LITMIR.BIZ

      Dedication

      For JUFELEE

      The more things change

      The more they remain the same.

      Contents

       Cover

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Prologue

      The Gathering

      1

      I guess that if it hadn’t been for that poker…

      2

      THEY weren’t ready to start processing us yet, so they…

      3

      A car pulled up outside, and Jack turned his head…

      4

      THE following Saturday I got out of the Army. Naturally,…

      5

      MIKE Carter and Betty, his wife, lived in a development…

      6

      IT wasn’t until Thursday that we finished up the deal…

      7

      ON Friday morning I went up to Seattle and picked…

      8

      “WHAT’S this doing here?” Clydine was standing over me the…

      9

      I worked—off and on—at the gun all the next week,…

      10

      I picked up Clydine about three thirty the next afternoon,…

      11

      THE following Wednesday, the first of September, we were all…

      12

      BY the next Saturday we were all getting things pretty…

      13

      ON Tuesday night we gathered at Sloane’s with all our…

      14

      IT rained all the next day. The sky sagged and…

      The High Hunt

      15

      SLOANE’S Cadillac was still leading, and at the summit he…

      16

      IT took us the better part of an hour to…

      17

      ABOUT three thirty that afternoon we crossed the second ridge…

      18

      WHEN the gun went off I think we all came…

      19

      MILLER split us up then and sent us on back…

      20

      “TIME to roll out.” Clint’s head blotted out the looming…

      21

      “YOU see any with any size?” Miller asked when he…

      22

      I woke up the next morning before Clint came around…

      23

      “MAN!” Jack said when I got back down to camp,…

      24

      SLOANE was much worse the next morning. Much as he…

      25

      I got up at the usual time the next morning…

      26

      “DAN,” Sloan gasped when I got up to him, “I’m…

      27

      IT drizzled rain all the next day. Miller had told…

      28

      AFTER he got back from taking Jack and Lou up…

      29

      AT lunchtime I rode up the ridge to pick up…

      30

      CLINT woke me the next morning, and I rolled out…

      31

      I went straight on down into the ravine, leaving Jack…

      32

      I don’t think either Jack or Lou said more than…

      33

      “I don’t know how the hell we’re gonna get all…

      The Parting

      34

      AFTER she left for class the next morning I called…

      35

      I didn’t see Stan until the next weekend. I’m not…

      36

      ON the first of October I moved to Seattle and…

      37

      I write a lousy letter. I always have. I knew…

      38

      AND so, after the holidays, Clydine Stewart, the terror of…

      39

      IT was a Thursday morning several weeks after Mother’s visit…

      Epilogue

      About the Author

      Praise

      Other Books by David Eddings

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      Prologue

      WHEN we were boys, before we lost him and before my brother and I turned away from each other, my father once told us a story about our grandfather and a dog. We were living in Tacoma then, in one of the battered, sagging, rented houses that stretch back in my memory and mark the outlines of a childhood spent unknowingly on the bare upper edge of poverty. Jack and I knew that we weren’t rich, but it didn’t really bother us all that much. Dad worked in a lumber mill and just couldn’t seem to get ahead of the bills. And, of course, Mom being the way she was didn’t help much either.

      It had been a raw, blustery Saturday, and Jack and I had spent the day outside. Mom was off someplace as usual, and Dad was supposed to be watching us. About all he’d done had been to feed us and tell us to stay the hell out of trouble or he’d bite off our ears. He always said stuff like that, but we were pretty sure he didn’t really mean it.

      The yard around our house was cluttered with a lot of old junk abandoned by previous tenants—rusty car bodies and discarded appliances and the like—but it was a good place to play. Jack and I were involved in one of the unending, structureless games of his invention that filled the days of our boyhood. My brother—even then thin, dark, quick, and nervous—was a natural ringleader who settled for directing my activities when he couldn’t round up a gang of neighborhood kids. I went along with him most of the time—to some extent because he was older, but even more, I suppose, because even then I really didn’t much give a damn, and I knew that he did.

      After supper it was too dark to go back outside, and the radio was on the blink, so we started tearing around the house. We got to playing tag in the living room, ducking back and forth around the big old wood-burning heating stove, giggling and yelling, our feet clattering on the worn linoleum. The Old Man was trying to read the paper, squinting through the dime-store glasses that didn’t seem to help much and made him look like a total stranger—to me

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