et to that coffee."

Inside, they all greeted Mrs. Boody. While she poured coffee into the
cups on the kitchen table, Robinson cornered Norm Boody and led him into
the living room. It was a low-ceilinged, warm, homey place. A telephone
hung on the far wall. Robinson dialed the sheriff's number at Indian
River, put the receiver back in place, lifted it and tried again. He
shook his head.

"Trouble?" Boody asked.

"The line must be down. Phone won't work. Guess we'll sleep tonight and
make that call in the morning."

The two men sat down in the darkness of the living room. Mrs. Boody, a
grey headed, smiling woman who looked as though she might be anyone's
mother, came in with two steaming cups.

"You better drink before you freeze," she said. "That darned stove takes
so long to heat up."

She turned to her husband.

"Norm, what's wrong?"

Norm Boody grimaced.

"Man dead down the road. Something mauled him. Killed before the snow
came this evening. Earl most ran over him."

* * * * *

The room was deathly silent for a moment. Then the woman's voice came,
almost in a sob.

"Norm, Norm, it wasn't Bill, was it?"

Robinson said quickly:

"It wasn't Bill. I saw the face. No one I've ever seen before."

"Thank God for that," Mrs. Boody said. "You called the sheriff?"

"Can't," Norm Boody said. "Line's out of order. We'll get in touch with
town in the morning."

"I don't think we'll sleep much tonight," a soft voice said from the
door.

Earl Robinson chuckled. It was an attempt to put the whole thing off
lightly. It didn't sound very sincere.

"You'll sleep all right, Marjorie. After that trip, we'll all sleep."

The girl smiled wanly.

"I hope so. It's hard--thinking of that--that...."

Daylight brought a peaceful, untroubled look to the valley. For ten
miles, without a track save for the animals who had moved during the
night, the valley stretched upward on all sides to the wooded hills. The
big general store, schoolhouse and country church nestled in the center
of the snow cup, with trackless roads leading away to the four points of
the compass.

Blue-gray smoke lifted straight upward from the house, drifted two
hundred feet into the sky and wafted away into nothingness.

Robinson came out of the woodshed with his black and red plaid coat
wrapped tightly around him. It was a grand hunting morning, and he
didn't intend to let last night's incident spoil it. The cou