interfere with their life.

Bill Boody hadn't come in last night. His car wasn't to be seen. Robinson went back into the woodshed. He climbed the steps to the kitchen and walked in quietly behind Mrs. Boody, who was bent over the kitchen stove.

"Where's Norm?" he asked.

Mrs. Boody looked worn and tired, as though she hadn't slept.

"Milking the cows. Bill didn't come home last night."

He knew that she was still suspicious of him. She wasn't sure that he told the truth about the body on the road.

"Bill will be okay," he said. "Are any of the others up?"

Mrs. Boody smiled.

"Roy came out a few minutes ago. He took one look at the thermometer outside the kitchen window, groaned and went back to bed."

Robinson started for the bedroom.

"You better let Marge sleep," Mrs. Boody said. "She was all worn out. She needs the rest."

"Earl," the woman at the stove said. There was a quality of urgency in her voice that stopped him short. He pivoted.

"Yes?"

"You think the phantom buck might have done the killing?"

Here it was again, he thought. They weren't satisfied to let the whole thing pass as an accident. They had to bring up dead dogs, fall back on superstition. Everything was perfect for hunting, and they had to spoil the spirit of the thing.

"That phantom buck business is a damned fairy tale," he said.

"But you think it was the phantom buck, all the same."

Robinson said nothing. The woman pushed the coffee pot back on the stove and went to the window. She stared out at the snowy world.

"Bill saw the phantom buck once."

"I know," Robinson said. He wished she wouldn't talk about it. She was getting herself all excited. "Probably Bill had been drinking some of that snake bite medicine."

Mrs. Boody shook her head.

"Bill don't touch a drop." Her face was very red, maybe from the stove. "Bill said the buck was the biggest deer he'd ever seen. He went right by Bill, and disappeared, right in broad daylight. Bill looked for tracks after he was gone, and there weren't any."

She wet her lips and went back to the stove.

"I wouldn't worry, Mrs. Boody," Robinson said.

She looked up then with frantic eyes.

"It isn't Bill, out there on the road, dead?"

He went swiftly to her and put one hand on her shoulder.

"I wouldn't lie to you. It wasn't him."

She seemed to relax for the first time since last night.

"I guess you're telling the truth. I wish Bill would come home, though. They used to say that anyone who saw the phantom buck was getting ready for an early death."

Norm Boody came up from the barn with two steaming pails of milk. Roy Starr was getting dressed in the kitchen, close to the stove. He was muttering threats against his brother, Glenn.

"Never let a guy sleep," he groaned. "Always the first guy up and the only man on earth who can't let other people stay in bed when they want to."

Glenn Starr and Marjorie were already at the breakfast table. The others drifted in and sat down. A girl and a husky, sleepy-eyed man came down from upstairs. Roy Starr greeted the girl by chasing her around the stove and left her alone only after she picked up the poker and threatened to use it on him.

Robinson introduced the fifth member of the hunting party at the breakfast table.

"Pete Larson hasn't hunted before," he said. "Pete, you know our own bunch. You know Norm and Mrs. Boody now. The tall, fair damsel holding the coffee pot is Norma, Mrs. Boody's best assistant housekeeper and daughter. The sleepy eyed creature at her side is her husband, Floyd."

Larson himself was heavy set, and a slightly ponderous man who wore light rimmed glasses and a rather awed look on his face.

"I guess I've let myself in for some rugged country and some heavy eating," he said. "Anyhow, I always did like a fifth cup of coffee and the supply looks adequate."

"It was rugged