As she headed for the woods on the morning of the first practice hunt wearing only a deerskin halter, a small backpack, comfortable running shoes, and a Bowie knife strapped to her leg, Rachel remembered the words of one of her visitors while she was in the lodge's infirmary recovering from her gunshot wound.

The visitor had been a man named Dave. He told Rachel that he was glad she had survived the hunt. He said he had been chatting with Amanda in the lodge's lounge just before the hunt and had felt inspired to wish Rachel good luck after Amanda left.

According to Dave, Amanda had said something that morning about not "lusting after results," which he interpreted as meaning, "keep your mind on the hunt and not what will follow."

Rachel considered that Amanda had given her some important advice via Dave.

If she allowed herself to dwell for any length of time over the difficulty she would have either killing Amanda or avoiding doing so after the hunt, then she made it less likely that there would be an "after the hunt" for her. Traverse that viaduct upon arrival.

The minimal outfit she was wearing did bring back the feeling of vulnerability she had experienced on her prior hunt. Rachel hoped that the male hunters she was matched against would not misinterpret her near-nakedness. Because these hunts were only practice, Rachel felt she could use the reminder of her role as prey that the outfit represented. Besides, it felt good to feel the wind and sun on places they seldom reached.

When Rachel had spoken about finding ways to work with the environment to protect herself, she really had no practical idea what she meant by that, but it had sounded good. Well, she told herself, she had eight days of practice hunts to put some meaning behind that phrase that sounded like eco-babble.

Her first thought was to examine the caves that were to be found in the northern part of the hunting ground. On her first hunt, she had dismissed those as being a good way to get herself trapped, but now that she had plenty of time to explore them, she figured she might as well do so.

Perhaps if she could find a cave with an opening or passage that might be just the right size for her to crawl through but too small for her broader-shouldered pursuer, she might be secure. Of course, it would be possible for Amanda to block the entrance to the cave, even interfere with her air supply by building a fire. She didn't think Amanda would kill her if her body wouldn't be retrievable, however. Of course, if Amanda became stuck in a very narrow passageway, that would have unpleasant consequences for both of them. Would somebody come to rescue them or would they both die of suffocation or thirst? Would Rachel have to cut her way out of the cave? A grim thought that Rachel didn't want to dwell on.

Rachel's mind was full of grim thoughts she didn't want to dwell on.

Get your mind on the task at hand, she told herself. You're here to learn, not to ruminate.

Rachel calculated that it would take about an hour and a half to reach the caves, following her map and traveling in a meandering line. When she had covered about half the distance, she realized that she was very close to a special place and she decided to stop and look at it.

This was the small clearing where Amanda had planned to kill her.

Rachel touched the branch where she had hung by her ankles, waiting to be slaughtered. She ran her foot over the ground that, at one time, had been soaked with her blood. All nice and green and grassy now. The earth had absorbed her blood and the earth nourished the tree from which she had dangled. Part of her was now probably part of the tree, just as almost all of her would have become a part of Amanda.

It seemed that the energy of that night still remained strong in this place.

There was no evidence that anybody else had built a fire in the same place where Amanda had planned to cook Rachel's filet and part of her rump. Rachel felt oddly pleased to think that apparently no one else had used "their place" for a similar purpose

Something new had been added to the site: a large orange plastic container of water set upon a three-legged stand. These were to be found all over the hunting grounds. The previous year, some runners had taken ill after drinking the water from the brook that flowed through the grounds. Rachel had been told that the water had tested safe to drink for over eight months, but the lodge was maintaining the plastic containers just as a precaution. Rachel helped herself to a drink.

Amanda had not wanted to kill Rachel too near any structure, so the cabin where they had made love was some distance away. As long as I'm being sentimental, Rachel decided, I might as well visit that, too.

Whereas the clearing had almost seemed to throb with energies of the past, the cabin seemed comfortable, warm. When Rachel sat down on the bed on which she and Amanda had first made love she felt relaxed, pleasant. She looked at the spot on the floor where Amanda had casually dropped her knife as they stripped themselves of their clothing. When Rachel had asked how Amanda planned to kill her, Amanda had merely looked at the knife. Amanda had intended the kill to be an efficient, business-like, relatively painless throat-slitting. It was Rachel who had asked that she be gutted because she wanted to know what it felt like. Rachel had puzzled many times over why she had made the request that had prompted Amanda to say, "You're weird. I like that in a woman." Why did that memory give her such a nice tingle?

