Robles had come to hunting as an adult, joining an elk hunt as a thirtieth-birthday goof, only to be overwhelmed by its emotional power. For the past five years hed hunted a half-dozen times annually, from Alaska to New Zealand.

ODell was a ranchers daughter. Her father owned twenty miles of South Dakota just east of the Wyoming line, and shed joined the annual antelope hunt when she was eight. During her college years at Smith, when the other girls had gone to Ivy League football games with their beaux, shed flown home for the shooting.

Bone was from Mississippi. Hed learned to hunt as a child, because he wanted to eat. Once, when he was nine, hed made soup for himself and his mother out of three carefully shot blackbirds.

Only McDonald disdained the hunt. Hed shot deer in the pasthe was a Minnesota male, and males of a certain class were expected to do thatbut he considered the hunt a pain in the ass. If he killed a deer, hed have to gut it. Then hed smell bad and get blood on his clothing. Then hed have to do something with the meat. A wasted day. At the club, theyd be playing some serious gindrinking some serious gin, he thoughtand here he was, about to climb a goddamned tree.

Goddamnit, he said aloud.

What? The chairman grunted, turned to look at him.

Nothing. Stray thought, McDonald said.

One benefit: If you killed a deer, people at the club attributed to you a certain common touchnot commonness, which would be a problem, but contact with the earth, which some of them perceived as a virtue. That was worth something; not enough to actually be out here, but something.

THE SCENT OF WOODSMOKE HUNG AROUND THE cabin, but gave way to the pungent odor of burr oaks as they pushed out into the trees. Fifty yards from the cabin, as they moved out of range of the house lights, ODell switched on her headlamp, and the chairman turned on a hand flash. Dawn was forty-five minutes away, but the moonless sky was clear, and they could see a long thread of stars above the trail: the Dipper pointing down to the North Star.