“Never charged him one nickel.”

“He used to say taking money for a deer on God’s land was a sin,” I said.

We climbed another fifty yards up the steep slope until we came to the edge of the high cornfield bottom.

Dale slipped his black rifle case off his shoulder and laid it across a dry oak stump.

“Mike’s taking the west ravine,” Dale said quietly, waving a hand into the dark.

“Sam’s got the middle clearing by the rock wall.”