“No fucking air above a fire.” Siggy was still clearly impressed with himself for remembering. “I knew there was something.”

Bennet, his face sheened in sweat, stared bewildered at Siggy, squatting beside him, when the child let out a piercing and extended scream.

“Keep that fucking kid quiet,” Bennet shouted.

Abruptly the scream stopped. All the men were fixed for a moment.

“Oh, Jesus,” Sal said. “No, no, no.”

“What the fuck’s happened?” Bennet got up from McFarlane’s body. He, Siggy, Finn, and Goldwin moved around the fire. The boy lay in the dirt, a pool of blood swelling out from his head. Magnus was breathing hard, holding the rifle’s barrel with both hands. Sal was still taking slow steps backward and seemed on the verge of running off into the woods.

“He hit the kid.” Sal pointed at Magnus. “With the rifle.”

Magnus’s eyes were wide. Excited and pleased, almost ecstatic, he made a strange grimacing smile and let out a triumphant cry.

Bennet rubbed his mouth. He looked like a man who had found himself in a nightmare, a man unaccustomed to nightmares, who wasn’t completely engaged or sure of the rules. But here the nightmare was. On one side of the fire lay a naked dead man, a man with a grotesque old face and the body of a boy. On the other lay a child of no more than six or seven, his skull cleft in. And all around him these drunken men: Siggy, with his fat, baffled, useless face; Finn and Goldwin, who were trying to become bystanders to an accident they had nothing to do with; and Otto, who stood with his back to them, loudly farting as he peed over the edge of the bluff.

“This is not happening,” Goldwin said, shaking his head.

Otto buttoned himself up and turned around to the men. He didn’t look in the least troubled. In fact, he looked bored. He surveyed the scene.

“See, it’s all fun and games,” he said, “until someone gets their eye poked out.” He laughed.

Bennet reached down and pulled Siggy’s pistol out of its holster. He aimed it at Otto, who howled and threw his arms in front of him. Bennet pulled the trigger four times, but the hammer fell without firing. He looked at the pistol and then at Siggy.

“Only ever put one bullet in it,” Siggy said. He took the gun out of Bennet’s hand and put it to his own temple. “Only ever need one.”

“You’re fucking drunk,” Bennet said.

Otto slowly emerged from behind his arms. Pointing at Bennet, but looking at Goldwin and Finn, since they seemed to have become the witnesses, he said, “Did he fire on me?”

Neither responded. They were no longer a part of this.