Ellie watched and waited until he could stand it no more. He pointed up the field toward the wooded ridge and said, "Them birds are up on top."

His boss smiled funny at him and got out. They eased the Range Rover's doors closed. Elijandro let the silence of predawn settle on them for a moment before he cleared his throat, cupped a hand to his mouth, and let fly the low sonorous call of a barred owl. Nothing came back at them but the echo of his call as it bounced away between the low hills.

Elijandro eyed the eastern sky. A line, pale yellow and flush with the horizon, had begun to melt away the ink of night to a navy blue promising day. The storm would come from the other side of the knob, where the flicker of lightning continued to illuminate the oncoming clouds.

Elijandro cleared his throat, then tried again.

Halfway through the call, the big tom erupted from the top of the knob with a gobble that sent a surge of blood through Elijandro's heart. He grinned at his boss and in the dark saw his boss's teeth. His boss raised his shotgun in one hand as though victory were already theirs, and together they pulled camo masks down over their faces.

"Let's go kill him," his boss said.

Elijandro set off into the woods, keeping just inside the trees and following the edge of the field up toward the top. By the time they were fifty yards from the far end of the field Elijandro could hear his boss's labored breathing. He directed his boss to the base of a big oak close enough to the edge of the woods for a good clean shot and slipped out into the field, the newly turned dirt damp and sucking at his boots. He set the decoys, crouched, spun, and darted across the soft ridges of dirt toward the spot where he'd left his boss. He found an old stump in a clump of bracken not twenty feet from where his boss sat, but closer to the decoys so that his call would better match their location. He settled in, resting the lower part of his back against the trunk, and glanced over his shoulder at his boss, who gave him a thumbs-up.