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looking back, that’s why he started killing in his skin; less evidence, as Lyon would say.
    “And you say you’ve never met him?” she said.
    I shook my head. “Never met no one called Kreagar Hallet,” I said, plain truth it was. Them ants was burrowing deep in my skin and scratching on my bones. I wanted away from that woman and that town fast as I could.
    I got back to the forest and got back to my home. Seeing my hut, place what I ate and slept and lived so many years a’ my life, made me think that Lyon woman was wrong, had to be. It weren’t the same fella. Anyone can have tattoos on they face, not anyone can go murdering. No ma’am, I thought, ain’t my Trapper on them posters.
    Trapper weren’t home so I stoked up the fire and went out to check the trap line. That’s when it all went to crap. Trap line came up empty save for a few rotten wood pigeons. Trapper sometimes set the snares too loose and open, let them critters sneak right through. I baited them and reset them, hid ’em better in the brush.
    I got back to the hut and saw someone moving around inside. It weren’t Trapper and they weren’t alone. Three of ’em, and three horses tied up outside. They were banging up something fierce, throwing over the table, smashing the cups. Trapper’s chair crashed through the window, spooked the horses. Then that woman came out the door. Holding something. Trapper’s box, a wooden thing I weren’t allowed to touch no matter what. I seen him, after he came back from his wolf hunts, sometimes after a deer hunt, putting something in that box and hiding it ’neath the floorboards where he thought I wouldn’t go looking. I didn’t, out of respect you see, but that’s not to say I weren’t tempted.

    That Magistrate Lyon had followed me home and taken that box. I took out my knife, silentlike, and held it ready to throw. She opened the box and started shaking. Her face and eyes went blood-red. She took something out, I tried to see, I wanted to see, but I couldn’t risk moving.
    Lyon held up a scrap of skin.
    I know all types of skin, see. I know moose, deer, hare, pig, boar, even grouse and goose ’neath the feathers. But that weren’t any skin I’d cut before. That was human, that was a scalp of bloody hair. Lyon dropped the box and them hard little lumps went skittering about. One a’ them still had long, silky black hair attached.
    Silky black hair I’d combed, felt ’tween my fingers, all them years ago. Felt sick down deep. Felt that silver scar on my hand burn and itch.
    “It’s not his,” Lyon said, and two men, one tall and bony, other stocky like he was made out a’ packed meat, came out the hut. “But this one matches the other recent victim.”
    I never figured out who she was talking about. Chittering somewhere in the tree above me said squirrels were coming out. I couldn’t see them, but I had squirrel poles up in all sorts a’ places so I’d catch some no doubt. Trouble was, thought a’ eating anything set my stomach churning.
    Faster’n I could blink, Lyon drew her gun and fired. The sound near deafened me, and a squirrel, or what was left of it, fell right at my feet. Right then I figured I wouldn’t get the best of that woman, least not in a fair fight.

    I held my breath, felt my heart raging up in my chest. Didn’t move. That woman’s eyes, like hawk eyes, scanned the trees, trying to pick out her prey.
    “No doubt,” she said, “this is the place.” She threw the scalp on the deck. It slapped and stuck. “Hallet won’t come back now we’ve been here,” she said, then mounted her horse in one quick move. “Burn it down.”
    One of the men flung kerosene about like it was holy water and my home for ten years was kindling. I watched it burn for a while after they left. All in one go I’d lost my hut and, when I saw that scrap a’ Missy’s hair fizzle and twist in the flames, like my heart was doing, burning and ripping apart inside me, I knew I’d lost a