound launched a mocking echo amongst the dense, lordly trunks of the wild wood.

Nearby a small clump of burgeoning bluebells was just beginning to thrust its way up into the late May sunshine.

-Ends-