In the days and weeks that followed, Harry became a more frequent visitor to the village at night, often bringing information that helped them avoid the hunters or helped them bring new girls safely into the troop. As always, he declined the sexual favors he knew were his for the asking, but he and Melanie became close friends nevertheless. Without Harry, Melanie would have lost track of time completely, but he kept her informed.

Even so, she was startled when he told her than five years had slipped by, that she'd managed to survive through half her sentence. Another year, and then two, glided by as well. Melanie, knowing that a fatal arrow could be waiting for her at any time, tried not to think about it--although sometimes she lay awake at night astounded that she'd now outlasted the almost legendary Jane.

It was near the anniversary of her eighth year there that, to the surprise of all the Deer, Harry came into the village one night with two women in his truck. As he climbed out of the cab, Melanie stood frowning at him, wondering if this was a new way to bring in new girls.

But the two women who got out did not look like prisoners; they were both dressed in light shirts, shorts, and sneakers. Ignoring the sense of oddness Melanie felt when she saw clothed women, she also noticed that one of them was very young, much younger than the prisoners virtually ever were. Not over fifteen at the most, Melanie guessed.

"Melanie," Harry said as the other Deer gathered around, "I think this is overdue. This is my wife, Rachel, and my daughter Eileen."

Rachel, a truly beautiful woman in her mid-thirties with long dancer's legs and short dark-brown hair, stepped forward quickly. "I am so happy to meet you, Melanie," she said. "I've heard so much about you from Harry, I feel I know you already." Speechless, Melanie took her hand. Rachel looked around at the others and smiled. "This isn't right," she said. "I look out of place here, and I don't think I should." With that, she quickly stripped off her shirt, shorts, shoes, and panties, and tossed them on the front seat of the truck. "I guess you know," she said as she came back to Melanie, "that I came within an inch of being in here too."

"Yes," Melanie said, smiling now. "Harry has told us the story, about how you were framed to blackmail him." She looked past Rachel at the young girl, who stood near Harry, looking uncertain. "And this is your daughter... my god, it's been forever since I've seen a child..."

"I'm fourteen," Eileen protested. "I'm not a child." She thrust out her chin defiantly. Then, after a quick glance at her father, she stripped herself naked as well. She had her father's dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair, and a plainly-visible promise of adult beauty to come. "See?" she said, throwing her arms out to the sides. "I'm no different from any of you!"

Melanie laughed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to insult you. This is just such an unusual thing, such a treat. We don't get many visitors around here!" She put her hand on her face and giggled. "I'm sorry. Where are my manners? Please, join us around the fire; we were just getting it started. Our food has been delivered already; we have plenty, they do feed us well in here! Would you please join us?"

Rachel smiled warmly. "We'd love to," she said. Walking across the ground rather tentatively--she wasn't used to going barefoot, Melanie was sure--she took a seat before the fire.

"It was nice of you to do this, too," Melanie said as Rachel and Eileen settled into their seats.

"Come here? No it was--"

"No," Melanie interrupted. "Though that's nice too. I meant, it was nice of you to take your clothes off. We're used to being around men who're dressed, but not women."

Rachel waved a hand dismissively. "It's the least we could do," she said. "In a way I'm sorry we came in here dressed, we probably shouldn't have. The other rangers have been staring enough, just because we decided to come here. I didn't want to give them anything else to stare at." The other girls, acknowledging Melanie's status as their leader, began preparing plates of food for her and for Harry and his family. For a while, the conversation was light, chatty.

"I don't know how you do it," Rachel said after a while. "How you... keep your humanity in here. I don't know if I could."

"Yes," Melanie said. "You could. You have to. Survival here depends on cooperation. When I first came here, things were a lot more disorganized than they are now. And we survive longer now."

Rachel shook her head. "I just wish there was something we could do for you..."

"Harry," Melanie assured her, "does a lot. You have to know that. Our situation here would be a lot worse than it is without him."

"I just do what I can," Harry said.

"You don't... hold it against him because he's had to kill some of you?" Rachel asked nervously.

