"Thank God for that," Mrs. Boody said. "You called the sheriff?"
"Can't," Norm Boody said. "Line's out of order. We'll get in touch with town in the morning."
"I don't think we'll sleep much tonight," a soft voice said from the door.
Earl Robinson chuckled. It was an attempt to put the whole thing off lightly. It didn't sound very sincere.
"You'll sleep all right, Marjorie. After that trip, we'll all sleep."
The girl smiled wanly.
"I hope so. It's hard—thinking of that—that...."
Daylight brought a peaceful, untroubled look to the valley. For ten miles, without a track save for the animals who had moved during the night, the valley stretched upward on all sides to the wooded hills. The big general store, schoolhouse and country church nestled in the center of the snow cup, with trackless roads leading away to the four points of the compass.
Blue-gray smoke lifted straight upward from the house, drifted two hundred feet into the sky and wafted away into nothingness.
Robinson came out of the woodshed with his black and red plaid coat wrapped tightly around him. It was a grand hunting morning, and he didn't intend to let last night's incident spoil it. The country was beautiful but there was nothing gentle about it. You had to face violence and forget it—quickly. Death wasn't easy to look at, but here, people learned that when it came, there was no point in letting it interfere with their life.