Weed stepped closer. Pigeon smelled as if he were rotting alive.

'Once you been in here awhile, your eyes start seeing again. Notice? I think all those lights from the cars below us have something to do with it,' Pigeon said. 'You don't look like you're much older than ten.'

'Fourteen,' Weed replied indignantly.

Pigeon dug in a trash bag and pulled out part of a submarine sandwich. Weed's mouth watered but he felt kind of sick, too. Pigeon dug in the bag again and set down a two-liter bottle of Pepsi that was half empty. He flicked the cigarette butt into the night.

'Want some?' Pigeon asked.

'I ain't eating or drinking nothing that came out of the garbage,' Weed said.

'How you know it came out of the garbage?' "Cause I seen people like you digging things outta the garbage. You go around with shopping carts and don't live anywhere.'

'I live here,' Pigeon said. 'That's somewhere, isn't it? Get your butt closer. I'll show you something.'

Weed tried to block our the smell as he walked all the way to the blanket Pigeon sat on. Pigeon reached into a pocket of his ragged Army jacket and showed Weed a Baggie filled with something.

'Peanut butter crackers,' Pigeon confided in his rough, raspy voice. 'Didn't come outta the trash. The soup kitchen downtown is where.'

'You swear?' Weed said as his stomach begged him to help out a little.

Pigeon nodded.

'I gotta bottle of water that's never been opened. Soup kitchen again. I guess I can share with a little lost boy.'

'I'm not lost,' Weed said.

Bubba was. The minute the dogs had been cut loose, Half Shell had taken off through the woods in one direction while Smudge and Tree Buster had gone in another. The dogs crashed through underbrush for a good ten minutes before Half Shell barked three times. 'STRIKE, HALF SHELL!1 Bubba hollered. The crashing in Smudge's direction stopped. Bubba started running as best he could, breaking branches so he could find his way back, stepping over logs and wading through creeks, his headlamp clearing the way. He stamped and crackled, hoping if there was a snake in the area, it would think twice about getting near all that noise. Bubba's heart was pounding and he was gasping for breath as he followed the sound of his dog.

Half Shell's front paws were up an old pine tree and she was barking and bawling, her tail wagging, when Bubba appeared. Bubba had no doubt that Half Shell had either backtracked and followed the scent of where the coon had been instead of where the coon was going, or Half Shell had found yet one more slick tree that no more had a coon in it than an iceberg had sugarcane. Bubba shone his submersible Super SabreLite up into the branches, sweeping the beam from high to low, disappointed but not surprised.

He dug out two iridescently painted pearls on a string and whirled them over his head. He flung them as high as they would go and was relieved when they snagged halfway up the pine tree. He shone his light on them and they glowed yellow, two perfect coon eyes. Bubba's heart swelled with euphoria as Half Shell continued barking at nothing and Tree Buster crashed in on them, Smudge right behind him.

'TREE, HALF SHELL!' Bubba yelled.

'No way,' Smudge said, trying to catch his breath and sweating.

'Look for yourself.'

Bubba shone the light on the bright yellow eyes high up in the black branches of the tree.

'If there's a coon up there, then how come Tree Buster's just sitting here and isn't trying to tree it, too,' Smudge declared as Tree Buster panted and stared.

'That's your problem, good buddy,' Bubba said. 'And you can't tell me you don't see it.'

'I see it,' Smudge had to admit. 'Damn thing sure is crouched up there at a funny angle. Looks like he's sideways.'

Bubba got out his score card.

'A hundred points for the strike and another hundred and twenty-five for the tree,' he said, jotting the numbers in the Tree column.

Smudge was sullen. They put the dogs back on the leashes and walked through the woods for five minutes. Smudge started the timer and again they let the dogs loose. Tree Buster bolted off as if he knew something. Half Shell disappeared no more than a hundred feet into the woods before she hit a creek and barked three times.

'STRIKE, HALF SHELL!' Bubba let loose his battle cry.

Tree Buster barked three times much farther away.

'STRIKE, TREE BUSTER!' Smudge yelled.

The two men went after their dogs. Bubba almost tripped over a root and stepped into a hole as he tried not to think about snakes. It was on his mind that if Smudge caught on to what Bubba was doing, Smudge might just leave Bubba out here. Hunters would find Bubba's skeleton years later.

Half Shell continued barking at the shallow creek and Bubba picked her up and carried her across it, setting her under another thick, winter-bare oak tree.

'Bark at that,' Bubba told her.

Half Shell wasn't interested.

'Come on, girl,' Bubba begged.

Half Shell sat, tongue hanging out. Bubba sighed. He reached inside a pocket and pulled out another pair of marbles and a Cheez Whiz sandwich on white bread. Half Shell started barking and drooling as Bubba waved the sandwich in front of her nose. The dog went crazy. Bubba reached up and stuffed the sandwich in a knothole. Half Shell started jumping up at it, barking and baying as Bubba flung another set of eyes high up in the branches of another slick tree.

This went on until there were only twenty minutes left of the two-hour competition. Bubba had amassed nine hundred points. Smudge had nothing. He had stopped talking forty-five minutes ago. He no longer petted his dog.

'We may as well call it a day,' Bubba proposed. 'There's no way you can catch up, Smudge.'

'It ain't over 'til it's over,' Smudge let him know.

The last chance was for Bubba to default, to quit before the competition was over. Smudge knew he had no choice as they walked deeper into the woods during their five-minute break between segments.

Smudge quietly reached inside his knapsack and grabbed hold of the rubber snake, closing his hand around the rattle to silence it as he withdrew the rattler and uncoiled the monofilament attached to it. Smudge cast the snake over Bubba's head. It landed about six yards in front of Bubba's feet.

'What the hell was that?' Bubba asked with fear in his voice.

'What was what?' Smudge asked as he started jerking the line and the rattle sounded.

'Oh God!' Bubba exclaimed, standing perfectly still and shining his light on a huge rattlesnake wriggling toward him at great speed.

'AHHHHHHHHH!!' Bubba screamed, crashing this way and that, tearing open his coat as the snake jumped and tumbled and rattled after him.

'Run! Run!' Smudge yelled, darting wherever necessary to keep the snake where he wanted it.

Bubba suddenly wheeled around, his.44 Anaconda revolver with its eight-inch barrel and scope gripped in both shaking hands. He fired again and again and again as pieces of the snake flew straight up into the air and Smudge dove over a dead tree and rolled through bushes and over a bank and into the creek.