Melanie shook her head. "No. Not a bit. We know the realities. He has to play the game just like we do." She touched Rachel's hand. "I was there," she said, "when he killed Jane. We all knew he had to do it; hell, it was her choice. If he hadn't she would've been hunted down and shot, and probably more of us would've been shot at the same time. He was as nice to her as he possibly could have been under the circumstances. She called all the shots, made all the choices. And she died quickly, without much pain."

"I'm glad to hear that," Rachel said, though Eileen was staring wide-eyed. "It tore him up, Melanie. Night after night afterwards he relived it. He cried like a baby over it."

"I wish," Harry said mildly, "you wouldn't tell things like that..."

Melanie looked over at him and felt her eyes grow wet. "I'm glad you did, Rachel," she said. "We all know what kind of man he is but he never shows much of any emotion here. I guess he can't... not and get the job done. It's a good thing to know..."

"We always say," Eileen put in, "that daddy's as much a prisoner here as any of the inmates..."

"And that's true," Melanie replied. "We know it is. But we don't call ourselves 'inmates' any more, Eileen. We felt that was demeaning to us... we call ourselves 'The Deer' now. We are deer, always hunted, surviving by our wits and skill."

"I've told them that," Harry said. He grinned, although to Melanie the grin looked rather stiff and artificial, not something she was used to seeing from him. "Eileen knows it very well. You'd never guess, Melanie, what she wants to do."

Melanie was grinning too. "No, what?"

"She wants to come here and spend a few days, running with you in the forest."

Melanie's smile vanished. For several long seconds, she didn't say anything. Then she turned her eyes on the young girl.

"No," she said firmly, "you do not. Eileen, the best of us get killed in here. The hunters, a lot of them anyway, are very good, very skilled. There were no more experienced women in here, no better ones, than my friends Jill and Sunni. And they're both dead, they've been dead for years. There's no way you could spend a day with us and be safe from the arrows." She looked back at Harry. "You weren't seriously considering this, were you?"

Harry shook his head. "As I've told Eileen, it's against the law--besides everything else. This isn't a theme park."

"Why would you want to do this, honey?" Melanie asked Eileen.

The girl's gaze was steady. "Daddy says," she began, "that practically all of you are innocent of the crimes you were convicted of. He says the government frames you so the Preserve can make money. That's not fair, it's not right."

"What does that have to do with you?"

"Why am I special? Why should I live a comfortable life up at the ranger station while you're being hunted every day?"

Melanie smiled at her tolerantly. "Believe it or not," she said, "I do understand that. But coming here, risking your life in the forest with us, isn't going to change anything and it sure isn't going to help us any, especially if something happens to you. If you want to help us, there's another, much better, way to do it. Go to school, study law. Help us change things. If somebody doesn't do that this stuff'll go on forever, things that make money usually do. Okay?"

Eileen argued a little, but Melanie pressed her point; in the end, Eileen was agreeing with her and becoming rather enthusiastic about following her suggestions. By then, Harry and Rachel were looking at her with something like awe.

A little later, while some of the other girls--Michelle, who'd become one of Melanie's closest friends here, and ex-gymnast Jackie--were showing Eileen around the village, Rachel brought the subject up again.

"Eileen's been fixated on this for years. Nothing we've said has changed her mind an iota. You seem to have made a dent, in just a few minutes. I'm amazed, Melanie. Amazed and more than grateful. We have been a little afraid that Eileen might try to sneak in here some day."

"That could really be a disaster."

"It could get her killed, easily," Harry noted. "Probably, in fact. The hunters cannot be expected to tell the difference between her and any other inm--uh, Deer, around here. And you know well how many losses we have in the first couple of days, even when we give the girl an advantage or two at the outset."

Melanie shrugged. "She's outraged at injustice. I was too at her age. Still am, as a matter of fact. As I told her, I understand."

"Maybe we've not been outraged enough," Rachel suggested. "Maybe we've been a little too complacent about all this, maybe we should be speaking out more..."

"I don't think so," Melanie argued. "I think that's a risk, anyway. I think it might put Harry in a position where he can't help us as much as he does, maybe not at all. Take my word for it, Rachel, that would be a disaster for us."

