I erased the message without saving it.

I stood at the field gate with my bare hands resting on the cold steel of the top rail.

Across the road, the cornfield stubble was going white under a thin frost spreading over the dirt.

At dawn tomorrow, six men would be hiking up the ridge with rifles.

Three were veterans invited under Arvid’s free tradition, and three were local hunters who believed they’d paid four thousand dollars for the right to be there.

I turned back toward the house.