Damn, you can’t tell me they don’t. They’re out with Uncle—after fox, most like—but listen how they feel about it. Listen how they carry on after that fox an’ just Molly after that bear....” They all listened. Indeed, there did seem to be the unmistakable sound of shame hidden beneath their high, overhysterical barking, certainly a sound not in the barking of the lone dog. “Where are Hank and Joe Ben?” Lee asked, and she feels the wrist move slightly. “Damned if I know. I figured they’d be here waiting. But, now...what I reckon is, the pack there sounds like it tried once, then headed off again.” He frowned, scratching the tip of his nose. “Yeah ...I reckon Molly took the pack right off to that bear—uh-oh, hear that? fox is turnin’—and soon as Uncle saw what he’d got into he says, ‘Let’s go, boys. Leave that fool Molly to get et by bear if she so wants. Let’s us go hunt some fox.’ Yeah—an’ that was that first big noise, at the bear tree when the pack was there. So what I figure is Hank and Joe headed off—listen—to get to the treein’, but when the pack left, Molly couldn’t hold the bear by herself . . . so when Hank an’ Joe got there . . .” He trailed off, mumbling to himself, nodding, opening his mouth to continue, then pausing to listen, eyes half closed and glinting green in the dark as he lip-read the hunt to himself. The fire spat and sizzled, opening pitch-pockets in the wood. The dogs’ baying scrambled after shadows. And Viv sees those shadows flutter, black-plumed and black-beaked, just at the corners of her eyes. And hears their excited whisperings. And now feels the hand rotate tortuously until the tips of the fingers touch her throat. And does not move. “What’s happening now?” Lee asked with casual interest. “Oh? Well, the fox—I reckon it’s got to be a fox, the way they’re moving around—he’s cuttin’ back an’ forth, trying to back trail so’s they won’t pin him between the river an’ the mouth of the slough. If he gets hemmed that way he’ll have to tree or swim, an’ there ain’t any good holes or hollers down that direction an’ lord does he hate to swim. If it was a coon he’d of cut ’cross the slough a long time ago, but fox don’t want his bushy wet. An’, over yonder, Molly ...hm...she’s moved back around the end of the slough and is cuttin’ up to the high rocks. Hm. That ain’t so good. But, listen...” And she concentrates even harder on the sounds, already hearing far more than the old man. She hears the slough, the whistle and bell buoys, the last of the hillside flowers dying in the breeze—the drip of bleeding heart, the rattle of firecracker weed, the hiss of adder’s tongue. Far off a fever of lightning takes a flash picture of Mary’s Peak. She waits but hears no thunder. A curious breeze dashes out of the dark firs to rummage for a moment through the fire, then snatches her hair away from Lee’s hand. A few strands blow into her mouth and she rolls them thoughtfully between her front teeth. Her wet boots begin to steam and she draws them back from the fire. She wraps her arms about her knees. The cold fingers against her neck move, growing hotter. “Ah . . . what’ll happen if he, if the fox, swims?” Lee asked his father. “He swims the slough ’stead the river he’ll be okay, but a lot of times they don’t. Lot of times they head right ’cross the river; and that ain’t so good for the dogs or fox neither one.” “Can’t they make it?” Viv asks. “Oh sure, honey. It ain’t that far across. But somehow they get out in that water...and it’s dark...and ’stead of going on across they swim with the current, swim and swim and never get to the other side, just keep right on agoin’. Listen... he’s tryin’ to make a run, cuttin’ back to the north. That means they got him away from the slough and headed toward the river. They’ll get him, ifn he don’t swim.” The barking of the pack had reached a pitch that seemed way out of proportion to the size of the animal they were chasing— when compared to that relentless tolling of the lone dog after the much larger game. “Keep right on agoin’ to where?” Lee asked. “To the ocean,” Henry answered, “to the sea. Dang! Listen at the way them boogers are makin’ over that pore little fox. Dirteaters!” She feels that she should move from that touch—tend the coffee or something—but doesn’t move. Henry listened to the pack’s trailing with a displeased frown; this wasn’t the way he liked to hear dogs work. They were making too big of some poor little runt of a fox. He leaned forward and spat his wad of tobacco into the coals as though it had turned suddenly bitter. He watched it sizzle and swell. “Sometimes,” he mused, staring at the coals, “the salmon trollers pick up animals miles out to sea; deer, dogs, cats, lots of fox—just swimmin’ around all by theirselves, miles and miles from shore.” He picked up a stick and poked at the coals, deep in thought, seeming to have momentarily dismissed the hunt. “Once—oh, maybe thirty years ago, a good thirty years—I was workin’ half-days on a crab boat. Get up about three an’ go out an’ help this old fart of a Swede haul up his crab pots.” He held his hand out in the firelight. “Them scars there on my little finger? Them’s crab bites, where the sonsabitches pinched me. Don’t ever tell me crabs can’t pinch. Anyhow, we was always running across animals swimmin’ around out there. Foxes mainly, but some deer too. Generally the Swede would say leave ’em be, leave ’em be; ‘No time to fool round, no time to fool round b’golly.’ But this once we seen a great big buck deer, a real beauty, eight-nine points. And he says let’s get that feller. So we get a line on him and haul him in. The Swede figures the buck’s worth foolin’ round b’golly because we can eat him, I suppose, so we get a line around his head and lug him on board. An’ he just laid there. He was pretty nearly gone. Breathin’ hard, rollin’ his eyes scared to death the way deer do. But I don’t know—not just scared. I mean it weren’t like he was just scared of damn near drowning; or of bein’ caught on a boat with people neither. Not that kind of just scared, as near as I could make out, but pure scared.” He jabbed at the fire, sending another fountain of sparks into the dark. Viv and Lee watched, waiting for him to go on. Feeling those sparks in her breast. “Well, he looked so done in we didn’t bother to tie him down. He was just layin’ there sort of stunned an’ so shot he didn’t look like he could bat an eye. He laid there, didn’t make a move till we go............