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us?”
    Turk gave Bernie a hard look, said nothing.
    Bernie turned away from him. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Devin! Devin!” louder than I’d ever heard him. Turk jumped right off the ground. So did I, kind of, even though it was Bernie.
    “Devin! Devin!”
    The night was silent.

EIGHT

    W e sat around the fire pit in the darkness. No one seemed to be making a fire. That was a first in my camping experience. Did no campfire wipe out the possibility of nibbling on roasted things in the near future? I feared that from the get-go and turned out to be right. Turk and Bernie ate sandwiches— peanut butter and jelly, the smell so much better than the taste, a strange disappointment I’d tested out more than once—and I had kibble. I was just about finished licking out the bowl—our traveling bowl, a little smaller than the kitchen bowl but nice and round at the bottom, the way I like—when Bernie said, “Tell me about the kids.”
    “What kids?” said Turk, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
    “The kids in tent seven,” Bernie said. “The ones in your charge.”
    Turk shrugged. “I take what they give me.”
    “Meaning?”
    “I’ve guided hundreds of kids into the backcountry,” Turk said. “Maybe thousands. They all blur together after a while.”
    “Understood,” said Bernie. “You’re only human.”
    Hey! One of my favorite expressions—it made so much sense to me.
    “Damn straight,” Turk said.
    “But,” said Bernie, and he paused—Bernie’s a real good pauser, all part of his interviewing technique; I bring other things to the table, in case I haven’t mentioned that already—“of all these hundreds, maybe thousands, Turk, did you ever lose one before now?”
    “Fucking well didn’t. And you’re startin’ to push me, pal.”
    Uh-oh. Turk had a temper. I got my back paws under me. I’ve seen lots of trouble, comes with the job, and it often starts right about now.
    “See, Turk,” Bernie said, “you just admitted you’ve never been in a situation like this. Chet and I have, more than once. The goal is to bring Devin back alive. Nothing else counts.”
    Turk sat there, a dark shadow but sort of bulging, like a muscle loading up.
    “So let’s talk about the kids in tent seven,” Bernie said. “How did they get along?”
    I heard Turk taking a deep breath. The violence that had been building inside him escaped into the air; I could sort of feel it. “Didn’t give me problems,” he said.
    “Glad to hear that,” said Bernie. “But it’s not what I asked.”
    “Lost me,” Turk said.
    “Yeah?” said Bernie.
    When he said “yeah” like that it always meant he didn’t believe what had just been said, not one bit. Love Bernie’s little ways! We were on the job!
    “Let’s narrow it down,” he went on. “How did the boys— meaning Preston, Tommy, Luke, and Keith—get along with Devin?”
    “Pretty good, I guess.”
    “Guess harder,” Bernie said.
    “Huh?”
    “The four boys are all returning campers. Devin’s new. That can be tough.”
    “Tough? None of them know shit about tough. They’re all rich kids from the city.”
    “Bullies can be rich or poor, city or country,” Bernie said. “Preston’s a bully. Luke and Keith are followers. Tommy’s stand-up, but he’s still too young to know it. What about Devin? Is he the victim type?”
    “Where are you getting all this info?” Turk said.
    “Doesn’t matter.”
    “Ranger Rob? I didn’t think—” Turk cut himself off. Sometimes the mouth gets ahead of the mind in humans. I watch for that one.
    “You didn’t think what?”
    “Nothin’,” Turk said.
    There was a silence, except for the breeze rustling the trees, and an owl doing that hooting thing, but very distant, right at the edge of what I could hear.
    “What kind of a kid were you?” Bernie said. “Bully, victim, follower, or stand-up?”
    “Hell, stand-up for sure. Ask anyone who knew me.”
    “If it comes to that,