Rachel accepted this; the conversation turned to other topics, mostly about what sorts of things Harry and his family could do for them that wasn't being done already. Melanie, who didn't want to see Harry taking any more risks than he already did, had few suggestions. Later--much later--Harry and his family left, but this was to be only the first of quite a few visits they'd make to Melanie's village over the next several months.

They came often enough, in fact, that it was probably inevitable that, sooner or later, Rachel and Eileen would be exposed to some of the inevitabilities of life in the Preserve. Naturally, Harry kept them out on those nights when the hunters came in, although he once confided to Melanie that Eileen gave him no end of trouble about this, she badly wanted to see the dance performances, and had even told her parents that she'd be willing to participate in the subsequent orgy for that privilege; as she was still underaged and still sexually inexperienced--or at least, so Harry and Rachel believed--both of them had absolutely refused this.

One particular night, Melanie found herself wishing she'd had a way to contact Harry, to tell him not to bring his family in--although, she had to remind herself, his visits were impromptu and unannounced, she had no way of knowing they were coming that night. The women were tired, tired and depressed. There had been several hunting parties in the forest that day, and they'd been on the run from them all day long. They'd suffered no losses, but, during their flights, one of the women, a year-veteran named Marcie--a tall girl with short reddish-brown hair and striking green eyes--had twisted her ankle. Sure it was a mere sprain, Melanie and the others had helped her back to the village, and, as a matter of course, the doctor had been called.

But the doctor--always cold and distant to the women--had decided, after only a cursory examination, that the ankle was broken and that she'd have to be put out. Marcie had been shocked into silence; Melanie had vigorously argued her case, saying she needed only an Ace bandage and perhaps some painkillers to allow her to run tomorrow. The doctor was implacable. To make matters worse, the night ranger had acted doubtful when the doctor informed him that Marcie was to be put out, and so the doctor insisted she be sent on her way before he left. Reluctantly--the night rangers often delayed for most of the evening before putting a girl out when they felt she actually had a chance of survival--they obeyed.

And, inadvertently, they practically delivered her into the hands of a group of hunters who were lurking just outside the village walls. Up at the wall, Melanie ground her teeth as she watched them lead the helpless woman away.

She did not know, until later--when Harry told them--what had happened next. The hunter's camp, as it turned out, was right alongside the road. Harry and his family came along just in time to see the hunters sitting around in a half-circle masturbating while Marcie hung by her neck from a tree, her legs frantically bicycling, urine spraying on the ground, strangling slowly, her body brightly illuminated by several lanterns the men had focused on her.

Eileen demanded that they stop. Harry refused. The young girl, shocked and hysterical, had then taken both her parents by surprise; she threw open the truck's door and jumped out. As the truck was moving at a very slow speed, she wasn't hurt; she jumped up and started running, in the general direction of the hunter's camp.

Shouting and cursing, Harry stopped the truck. Given no choice in the matter, he was forced to leave Rachel behind while he started running after Eileen. At first he'd feared that she'd run right into the hunter's camp and try to stop the killing; even though she was then wearing shorts and a shirt, the hunters could not be faulted if they shot her down on sight.

He quickly discovered, however, that she hadn't done that. Apparently, she secreted herself somewhere in the forest to watch, or she'd simply run off, which didn't make sense to him. Assuming that she was somewhere within sight-line of the camp, he'd started making a circle around it, methodically searching through the brush and trees.

He didn't find Eileen. He also didn't notice that the hunters in the camp had become aware of the truck on the road. They'd let Marcie down short of her death; leaving her sitting on the ground, her hands still tied and the noose still around her neck, coughing and struggling to catch her breath, they'd gone to check out the truck.

And they'd found Rachel there.

She'd tried to explain that she wasn't an inmate. Naturally, they hadn't listened; they kept questioning her about where she'd gotten her clothing. Although she told them the truth she had no answer that would satisfy them, and, in the end, they came to the conclusion that she was an inmate being delivered to the village--who'd had the bad luck of being left, for reasons unknown, by the ranger bringing her in. They were of course not even aware that prisoners were never brought in at night. In any case, in their eyes that made her fair game. Under lethal threat from a drawn bow and exposed knives, she'd gotten out of the truck and had allowed herself to be taken to their camp. She was at that point sure Harry was nearby, and that this whole mess would be straightened out shortly.

