He plunged down the hill and across a short stretch of level ground until he reached the edge of the area that Jake had cleared. This was going to become a very dangerous place in a few seconds. It might already be. He dropped to his belly and crawled several meters to a spot where he could take shelter behind a recently felled tree, not yet cut up for firewood. Its trunk was too skinny to hide him or to stop bullets, but its innumerable small dead branches, spraying out in all directions, created a visual screen. He crawled down the length of it, getting a bit closer to the cabin, then raised his head cautiously and, when this failed to draw fire, spent a few moments looking into the cabin’s windows. He saw no smashed-out panes, no faces peeking round the edges of window frames—no signs, in other words, that it had yet been occupied. He could still make out two identifiable groups of gunmen moving around the property, converging generally on the cabin—but not there yet.