Jim knew it, and Old Sam knew he knew it, but Jim wasn‘t going to say it, partly because it would just pander to the old fart‘s ego, which justifiably or not was already the size of Big Bump, and partly because saying so might then necessitate a discussion about what Old Sam had really been doing out in the woods the day the search party had tripped over him. Like Kate, Jim thought the less official notice taken of that, the better for all concerned. So he said only, I‘d appreciate it if you could guide me out there.

What for?

Well. Jim squinted into the sun. Kate tells me the bunch of you were in something of a hurry when you left.

We were at first. Old Sam grinned that saturnine grin. After, of course, Dan insisted we skin out that ol‘ griz and take his bladder so no one else would and sell ‘em off on the black market.

Yeah, Kate said. She is especially torqued that Dan wouldn‘t let her keep the hide. Anyway, I was thinking there might be something there that got missed in all the excitement. Jim looked back across the river, wishing he could sit next to its calm serenity for the rest of the day. The thing is, I‘m going to need a hell of a lot more than I‘ve got now if I‘m ever going to identify that body.

Old Sam drove them to the place where they‘d found Gammons‘s pickup. He parked and they got out. He had his Model 70 slung over his shoulder. At Jim‘s look he said tersely, Fish are hitting fresh water. The bears‘ll all be down on the creeks by now. Jim had brought the shotgun from his Blazer anyway.

They moved through the woods, Jim following Old Sam. To Jim it looked like your average forest, dark, impenetrable to the sun, and possessed of a malevolent spirit that was out to get him and only him. Scrub spruce flung up roots for him to trip over and then slapped him in the face with their branches, if they didn‘t outright leap into his path. Diamond willow wound themselves into a tangle that would have put the Gordian knot to shame. Where the willow left off the alder began, and when he managed to fight off the alder a grove of birch trees was lurking in a dense fence with no bole more than six inches from the next. Biting flies and mosquitoes gathered around this heaven-sent infusion of fresh blood and in spite of the bug dope he had slathered on himself before they went in he was attacked with the enthusiastic, single-minded dedication only genus Aedescan bring to their duty. The one place they didn‘t bite was where the spruce sap had attached itself to his skin, and he knew from bitter experience the only way to remove spruce sap was to grow a new epidermis.

There was a reason for the invention of airplanes, and it was so you could fly over this crap instead of walk through it. Jim knuckled a drop of sweat depending from the tip of his nose and soldiered on.