THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD PULLED THE DOORshut behind him, stacked his rifle against the log-sided cabin, and walked down to the end of the porch. The light from the kitchen window punched out into the earlymorning darkness and the utter silence of the woods. Two weeks of nightly frost had killed the insects and had driven the amphibians into hibernation: for a few seconds, he was alone.

Then the chairman yawned and unzipped his bib overalls, unbuttoned his pants, shuffled his feet, the porch boards creaking under his insulated hunting boots. Nothing like a good leak to start the day, he thought. As he leaned over the low porch rail, he heard the door opening behind him. He paid no attention.

Three men and a woman filed out of the house, pretended not to notice him.

Need some snow, the woman said, peering into the dark. Susan ODell was a slender forty, with a tanned, dry face, steady brown eyes, and smile lines around her mouth. A headlamp was strapped around her blaze-orange stocking cap, but she hadnt yet switched it on. She wore a blazeorange Browning parka, snowmobile pants, and carried a backpack and a Remington. 308 mountain rifle with a LeupoldVari-X III scope. Not visible was the rifles custom trigger job. The trigger would break at exactly two and a half pounds.

Cold sonofabitch, though, said Wilson McDonald, as he slipped one heavy arm through his gun sling. McDonald was a large man, and much too heavy: in his hunting suit he looked like a blaze-orange Pillsbury Doughboy. He carried an aging. 3006 with open sights, bought in the thirties at Abercrombie amp; Fitch in New York. At forty-two, he believed in a certain kind of traditionhis summer car, a racing-green XK-E, was handed down from his father; his rifle came from his grandfather; and his spot in the country club from his great-grandfather. He would defend the Jaguar against far better cars; the. 3006 against more modern rifles, and the club against parvenus, hirelings, and of course, blacks and Jews.