It’s Jim, I thought. It’s him or Bobby, one or the other. One of them has fallen out of his stand, and broken his leg, or landed on his knife. I started up, then stopped. It was coming from right in front of me. Bobby was a few hundred yards to the right of me, and Jim was far away to the left. This voice was close. It stopped then, and there was nothing to hear but the limbs moving, and the dead leaves rattling over the ground. I sat as still as I could and held my breath for a short time. I stopped noticing that I was cold. There was nothing, no sound but the wind. There was not an animal stirring anywhere, not even a squirrel. No birds. And it was only then that I noticed what had been missing all morning: the sound of any kind of life. In a place that is always teeming with life, it all appeared as dead as dead can be.

I told myself that it was too cold for anything to be stirring, that the animals knew when to stay hidden and warm better than men did. I told myself that I had been mistaken about the voice. If Jim or Bobby had been hurt, they would have fired three times. We had a prearranged signal for trouble. We all carried extra cartridges just for that purpose. Nobody else was supposed to be there.

I heard it again. Softer now. heeeeeeeeelp oooooooooh help

It was a weak voice, the voice of someone who had been crying out for help for a long time, so long a time that his voice was almost gone, either that or his life. And it didn’t matter if somebody was on our land who wasn’t supposed to be there, or if I spooked all the deer by getting down and trying to find him. The thing was, I had to find him. Soon.

I unloaded my 30.30 and slung it over my back. I slipped once, going off the platform, and I had that wild sudden leap of fear in my throat before I caught myself and held on. I was twenty feet off the ground. I couldn’t afford a mistake like that. I hung on until my breathing slowed back down, and my heart, and I went down the tree a step at a time, the cotton picker spindles I’d driven in hard and cold beneath my hands. My breath fogged in front of my face. The sleet started turning to rain.

I didn’t draw an easy breath until I got both feet on the ground. Then I hobbled around like an old man, trying to walk some feeling back into them. They were just dead nubs on the ends of my legs. I wondered if I had frostbite.