Rachel had suggested to Steve, and he had agreed, that, because their hunt was not for blood or even a lesser stake, they might as well not wear themselves out. At four o'clock, wherever they were, they would take a half-hour break. Tea time. In addition to allowing for rest and refreshment, she would be able to quietly evaluate what she had learned thus far. In her backpack, she had a small snack that she planned to enjoy during the break. Rather than carry it around with her all day, she decided to leave it in the cabin. She should be able to plan her day so that she could return at four.

Well, on to the spelunking adventure.

The caves were not all that she might have hoped for. Set in the side of a small cliff, they were few in number and most were so shallow that their whole interior could be seen from the entrance. The deeper caves tended to be narrow and low-ceilinged, some of them so much so that Rachel could not turn around once inside. Although a cul de sac could be a trap, Rachel would see Amanda before Amanda saw her. This would be an advantage.

One cave did have two entrances. Now, this one had real possibilities. There would be no way for Amanda to enter so quietly that Rachel could not hear her coming. For a considerable distance from the midpoint of this cave, it was pitch black and the passage was narrow and low. A smaller person could move through this more quickly than a large person, and this advantage could be improved upon by memorizing the turns and the places where the ceiling was particularly low. Once she emerged from the cave, Rachel could wait for Amanda, rock in hand, ready to bring it down on Amanda's head. Not a perfect plan, by any means, for there was nothing to prevent Amanda from retreating, exiting from the other opening, and attacking Rachel when she emerged.

If there were two such caves, Rachel visualized a nice game of in and out the windows, a subterranean chase in which her smaller size could be an advantage.

Rachel had promised not to build anything permanent, but would digging a second entrance to a cave be building something? Interesting point for debate. Rachel picked a likely cave for extension and began to chip away with her knife. However, after fifteen minutes of digging, Rachel saw that she could spend her entire eight days of practice in this excavation process and not achieve her objective. Oh, well.

The cave that seemed to offer the most advantages was about sixteen feet deep with a bend at the end of it, and it averaged about four feet in height and width. Its entrance faced the east, so for most of the day, direct sunlight did not enter it. The bend would allow someone to conceal herself and avoid being struck by an arrow fired from the entrance. In a space like this, a person Rachel's size might be able to defend herself using a spear against a larger assailant.

Rachel went to the back of the cave, but did not hide around the bend. She sat down and faced the entrance. She would be able to see out very well and Amanda would have difficulty seeing in. A fire could be built in the entrance that, if large enough, might consume all of the oxygen inside, leaving her in a very tough spot. However, Amanda would have to gather firewood and, at this time of year, she would have to be foraging a long time, allowing Rachel plenty of opportunity to escape. Or alternatively, since one load of wood would not be enough for a serious fire, Rachel could disperse each load while Amanda went back for another.

Remaining stationary and staring out the entrance of the cave for most of a day would require endurance, so Rachel decided to test hers. After an hour, she was restless. During the second hour, she began doing push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, and isometric exercises to pass the time. After three hours and twenty minutes, she decided she could make it back to the cabin by four o'clock. She had been spent so much time staring out the cave opening that she was sure its outline was indelibly impressed on her mind, if not her retinas.

Sitting in the doorway of the cabin munching her snack consisting of a chocolate bar, an apple, and some carrots, Rachel decided that, yes, the cave might work. She would carve a short spear and a long spear and see which one handled more easily in the confined space.

As she did not feel like finishing all of her carrots, Rachel decided to leave them on the ground by the cabin for whatever creatures might have an appetite for them. Might as well be on good terms with the locals.

Her knife was very useful for carving points on the three- and six-foot shafts that she cut from saplings. Back in the cave she found that she could maneuver the two weapons fairly easily, although she had carried the longer one in point first and it was not possible to turn it around without going back to the entrance of the cave.

