ntry was
beautiful but there was nothing gentle about it. You had to face
violence and forget it--quickly. Death wasn't easy to look at, but here,
people learned that when it came, there was no point in letting it
interfere with their life.

Bill Boody hadn't come in last night. His car wasn't to be seen.
Robinson went back into the woodshed. He climbed the steps to the
kitchen and walked in quietly behind Mrs. Boody, who was bent over the
kitchen stove.

"Where's Norm?" he asked.

Mrs. Boody looked worn and tired, as though she hadn't slept.

"Milking the cows. Bill didn't come home last night."

He knew that she was still suspicious of him. She wasn't sure that he
told the truth about the body on the road.

"Bill will be okay," he said. "Are any of the others up?"

Mrs. Boody smiled.

"Roy came out a few minutes ago. He took one look at the thermometer
outside the kitchen window, groaned and went back to bed."

Robinson started for the bedroom.

"You better let Marge sleep," Mrs. Boody said. "She was all worn out.
She needs the rest."

"Earl," the woman at the stove said. There was a quality of urgency in
her voice that stopped him short. He pivoted.

"Yes?"

"You think the phantom buck might have done the killing?"

Here it was again, he thought. They weren't satisfied to let the whole
thing pass as an accident. They had to bring up dead dogs, fall back on
superstition. Everything was perfect for hunting, and they had to spoil
the spirit of the thing.

"That phantom buck business is a damned fairy tale," he said.

"_But you think it was the phantom buck, all the same._"

Robinson said nothing. The woman pushed the coffee pot back on the stove
and went to the window. She stared out at the snowy world.

"Bill _saw_ the phantom buck once."

"I know," Robinson said. He wished she wouldn't talk about it. She was
getting herself all excited. "Probably Bill had been drinking some of
that snake bite medicine."

Mrs. Boody shook her head.

"Bill don't touch a drop." Her face was very red, maybe from the stove.
"Bill said the buck was the biggest deer he'd ever seen. He went right
by Bill, and disappeared, right in broad daylight. Bill looked for
tracks after he was gone, and there weren't any."

She wet her lips and went back to the stove.

"I wouldn't worry, Mrs. Boody," Robinson said.

She looked up then with frantic eyes.

"_It isn't Bill, out there on the road, dead?_"

He went swiftly t