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themselves climbing mountains whose summits were still covered with snow, as the temperature dropped and the vegetation changed. So, too, did the accents of the people they ran into, from the soft Maryland twang to the formal lilt of the Quakers to the impatient and brutal tongue of those New Jerseyites, and again to the clipped and nasally dialect of those Yankees north of the city of New York, pale, flinty-souled folk scored by icy winds and snow, who had the surly aspect of one woken up from sleep in the middle of the night. They entered finally the frigid far north woods where, it being early spring, the lakes and ponds were mostly still frozen over with ice the strange blue hue of a robin's egg. As they passed by one frozen mountain tarn in the Catskills, Little Strofe called to the others. "Looky there," he said, pointing at the ice. Perfectly intact and locked just below the surface was some sort of furry creature--dog or wolf or fox, they could not tell--eyes still open, its bared fangs inches from the surface seemingly about to yap, its forefeet seeming to scratch at the underside of the ice, as if still entertaining the notion of escape. Cain, a native Virginian, had been this far north only once in his life. When he was a boy he had accompanied his father on a steamship to Portland, Maine, to look at a new breed of cattle newly arrived from Scotland. But that was nothing like this ice-locked and frigid landscape.
    "Them Yankees can have this cold," Preacher complained one time, blowing on his hands. "Freeze they damn balls off."
    Little Strofe, who happened to be riding next to Cain, asked, "Y'ever see you such c-cold weather in springtime, Mr. Cain?"
    "No, indeed, Mr. Strofe," he replied. Cain had developed a fondness for the stuttering, simple man.
    "Why, up in the hills it weren't never like this, even in the hardest winter. 'M-member back in forty-two, Brother." He turned and called over his shoulder to Strofe. "That was some cold spell."
    "Hit were forty we had the bad winter," Strofe replied.
    "I reckon you're mistaken on that."
    "How the hell would you know?" Strofe said. "You were still shittin' in your drawers."
    Even Preacher laughed at this.
    Each evening, after the long day's ride, after the horses were hobbled and brushed and fed, after supper was made and eaten, after all the pans and cups were cleaned, the fire banked for the night, the bedrolls laid out--after all this they'd sit around the campfire for a while before sleep finally overtook them. Bats would come out, flittering and gliding in the twilight sky like a child's mobile. A screech owl's quavering cry might erupt nearby or a catamount's snarl echo down through the mountains. They'd sit there, four men whose only connection was the hunting of human prey, each occupied by his own devices. Drinking from a bottle of applejack, the hulking Strofe would get out his maps and by the lantern's light plan how far they'd get the next day. Some nights Preacher would remove his deck of cards and play solitaire, or talk Strofe or his brother into a game of poker, for which they played for coppers or quids of tobacco. On those occasions that he was drunk, Preacher might jabber on about some tight-fisted farmer he used to work for back in Botetourt County or relate a story about how he'd cut up somebody bad in a tavern fight. But most nights he would sit there silently sharpening his big knife with a whetstone and then take to whittling a piece of wood with such single-minded concentration it almost seemed he'd fallen into a fugue state. Yet when he'd eventually come back from wherever it was he'd gone, and look up and catch Cain staring at him, he'd wink and offer a smile whose meaning Cain could no more fathom than he could the expression of the man in the moon.
    Some nights Little Strofe would take out his Jew's harp and play something, a jig or reel, some tune from the hills. Sometimes he'd sing with a lilting voice "The Pretty Plowboy" or "The Girl I