She would have the advantage of being able to see Amanda's outline better than Amanda could see her. Wait for Amanda to fire all of her arrows if she chose to, then be ready to defend herself with the spears. The spears might, in fact, come as a surprise to Amanda, although it was doubtful. Amanda, of course, could easily make her own spear.

Would it come down to a matter of who had the longest, thickest, sturdiest spear?

Somehow, it seemed ironic that a contest between two women should depend on such a consideration. Things like that were for the boy's club.

The tight space would neutralize Amanda's advantages to some degree. An attack could come only from one direction. The narrowness of the cave would not allow for lateral strikes, somewhat diminishing the usefulness of Amanda's longer reach. As far as a frontal attack, the lengths of the spears would probably more important than that of the arms. Height would count for nothing, as neither of them would be able to stand. Strength? That would be major factor if either one of them got a hold on the other's spear, an impossible thing for Rachel to do, if she tried using two spears simultaneously.

In any event, a fight with spears in this space would have to be a fight to the death, unless one of them surrendered. Rachel couldn't get past Amanda without killing her and, once inside, Amanda was not likely to leave without taking Rachel with her.

Waiting inside the cave was not fun. It would be even less fun if she had to remain constantly alert, which Rachel did not feel she needed to do for a practice hunt. She and Steve had agreed to make an early day of it and meet back at the lodge at nine for dinner and for a review of her performance, assuming, of course, that he did not catch her. By seven-thirty, Rachel was more than ready to leave. She decided to leave the spears behind. If someone else found them, she could make some more.

Well, she thought as she crawled into the fresh air began to make her way down the steep slope, as a back-up plan or a last resort, the cave was not a bad idea. It would be a crappy way to spend what could easily be the last day of her life, if neither woman canceled the hunt. If nothing better turned up, Rachel would be tempted to do just that. The cave was not a place where she would want to die.

Also, somehow, it seemed to Rachel, she and Amanda did not belong in the darkness. Whatever would happen between them should take place in the sunshine or, at the very least, by firelight.

One good thing, though, at least Steve didn't find me, Rachel thought.

"Hi, there, I've been waiting for you. If you hadn't come out soon, I would have shouted out your name. Didn't want to scramble uphill needlessly."

"Shit!" Rachel turned to see Steve step out from behind a tree. "How did you find me?"

On the way back to the lodge, Steve explained that he had seen a few clear footprints and some broken twigs, all of which seemed to lead in the same general direction. Mostly, though, he had used reasoning after finding a pair of freshly cut saplings and some shavings indicating that they had probably been made into spears. Now, why would a runner make spears in a hunt that wasn't for blood? Well, to practice handling them, of course. Why do that on the hunting grounds on one of eight valuable days when one could go to a public park and practice at leisure? Most likely because one wanted to practice under special conditions. And where on the hunting grounds did conditions exist that couldn't be found in almost any park? The caves, which would be a likely place for a runner to go.

"Of course, when Amanda hunts you for real, there won't be anything odd about you making a spear," Steve assured her. "However, if you plan to see Amanda in the next week or so, you had best wear slacks or a long skirt. Looking at the scratches on your knees, well, a person doesn't have to be the man with two brains to figure out that you've been crawling around. And about the only place where you would need to do that is in the caves. It's a dead giveaway."

"Emphasis on 'dead,'" Rachel said with an attempt at a smile.

Rachel did use her dinner conversation with Steve to ask him about this woman named Vicky who he thought she might be a replacement for. Not that Rachel was given to jealousy, but she did suspect that Vicki had been a former lover. Rachel had heard the story before, though no names were mentioned. While Steve's answer didn't tell Rachel anything about Amanda's relationship history, it did give her a name for the hostile figure who appeared in her dreams.

Before they parted company, Steve wished Rachel good luck in her hunt with Amanda. He even hoped that she would achieve more than she planned on.

"I know that you only need to keep Amanda from catching you," Steve said, "but I really think it would be nice if you could actually somehow capture Amanda. That would be really something. If you managed to bring her in, just imagine the applause you'd get. Like they say in show business, you would be 'bringing down the house.'"

Rachel laughed and said, "Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but really, I want to keep my ambitions within the realm of possibility. Trying to capture Amanda would be a little bit wild and crazy, guy."

