Great night, Bone said, his face turned to the sky.

A small lake lay just downslope from the cabin like a smoked mirror. They followed a shoreline trail for a hundred and fifty yards, moved single file up a ridge, and continued on, still parallel to the lake.

Dont step in the shit, the woman said, her voice a snapping break in the silence. She caught a pile of fresh deer droppings with her headlamp, like a handful of purple chicken hearts.

We did that last week with the Cove Links deal, the chairman said dryly.

The ridge separated the lake and a tamarack swamp. Fifty yards further on, Robles said, I guess this is me, and turned off to the left toward the swamp. As he broke away from the group, he switched on his flash, said, Good luck, guys, and disappeared down a narrow trail toward his tree stand.

The chairman of the board was next. Another path broke to the left, toward the swamp, and he took it, saying, See you.

Get the buck, said ODell, and McDonald, ODell, and Bone continued on.

THE CHAIRMAN FOLLOWED THE NARROW FLASHLIGHT beam forty-five yards down a gentle slope to the edge of the swamp. The lake was still open, but the swamp was freezing out, the shallow pockets of water showing windowpane ice.

One stumpy burr oak stood at the boundary of the swamp; the kind of oak an elf might live in. The chairman dug into his coat pocket, took out a long length of nylon parachute cord, looped it around his rifle sling, leaned the rifle against the tree, and began climbing the foot spikes that hed driven into the tree eight years earlier.