see me. It’s you he wants. So he may pretend he doesn’t see me, and let me go. And when I’m out there on the wide part of the swing he may come in for you.

“The front door is locked. After I go out, bolt the back one. Sit in the storeroom, because it hasn’t got any windows. And if you hear him on the porch or if he starts to kick in one of these other windows, scream. And keep screaming. Close the door to the storeroom and pile everything in there against it. And if you smell smoke, scream twice as loud.”

“Smoke?”

“That’s right. It’s one way.”

She got it, but it didn’t scare her much. “All right,” she said. “And thank you for your solicitude. It’s touching.”

“Isn’t it,” I said.

I opened the back door and stepped out. Nothing happened.

I dropped off the porch and ran bent over toward the bushes at the edge of the water, the muscles bunched up and icy in the middle of my back. Guessing where he was and what he’d do was fine on paper, but out here in the open I could feel the cross hairs of a telescope sight crawling all over me like long-legged spiders. It was the dead silence all around and not ever knowing that made it bad.

I hit the bushes and dropped into them. A mosquito buzzed around my face and got in my nose. I stifled the impulse to sneeze, and searched the timber along the lake shore in both directions, turning my head very slowly. Nothing moved. I looked behind me, out across the lake, just for the sheer relief of seeing one place he couldn’t be. It was glassy under the sun. Out in the middle a mud hen swam, jerking its head, and left a V-shaped ripple on the surface. The trees were dark green along the other shore. It looked like the picture on a sporting-goods calendar.

I started crawling to the right, between the screen of bushes and the water’s edge. I had to slide under the little dock where the two skiffs were tied up. I was behind the shed now. A down log blocked my way. I crawled over it. A limb broke, snapping loudly in the hush. I fell to the ground and waited. Nothing happened. Three minutes went by. Four. I started again.

Mud sucked at my hands and knees. Sweat ran down my face. I kept watching for snakes. I looked back. The house and shed were lost in the trees, but I could see the dock. I had come over a hundred yards. A little more would do it. Wherever he was, he’d still be near enough to the edge of the timber to see the whole meadow.

I had to be behind him now. I stood up, wiped some of the mud off my hands, and began slipping through the timber, circling and heading away from the lake. Here in the low ground, underbrush was heavy, but ahead I could see it thinning out as I approached the foot of the hill. I stopped in a minute and held my breath to listen. If he had seen me leave, he’d be closing in now. I’d have to get there fast if she screamed. It was silent except for a squirrel chattering up on the hillside.

The grade began to pitch upward into the pines and stunted post oak. The soil was sandy here and matted in places with pine needles. My feet made no sound at all. I could see the meadow now and then through the trees, two or three hundred yards off to my left and a little below. I went straight up toward the crest of the ridge. In a few minutes I came out on level ground, turned sharp left, and began searching for the tall pine with the dead top. After another hundred yards I found it and faced down toward the lake for a glimpse of the house to orient myself. Through a small opening in the trees I could see part of the roof. I turned ninety degrees and went straight ahead for a hundred and fifty steps, going very slowly now and taking advantage of all the cover I could.

I stopped and squatted down at the foot of a pine. I should be directly above him. Somewhere in the trees below he was lying with his rifle beside him, watching the house. Moving nothing but my eyes, I began covering it