On her second practice hunt, Rachel investigated the possibility of taking the hunt to a higher level, so to speak.

If she were perched on a tree limb, Rachel would be able to command a good view and it would be almost impossible for Amanda to sneak up on her. While she would be a tempting target, Rachel felt that a shot through the limbs of a tree could be difficult. If it was windy, moving branches would be even harder to shoot through. This wouldn't make Amanda's bow and arrow completely useless, but it would have to help.

Of course, Amanda could easily go arboreal herself, but Rachel felt she might have an advantage in a pursuit through the treetops. Her lighter weight might give her more options for movement, in that she could choose less sturdy limbs than Amanda would need. On the other hand, Amanda had a longer reach, so things might balance out.

Rachel figured that it was worthwhile to spend some time climbing around in the trees. If nothing else, she could temporarily leave the ground, causing Amanda to wonder where the trail went.

Five and a half hours of playing Tarzanna, Rachel came back down to earth for her snack.

Again sitting in the doorway of the cabin, munching her carrots and chocolate, she evaluated her adventure among the branches.

Risky business, tree climbing. It would be even riskier when pursued by a mad woman.

Expecting tree branches to protect her from arrows, even if the branches were moving about in the breeze was leaving a lot to chance. If she could control the movements of the branches, things would be different, but psycho-kinetic powers were not among Rachel's gifts.

She did like the idea traveling through the branches for short distances to make her trail harder to follow. She had found a few places where she could easily grab a branch, hoist herself up, and travel twenty to fifty feet in any of several directions without touching ground. This could be very confusing for Amanda.

Rachel decided that after her teatime break, she would return to the tree limbs and search for Martin, her opponent in that day's hunt. One of her "triumphs" in her first hunt with Amanda had been that she was able to stalk the huntress undetected quite some time. She wanted to see if it was easier to duplicate this feat from above ground level. She might even improve on the length of time she could sustain her spying. Of course, Martin wasn't Amanda - nobody was.

Leaving a few carrots behind, Rachel left the cabin and returned to the trees.

Locating Martin was not too difficult, but it didn't happen in a hurry. Rachel went to areas of the woods where she believed she had left the easiest-to-follow trail. She found Martin at about six o'clock and was able to follow him for twenty minutes before he seemed to become aware that he was being watched. He kept looking behind him, but he did not look up.

Moving through the tree limbs was, of course, slower going than moving on the ground but Martin was having difficulty following the trail, so Rachel was able to keep up with him for over an hour. However, eventually she lost her footing and nearly fell to the ground. The resulting noise caused Martin to turn around, look up, and be greeted by the sight of Rachel's bare arse as she dangled from a tree limb trying to decide whether to drop to the ground or to pull herself back up onto the limb.

"Now, that's what I think they call in the States a full moon!" Martin laughed. "Don't be scared stiff. I'll be right there."

Martin rushed to Rachel's rescue. Fortunately, her feet were right at his shoulder height. He positioned himself beneath her, reached up and steadied her legs as she let go of the branch and slowly lowered herself until she was in a piggy-back position. Then Martin knelt down and allowed Rachel to dismount.

"Thank you," Rachel said. "People have seen me in some awkward situations before and some came running to my rescue, and I'm always grateful."

"Well, I'd like to say that rescuing damsels in distress is all in a night's work for me, but it doesn't come up that often."

Rachel laughed. "I don't know if that little balancing act we just did would be good enough for a three ring circus, but I'm sure some would find it entertaining. Now, tell me: I know you suspected that I was behind you, but did it occur to you that I might be up in the tree limbs?"

"Oh, I had a feeling someone was watching me, but, no, it wasn't until I heard that rustling and looked up and that moon hit my eye like big pizza pie that I had any idea where you were."

"Before you got the feeling that I was watching you, did you think you were close to finding me?" Rachel wanted to know.

"Oh, everybody finds somebody sometime," Martin said philosophically, "but it isn't until I actually lay my hands on my quarry that I feel my sometime is now."

