nt over and pushed more snow away.

"I'll be damned."

The chest was badly crushed. Blood had frozen in the snow next to the
wound.

"Hit sometime before the snow came," Robinson said.

Roy Starr was brushing snow away from the corpse.

"Maybe," he said softly. "A car never hit him, though. There aren't any
blood tracks. The hole is in the direct center of his chest. The ribs
aren't crushed on either side."

Robinson's voice was a little hushed.

"That's what I was thinking. Looks like a bear might have mauled him."

Roy Starr came slowly to his feet.

"Look," he said, "we aren't kidding ourselves. Something hit him, hard,
in the chest. It wasn't a car because it didn't break in the whole bone
structure. It wasn't a bear, because a bear would have done a more
thorough job of it. Shooting is out. That isn't a bullet wound."

Robinson shrugged.

"What's left?"

"The same thing that's been killing hunters for the past five years,"
Starr said grimly. "For lack of a better name, the phantom buck."

Robinson turned away, looking toward the car.

"You're crazy," he said. "Let's say we're both crazy. Our imaginations
are running riot. I think the rest of the party ought to know about the
_automobile accident_. We can't do any good here. We'll go on to
Rosewood if we can get the buggy out of the ditch. We can call the
sheriff from there. This is the sheriff's job, not ours."

The three people who had ridden in the rear seat were in the ditch,
pushing snow away from the wheels. Glenn Starr was saying quietly:

"We ought to get him out of the road."

Robinson went to work with the shovel, digging the right rear wheel out
of the snow and the thick, half-frozen mud.

"Forget all about it," he said. "No one will be driving through here
tonight. We'll call the sheriff from Rosewood. Outside of that, it's
none of our business. Automobile accident. Wasn't our fault. We've done
all we can."

They worked hard, all of them trying to forget the body on the road and
concentrate on the task of freeing the car from the ditch. In twenty
minutes they were on their way, crawling slowly down the opposite side
of the hill into the cup-like valley where a country store, church and
schoolhouse had been flatteringly named "Village of Rosewood!"

Marjorie Wrenn was still crying softly. Glenn tried to comfort her, but
the girl was exhausted mentally and physically. The snow still blotted
out everything but a few yards of the roa