would be no second shot. She had sighted along the trail and made sure there was no straight stretch that was long enough to allow him to stop, aim, and shoot before she turned again and placed a rock or a tree between them.
She ran hard now, sprinting from one marked tree to the next, digging the balls of her feet into the dirt and pumping her arms. She could hear him on the trail behind her, running as hard as she was, his feet hitting harder and louder than hers, determined to get her this time. As she listened, she began to be afraid. She could tell that she had underestimated his speed; he was gaining on her.
She tried to go faster, making her strides longer to pass each mark and take the next turn. At the big sycamore she couldn’t take the turn without falling, so she went into a slide on her side to push off the root with her foot and dash up the next corridor toward the rocky outcropping ahead.
At last she was on the path, running up the little incline between the jagged slabs of stone, then into the chute that the two long rock shelves formed. There was another shot, which went over her head, but she was in the stretch now. She could see the bent sapling. When she reached it, she took a jump and ran on.
Thirty feet farther on, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him appear between the stone outcroppings. She took two steps, put her head down, and leaped over the covered pit. She hit the path hard and let her momentum push her to the right into the brush.
She rolled behind the rock, picked up her bow and the arrow that she had left fitted to the string, turned, and cautiously looked above the rock through the leaves of the bush.
He was coming hard, charging toward her, the gun in both hands across his chest. She could tell from the look on his face that he had seen the bent sapling. He was sure he had spotted a trap and stepped over it without breaking stride. But the confident, almost amused look wasn’t for the sapling. He had seen her leap over the spot where the pit was dug. His eyes were on the path. He was going to jump over the pit.
She pulled the bowstring back, straining to hold it steady. She listened for his footsteps: louder and louder and then a stutter-step. He was timing his approach to push off into the air. Through the leaves she saw the enemy’s eyes. They were on the narrow path, down on the matting covering the pit. With his size and his strength, the jump was going to be easy. He kept his eyes on the pit as he launched himself into the air, higher than he needed to.
As he reached the top of his arc, the hooks caught him. Jane saw the upper part of his torso abruptly jerk backward and a look of horror contort his features. His momentum made five of the fishing lines go taut, and the bough of the tree above him bent, then tugged back, pulling him upright. His breath was sucked in with a whistle.
Her right hand released the bowstring. The arrow streaked through the air and made a thunk as it struck him. He gave a harsh, loud shriek of pain. She nocked another arrow and pulled the string back. She had time to see the black feather of the first arrow sticking out of his shoulder as she released the second.
He was straddling the shallow pit, holding himself upright to keep the hooks from going deeper into his face and chest and trying to claw at the arrow shaft when the second arrow struck his right leg.
The wounded enemy grunted in rage, swatting the arrows out of his shoulder and thigh, where they had penetrated the fabric of his clothes. He dropped his rifle, pulled his knife from his belt, and slashed wildly at the fishing lines. She aimed her third arrow for his chest. It flew straight, but he ducked down just as it came so that it glanced off his back and sailed into the forest.
She dropped to the ground and began to crawl when the enemy grasped his rifle. The woods echoed with shots. He fired wildly, shooting into bushes in her direction as rapidly as he could. Two shots, three more, four this time. She lost count as a bullet bit into the bark of the tree a foot above her head. There was silence again, and she used the time to retreat quietly up the trail a few paces, then slip off into the deep brush. She was in trouble. The arrows weren’t getting through the thick down jacket. It was like armor. She kept going silently, trying to move farther into the brush.
He was enraged now, and he was free. The arrows weren’t doing enough damage, and the fishhooks had only nettled him. He could still kill her, and the pain would make him desperate to do it this time.
Then she heard the scraping sound and stopped. He was climbing up on the stone outcropping that had been meant to keep him in. He was a little hurt but not at all incapacitated. In a moment he would be on top, and he would see her and the rifle bullet would explode through her body. She slipped behind a tree trunk. She couldn’t wait here, hiding until he found her. Jane’s hand trembled as she fitted the arrow onto the string and leaned against the tree. The bow wasn’t powerful enough. She hadn’t been strong enough to use one that could penetrate that padded jacket. 'They are less than women.' She felt anger rising in her chest. She was going to die; she had been doomed from the moment he had heard her name from poor Harry. The injustice of it stung her, and her chest tightened with hatred as she decided how to deny it. She stepped out from behind the tree into the open and held her bow downward, the arrow ready. She turned to the side as though she didn’t know he was up there and was waiting for him to come up the path. She gave him a profile to aim at.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him reach the peak of the ten-foot boulder. She saw his face turn toward her. Then, quietly, he stood up and the rifle started its steady rise to his good shoulder.
She was already half turned, and she raised the bow quickly. In her anger she pulled the arrow back until the bone tip touched her knuckle. She stared back into his eyes. In a second the right eye would reach the rifle sight. The left eye was already beginning to close, and next the gun would roar. Her fingers loosed the arrow.
It flew upward with a hiss, the feathers spinning. When it hit, she heard a chuck. The rifle fell, the hands shot upward and gripped the place where the arrow had gone in, just where the zipper sides came together below his neck. He sat down on top of the rock and his balance seemed to leave him.
He began to slide, reaching ahead of him for the rifle. She pushed off and ran toward him. It was at least twenty paces, but she was charging now, dashing along through the calf-high vegetation to get there before he could pick up the gun. She didn’t know when her hand went behind her to grip the handle of the heavy war club. When she got there his hand was on the rifle and it was coming up again. She swung the war club with all her might into the back of his skull. She heard the crack of bone and saw his head slump forward. When she swung the club into his skull again, she felt it hit soft tissue. She had done it. He was dead.
Jane drew a deep breath and threw her head back so far that the feathers in her hair brushed her spine and her painted face glared up through the leaves at the sky. Then she let out a piercing whoop of triumph and gladness.
30
Jane staggered a few feet, fell to the ground, and began to cry. She cried in gratitude that she was alive, in relief that the killer was finally dead. She wept in mourning for the little gambler Harry, who had felt a knife brought across his throat by a man he had thought was his friend, and she keened for her lost, dead lover.
Then, as the sun rose higher into the tops of the trees, her tears stopped coming. She stood up, looked around her, and knew what she was going to do. She walked back to the enemy’s camp and collected the tools she would need, then followed the path to the little stream of water that she had drunk from in the night. She rolled an old, rotten log down the bank into the stream to divert it from its course and then began to dig in the bed. The first few inches were small pebbles and gravel, and below them was mud. She packed the stones and mud against the log to make it into a dam. After an hour of digging, she was hip deep, and hit rock.
She couldn’t bear to touch his hands, so she brought up his sleeping bag, rolled him over onto it with her foot, and dragged him down to the streambed. When she had covered the body and pushed the three feet of mud and stones over him, she pushed the log away and let the stream return to its course, first washing over the grave in a little flood and then in a muddy, cloudy stream. In a few minutes the water was clear again, as though it had never been disturbed since the mountains first rose up from the earth. Then she walked back up the trail she had made for him, cut down the rest of the monofilament fishing line and the three hooks that hadn’t caught his flesh, untied the bent sapling, and filled in the hole she had dug.
She walked back to the camp, ate his food, and drank water beside the beautiful black lake. Then she tossed the paddle, the car keys, and four days’ worth of dried food into his canoe and pushed it to the edge of the lake to wait for her.
