“WHERE?” HART MUTTERED.

The men were moving through the dry streambed where they’d seen their prey disappear.

“Look,” Lewis called softly. He was staring at a muddy patch of ground.

“What? I can’t see anything.”

Lewis pulled off his jacket and made a tent with it. He took a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and, inside the garment, flicked it. Kneeling, Hart could see a series of footprints in the mud. They came from three people. “How old you think those are?”

“Look fresh to me. Who the hell’s with them? Shit, if it’s a cop he’s got a cell phone or radio.”

The lighter clicked off. The men stood up and looked around, as Lewis tugged his jacket on. Hefted the shotgun. He shook his head. “You wouldn’t think a cop’d be around this time of night.”

“True.”

“But who else’d be here?”

“No campers this time of year. Ranger maybe. We gotta find ’ em fast.” Hart walked a little farther up the streambed. He crouched and ran his hand over another patch of mud. “They’re going that way.” He pointed up the hill. “That a path?”

“Looks like it.”

Hart grabbed a fallen tree trunk to push himself to his feet. The wood was rotten and a portion of it crumbled under his grip.

In less than a second the rattlesnake nesting inside, about two and a half feet long, had launched itself silently into the back of Hart’s hand-on his good arm. Before he could even shout in horror, the dark, glistening stripe of muscle had vanished.

“Lewis!” Hart pulled off his glove and saw two puncture wounds in the back of his hand, near the wrist. Shit. Was he going to die? One of the fangs had pierced a vein. Feeling faint, he sat down.

Lewis, who’d seen the strike, flicked his lighter and examined the wound.

Hart asked, “Should I suck it out? I saw that on TV, a movie.”

“You’re going to be okay. You don’t want to suck it out. Venom gets to your heart faster under your tongue than through a vein.”

Hart noted that his breathing was suddenly coming fast.

“Stay calm. The calmer the better. Let me look.” Lewis studied the wound carefully.

“You going to burn it?” Hart’s eyes danced as he gazed at the Bic flame.

“No. Relax.”

Lewis let the lighter go dark. He took a shotgun shell out of his pocket and, with his Buck knife, carefully cut it open. He tossed aside the pellets and the plastic wad. “Hold your other hand out.”

Hart did and the man poured the gunpowder, fine little black cylinders, into his cupped palm.

Lewis told him, “Spit in it. Go ahead.”

“Spit?”

“I know what I’m doing. Go ahead.”

Hart did this.

“Again. Get it wet.”

“Okay.”

Then Lewis reached into his inner pocket and took out a pack of Camels. He smiled like a cookie-stealing schoolboy. “I meant to give up smoking last week.” Then he ripped open three cigarettes and sprinkled the tobacco into Hart’s palm. “Mix it all up.”

Hart thought this was crazy but he was feeling even more light-headed. He did what he was told. With the knife Lewis cut the tail off his shirt. “Put that mess on the wound and I’ll tie it.”

Hart pressed the black-brown wad onto the punctures and Lewis tied the cloth around them and helped him put his glove back on.

“It’ll sting. But you’ll be fine.”

“Fine? I just got bit by a rattler.”

“It was pretty much a dry bite.”

“A what?”

“Snake was a rattler, yeah, but a massasauga. They control how much venom they let go. They’re small and don’t have a lot, so they conserve it, use it on prey so they can eat. For defense they don’t use much. Just enough to scare off a threat.”

“Well, scared the shit out of me. I didn’t hear it rattle.”

“That’s only if they sense you coming. You surprised him as much as he surprised you.”

“No, not quite,” Hart muttered. “I feel faint.”

“You got a little venom and you’ll feel funny some. But if that was a wet bite your hand’d be twice its size and you’d be screaming already. Or out like a light. I know we’ve gotta move but it’s better you just sit still for five, ten minutes.”

Hart had been in fist fights, he’d faced down people with weapons when he’d had none and he’d exchanged bullets from time to time. But nothing had shocked him like that snake.

This is my world. You’ll see things that aren’t there and miss things that’re coming up right behind you.

Hart took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “That’s a rush for you.” He was almost enjoying the giddy sensation. He looked down at his hand, which had stopped stinging now. “How come you know all this, Comp?”

“My dad and me’d go hunting. Same thing happened to you happened to him. He explained it all what to do. Then he switched my bare behind for not looking where I was going and stepping on the nest.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Hart wished that Lewis had pocketed one of the vodka bottles. He wouldn’t have minded a jolt right about now.

Hart remembered that Lewis’s mother was in a home. “Your father still alive?”

“Yep.”

“You see him much?”

“Not really. You know, things happen.” Lewis grinned, looked away and said nothing more for a moment. He started to say something. But didn’t. They looked around at the wilderness, the wind shuffling leaves, the faint lapping of the lake.

“I was thinking, Hart.”

“Yeah?”

“When we take care of them and get back home? You and me, we could do a job together. I was thinking with my contacts, guys in my crew, and your, you know, the way you plan things and think, we’d be a good team. This thing tonight, we just fell into it. It happened fast.”

“Too fast,” Hart muttered. To put it mildly.

“I know some people in Kenosha. There’s money there. Illinois money, Chicago money. So how ’bout it? You and me.”

“Go on.”

“I was thinking of this place outside of town, Benton Plastics. You know it?”

“No.”

“It’s on Haversham Road? Big fucking place. Sell shit all over the world. On payday they have this big-ass check-cashing truck. The guard’s this lazy asshole. We could walk up and clear twenty, thirty thousand. If it was early on Friday morning. How ’bout that?”

Hart was nodding.

Lewis continued, “I’d get all the information. You know, like reconnaissance.” He patted his shirt, felt the cigarettes but it was like he was doing it from habit. He wasn’t about to light up out here. “I’m a good listener. Everybody talks to me, tells me all kinds of shit. One time this guy and I were bullshitting and he mentions the name of his dog, along with a bunch of other stuff. So, guess what? I boost his ATM card and the dog’s name is his PIN. I cleaned him out. I got that just by talking.”

“That was pretty slick.”

“So, whatta you say?”

“You know what, Comp? I like the idea.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll look at the details. And put together a plan. Do it right this time.”

“A hundred ten percent.”

“One ten. Now, I’ve rested enough. We’ve got unfinished business. And our girlfriends could be calling in the cavalry right now.”

“You feeling okay?” Lewis asked.

“No, sir,” Hart whispered, laughing. “I just got shot. I just got snakebit. And let’s not leave out I nearly took a shower in ammonia. No, I’m not feeling okay at all. But what’s a man going to do?”

Lewis picked up the shotgun and they started to walk in the direction the tracks seemed to lead.

Hart flexed his snakebit hand. It felt fine. He asked, “That tobacco and gunpowder-what exactly does it do?”

“You ask me, it doesn’t do shit. Excepting, it calms you down.”

Hart inhaled deeply. “Nothing like the smell of country air. Our luck’s changing, Comp. Let’s go that way. I think I see a path. Looks like the Trickster’s on our side now.”

“RIGHT DOWN THERE, in that hollow.”

Charles Gandy led them along the dim path toward the camper. It was a big one. Their escape vehicle, a long panel van, like an Econoline, sat nearby.