I met him halfway up the hollow. He had the strangest look on his face. We didn’t say anything at first. We stopped about ten feet away from each other and squatted on the ground. I lit a cigarette and laid the barrel of the rifle alongside my face, leaning on it, staring at the woods. He hunkered down like a country man, his Browning across his knees. We just listened for a while. Every so often I’d see him raise his head and turn one ear toward the sound, tracking it. Then he’d shake his head.

“What do you think?” he said, finally.

“I be damn if I know, Bobby. I can’t figure it. How long you been hearing it?”

He looked down and raked at the leaves with a stick.

“Ever since I got up in my stand,” he said. “I heard it before daylight.”

“What about Jim? You think he …?”

“Yonder he is. Let’s ask him.”

I looked up. I could see Jim’s blue cap coming down toward us. He’d already seen us and had stuck his rifle under his arm, walking quickly, not trying to be quiet. He stopped about fifty feet away and grinned. I damn sure didn’t feel like grinning.

“What is that?” he said.

“Don’t know,” Bobby said. “Gimme a dip, Jim.”

He came on over to us and sat down. He pulled his Skoal out of his pocket and passed it to Bobby. Then he took off his cap.

“I thought it was somebody lost at first,” he said. “First I heard it, it was coming from the west.”

“West?” I said.

“Yeah. At first. It sounded like it was close to my stand. I got down after about ten minutes. Sounded like somebody hurt bad. And I started walkin’ and lookin’. Every time I thought I’s getting close to it it’d move.” He looked at me and Bobby. “Then I noticed. Ever time I stopped, it stopped.” He gave me the same funny look that Bobby had given me. Something strange. Unreadable. It was like all of us knew something that none of us wanted to speak aloud.

We just sat there for a while, listening to it. It seemed to me that once it had us all three in the same place, it got louder. Maybe I was just concentrating harder. I don’t know. But it seemed to get closer, and louder. Finally, Bobby stood up and said, “Well, shit, let’s go see what it is.”