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would love the wilderness, he had said he wouldn’t, and he resisted admitting that they’d been right. But before long it was much more than that. Before long it had become the kind of private treasure you don’t risk by exposing it to the appraisal of others. Particularly not if the others in question happen to have made a career of investigating other people’s value systems in the cold light of logic. There was nothing logical about the way James felt about the deer in the valley—and he didn’t want there to be.
    “James! You’re getting to be as bad as your father.” Apparently he’d been daydreaming again and missed something his mother had been saying to him. But now the frustrated shrillness of her voice had gotten through not only to him, but to his father as well.
    Looking up from the notebook he’d been scribbling in all through breakfast, William smiled at James. “What’s this? What have you been up to to merit such a harsh accusation?”
    “Not listening.” James grinned. “I stand accused of the heinous sin of not listening.”
    “Shocking,” William said sternly. “Capital offense. Off with his head.”
    Charlotte smiled, and then sighed with exasperation, at both of them or at herself for smiling at them. “What I’ve been saying was—we’re out of bread and milk again, and I wondered if you’d mind going over to the Commissary for me before you take off for the hills.”
    For just a moment he felt disappointed—he’d been thinking of taking a lunch and spending the whole day in the valley of the stag; but then suddenly the disappointment faded. Another image had appeared in his mind, taking the place of the noble beast. A hot pink and golden tan image. “Sure,” he said. “I’d be glad to.”
    The west gate of The Camp was a small pedestrian-sized opening, on the opposite side of the enclosure from the main entrance. It was used mostly by Campers on their way into the mountains to hike or ski—and by Willowbyites on their way to and from the Commissary. There was no gatehouse or guard, but there was a very heavy duty gate. Admission was by remote control. You opened the call box, held down a button, and talked to the guard at the main gate.
    “Main gate, Sergeant Smithers speaking. Who goes there?”
    James suppressed a laugh. Smithers was the chubby bald guard with the pot belly and slightly embarrassed manner. Embarrassed, no doubt, by having to call himself sergeant when the only army he’d ever been in was probably old T.J.’s, and by having to say corny things like, “Who goes there?”
    As far as James had been able to determine, Major T. J. Mitchell’s private army consisted of himself; Lieutenant Carnaby, his fat-legged secretary; old Sergeant Smithers; and the two other gate guards who only got to play they were privates. And then of course, the troops —the Camp residents, more than one hundred members of the affluent society ranging in age from doddering to toddling, who seemed, in T.J.’s fantasy, to play the role of a kind of reserve army, but who would be about as effective militarily as a pack of pomeranians, with the possible exception, on second thought, of the little golf ball hit-man.
    “James Fielding,” he said into the speaker, trying to keep the giggle out of his voice. “Pass number one, eight, five, four, six.” The badge number was a case in point—as if The Camp had issued more than eighteen thousand passes. Eight would probably be more like it.
    “Okay Fielding. Enter!” Smithers said, and a buzzer sounded, indicating that the gate was unlatched.
    Recalling the two-year-old torpedo brought back images—most of which concerned his sister—and the fact that, as far as James was concerned, the main purpose of this expedition was more than the purchase of bread and milk. Man does not live by bread and milk alone. The main purpose was, of course—A. Diane Jarrett. And—B. The Don Juan Project.
    The Don Juan Project had begun, or at least