GON Subscriber Exclusives

Dry leaves, the cold, dead husks of another summer, were twirling down in sheets over the swamp, blanketing the dry ground, dotting the surface of the black creek water, piling up against limbs that hung in the current. Sweet gum leaves cracked under the hooves of the Cemetery Buck as it plodded slowly beside a…

Darkness was beginning to lift when the deer that Jay called the Bay Buck came creeping through a list mist to the sheltered side of the Hornets Nest. The buck made no noise except for the droplet-sounds of icy water falling from its hoofs. It passed through the flooded tupelo and black gum on the…

When the Cemetery Buck finished rubbing the oak, the tree was already dying. The straight, slender trunk of the turkey oak sapling had drawn the buck across a hundred yards of wiregrass prairie. It stood among other young trees and sapling stalks, but something about the one tree pulled at an instinctive cord, and the…

The Cemetery Buck drifted through the early morning September fog like a specter. It walked in smooth, silent strides and seemed to float over the dim trail without touching the earth. On its flanks and throat were the scabbed-over wounds left by the wild dogs more than a month ago, but otherwise its thickening coat…