You all ready? asked the chairman of the board, as he came back toward them, buttoning his pants. He was a fleshy, red-faced man, the oldest of the group, with a thick shock of white hair and caterpillar-sized eyebrows. As he got closer to the others, he could smell the odor of pancakes and coffee still steaming off them. I dont want anybody stumbling around in the goddamn woods just when its getting good.

They all nodded: theyd all been here before.

Getting late, said ODell. She wore the parka hood down, and the parka itself was still unzipped; but shed wrapped a red and white kaffiyeh around her neck and chin. Purchased on a whim in the Old City of Jerusalem, and meant to protect an Arab from the desert sun, it was now protecting a third-generation Irishwoman from the Minnesota cold. We better get out there and get settled.

Five forty-five in the morning, opening day of deer season. ODell led the way off the porch, the chairman of the board at her shoulder, the other three men trailing behind.

Terrance Robles was the youngest of them, still in his mid-thirties. He was a blocky man with thick, blackrimmed glasses and a thin, curly beard. His watery blueeyes showed a nervous flash, and he laughed too often, a shallow, uncertain chuckle. He carried a stainless Sako. 270, mounted with a satin-finished Nikon scope. Robles had little regard for tradition: everything he hunted with was new technology.

James T. Bone might have been Susan ODells brother: forty, as she was, Bone was slim, tanned, and dark-eyed, his face showing a hint of humor in a surface that was hard as a nut. He brought up the rear with a. 243 Mauser Model 66 cradled in his bent left arm.

Four of the fivethe chairman of the board, Robles, ODell, and Bonewere serious hunters.

The chairmans father had been a country banker. Theyd had a nice rambling stone-and-redwood home on Blueberry Lake south of Itasca, and his father had been big in Rotary and the Legion. The deer hunt was an annual ritual: the chairman of the board had hung twenty-plus bucks in his forty-six years: real men didnt kill does.