“Here.” Bob Menechinn held out a hand for the ax. “I’ll do it. Man, it would be something to have that on your wall, wouldn’t it?”

“Step back,” Ridley warned them, ignoring the offer. “This is going to be messy.”

Ridley wasn’t much taller than Anna, five-eight maybe, and slight, but he swung the ax like a man long used to chopping his own wood. Hefting it back across his shoulder, he swung it in a clean arc, the strength of his legs in the blow.

The axhead buried itself in meat and bone behind the moose’s ears.

Anna’d thought it would be the way the guillotine was depicted in the movies; a single chop and the moose’s head would roll free of its body. Except, with the antlers, it couldn’t roll. With the long, bulbous nose, it couldn’t roll. Moose were not beasts designed for a beautiful life or a dignified death.

Ridley put his mukluk on the thick neck and yanked on the ax. With a sucking crunch, it jerked loose, and blood flew like a flock of cardinals over the ice.

The head lolled. Great, dark eyes stared upward; the executed watching the executioner botch the job.

“He looks stoned.” Bob laughed. “Or is it a she?”

Ridley’s ax hit the animal between the eyes.

“God dammit,” he whispered, took a deep breath and swung the ax again, severing the head but for an eight-inch strip of hide that Adam quickly cut with a mat knife he produced from somewhere in his ragtag clothing.

Ravens were landing before they’d finished wrapping the moose’s head in a tarp. They hopped and scolded; their feast was growing cold. Bolder birds dashed in to snatch bits of flesh from the open neck wound; easy pickings, with no tough hide to tear through. By the time the carcass was consumed, all manner of smaller creatures would have had a good dinner; maybe the meal that would give them the strength to make it until summer, when the island provided in plenty.