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like Dalston. Taller’n me and I was no short stack, Trapper said I was tall as a big gray wolf was long, tail an’ all, and just as skinny. The woman had a straight back and blue eyes cold as her voice. Made me feel right uncivilized, that straight back. Never seen a woman like her before nor since.
    “Do you know him?” she said, slower, like she was trying to get answers out of stubborn cattle.
    “Never seen him afore,” I said.
    Don’t think she believed it, ’cause she kept talking at me. Trapper’s first rule he told me was don’t tell no one ’bout him. He wanted a quiet life in the forest and I couldn’t argue with that.
    “His name is Kreagar Hallet and he is wanted for the murders of eight women and one child.”
    At that word child , she shifted slight. Gave herself away.
    “We think he lives out in the forest. The women”—she raised them perfect eyebrows at me like she was looking for a lie—“were abducted from their homes and hunted, like animals.”
    “What’s it to you?” I asked. Didn’t want to be around her. There was something about her. Felt like she could look right into me, see my soul and my sins. Feeling like ants crawling all up inside my skin. Trapper’s face. Talk a’ killing. Them things didn’t add up in my head.
    “Murder is against the law.”
    I had to laugh. “Ain’t no law here, lady, never has been.”
    She put her hand on her gun and mine went to my knife. “There is now,” she said, and her voice went from cold to steaming.

    “Who in hell are you?”
    “Jennifer Lyon, Magistrate of Dalston, Ridgeway, Erminton. Hell, all south BeeCee is in my jurisdiction.”
    “Fancy name, fancy words. Don’t mean nothing to real folk out here,” I said.
    “And what about you?” she said. Didn’t seem put out by my laughing. “Do you have a name?”
    I smiled wide, showed off all my teeth at her and said, “I got a few. Now if you’ll ’scuse me, lady Jennifer Lyon, Magistrate, I’ll be on my way.”
    I waved my hand in circles and bowed low and grand. I started walking, suddenly didn’t want to stay the night in the same town as her. Cold went through my bones. That charcoal picture was Trapper, no doubt in my head, but she’d called him Kreagar. Said he killed women. Said he killed a kid. Something froze in me. Hunted women, she said, out in the forest, but there’s a lot a’ hunters in BeeCee. A lot a’ men out there in the woods, living away from people. Maybe they had my Trapper mixed up with one a’ them. Must be that. Figured I should warn him, least I could do.
    I weren’t thinking all that straight, that Lyon woman put some kind a’ fear in me and it made my feet clumsy. My boot caught on the edge a’ the step down to the street and I shot out my hand ’gainst a post to stop falling. Silver scar. Old burn. Missy. Seven years passed without so much as a thought ’bout her and now her face was right there in the front a’ my head. That long black hair. That look a’ terror in her eyes. Was she running from this Kreagar fella? Lyon said them poor women was taken from they houses. All them memories a’ Missy came back like a smack upside the head. What she say? Went to bed, saw a shadow at her window.
    That Lyon woman didn’t seem like the type to get things wrong. I stopped and looked back at her.

    “When these killings happen?”
    She took a few steps closer to me. “The most recent was four nights ago, a few hours before dawn, another was a few days before that, but we believe they go back as far as ten years, probably even longer. He could have killed dozens,” she said. Hand came off her gun and she started fiddling with whatever was on the end of that silver chain.
    Week ago, me an’ Trapper had gone deer stalking. First time he let me be on point. Bagged a buck on my first shot. Few days later Trapper had gone wolf hunting by himself. He didn’t come back with a pelt, but he came back with blood on his shirt. I reckon now,