IN CAMP Edd Tury Charles M. Rollen finished raking the tent floor and reached next to his sleeping bag, fumbling for what was left of the scotch. It was 10 o’clock in the morning. The sun shone through the spruce tops, barely illuminating the inside of the dirty canvas tent. CM got his glass and went out for some icicles. He snapped several off the tent fly and broke them into his glass. He poured two fingers of the whiskey over the ice, took a long sip and looked back into the open tent flap. The tent always looked better after the floor was raked. CM sipped more scotch and studied the bottle. It wouldn’t last the day. A trip to town was in order; he hoped his brother Ned would be up for it after his day in the woods. The lack of camp whiskey was usually good motivation. He drained his glass and sloshed the remaining ice at the firepit. Chickadees flew into the small spruce tops, peeping their displeasure at being chased from the tent floor detritus CM had raked to the pit. CM walked over to where his buck hung from the buck pole. For the hundredth time that week he pounded its frozen chest and admired the great antlers. It was a big deer; the largest buck any of them had killed. He shot it three mornings ago on the river ridge east of camp. He was lucky. There were few deer in these woods and the good bucks almost never make the mistake this one had made: It walked past CM in good shooting light. The camp celebration lasted long into the night. Most of the camp whiskey was gone that evening. Lucky his brother didn’t like scotch all that well. One bottle survived intact. He admired the camp. It was an old-fashioned, rough tent camp. He liked that. He liked being part of an old time deer camp. He, his dad, and his brother were quite comfortable. Not like the first couple of years when they didn’t know what they were doing. They were warm at night, ate well, and hunted hard all day in the big woods. They saw few other hunters and liked it that way. CM went into the tent. The trash box was full again. He inspected the trash carefully before he dumped it into the woodstove and cracked the front air hole. He took his time. Yesterday, after he emptied the trash into the stove, he was outside the tent straightening up the campsite when he heard a loud bang from inside the tent. Startled, CM turned to see a large puff of smoke and ash burp out of the stovepipe. Three more explosions in quick succession, silence, then one more. He went back into the tent knowing that all five of his brother’s lost cartridges had exploded in the stove. Ned had looked for his leather cartridge holder that morning. It was the type worn on a belt and it must have slipped off Ned’s belt into the trash box when Ned took off his woolen hunting pants the night before. CM checked the stove for holes, but there were none. When the fire died down he scraped the ashes out the front cleanout into the camp shovel. He carried the shovel of ash into the good light and sifted through it finding the exploded cartridges. Instead of propelling the unconfined bullet the burning gunpowder blew the bullet casings open at their necks, releasing the energy quite harmlessly. CM thought back
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