Like Steve, Martin seemed to be a cut above the stereotype of girl hunters both in ability and manners. She also found Martin devastatingly handsome and she felt it was a pity that she had to be so businesslike in her approach to these practice hunts. Well, if she came up with a workable plan to defeat Amanda, then she could think about getting sociable with some of the hunters. Until then, she wanted to confine her conversation with her opponents to matters that might bear on her survival. Fortunately, over dinner in the lounge of the lodge, Martin was happy to answer all of Rachel's questions.

Did hunters often pick off quarry who were nestled among the branches?

Well, yes and no. The only successes he had heard about had occurred on the periphery of the woods. Of course, not every hunter bragged about his or her successes.

Did Amanda brag about her successes?

No, not at all. If anything, she was more likely to talk about her difficult hunts.

Had he come across many clues as to her whereabouts?

Oh, a couple of footprints when he first went into the woods. Not much after that, though. He had thought he detected her scent a few times, and maybe he did. In retrospect, he had noticed a low-hanging branch with a few broken twigs, but only now was he able to attach meaning to them.

Some part of Rachel was burning to know if Martin hunted women for real, but refrained from asking. She didn't want to ruin her dinner with this charming man with thoughts that he might be another figure in the "murderer's row" that women-hunters were generally considered to be,

On her drive home, thinking back on the impression that Martin had made on her, Rachel decided that if woman-hunting and eating existed only in fantasy, a lot of women might imagine themselves being caught by a hunter like Martin and say to themselves "What a way to go!"

It's a pity, Rachel thought, that she couldn't afford the luxury of treating being hunted with such lightness.

On her third practice hunt, Rachel concentrated on things that could be useful to her in a ground pursuit.

She sought out parts of the woods where the trees were particularly dense, places where she could be a few yards from Amanda and not be seen, places where she could disappear in an instant. Not as many of those to be found as she would have liked.

She practiced running at high speed, dodging around trees, making sharp turns. In some places, the growth was so thick that she had to slow down to avoid running smack into an oak or yew. Dodging too quickly around one tree could bring her face to bark with another. It would be handy, Rachel thought, if I could operate by something like radar, rather like a bat. She recalled that she had once seen a slow motion film of a bat flying through the moving blades of a fan. That, Rachel said to herself, is an effective guidance system.

She did come upon one phenomenon that might be very useful in tight chase.

It was a long depression in the earth, maybe twelve feet wide and about four feet deep at the middle. Probably it had been a stream bed at one time. It might still get muddy in a rainstorm.

The depression was too wide for her to jump and the same might be true for Amanda. The walls of the formation were just steep enough that going down one side and up the other would slow a person down. Probably that would be more of a disadvantage to Rachel than to Amanda.

However, Rachel saw a possibility of making this into a bit of a trap.

A log just over twelve feet long lay beside the edge of the depression and, with a little effort, Rachel could turn it so that it stuck out to just a bit over halfway across the gap. Rachel could easily jump the remaining distance - well, maybe not easily, but with the inspiration of Amanda chasing her it should be no problem.

The log was partly rotted out and was not as heavy as it looked. When Rachel walked out to the end of the log, she found that the other end almost tipped up like a see-saw. Now, if she weighed another three stone, then she would definitely upend the log or at least cause it to dip down, dumping her into the depression. Rachel estimated that Amanda outweighed her by at least forty pounds.

So, if Amanda were in hot pursuit, Rachel could run out onto the log, jump to the other side of the former stream and, if Amanda tried to follow her example, well, Amanda would find herself being introduced to the ground rather suddenly. If the log toppled onto her, it wouldn't be fatal, but could be a nuisance.

This most likely would only buy Rachel from a few seconds to a minute or two of advantage, but, under the right conditions, that could save her life.

Rachel moved the log back to its former position, having used her knife to make notch in the log at mid-point. After practicing four times, she knew that it would take less than a minute to reset the trap on the morning of the hunt.

When she stopped for her teatime break, she realized that she had not seen or heard anything of Lewis, her hunter for the day.

Because she had noticed that her left-over carrots disappeared by the time she passed the cabin on her way back to the lodge, on her third hunt, Rachel brought some extra food along specifically to leave it for whatever hungry creature might come by. She enjoyed imagining a rabbit's delight at finding this small bonanza.

