With the sun now at the horizon and shadows moving in, he rose and retraced his steps to the pond, snapping his whip at everything in view until the end strands began to unravel.

Nothing had been resolved.

His mood wasn't any better the next morning. While sitting on a log, preparing a meager meal before packing and heading out, there was a light, hardly audible crack from behind a bush close by. That sound was the final straw on a temperament at its limit. In a foolish move, John grabbed his club and charged blindly toward the bush, intent on killing or scaring the hell out of whatever was there.

There was a crash, a crack, a muffled cry and a tumble with John ending down in the bush beyond. He struggled to get out of the tangle. There had been hard contact with something and whatever that something was... was now beating a hasty, noisy retreat away. Stunned, now standing, John tried to reconstruct what had happened and with what. He looked about for clues.

There was a footprint...

and the footprint was human!