Panicked, I slap my torso, but find nothing, move my hands down to my pelvis and groin until I find a spreading wet stain on my left leg. I feel the ripped fabric and find a deep gouge along the outer thigh. The instant my fingers touch the exposed tissue, I feel an electrical charge that causes me to bite my hand to keep from screaming.

The light coming from my dying, distant fire is too faint. I have no choice but to probe with my fingertips. If the bullet—it had to have been a hollow-point—nicked the femoral artery, I’d be spraying blood like a dam without a Dutch boy. The slug has carved a burrow along my upper leg half an inch deep and four inches long. Blood pumps through my fingers when I clamp my whole hand over the wound, trying to use pressure to slow the hemorrhage.

I left home that morning with a fully stocked first aid kit. It contained antibiotic gel, a packet of hemophilic clotting agents, and an adhesive combat bandage invented by the Israeli army, not to mention a surgical stapler that can stopgap a wound long enough to find a doctor. That first aid bag is probably halfway down the river to Lewiston now.

In the dark I can’t even tell how badly I’m bleeding. Shock worries me. Blood loss worries me.

The wound has to be dirty. Bullet fragments, cloth from my jeans, maybe dirt and bits of wood. But I have nothing to irrigate the exposed tissue. Add sepsis to my list of worries, although an infection won’t kill me in the next hour.

Snow maybe? Pack snow into the wound? Let the cold constrict the blood vessels and slow the outflow of blood.

No, that’s a stupid idea.

Ideally, I’d have a clean absorbent cloth to use as an improvised bandage.

Ideally, I’d be a hundred miles from here with no perforations in my person, enjoying a bourbon neat beside a crackling stove.

I fondly recall the magical time, two minutes earlier, when hypothermia was my major concern in life.

I keep pressing my hand against my thigh. I clench my teeth so hard, it’s amazing the molars don’t crack.

I need to get gravity working for me. Sitting up, I try to elevate my injured leg by resting it on a fallen log.

Meanwhile Jewett is out there with his rifle, waiting for me to poke my head up. The kind of scope he is using matters a great deal. Does it rely on image intensification, active illumination, or infrared thermal imaging? It’s one thing if he has to pick out my fuzzy shadow from amid the monochrome trees. It’s another if he can see my heat signature glowing red and yellow against a magenta backdrop.