She was wrong.

By that time, Harry had completed his circle around their campsite, and he'd determined, with reasonable certainty, that his daughter wasn't there--but he'd picked up what he thought might well be her trail, assuming that she'd run past the camp and then on into the deeper woods. Knowing that there was another camp of hunters out tonight, and not knowing exactly where they were--and knowing all too well that an encounter with them could cost Eileen her life--he raced on after her. And, about twenty minutes later, he found her--headed in the general direction of the village.

"No, I'm staying, Daddy," she told him. "I can't go back home while those women are being killed like that!"

"Honey, you have to," he told her. "If you stay, you'll probably be killed. Remember what Melanie told you? That's going to accomplish nothing."

"You can't know that... maybe if someone innocent is killed out here by accident, the politicians will outlaw this place. Maybe if--"

"They won't, Eileen. They'll say, 'sorry, but she shouldn't have been there.' That'll be the end of it."

"You can't know that," she repeated, backing away.

'Yes, I can. I want you to talk to Melanie about this again, honey. Come on now, your mother's waiting in the truck."

"No, I--"

"Eileen, I'll take you back by force if I have to." There was a hard edge in his voice. "You're at real risk out here, even with me."

She'd wilted then. That he could take her back by force if he wished she did not and could not doubt. More, she knew, from the tone of his voice, that he meant it.

"Yes, Daddy," she said meekly. Docile now, she allowed him to lead her through the dark forest, back to the waiting truck.

The empty truck.

When Harry saw that Rachel was gone, he stopped cold for a moment, just staring into the empty cab. Then he began cursing, low, under his breath. That she would have wandered off into the forest looking for them--or for any other reason--was, he knew, out of the question. And that could only mean one thing--the hunters had her. How long they'd had her he didn't know, but he'd left her forty minutes earlier. A long time, a very long time.

"Come on," he told Eileen. 'We're going to that camp." Eileen said nothing; taking out his handgun, he led her toward the camp at a run. Being right at the road and only a few hundred yards behind the truck, it wasn't far. They reached it in a matter of seconds--then stopped cold as they entered.

Marcie, still alive, was still sitting on the ground under the tree, the noose around her neck. In the middle of the camp, the men had laid out a large pad; on it was Rachel. She was naked, and she had one of the hunters between her legs, his cock deep inside her, while she busily sucked the cock of another. A third knelt nearby, playing with her breasts--running the point of a knife over them--and she was massaging his erection with her hand. She didn't see Harry and Eileen right away, and there couldn't be a question that she was fully involved in what she was doing. She was wriggling her hips actively against the man who was fucking her, and her face looked impassioned as she slipped the other's cock in and out of her mouth.

"Mom, what are you doing?" Eileen asked in a bewildered tone.

The hunters, all of them, lifted their heads. One, the only one not sexually involved with Rachel, reached for his bow. Harry waved his gun in the air. "Not," he said coldly, "a very good idea."

The man stopped. Rachel, pushing at the man behind her, disengaged herself. "What I'm doing, Eileen," she said as she got to her feet, "is stalling. Trying to stay alive until you two got here."

"Ranger?" one of the men asked. "What's going on here? We're within our rights to--"

"That woman is my wife," Harry said, his voice icy. "Not an inmate. Didn't she tell you that?"

The hunter paled. "Ah... uh... yes, well, yes, she did, she did... but we thought, you know, we thought..."

"I tried to tell them too, Harry," Marcie said tiredly. "They weren't listening."

"I think," Harry said, "I'm going to take you all in. The charge is rape."

"Rape!" one of the men cried. "But--!"

Rachel had by that time come to stand beside Harry and Eileen. "They didn't really rape me, Harry," she said. "I kinda volunteered. I kinda wanted to stay alive."

"I know," he said, under his breath and out of the side of his mouth. Then, to the men, and much more loudly: 'Yes, rape. This woman is not an inmate. I don't care about the circumstances. The way I see it, she was forced to have sex with you because of her fear that if she didn't, you'd kill her. That's rape."

"But ranger, we didn't know! How could we know?"

"She was dressed. She was in a truck. She was not restrained. That should have told you something." He waved the gun in their general direction. "That is a park service truck. It's clearly marked. You had no business even being near it."