After her break, Rachel went back to practicing running the highest speed possible in the woods, dodging trees and leaping over logs. She found that after ten minutes or so, the kaleidoscopic effect of trees rapidly entering and disappearing from her field of vision had a dizzying, disorienting effect on her. Perhaps she could find a particularly effective route that she could run over and over again until the required twists and turns became as familiar to her as the steps in a long and complex dance routine. She might be able to get the moves down so well that she could run the course without thinking about it. This might eliminate any advantage Amanda's longer legs and greater speed would give her.

In fact, Amanda's larger size could work against her. Simple physics: a body in motion tends to remain in motion. A larger mass requires more effort to bring it to a stop or to change the direction of its movement. If Amanda didn't deliberately slow herself down, her momentum might cause her to crash into a tree. It should be possible for Rachel to plan a route such that stationary objects would appear too quickly to avoid them if one wasn't expecting them.

As Rachel was about to find out for herself.

"LADY! Look out, lady!"

Lewis's warning did not did not come in time to stop Rachel from crashing into him.

He had been waiting for her, but he was nearly knocked down by the impact. He was also startled to suddenly find a beautiful woman in his arms.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Lewis said, quickly releasing Rachel and stepping back. While his eyes drank in her beauty, he did not leer.

Rachel laughed. "This is one more time that I've found myself in an amusing and embarrassing situation with one of my opponents. This is slapstick of a different kind."

"Yes, and it appears that I'm the stooge," Lewis said. "What happened with the other hunters?"

"Well, the last one had to help me out of a tree. And, no, I wasn't playing rock-a-bye baby in the tree top."

"Oh, who was that, lady?" Lewis asked as they began moving back to the lodge.

"Well, the king of comedy in that case was a chap named Martin."

"Oh, him. I understand he's quite the ladies' man. At least, that's what my friend Erma says."

Rachel was finding that hunters could be rather decent people. Steve had patiently waited while Rachel continued her cave experience, and both Martin and Lewis had been respectful of Rachel's femininity, declining to take advantage of an awkward position. All three hunters also willingly gave her a helpful critique.

"So," Rachel wanted to know, "how did you come to be waiting for me? Was it hard work?"

"Oh, no. Once I saw what was going on, it was more like hardly working." Lewis went on to explain.

Running recklessly, Rachel had left an easy to distinguish trail, but not an easy one to follow in the sense of being able to keep up with her. If Lewis were to have tried to have matched Rachel's speed, he would have been in danger of losing the trail and having to backtrack. Whereas a runner has nothing lose by moving as fast as safely possible, a tracker needs to move more slowly, especially when a trail has many twists and turns.

After following Rachel for a few hours, it became clear to Lewis that she was doing nothing to obscure her trail, but rather running as though someone were in pursuit. Taking note of where she chose to run, he could tell that she was practicing maneuvers in dense growth. Realizing that he had no practical chance to catch her if that was her game, he decided to determine where she was most likely to go. Where was the densest tree growth in the hunting grounds and what seemed to be her pattern? Lewis had been waiting for her in that spot since about three o'clock.

Rachel apologized for having spoiled the day for Lewis. He had been looking forward to some tracking practice and she had managed to make it both too easy and too difficult for him at the same time.

No need for apologies, Lewis assured her. He could have had more practice if he wanted it. Reasoning and thoughtfulness were as important as sharp eyes and keen ears to a hunter. Besides, it was a pleasant day, and the notion that a lovely creature was rushing to meet him, even if she didn't know it, was a pleasant thought.

After a nice dinner at the lodge, driving herself back home, Rachel considered the fact that, so far, she had not managed to elude one hunter. True, she had found Martin, but that didn't mean he would not have found her soon enough.

Of course, she had been doing very special things, performing experiments, not concentrating on being elusive. All of three hunters had used reason as much as skill in their search for her. Amanda had given good advice regarding the challenges she should accept. Not only were Steve, Martin, and Lewis competent hunters, but also they behaved like gentlemen. Meeting outside the lodge, she never would have thought of them as men who would kill her and eat her, given the opportunity.

In selecting her next opponent, Rachel had stepped outside Amanda's advice in accepting the challenge. This would be a very good time, Rachel figured, to start working on avoiding contact. Her next opponent, she knew, would be no gentleman.