"Your siblings, Buchanan," Pemberton said. "A brother and sister?"

Buchanan switched the reins to his right hand and turned.

"Two brothers," he said.

"And their occupations?"

"One teaches history at Dartmouth. The other is studying architecture in Scotland."

"And Mrs. Buchanan's father?" Pemberton asked. "What's his occupation?"

Buchanan did not answer. Instead he looked at Pemberton with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Harris listened as well and entered the conversation.

"Such reticence must mean he's a bootlegger or bawdy house owner, Pemberton. Whichever it is, I'll make every effort to sample his product the next time I'm in Boston."

"I'm sure it's nothing unseemly," Pemberton suggested. "I thought perhaps a banker or lawyer."

"He's a physician," Buchanan said tersely, not bothering to turn around as he spoke.

Pemberton nodded. The coming negotiations would be easier than expected, good news he'd soon enough share with Serena. He'd call Lawyer Covington tonight and have him prepare the necessary documents to make an offer for Buchanan's third interest. His right hand felt the rifle holstered to the saddle. One well-aimed shot. Then it would be just Serena and him.

Soon the trees fell away and the men entered an old pasture. Locust fence posts still stood, draping brown tendrils of barbed wire. Milking traces were faint but visible, indenting the slantland like the wide steps of some Aztec ruin. Though wisps of fog held fast to the coves and valleys, sunlight leaned into the pasture. The air was bracing, more reminiscent of fall than spring.

"A good day for a hunt," Harris said, glancing skyward. "I was afraid it might start raining again, but from the looks of it we'll be able to stay out until evening."

Pemberton agreed, though he knew they wouldn't be gone that long. He would be back with Serena by early afternoon. Do this one thing, he told himself, reciting the words like a mantra, as he'd done since he'd awakened at first light.

They splashed through Cook Creek and soon came to the homestead. No deer grazed the orchards, so Galloway and Vaughn unleashed the dogs and they moved in a swaying wave across the orchard, quickly into the deeper gorge. Vaughn unloaded the wagon and gathered wood for a cooking fire.

"We'll give Harris the upper orchard," Pemberton told Buchanan. "You and I can take the lower."

Pemberton and Buchanan walked to where the orchard ended at a sagging farmhouse, beside it a barn and well. The well bucket dangled from a rotting rope, a rusty dipper beside the well mouth. Pemberton dropped the dipper into the darkness, unsurprised when he heard no splash.

"You take this side," Pemberton said. "I'll be near the barn."

Pemberton walked a few paces, then stopped and turned.

"I almost forgot, Buchanan. Mrs. Pemberton wanted me to tell you that you are wrong about the origin of 'feathered into.'"

"How so?" Buchanan asked.

"She says the phrase is indeed from Britain. The feathers referred to are the fletching of an arrow. If you've feathered into your opponent, the arrow's so deep the feather itself has entered the body."

Buchanan gave a slight nod.

Pemberton walked on toward the barn, the smell of hay and manure yet lingering inside the gray wood. The front had collapsed but the back portion's spine remained level. From the side, the barn resembled the petrified remains of an immense kneeling animal. As Pemberton got closer, he saw something on the barn's back wall. Little more than withered rags of skin and fur held by rotting nails, but Pemberton knew what it was. He touched a tawny boll of fur.

Half an hour passed before the Redbones' long-spaced howls quickened. Shortly thereafter a deer came into Harris' shooting alley. He fired twice and a few moments later a buck staggered through the orchard's center row toward Pemberton and Buchanan. The animal was shot in the hindquarters, and when it fell Pemberton knew it would not get up. Buchanan stepped into the orchard.

"Save your bullet," Pemberton said. "The dogs will finish it off."

"I can afford the damn bullet," Buchanan said, pausing to glare at Pemberton.

Pemberton released his safety, the click so audible in the crisp morning air that for a moment he thought Buchanan might have heard. But Buchanan's eyes stayed on the deer. The buck's head lifted, dark eyes rolling. Its forelegs treaded the air, the torso flinging blood as the animal tried vainly to rise. Buchanan aimed but the deer's writhing allowed no clean head shot. He took off the fine English hunting jacket and set it behind him. Laid on the grass but nevertheless neatly folded, Pemberton noted, a man of propriety to the very end. Something about Buchanan's fastidiousness extinguished Pemberton's last misgiving.

Buchanan placed the barrel against the buck's skull, pressed hard enough to hold the deer's head still. Pemberton stepped into the apple orchard and aimed his rifle as well.

VAUGHN had gone ahead of the party, racing back to camp on Buchanan's horse although Doctor Cheney would only be able to confirm what Vaughn and the rest of the hunting party already knew. It was early afternoon when the wagon crested the last ridge and rolled into camp. The scene appeared almost Egyptian, Buchanan wrapped inside an oilcloth, the Plotts and Redbones gathered around the corpse like the animals of old pharaohs accompanying their master into the afterlife. Pemberton and Harris followed the wagon, Buchanan's black hunting jacket tied to the hitch-gate's top slat like a banner of mourning. The wagon halted in front of the office.

The procession had barely come to a stop when Frizzell's green pickup jolted up beside the commissary. Pemberton suspected the photographer had heard there'd been an accident and assumed the dead man a highlander. Doctor Cheney and Wilkie stepped off the office porch. Sheriff McDowell, who'd been sitting on the cane ash stump, got up and walked over to the wagon as well.

For a few moments the three men did nothing but stare at the shrouded body. Galloway came around and lifted the hitch-gate from its tracks and shooed the Plotts and Redbones off the wagon. When the last dog was out, Doctor Cheney climbed aboard. He unwrapped Buchanan's corpse so it lay face upward on the planked bed, then probed where the bullet had passed through the heart before shattering the spine. Rifle, Cheney said softly, as much to himself as McDowell. Doctor Cheney picked up something from the wagon bed, rubbed the blood from its oval shape to reveal a dull whiteness. Sheriff McDowell placed his hands on the wagon's sideboard and leaned forward.

"Is that a button?"

"No," Doctor Cheney said, "a piece of vertebrae."

Wilkie's face paled. Sheriff McDowell turned to Pemberton and Harris, who were still on their horses.

"Who shot him?"

"I did," Pemberton said. "He was in the orchard. He was supposed to be farther away, over by the barn. I wouldn't have shot otherwise."

"Anybody else with you?" Sheriff McDowell asked.

"No."

McDowell looked at the dead man.

"Interesting how your shot hit dead center in the heart. I'd call that a rather amazing accident."

"I would call it an especially unfortunate accident," Pemberton said.

The sheriff raised his eyes, looking not at Pemberton but at Serena, who watched from the Pembertons' porch, a boot she was polishing in her right hand, a rag dabbed black in the other.

"Mrs. Pemberton doesn't seem particularly distressed by the loss of your partner."

"It's not her nature to make outward shows of emotion," Pemberton said.

"What about you, Wilkie?" McDowell asked. "Any suspicions as to why your partner might be shot, other than an accident."