"Ranger, please, it was an honest mistake..."

Harry stroked his chin. "I might consider letting it go," he told them, "if you'll agree to leave, first light. Forfeit your hunt."

The man looked over at Marcie. "But we have her... she's fair game, isn't she?"

"She is," Harry answered with a nod. "And I have no right to insist you give her up. But you keep her and we file charges. That's the bottom line."

The man waved at the bound girl. "No, that's okay, take her. We'll be out, first light."

"Fine." While Rachel retrieved her clothes and dressed, Harry went to Marcie and cut her loose.

"Thanks, Harry," Marcie whispered.

"Don't mention it," he whispered back. He supported her, allowing her to keep her injured ankle up.

"I can't go back to the village," she told him as they walked back toward Rachel and Eileen. "I was put out by the doctor."

"Then you'll sleep tonight in the back of the truck," he told her. "Is the ankle broken?"

"I'm pretty sure it's not. Just sprained. The doctor wouldn't believe it."

"The doctor," Harry said as they all now walked back toward the truck, "is an asshole. Besides that, he's under orders from the warden to put out as many women as possible. The hunters want night hunts, he says." He snorted. "The hunters want to hang around the village and pick up injured women who can't run, that's what they want. Lazy assholes." He turned to Eileen. "You go back there with her," he said. "There's a first-aid kit back there, under the bench on the right-hand side. You'll find stretch bandages and tape in there, help her tape her ankle up. There's also some single-injection phials of procaine there, use them if you need them. She has to be able to run tomorrow." He paused a moment. "Also, when we take the truck into the village, the night rangers do not need to know she's back there. We'll stay the night and let her out in the forest in the morning, but this is breaking rules--you understand?"

"Yes, Daddy," she replied. Her eyes were full of pride as she gazed at her father. But then, as quickly as it had appeared, her expression changed. "Daddy, are you and Mom--okay? I mean--"

Harry laid a hand on her shoulder. "If you mean, am I mad at your Mom because of what she was doing with those hunters--don't be ridiculous. You think I'd rather have come back and found her already dead? It was a real possibility, Eileen." Eileen nodded and turned away to help Marcie climb into the back of the truck. Harry and Rachel climbed into the front of the truck, he started it, and they moved on toward the village. Once there, they left Marcie secreted in the back of the truck while they told Melanie and the others about what had happened.

"It was really foolish of you to run off like that, Eileen," Melanie chastised. "You're just lucky nothing worse happened."

"I know," the girl said, hanging her head. "I know. It just--it wasn't easy to watch, the way they were hanging Marcie and--uh--masturbating while she was hanging..."

Melanie patted her knee. "Everyday business around here, honey. I'm just sorry you had to see it."

"No. I think it was good for me. Before, it was something I just imagined. Now I've seen it." She glanced at her mother. "Seen what they do before the killings, too. Now it's real."

"All too real for us in here," Melanie agreed. "All the time, every day."

"It's very strange," Rachel said as they sat talking, well after Eileen had fallen asleep. "I've never felt anything like that before, never. I was scared to death; I know Harry is good, but I also knew that if Eileen had just kept running, he would've kept tracking her--there was no way of knowing when he'd get back. Those hunters kept telling me how glad they were to have two of us, one they could hang and one they could kill with their knives; since Marcie already had the rope around her neck I'd been elected to get the knives." She paused, glanced at Harry, then shook her head. 'It's really hard for me to understand," she went on. "At first, all I was doing was playing for time. They sort of decided to go ahead and kill me right away, then get back to hanging Marcie. The sex was my suggestion, it was all I could think of at that moment, and at that moment one of them was holding my arms and another was getting ready to stick a knife in my belly. So the next thing I know I'm down on the ground, one of them between my legs and another in my mouth. And they were talking to me about what they were going to do to me, how they were going to stab me in the gut." She sighed. "I don't know. I'm... I don't know. After a while, one of them came--in my mouth." She looked at Harry again. "I hope this doesn't hurt your feelings or anything, but by that time I was... uh, really excited. I wish I could understand why. This wasn't a man I would have given a second glance even if you weren't around, Harry--not someone who was attractive to me at all. And yet there I was, excited as all hell, swallowing part of his come and smearing the rest of it on my face and at the same time wondering how it was going to feel when they stuck a knife in me."

