"Yes, of course," Pemberton said, "but I do think Mr. Frizzell should compensate us with a photograph."
Frizzell's brow furrowed in surprise.
"Of this?" the photographer asked, his palm turned upward toward the valley.
"No, a photograph of us," Pemberton replied.
"I thought I made my views on such things clear at the Vanderbilt Estate," Serena said.
"Not a portrait, just a photograph."
Serena did not answer.
"Indulge me this one time," Pemberton said. "We have no photograph of us together. Think of it as a last birthday present."
For a few moments Serena did not respond. Then something in her countenance let go, not so much a softening as a yielding that Pemberton thought at first was resignation but then seemed more like sadness. He remembered the photographs she left in the Colorado house to burn, and wondered, for all her denying of the past, if some part of her yet dwelled on those photographs.
"All right, Pemberton."
Frizzell slid the negative plate from his last photograph into its protective metal sleeve and placed a new one in the camera.
"We'll need a less dreary backdrop, so I'll have to move my equipment," Frizzell said irritably.
"No," Pemberton said. "The backdrop is fine as it is. As Mrs. Pemberton says, we're pleased with what we've done here."
"Very well," Frizzell said, turning to Serena, "but surely you're not staying on your horse?"
"Yes," Serena said. "I am."
"Well," Frizzell said with utter exasperation, "if the photograph is blurred you'll only have yourselves to blame."
Frizzell disappeared under his shawl, and the photograph was taken. The photographer began packing his equipment as Galloway gave a long blast of his car horn.
"I'll have one of my men pick it up in Waynesville tomorrow," Pemberton said, lingering beside Serena.
"You need to go, Pemberton," Serena said.
She leaned in the saddle and pressed her hand against his face. Pemberton took her hand and pressed it to his lips a moment.
"I love you," he said.
Serena nodded and turned away. She rode off toward Noland Mountain, black puffs of lingering ash rising around the horse's hooves. Pemberton watched her a few moments and then walked to the car, but he paused before opening the passenger door.
"What is it?" Galloway asked.
"Just trying to think if there's anything else I may need."
"I got us food," Galloway said. "Got your hunting knife too. The Missus had me fetch it. It's in my tote sack."
As they left camp, Pemberton glanced up the ridge at Galloway's stringhouse, one of the few that hadn't yet been hauled to the new site. The old woman wasn't on the porch, was probably inside sitting at the table. Pemberton smiled as he thought of her prophecy, the way they'd all been taken in by her performance. They rode north, Galloway using his stub to guide the wheel when he shifted gears. Pemberton closed his eyes and waited for the aspirin to ease his headache.
After a while the Packard slowed and turned. Pemberton opened his eyes. Trees closed in around them. They bumped down into Ivy Gap, a swathe of private land just east of the park holdings. The car passed over a wooden plank bridge, and the automobile's vibration caused Pemberton's latent headache to return.
"Why don't you get a damn fender brace for this thing," Pemberton said, "that or slow down."
"Maybe it'll shake that hang over out of your head," Galloway said, swerving to avoid a washout.
They passed a harvested cornfield where a scarecrow rose, wide-armed as if forsaken. A pair of doves fluttered up amid the tatter of broken stalks and shucks, resettled. Pemberton knew men hunted them but could not imagine what satisfaction came from killing something hardly larger than the shell you shot with. The woods thickened until the road did not so much end as give up, surrendering to scrub oaks and broom sedge. Galloway stopped and jerked the handbrake.
"We'll have to hoof it the rest of the way."
They got out and Galloway took a tote sack from the back seat. Pemberton retrieved his rifle and opened the box of bullets, lifted out a handful and stuffed them in a jacket pocket. Galloway swung the tote sack over his shoulder.
"Anything else?" Pemberton asked.
"No," Galloway said, starting down the hint of road that remained. "All we need's in this tote sack."
"You have the car keys?"
"Got them," Galloway said, patting his right pants pocket.
"Give me my knife."
Galloway opened the tote sack and handed Pemberton the knife.
"Where's the sheath?"
"I reckon it's still in that drawer," Galloway said.
Pemberton cursed softly at Galloway's oversight, placed the hunting knife in the jacket's side pocket.
Pemberton and Galloway moved deeper into the gorge, crossing a spring bog and then a creek. They moved through a stand of tulip poplars whose yellow leaves shimmered the forest floor with new-fallen brightness. The land made a last steep drop, and they entered the meadow, tufts of broom sedge giving the open landscape a luster to rival the surrounding trees. A deer lay in the meadow's center, little left but rags of fur and bones. Galloway opened the tote sack and removed a dozen ears of corn, placed them in a full circle as if to enclose the carcass. Pemberton wondered if Galloway was enacting some primitive hunting ceremony, something learned from the Cherokee or done centuries ago in Albion, the kind of thing that had so fascinated Buchanan.
"That panther fed on this deer pretty good, didn't it," Galloway said.
"It appears so."
"I figured it would," Galloway said, taking a hawkbill knife from his right pocket.
Galloway walked over to the meadow edge where a bed sheet hung from a dogwood branch, its four corners knotted to hold something sagging within. He methodically freed the knife blade, then sliced open the bed sheet. A dead fawn spilled onto the ground. Galloway picked up a back leg and dragged the fawn to the meadow's center, set it beside the other carcass.
"This way even if the corn don't draw a deer, that cat will have something to gnaw on," Galloway said, and pointed halfway up the far ridge where a granite outcrop pushed out of the slantland like a huge fist. "There's a flat place on that biggest rock, even has a cave goes back in it a ways on the nigh end. You can set there and see this whole meadow, and it's high enough for that cat not to smell you. Some deer should show for them corn shucks come the shank of evening, and that panther won't be far behind."