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He looked back out the window. To his surprise, two men stumbled out of the thick fir trees, each carrying a rifle. He had the closer one in his sights when he saw they were laughing, leaning into each other, one of the men dragging his rifle. He cursed viciously. The idiots were drunk. Jesus, there was no hunting allowed anywhere near here and here they were shooting and drinking.

The closer man was very tall and thin, he could tell that even though he was wearing thick dark corduroy pants and a heavy dark brown down jacket. He had a plaid hunter’s hat on his head. He was waving toward the cabin, yelling, “Hey! Anybody there? We’re sorry, we didn’t mean anything.” Then he giggled as the other man, short, bowlegged, wearing cowboy boots, said, “Yeah, we thought you was a couple of deer. I told Tommy here that deer didn’t fly kites.”

Ramsey put down his rifle, but held the pistol at his side as he came through the front door out onto the porch.

He was so angry he was shaking. He wanted to bang their heads together, the morons. He yelled at them, “What do you think you’re doing firing guns up here? Didn’t you see my little girl?”

They waved at him. The drunken idiots actually waved, as if he’d invited them up for a beer. The tall guy called out, “Hey, buddy, it was an accident. Who are you? We didn’t think anybody lived up here. We’re sorry, real sorry.”

The bowlegged guy didn’t say a word, just walked along toward him, looking at his rifle or his snakeskin boots, or both.

“You up here a long time?”

When the tall guy asked him the question, Ramsey looked away from the shorter man for just an instant, just long enough for the man to raise the rifle and aim it at him.

Ramsey didn’t think, he fired. He caught the bowlegged guy in his shooting arm just as he felt a numbing cold slam against his left thigh. The tall man had his rifle up in an instant, but Ramsey was faster this time. He got him in the shoulder, a clean hit that knocked him backward, off his feet, to the ground.

Ramsey started toward them, then stumbled. He’d been shot in the leg. He hadn’t realized it. He yelled, “What the hell do you want? Who are you?”

They were both wounded, cursing, one of the rifles on the ground. The tall guy on the ground managed to jump up, and the two of them had turned and were stumbling back toward the forest. Ramsey raised his Smith & Wesson and fired. He saw a chunk of tree bark fly into the air. He fired again. He heard one of the men yell. Good, he’d gotten one of them with two bullets. He couldn’t see them now. They were gone deep into the forest. He wanted to go after them, but he couldn’t. He looked down at his thigh. Blood was seeping through the denim. He realized in that instant that he hurt like hell.

Ramsey quickly turned and ran as fast as he could with his gimp leg to the cabin. One of the men still had his gun. He was still at risk. He was in the open and they were hidden in the trees. He saw an old .22 on the ground where the bowlegged guy had dropped it. It was banged up, not very powerful, thank God, but powerful enough to do the job, accurate as hell from close range.

He made the cabin and looked up in shock to see her standing there on the porch, frozen, staring at him. He grabbed her up, ran inside, slamming the door behind him. He felt a new shock of pain in his left leg. He looked down to see his jeans ripped through the outside of his thigh, the blood oozing through the thick denim to run slowly down his leg. Slowly, he eased her down. She clutched his right leg. She was making those gut-wrenching mewling noises again.

He kept her against his right leg. He didn’t want to get any blood on her, that would be all she needed to freak her out all over again. But she’d overcome her fear to come outside to see if he was okay. “I’m all right, sweetheart. The bad men are gone, at least I hope they are. You’re really brave, you know that? I’m proud of you. You run really fast and that’s good too.

“I didn’t lie to you. We