Nightshade by John Saul

glaring at him too. “Who needs any of you?” he shouted. He turned away, pushed past Eric and Pete, Marty Holmes and Paul Arneson, and started down the trail.
    “Matt!” his stepfather barked, breaking the tense silence in the aftermath of Matt’s outburst. From force of habit, Matt stopped and turned back. “You don’t talk to your guests that way.”
    Matt’s face burned with humiliation at the tone of Bill’s voice but he wasn’t about to back down. “They’re not my guests,” he shot back. “This whole thing was your idea. I didn’t even want to come.”
    Bill Hapgood’s jaw tightened. “Be careful, Matt. You’re walking a very thin line. Just because it’s your birthday doesn’t give you the right to talk to your friends or your father — ”
    “You’re not my father!” Matt exploded. “I don’t have a father, remember? You’re just the man my mother married!”
    “Now just hold on, Matt,” Marty Holmes cut in. “If I were you — ”
    “You’re not me,” Matt flared. “None of you are! So why don’t you all just — ”
    Pete Arneson grabbed Matt’s arm. “Look!” he whispered excitedly, pointing upward. They were standing on the bank of Granite Creek, a quarter of a mile above the falls for which the town was named. Across the stream a craggy face of stone rose in a steep bluff for nearly forty feet. A seven-point buck gazed down at them from the top of the bluff. “Jeez!” Pete whispered. “Did you ever see one that big before?”
    They peered up at the buck, and the enormous animal, feeling their eyes on him, looked back at them for a moment. But as Eric Holmes lifted his rifle to his shoulder, the deer shied away and disappeared.
    “It’s not going to be that easy,” Bill Hapgood said as Eric lowered his rifle. “Any buck that’s been around long enough to get that big isn’t going to just stand there and let us shoot him.” The storm between Matt and his friends dying away almost as quickly as it had come up, Bill began issuing orders. “If we’re going to get him, we’ll have to split up. Matt and I will cross the stream and climb the bluff here, and you guys spread out. Marty, you and Eric head downstream toward the falls, while Paul and Pete go the other way.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ll meet back here at ten — that gives us a little less than two hours. If none of us have him by then, we’re not going to get him.” His voice dropped. “And just make sure that if you shoot at something, it’s that buck, not one of us.”
    “If he’s still up there at all,” Marty Holmes muttered, warily eyeing the steep face of the bluff and wondering how sure the footing might be.
    “He’ll be up there somewhere,” Bill replied. “He wants to come down to the river to drink, so he’ll stay close. See you back here at ten.”
    The group split up, and as his stepfather picked his way across the shallow stream and began working his way up the bluff, Matt hesitated.
    Maybe he should just go home right now.
    But that would only make things worse than they already were. And maybe if they were by themselves for a while, he and his dad could straighten things out. Taking a deep breath, Matt made his way across the stream, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and followed his stepfather to the top of the bluff.
    Ten minutes later, as they were working their way along the edge of the bluff searching for the deer’s tracks, a flicker of movement caught Matt’s eye.
    The buck was standing in a thicket about fifty yards away, its ears flicking rapidly as it searched for sounds that might indicate danger. But as Matt raised his rifle, the deer vanished into the woods.
    “He smells us,” Bill said softly. His eyes still fixed on the spot where the deer had been, he tilted his head to the left. “Circle around that way. We’re upwind of him, so if I stay here, he’ll still have my scent. And you can bet that he’s in there somewhere, watching us. But if you