She had dropped limply in her tracks and lain there, and he had sauntered up and stood looking at her stretched before him.

He was out of meat, and the doe meant all that hot venison steaks and rich, brown gravy can mean to a man meat-hungry.

While he unsheathed his hunting knife, he gloated over the feast he would have, that night.

And just when he had laid his rifle against a rock and knelt to bleed her, the deer leaped from under his hand and bounded away over the hill.

He had not said a word on that occasion, either.
This night, although the case was altogether different and the disappearance of the girl was in no sense a disaster--rather a relief, if anything--he felt that same wordless rage, the same sense of utter chagrin.