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The rain falls slowly. Then it freezes and snows hard so that everything is quiet. My feet sink in the drift and they get wet but it's not cold. I leave the paths and the buildings and walk into the forest. The trees make it darker but my eyes grade the blackness. I think about the metal weight in my pocket and I touch the nickel plating slowly, tracing the rough engraving. For a minute I forget what it is but then I remember. And I remember where I have to meet him at the red overhang that forks the creek. I hear the water now that flows slowly but does not freeze.

It is very dark and I trip over roots and catch stumps and leaves that smell like deer. I check the weight in my pocket again and brush my hair which is wet. I stop to listen but hear nothing except a long creaking of wood and the river for the snow muffles everything else. The trees are very bare but as I mount the slope towards the overhang, they become green and needly.

He won't be alone, I think. He will have one other, maybe more. If it is Jake, then I am in trouble.

If only I had someone. But I have no one. I have no one.

The climb is steep and my thighs numb and I have trouble breathing. I stop to breathe the cold air. I see some light sparks ahead. They are smoking.

Hey, I cry out as I near them.

You're late. Maybe you didn't want to come.

I did want to come.

He bends over and spits on the hardening mud. I see Jake watching me.

But I look at him again because he is pointing across the creek.

I set up bottles there for practice. I broke them all to splinters from up here in the dark.

You don't scare me, I say. And that's a lie because I heard no shot coming up.

Well I got here a muffler, see? He points at his gun.

Why did you -

Shut up, you shot my dog. You shot her dead.

And you sawed my horse's leg for that?

My dog's worth more than your god damn horse.

I broke her on uncle Anselm's ranch and she was mine and she was all I had.

And so you're going to make something of it. You're going to make yourself dead. Should've thought about that when you shot my dog.

He raises his arm but I take out my weapon and press the trigger three times without really seeing him but feeling the ticking revolutions of the cylinder and the explosion of force.

He reels back and disappears over the ridge. When I hear the splash, Jake is all over me and grips my neck. Then I feel something boiling on my side and I see him stabbing me there with his knife. I shoot him in the stomach right below the sternum.

All this for a horse and a dog, I think as I watch Jake choke like a fish. Just like a fish.

I shoot him twice in the eye to end it. Then I trek back as I have a long way to go and I am bleeding and I am going blind.