Caleb glared back at him, his eyes dark and piercing but his expression inscrutable.

“You know he can’t talk,” Camish said. “That shot to his lower jaw splintered his chinbone and somehow drove slivers of it into his talk box. The point-blank shot to his chest later probably didn’t help much, either. Anyways, he hasn’t spoken a word since that night.”

He said it matter-of-factly, and Joe let it sink in. Joe said, “I fired blindly when I hit him in the face. Not that I wasn’t trying to do damage-I was.”

Caleb almost imperceptibly nodded his head.

Joe said to Caleb, “I would have been happy to have killed you given the circumstances.”

Camish nodded, and he and Nate shared a look, which Joe found disconcerting.

“The circumstances are different depending on where you stand, I guess,” Camish said. “You have one version, we have a different version.”

Joe nodded. “Maybe so. But what I know is you boys came after me and killed my horses.”

Camish made his eyes big, and there was a slight smile on his face. “My version, game warden, is me and my brother were minding our own damned business and not bothering a soul when you rode up and wanted to collect a tax on behalf of the government, the tax being a license to fish so we could eat. And when we didn’t produce the license, you threatened our liberty. We, as freeborn Americans, resisted you.”

Joe held his tongue, but he shared a look with Nate. This confirmed his friend’s earlier theory.

Nate tipped his head toward Joe, but never took his eyes off Caleb. He said, “Joe’s kind of like that. It’s his worst fault. He’s damned stubborn.”

“My horses,” Joe said, glaring at Camish. “They belonged to my wife. She loved them like only a woman can love horses. You two killed them and butchered them.”

“Better than letting them go to waste, eh, Caleb?” Camish said, as if it made all the sense in the world, Joe thought. “Anyway,” Camish said, “we didn’t target your horses. They were collateral damage. We came after you so hard because there was something in your eyes when we met you. We knew you’d follow this goddamned stupid fishing license deal to the gates of hell. Otherwise, we’d just have let you ride away. We practically begged you to just ride out of here. But you wouldn’t let it go. You said you’d march us into court. All for a stupid twenty-four-dollar license.”

Joe said, “You boys are out of state. It’s ninety-four dollars for Michigan residents.”

Camish leaned back on his log and tipped his head back and laughed. Caleb snorted, sounding like the angry pneumatic staccato spitting of a pressure cooker on a stovetop.

Nate moaned.

Joe felt his neck get hot. He said, “It’s my job. I do my job.”

Camish finished his run of laughter, then cut it off. He leaned forward on the log and thrust his face at Joe. “That may be. But the things you set in motion. ”

Joe stood up. He let the muzzle of the shotgun swing lazily past Camish, past Caleb, past Nate. He said, “Tomorrow by this time, these mountains are going to be overrun. There will be hundreds of law enforcement personnel. Some of them will even know what they’re doing. You boys assaulted a sheriff and humiliated him. You assaulted meand humiliated me. The people who’ll be coming after you don’t even know about those three men you killed yet, which makes you cold-blooded murderers.”

From the far end of the downed log, Farkus said, “They killed four, not three.”

Camish said, “I wish you’d shut up, Dave.”

Joe broke in. “Four, three, it doesn’t matter at this point. You boys are done. Even if you figure out a way to hole up and not get caught tomorrow, this is only the beginning. You can’t really think you can stay here, do you? That you can set traps and hang dead men from cross poles and the world will just stay away? What are you thinking?”

With the last sentence, Joe stood and leaned into them and his voice rose. And he realized, by looking at Nate’s face, and the Grim Brothers, and Farkus in the light of the fire, how utterly alone he was.

“You people,” Camish said, his eyes sliding off Nate and settling on Joe, “you government people just keep coming. It’s like you won’t stop coming until you’ve got us all and you own everything we’ve got. Until we all submitto you. It ain’t right. It ain’t American. All we want to do is be left alone. That’s all.

“Hell, we know we make people nervous, me and Caleb. We know we look funny and we act funny to some people. We know they judge us. They made my mom out into some kind of stupid hillbilly when they went after her.”

Joe studied Camish’s face in the flickering firelight. Unlike Caleb’s terrifying, almost manic glare, Camish’s attitude had softened from its initial ferocity. Into what? Joe thought. Victory? Resignation?

“That’s all,” Camish echoed. “We thought you’d leave us alone back in Michigan if we just paid our taxes and kept our mouths shut. Didn’t we, Caleb?”

Caleb nodded and grunted.

Said Camish, “When they tried to take our property the first time, we fought ’em off pretty good. We thought it was over, that there was just no damned chance in the United States of America that the government could take a man’s land and give it to somebody just because they’d pay moretaxes. They backed off at first, and we thought we won. But they was like you, like all governments, I guess. They just kept coming. Those three things that are supposed to be our rights-life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Hell, the government’s supposed to protect those things. Instead, they took the last two of them away from us, just like that. Finally, they took our place from us and we lost our dad, our mom, and our brother in the process. They took all three of those rights away from them, didn’t they?”

He spoke in a flat, unsentimental way. Joe nodded for him to go on.

“When a thief comes into your home in the night and tries to take your property, it’s okay to shoot him. But when the government comes and wants the same thing, you go to jail if you resist. At least the thief puts his ownass on the line.”

Camish said, “We just wanted to find somewhere we could be left alone. Is that so damned much to ask?”

Nate said, “No, it isn’t.”

Joe sighed. “Problem is, no one can just walk away. Everyone has obligations.”

Camish said, “You mean like paying taxes?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Joe said, grateful it was dark so no one could see him flush. “Folks can’t expect services and programs without paying for them somehow.”

Camish said, “Why the hell should we pay for things we don’t want and don’t get? Why should the government take our money and our property and give it to other people? What the hell kind of place has this become?”

Joe said, “It’s not that bad or that simple. This whole mountain range, for example. It’s managed by the U.S. Forest Service, a government agency. Taxes pay for that.”

“We do our part,” Camish said. “We keep the riffraff out.”

Caleb snorted a laugh.

Joe said, “You boys vandalized some vehicles and scared the hell out of some campers. Not to mention that elk you took.”

Joe saw a flash of anger in Camish’s eyes. He didn’t even look at Caleb, hoping Nate had him covered. Camish said, “We did that to keep people away. To spook’em. We didn’t want to have to hurt somebody or take things too far, so we laid down a marker: Leave us alone. It’s our way of managing the place. We didn’t disturb or hurt anything that was perfect. Fish, deer, elk-whatever. If anything, we helped cull the herd. That’s management, too. It just ain’t done by bureaucrats sitting on their asses. Like the Forest Service, you know? Or you guys.”

Joe could feel Nate’s eyes on the side of his face, but he didn’t look over.

Instead, Joe said, “Diane Shober. Tell me about her.”