Bruno's comment might have surprised a lot of people who thought he was, to put it politely, mentally challenged, but Dina wasn't one of them. He might have the mental age of an eight-year-old, as the various tests he'd been given indicated, but Dina, as a nine-year-old, felt confident that Bruno was smarter than a lot of kids her age. "Yes, two guns. At least one of them is a modern rifle."

"Repeater," Bruno said before mimicking firing a lever-action carbine with full sound effects.

"Yes, a repeater," Dina agreed. The boom had come from a black powder weapon. The two supersonic cracks had to have come from a modern rifle firing modern ammunition. That meant two, maybe three poachers. Well, she thought, if they'd killed their deer, then they'd be more interested in carrying it out before anybody caught them, meaning they wouldn't be hunting in the valley she and Bruno were heading for. Sure that they'd be safe from carelessly discharged firearms she waved for Bruno to follow and they continued on their way.

They walked on in silence for a quarter of an hour, until Bruno tapped Dina on the shoulder and pointed towards a tree. "Amerikanischer Rotvogel."

Dina knew better than to try and distract Bruno when he was birdwatching. Birds fascinated him, and he could watch them for hours. She pulled a book from her rucksack and settled down to wait until he got bored, or more likely, the birds flew off.

Marcus Acton rammed the barrel of his rifle into the gut of Ned Harris. "Why the hell did you have to snoop around, kid?" He glared at the body at his feet for a few seconds. He hadn't enjoyed having to kill the silly fool. Now he had to find out how much the snoopers knew about his operation. He dug out Ned's notebook, but there was nothing in there to suggest why he was in Marcus' valley. He walked over to the next body. It was another uniformed police officer. An examination of his notebook also came up empty. That left the female. She wasn't in uniform, so she probably wasn't a cop. Wilhelm, one of his two down-timer partners, passed him an official looking identification folder he'd lifted from her body. Marcus felt a sense of foreboding. Flipping it open the badge confirmed his worst fears. "A fucking Treasury agent."

Herman and Wilhelm gathered close to read over his shoulder. "They're onto us," Herman said.

Marcus almost agreed, but a moment's thought had him shaking his head. "I don't think so. If they were, the hills would be alive with Treasury agents." He took a really good look at the female. She'd been a good looking down-timer, but her hands were soft and ink stained. He felt around for the notebook he was sure she would be carrying. He found it easily, and whereas the notebooks of the two policemen had shed no light on why they were here, hers was full of details.

The details were distressingly accurate, but the side comments threaded through the notebook reassured Marcus. "I think we might be in the clear. The dame's obviously a frustrated wannabe field agent who was conducting her own investigation with a little help from the boyfriend."

"But if she was on to us. " Herman said.

"Don't worry, Herman. She'll have kept everything to herself. I'm sure she would have wanted to present the case against us to her boss all tied up in ribbons."

"So what do we do now? We can't leave them here. It's too close to our camp."

That was an understatement. The camp was all of a hundred yards from where they were standing. If he bothered to look, Marcus would have easily seen the shed where their still was quietly bubbling away. "First thing, we need to dump the bodies where they are unlikely to be found, and if they are found, they'd better be nigh on impossible to identify. Start stripping them."

His two companions had no hesitation stripping the dead, but Marcus hesitated over the distasteful task of stripping Ned. It wasn't that he had any real qualms about what he was doing, but the.308 hunting round that had killed Ned had made a real mess of the young police officer. Eventually the task was done. He bundled up the clothes and slid Ned's wallet and identification into a pocket before buckling Ned's issue belt with all its accouterments around his waist. Then he picked the naked body up in a fireman's lift. "Herman, Wilhelm, you ready?"

" Ja!" Herman said as he struggled to lift his man.

Wilhelm, with the woman, had a much easier time lifting her. "Where to?"

"Over the hill. We want the bodies as far away from our camp as possible," Marcus said.

Once they were over the hill and into the next valley Marcus started looking for somewhere to hide the bodies. A mine shaft would have been ideal, but they were few and far between in this particular patch of West Virginia County. So what he was looking for was somewhere where they were unlikely to be discovered for a few years, or at least several months.

"This'll do. Dump them here," he said as he dropped Ned Harris and started pulling leaves and other ground litter over the body. Wilhelm and Herman followed suit. A few minutes later Marcus stood and examined their handiwork. "Okay, that's good enough. Let's go back and see if we can back-track them to where they left their vehicle. That'll be a signpost pointing right to us if we can't move it before it's discovered."

The sound of voices and crashing in the woods interrupted the peace and the cardinals took to the air. Bruno moaned, and Dina had to grab his hand him to stop him running out and confronting the people who'd disturbed his bird watching. Then she distinctly heard someone say "dump them here." There were the thuds of three objects landing on the ground, followed by a period of rustling in the undergrowth, then the voices went away.

Dina was curious. What were they dumping? "Follow me," she told Bruno as she set off towards where she'd heard the objects being dumped.

Bruno spotted the disturbed undergrowth first. He prodded it with his hiking stave, and swept aside some of the undergrowth. His muted squeal of horror had Dina running to see what he'd found.

She immediately wished she hadn't, because Bruno had found a naked body. Dina stared at the body in horror. Those men had dumped a body. Her first instinct was to grab Bruno by the hand and run, but what if the person wasn't dead? She'd never forgive herself if she'd left a man to die. She fell to her knees and brushed aside the ground litter that covered the man, and quickly realized that there was more than one body. She removed more ground litter to reveal three naked bodies.

She was almost sick at the sight of the two men and a woman. The girl and one of the men had enormous exit wounds in their backs. Dina felt for a pulse, but didn't feel anything. Because her hands were shaking so much she checked again by putting her ear to their chests. They were both dead.

The other man, a down-timer she was pretty sure she recognized from when her paternal grandmother called the police after her prized fluffy-white Persian cat had been terrorized by someone spreading nitrogen triiodide crystals around her food bowl, had a much smaller and less gory exit wound, and it was still bleeding. She stared at the trickle of blood for a moment. Surely dead people didn't bleed? She put her ear to his chest, and heard a faint heartbeat. Dina wasn't sure what to do. She had to get help, or the man would surely die. But she couldn't leave him here. Her eyes fell upon her companion. Bruno was strong. He might not have the physique of a bodybuilder, but a lifetime of hard physical labor had given him considerable strength and endurance. "Bruno, can you carry this man back to where we found that police car?"