But not Bob. Bob was a secret pussy. He didn’t have what Shreck had and what Payne had: he couldn’t do the final thing. He couldn’t get it done. That’s why now, at the end, when it came down to balls and nothing else, he’d lose.

Dobbler finally gave up around one o’clock. It was surprising that he lasted that long. They saw it happen, having extended their lead and now sited themselves on another ridge for a checkup.

“Look, Colonel Shreck, look!”

Shreck bent to the scope and saw what Payne had seen: a mile and a half away, Dobbler had quit. He lay in the high grass, clearly begging for mercy. Memphis appeared to be the angry one. They saw him try and pick Dobbler up but Dobbler simply collapsed. Dobbler would not rise.

And giving up had its dire implications. Who would come back for him? Shreck knew these two wouldn’t; in two hours they’d be under the gun of Lon Scott. Dobbler would perish in these mountains, though he couldn’t know this now. He’d wander, winding down further each day. Maybe he’d be lucky and run into a party of hunters, but they were so deep in the fastness of the Ouachitas now, that prospect seemed unlikely.

“If he stays, he’s dead,” said Shreck.

“And if he goes, he’s dead,” said Payne.

Bob appeared to have disengaged. He stood away from them, unmoving, as Memphis did all the screaming. Finally, Shreck could just barely make out through the scope that he was saying something; then he turned and walked away. Shreck watched Memphis bend quickly to Dobbler, the yellow letters of his FBI raid jacket flashing as he opened it to peel his own canteen from his belt, and hand it to the man. Then he turned to run after Bob.

Shreck, Payne and the woman had achieved Hard Bargain Valley from the southwest, coming across a screen of trees and over a little creek. They were more than an hour ahead of Swagger and Memphis, though in the hours since dumping poor Dr. Dobbler, the two pursuers had closed the gap considerably.

It had not been an easy approach, for no roads lead to the valley and it must be earned by several hours of desperately difficult hiking over rills and hills and gulches, up stony mountainsides, through dense trees.

And then a splurge of yellow openness. A mile wide at its most open, it is one of the largest, flattest geological phenomena in all of Arkansas, a virtual tabletop in the middle of the mountains.

At one side is the ridge that could be said to overlook it, although it’s not high, and it doesn’t afford much in the way of observation. On the other side is just a forest, which leads downhill eventually to a valley and then to another mountain. Not even the deer will roam on the flatness of Hard Bargain Valley, because they are creatures of the forest, and feel vulnerable in the open. So it is predominantly the kingdom of the crows, who wheel overhead on the breeze like bad omens.

“I want us to be on that side,” said Shreck. “We’ll have the meet in the dead center, fifteen hundred yards from the nearest shootable elevation.”

“Where is he?” asked Payne. Snipers made Payne a little nervous. Even snipers on his own side.

“Oh, he’s up there. You can count on it,” Shreck said tersely.

Lon’s mood had darkened. He sat alone in his spider hole, fifteen hundred yards from the flat yellow center of Hard Bargain Valley on its western rim. He suddenly felt cursed.

It had begun as a lovely day. But a few hours ago, a huge red buck had pranced down the ridge in front of him. He remembered the deer hunts of his boyhood, before his father shot him. It filled him with a kind of joy. On impulse he brought the rifle to bear on the buck. The animal was about 250 paces out, gigantic in the magnification of the Unertl 36×. Lon put his cross hairs on the creature and felt a thrill as he played with the notion of making the creature’s beauty his own by extinguishing it forever.

The animal, a bearded old geezer with two stubs where his antlers had been sheared off in some freak accident, paused as the scope settled upon him. It turned its magnificent head and fixed two bold, calm eyes upon Lon. It appeared not to fear him at all; worse, it had no respect for him. This enraged him in some strange way. He felt his finger take three ounces of slack out of the six-ounce trigger, until the animal lived only on the stretch of the thinnest of hairs. The buck stared at him insolently, as if daring him to go ahead and shoot. He knew this was impossible: the animal could not have seen him. But haughtily, nevertheless, the old creature cast its evil eye on him, until he became aware of the pressure in his trigger finger and the beads of sweat in his hairline. He slackened off the trigger.

The animal spluttered, threw his beautiful red-hazed old head in the sunlight, then trotted away with an aristocratic saunter as if to snub him, and make him feel unworthy.

Yet he was strangely agitated.

Be still, he told himself. It’s nothing. But he could not get it out of his mind.

The hours had passed. Now, moodily, he scanned the far ridge of trees in search of human motion. He had glanced at his watch for the thousandth time; it was well past three and time for the action to begin.

Ah! There! There!

He made them through the spotting scope as they came out of the trees and began their slow trek across the open space to the far side. Though at this range it was impossible to make out details or faces, he could read them from their body types. The tall one was Shreck; the stumpy one, hunched and dangerous, was the little soldier Payne. And third was the woman, the tethered bait.

He watched them walk across the field, and set up below him; now their faces were distinct, but they could not see him. Then, suddenly, commotion: the two men both stood and looked and pointed.

Yes, there is was, just as Colonel Shreck had promised, though a bit late: a yellow flare, barely distinguishable in the bright sunlight, floating down behind the ridge line.

He saw Payne fire an answering flare, letting the pursuers know their next move, and upon what field the game would be played.

Lon flexed his fingers and tried to will his body to alertness as he slid in behind the rifle once again.

He touched the radio receiver that would receive the bolt of sound that meant Shreck was green-lighting the shot. He touched, as if to draw on their magic, the.300 H & H Magnums laid out before him, tapering brass tubes close to four inches long, glinting, their heavy, cratered noses stolid and somehow faintly greasy.

Now it was merely a matter of waiting.

The buck was forgotten at last; he thought only of the hellacious long shot he had to make, that no man had a right to make, that he knew he could make. He’d made them before.

“All right, Payne,” said Shreck as they languished on the far side of Hard Bargain Valley. “This is the easy part. Get her ready.”

“Yes, sir,” said Payne.

He turned to Julie.

“Okay, honey,” he said. “Just this one last little thing.”

She looked at him with drug-dumb eyes. There wasn’t a flicker of will or resistance in their glassy depthlessness. A stupid half-smile played across her mouth.

Payne shucked his pack and reached into it. There he removed his cut-down Remington 1100 semiautomatic shotgun. It held six 12-gauge shells in double-ought buckshot, each of which contained nine.32 caliber pellets. It was possibly the most devastating close-quarters weapon ever devised. In less than two seconds it could blow out fifty-four man-killing balls of lead with an effective range of fifteen yards.

He walked around behind the woman.

“You just relax now,” he said. “This is nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

She looked as if she’d never worried about anything in her life.