He managed to get to his feet, swaying a little, and held himself up by leaning on Old Pete’s shoulder. He put a hand to his forehead as if he were waking out of a bad dream. Meanwhile Trigger was still sitting on the ground trying to pull himself together.

“Mrs. Chapman heard the shots and called me,” Gregg answered Nick, after a considerable pause. Everything now seemed to be happening in slow motion, everything that had been happening too fast to take in a moment before.

“You realize, of course, that you are on posted land,” he said to Al. “That’s one count against you.”

“Were you and Nick hunting?” he asked Old Pete severely. “You should know better.”

“No, sir,” Old Pete said. (The “sir” was ironic. Orin Gregg was a young man and took himself seriously.) “We were not after deer. You might say we were on a wild-goose chase,” he said with a sly smile.

“If it was after five—and I doubt it,” Trigger said, “that man shot too.”

“The deer was wounded. Someone had to put her out of her misery,” Old Pete answered. Nick seemed too bewildered to say anything now.

“Well, this will take some going into. It’s dark and we’d better get going. I’ll see to the doe tomorrow. At present it is state property.”

Gregg led the way and, slowly and painfully, the small procession followed after. The atmosphere had changed. Everyone was too exhausted to feel anything but his own bruises. Nick had wrenched his shoulder. Jack limped. The men were relieved, if anything, to have to spend the night in a motel and be taken to court in the morning. They signed papers and gave addresses, standing by their car. Then Orin took Old Pete and Nick down the hill in his.

Nick was silent. Old Pete did all, the talking, and it was a rather odd story.

“Well,” Orin said, “sounds crazy to me, all of it. It’s not good that you were caught on Chapman land with guns. Mrs. Chapman said her husband was cross about the whole thing. Who’s going to believe this story about chasing the deer away from the hunters? And if they do, what will people think? Any way you look at it, you two come out as pretty strange critters. Well,” he ended as he drew up at Nick’s mother’s door, “we’ll all see better by daylight. Expect you in my office tomorrow at ten—and you be there!”

Nick stood in the doorway, one eye closed, his mouth still bloody, his hands covered with dirt, and gave his mother a painful smile.

“It’s all right, Mother. I did what I wanted to do. Now I’ll just wash and we can sit down.”