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up in my empty stomach, causing problems not easily dealt with in a tree, and the sun pushed the shadows longer by the minute. Besides, the top of the mountain called. What an anthropomorphic thought.
    A man walked down the trail from the same direction as the jogger. He was an older man in gray khakis, a red wool shirt, and hiking boots. I couldn’t see his face because he kept it down, looking at the ground, but a rifle hung from his right hand.
    I decided to stay put.
    The man knelt and studied something on the trail—the neat’s-foot oil—then he squinted at the sun before moving toward my tree. He limped a little, taking shorter steps with his left foot than he did with the right.
    Hunting season is in October, and this guy was no hunter anyway. He carried the rifle like a putter. His face was deep-tanned across the forehead, nothing at all like a hunter’s tan.
    He stopped below my perch and touched the dust where the jogger had run in place. Turning his head, he looked down along the trail, then over at the canyon, then behind himself, up the hill. I wondered who he was. The face seemed familiar, but way out of context, like someone from an old television commercial.
    He stood back up and leaned one hand against the aspen. Had I been Jimmy Stewart, I would have leaped from the tree, landed on his back, wrestled the rifle from his grasp, and demanded to know why he’d shot at me. Then I would have had Henry Fonda blow his face off. But I’m not Jimmy Stewart. I’m a writer and writers don’t leap from trees. They create people to jump for them.
    Besides which, this would-be killer was tracking a jogger who ran to the road, got in his car, and drove away. He would probably follow all the way into town and forget me. I hoped. Couldn’t be much of a tracker if he didn’t know a Nike sole from an Adidas. The man coughed twice, then limped slowly on down the trail.
    â€¢ • •
    Down the tree and into the woods. I walked backwards so the tracks would lead out of the forest instead of in—a cheap Max Brand trick that anyone who’d ever read a Western would catch, but this old fart didn’t look like the type to waste his time on category fiction. More likely he subscribed to Omni and Smithsonian, maybe even Dynamic Jazz Reports.
    Soon though, I fell backwards over a root. Forward again, I pushed into the deepest, darkest, most forbidding part of the forest. Afternoon suddenly turned into evening. An owl whooshed by my ear. The bushes blended together to form shadows that made strange sounds. I ducked into a westward-running gully that smelled of angry grizzlies, salivating with desire to rip the entrails from innocent intruders.
    On a narrow shelf that jutted up beside the gully floor, I unloaded the pack, built a small fire, and sat cross-legged in the dirt, watching the tops of the fir and spruce grow dark against the stars. If the old man had followed, he’d have an easy kill with me outlined by the fire, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t. Most assassins and all hit men come from cities, and no city boy, not even a killer, would follow a local into the unknown darkness. That was the theory anyway.
    â€¢ • •
    A coyote howled a five-note pattern, three the same tone, then down, then up, more or less. Then silence. Then the first three again, down, back up for a hold. I tossed a chunk of green pine onto the fire. The log would smoke like crazy and mark my position, but I always feel safe when coyotes howl. Silence would mean something out there has them nervous, and whatever scares a coyote scares me.
    I draped one arm over the woodpile as if it was a loyal, tired dog keeping me company. With the other hand, I drank. Canteen water tasted better than the Fig Newtons. My fiberfill bag lay stretched on the back side of the fire. Flame-strobe action gave it an occupied look, like a woman tossing in her sleep, wishing I would come to bed and warm her