No Man's Dog by Jon A. Jackson Page B

arms out.
    Luck smiled apologetically and waved his hand. “I’ll take your word. All right. I’ll just be a minute.” Luck made his way around Mulheisen’s car to the other truck. He talked quietly to the men. They turned on their headlights and began to back out the way they had come, but shortly they merely backed into the brush, with a loud crackle of breaking branches, then turned and drove on out.
    Luck returned and said, “Just a couple of neighbors. I was on my way to get my mail. If you can wait here a minute, I’ll be back in a second.”
    He hopped up into the cab and with a roar drove into the brush, breaking limbs and crushing sumac as he steered around Mulheisen’s car.
    Mulheisen stood in the gathering darkness. The truck had disappeared. He could hear an owl hooting from the woods. He wondered if he should light up a cigar but decided not to. He went to stand by the car. Presently, Luck’s vehicle came roaring back and pulled around the Checker, back onto the two-track, and stopped. He rolled down his window and called to Mulheisen to follow him.
    Once through the gate, which Luck stopped to lock closed behind them, Mulheisen followed the truck another quarter of a mile or so, the woods getting deeper, until suddenly they broke out into a broad clearing. The house was ahead. It was a low, single-story house with a shallow-pitched roof and large stone chimney. It had a broad porch along the front, over which the roof extended.
    Luck parked his truck next to another vehicle, an older-model Buick sedan. He motioned Mulheisen to park to one side of the truck.
    â€œKind of lonely, back in these woods,” Mulheisen ventured as he got out. “Smells good though, those pines.” There were a couple of large white pines soaring up on either side of the house, easily eighty feet tall. There was a long stack of firewood to one side, with more stacked on the porch. Beyond the house a ways were two buildings, one of them an equipment shed, the other a small barn.
    â€œI had more of those pines once,” Luck said. “One of the last stands of virgin white pine in these parts. I don’t know how it got missed by the timber company. I had to cut them down.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œField of fire, Mul. Before I cut them you could have walked right up to the house without me knowing you were there. If you were careful.”
    Mulheisen nodded as if he understood. He drew in a deep, hearty breath. “I wonder if there’s a word for that pine smell?” he said. “Resiny? Maybe, ‘resinance’?”
    â€˜"Resinance’? I like that,” Luck said. “Poetic, although one would inevitably have to explain that it wasn’t ‘resonance,’ like the sound.”
    Mulheisen glanced at the AK-47 that Luck had taken from the rack on the rear window of the pickup. He was carrying the gun casually in one hand, a large bundle of mail under his other arm. When they went into the house he set the gun to one side, leaning against the wall. He hung his hat on a peg set in a rail alongside the door and set the mail on the kitchen counter.
    It was a pleasant, ordinary-looking house. The kitchen to one side, with standard cupboards, a work counter with stools around it. A large archway led to the living room, furnished with couches and chairs. An enameled green woodstove sat on a brick hearth, vented into what had been an attractive fireplace made of faced fieldstone. It was putting out quite a bit of heat. Luck opened the door of the stove and poked at the logs within, then made some sort of adjustment to the draft device in the chimney pipe. He turned around to face Mulheisen.
    â€œTake your coat?” he asked. He hung Mul’s jacket and his own coat side by side on pegs by the kitchen door, where other coats hung. He looked very rustic in his wool plaid shirt and red suspenders.
    â€œHungry, Mul? I made a stew before I set