I loaded about forty pounds of loose meat in my pack, and we started for the lake, two miles down the valley. Upon approaching the lake, we began feeling a light breeze in our face, and as we dropped over the last rise, descending to the shore, the full force of the wind hit us. The lake was a mass of whitecaps. It was two miles long, but narrow, and the wind was being funneled down it. The cabin was at the other endWe stood on the shore looking at the turbulent surf. Dan laid down on the bank. “To hell with it”, he said. “let’s crawl under the raft and stay here. I’m too tired to fight it.”
I was tired, but not nearly as bad-off as Dan. “No way! I’ll row home. We’ll hang close to the shore. We can make it - besides you row in circles most of the time anyway.”
“Well, I’ve only rowed a boat a couple times; there’s not that much water around Amarillo, Texas. You know what I mean?”
Dan’s favorite phrase, “You know what I mean?”. It was his attempt to accentuate a point, and after several years of running with him, I knew it was rhetorical, not requiring a response . “I would never have guessed it this morning“, I said. “I wasn’t sure which direction you were going most of the time.”
I launched the raft, turned it around, and backed it into shore for Dan. He stumbled off-balance into it, and landed full force in the bottom.
“Watch it or you’ll go through. That jaunt around the mountain did you in, didn’t it?”
“I’ve been beat ever since”, Dan said in a tired voice.
“I’ll stay close to shore. If it gets too rough we’ll pull up and stay there the night.”
It took an hour and a half to row the length of the lake. I would row up to the sheltered edge of a point and hold until the wind died, then hurry around the point and into the next cove. That way we did not catch as much spray, though our clothes became sodden anyway. Further down the lake the wind died a bit, and the rowing became easier.
Our two hunting partners, waiting at the water’s edge, stepped forward to help us land. Doug Jackson grabbed the bow line and pulled us onto shore a ways. “Its about time you guys got back; where in the hell you been anyway”, he asked?
“We’ve been hunting. We don’t quit in the middle of the afternoon like some guys.”
“We just got back an hour ago. Did you get anything?”
“Oh! We got two”, Dan answered casually. “How’did you do?”
“Well we got two too,” returned Ed Cerney in a superior tone.
“Christ! We’re in trouble”, Dan spit out as he slumped back into the raft.
”You didn’t really get two - did you?”
“Here, take this,” I said, as I heaved my pack to the front of the raft.
They lifted it to shore, opened it and looked inside.
“You really get two”, one of them said, stressing the “two“.
“Yea! Did you really get any?”
“No”, Ed answered ruefully. “I thought you were spoofing us.”
“We didn’t even see a cow”, Doug added.
GO TO: Day 3, Part 6
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