He cawed loudly to the world, then, as mysteriously as he appeared, he vanished into the slice of light which curved like a yolk into a horizon as thin as the edge of a knife. Philip Highmountain walked alone this forest of his youth, the only sound that of soft snow beneath his boots and a raven’s wings beating towards a purple sundown. The tall Indian carried a single shot twenty-two caliber rifle cradled gently under his right arm. It was an old and battered thing. The bolt always came out if he pulled back too hard, and the front sight had been lost years earlier. When he was a boy, his father had welded a cut nail onto the barrel’s end as a sight, and it had a length of yellow nylon rope as a sling. But it was accurate. He used it to hunt birds and rabbits. Once, he remembered, he had even shot a fox from about fifty yards. Many years before, he and his uncle had hunted this place in the winter sunshine, the brilliant snow blinding them when they looked out across the wide river.