Listening to this, Melanie found herself becoming increasingly uncomfortable. She studied Harry's face; to all appearances, he did not seem to be upset, he was merely listening. Still, she felt obligated to say something. "Uh, Rachel, I don't know if it's really a good idea to go into such graphic detail, okay?"

Rachel looked at her with innocent eyes. "I'm sorry, Melanie. Is it making you uncomfortable?"

Melanie laughed. "Me? Hardly! Don't forget who you're talking to here! More times than I care to count I've been fucking some hunter or sucking him off while he and his buddies were killing a friend of mine! I've entertained them right here, damn, I guess a hundred times, and they are incessantly talking about the great time they're gonna have killing me if they catch me the next day."

Rachel gazed at her steadily. "It's a real turn-on, isn't it?"

Melanie dropped her eyes. "Well, yeah. Sometimes. Okay, yeah, it can be. It can be one hell of a turn-on. All of us here, those who've been here a while, know about that." She jabbed a finger in the air at Rachel. "But it's the idea of it, the fantasy, that's the turn-on. I've seen a lot of girls die here, and not very many of them found the reality much of a turn-on."

"No, I don't expect they would," Rachel agreed. "And believe me, I'm glad I'm still alive." She peered at Melanie keenly. "You said, 'not many of them found the reality a turn-on.' I take that to mean there were a few who did."

Unsure of where this was going, Melanie hesitated. She glanced at Harry; his dark face was, as usual, impassive, unrevealing. She felt he knew the answer to this question as well as she did. She shrugged. "In my opinion," she said carefully, "there were some, yes. Nadine is a good example. You already know Nadine's story, Harry; she decided she couldn't stand being here any longer and she gave herself up to the hunters to be killed. I witnessed the whole thing; she asked me to. If it wasn't a turn-on for her she put on a hell of an act. I've seen others too, that hadn't made any such decision but were either taken by the hunters or were the volunteers in situations where one has to die to save the rest--those situations aren't rare in here. We can't ask any of them, of course--they're all dead. All I can do is tell you what I saw."

"I thought so," Rachel said with a nod. "I didn't understand that fully until tonight; I didn't understand why there weren't more rogues than there are, and why there weren't suicides in here. Now I think I do."

"Yes," Melanie agreed. "The girls that have gone rogue--the ones I've seen anyway--usually they were reacting to someone who made it clear that they had no respect for the women at all, or actually hate them. There are far fewer of those that I thought there'd be. It's weird, isn't it?"

"Maybe. And maybe there were reasons Eileen wanted to spend time being hunted besides solidarity with the women here. I'm sure that played into it too, but there might be another reason as well."

"I can see what you mean..." Melanie offered. "But I'm not sure that--"

"Probably she's not fully aware of it. All I know is, I'd bet you could design a place like this and stock it with all volunteers. The time would have to be a lot less than ten years and the pay would have to be high, but you'd get volunteers. I'm sure of it." She looked up at the night sky briefly. "I'm a wife and a mother," she went on. "And so I wouldn't even consider it for me, because there are people who depend on me. But I'm also the kind of girl who likes white-water rafting and rollercoasters and things like that. If I were independent, and the place was like that... I don't know. I do know I'd think about it."

Melanie started to snap at her, to tell her she had no concept of the harsh realities of life in the Preserve day after day. But, before she could speak, a whole series of images and feelings passed through her mind. The thrill of knowing the hunters were on your trail, and that success for them meant death for you. The satisfaction of having eluded a group of skilled hunters, even if you did know you might have to do it again tomorrow. The way Jill had died, and Cindy, and Nadine... the painful but in some way exhilarating anxiety of being in the camp with the hunters while they were killing Cindy, not knowing them but knowing that your life hinged solely on them keeping their word.

The annoyance she felt faded away and disappeared. She started to speak again, to assure Rachel that there was no way in hell she'd volunteer for such a thing, even if the time span was a week and the possible payoff huge.

She couldn't quite make those words come out, either.