The noise from the trees was the little double click of a rifle being opened.
Dace had made that rifle. He had filed its hinge until the second click was barely audible, a courtesy to the man who bought it and complained about every sound except his own voice.
Now Hobb had been missing for four days, and somebody in the trees was opening his rifle very slowly.
Dace stood in the road until the noise stopped. Above him the branches were thick with last year’s cones. Below them the woods fell toward a ravine, all pale trunks and dark spaces between.
He called Hobb’s name.
A buckle shone in the shade. It could have been on a belt, except it was too high.
Dace brought up his own rifle. The buckle moved behind a trunk. He did not shoot at a glint. There was still a chance of finding Hobb alive, and Dace had not lived this long by putting holes in things he couldn’t see.
At the road’s end, Iona was loading the final wagon. The settlement had bought its winter flour somewhere cheaper this year, and the freight crews were leaving with the last empty sacks. Dace could ride with her for the price of helping at the steep places. They would pass the old mill, where Hobb’s wife lived, before taking the coast road. He had already rolled his bedding and put it behind her seat.
“Noon,” she had said. “The horses don’t know whose goodbye is important.”
The bounty for Hobb would pay Dace’s fare all the way to the coast. Without it he would finish at the next freight yard, looking for another job. Hobb had taken the rifle on credit. His wife had paid Dace what remained owing before asking whether he would search.
He had wanted to give her the money back. She had put his hand over it.
“Bring something I can know,” she said.
He marked his place at the road with a broken branch and went downhill.
The prints were deep, irregular holes with a long scrape behind each. A deer had passed there too. Its little sharp slots crossed the holes, so the larger thing had gone through first. Hobb’s boot prints stayed on the other side of the ravine. Dace could see where he had stopped, where he had turned, where he had taken two backward steps.
The rifle clicked again, lower down.
He crossed at a fallen trunk. Its bark had come off in sheets, leaving smooth wood under his hands. On the far side he found a small brass button. Then another. They were bright, unworn by the damp earth, and arranged a pace apart.
Hobb wore a coat with wooden toggles.
Dace left the buttons where they were.
There were stories in the settlement about something that collected shine. A pan left outside went missing. A horse came back without its bells. Children dared each other to put coins under a stump and fetch them after dark. Dace had blamed people. A pan was worth taking. A bell could be sold.
The buttons were lying like markers on a path. Both shone on top of the wet leaves, as though someone had just put them there. He looked downhill again.
He reached the place where Hobb had stood. Beside the prints lay a splinter of walnut. Dace recognized the stock’s grain before he picked it up. It had been a good piece, saved for a customer who would appreciate it. Hobb had offered cash for the first half and a loudly witnessed promise for the second.
The splinter’s broken edge was fresh. It did not establish that Hobb was dead. Dace put it in his coat and continued.
The ravine narrowed. Water slipped beneath fallen leaves, making a soft, continuous noise. Against it came the double click, repeated without variation.
Open. Open.
No closing sound.
Dace stopped.
With that rifle, the hinge returned under pressure from the stock. You could open it, close it, open it again. The spring catch snapped audibly when it shut, however gently you moved the stock. You could not make the little second opening click indefinitely without that closing sound between.
Somebody was making the noise with something else.
He looked behind him. The two brass buttons were no longer visible. He could see the passage he had come down, the low branches, the wet shine of the stream. At its edge a patch of shadow stood above the ground.
It had been there when he passed. He had taken it for the far side of a stump.
Now it leaned.
Dace turned sideways to keep it and the upper slope in view. He had seen bears rear, dogs stand with their paws on gates, a badly wounded elk crawl on its knees. This had too many places to bend. A narrow limb came down from its middle and rested on the bank. Something brass moved with it.
He fired at the limb.
The report hit both sides of the ravine. Bark scattered. The thing pulled back, then rose above the stump he had thought it was. A strip of dull fur dragged through the water. High inside it, two polished circles swung toward him.
He moved up the slope. The earth went out under his right foot and he caught a sapling. His rifle struck a stone. Below, a metallic clatter answered it, as though somebody had shaken a box of tools.
He held the rifle still. The clatter stopped.
On the shelf above the stream lay a collection of small things: buckles, spoons, a watch without its strap, a tin cup crushed flat. Hobb’s rifle rested across them. Its stock was broken, the barrel bent. There was no place from which a living man could be holding it.
The thing reached for Dace’s rifle.
He pulled it close. A limb struck the sapling. The little tree came out of the slope by its roots, bringing a wet mass of soil with it. Dace fell onto his knees. The muzzle scraped the collection, sending the cup spinning.
The limb changed direction and caught the cup.
For half a breath it was still, the narrow appendage curled around the battered tin.
Dace got to his feet. He slid his left hand down the rifle until he held it by the stock. It was his best one, made after Hobb’s, with the hinge set right on the first attempt. He had expected to carry it for the rest of his working life.
He threw it along the bank.
The thing went after it. Dace saw its length then, unfolding out of the low space between the stream and the rock. It moved on the narrow limbs while the heavy part trailed behind. Nothing about it looked fast until it was moving.
He went uphill without waiting to see it catch the rifle.
The fallen trunk was too far downstream. He took the higher bank, clawing up through roots, losing his hat when a branch caught it. At the road he stumbled over the branch he had broken. He kept going.
Iona had the horses in harness. She looked at his empty hands and pulled the wagon brake tight.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
She watched his face.
“Something took the rifle. His and mine. Other things down there.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Get up.”
She moved his bedding to give him a place beside her. He tried to take the reins. His fingers were shaking too badly to close. Iona put them back on his knees.
The wagon started. Dace looked at the bits, the buckles on the harness, the iron rims. He listened to every little noise the horses carried with them.
“Take the bells off,” he said.
Iona did not stop. “You can reach them from there.”
He worked the straps loose, one, then the other. Under the seat was a folded sack. He wrapped the bells in it. They made one muted sound when he pushed them beneath his bedding.
The woods went by on his right. The space between the trunks seemed to narrow with the wagon’s passage. Once he heard the double click. It could have been an axle. He watched Iona’s hands and said nothing.
At the first rise she asked whether he could walk beside the wagon. He nodded and got down.
Before taking up his place he pulled the walnut splinter from his pocket and gave it to her.
“Keep that. For Hobb’s wife.”
“You’ll give it to her. At the mill.”
He had no answer. Iona tucked the splinter inside her coat and started the horses again. Dace walked beside the wheel. The road curved into open ground, where he could see the sky from one edge to the other, and for a while there was no sound behind him except the iron turning.
At the mill crossroads Iona drew up. Hobb’s wife was in her garden, hanging a shirt on the line. Dace recognized its wooden toggles.
Iona held out the splinter. He took it, crossed the road and waited while she put down her basket.
“I found his rifle,” he said. “I didn’t find him.”
She looked past him at the wagon, then back at his empty shoulder.
He opened his hand. She took the little piece of walnut and turned it over. Dace stayed beside the gate while she looked, though the horses were waiting and he could no longer hear whether anything clicked behind him.
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