Lonely, Dark and Deep

When Johnston returned, he saw his friend with the man he had given fish to earlier. Soon enough, everyone was chatting amiably.

There was a gentle breeze, like feathers swirling.

"Ricky" seemed in no rush to get to his own campsite. Johnston soon was tossing some trout in a skillet and heating up some beans. He invited the stranger to stay for dinner.

"I even grilled an extra trout for the dog," Johnston says.

Scott and Sean asked "Ricky" if he was often kidded about having the same name as the professional football player Ricky Williams. He scoffed and said he didn't even like Ricky Williams.

Then "Ricky" -- or "Lyin' Randall," as the neighborhood kids dubbed him when he was growing up -- began spooling out a fanciful biography. He said he had attended Virginia Tech and written papers for NASA.

Neither Farmer nor Johnston believed the stories. They actually pitied the stranger before them. "My intuition was the guy was an alcoholic who had been kicked out of his home," Johnston says.

Three hours had passed, and dusk was turning to darkness. Both Farmer and Johnston wondered why the man was not leaving: If he fell in the dark walking to his own campsite, he could easily be injured.

Just as darkness fully descended on this remote mountain like a dark blanket over the eyes, the stranger got up.

"Come on, boy," he said to the dog.

As casually as someone fetching a piece of wood for the fire, he strolled behind Farmer and to his left. Then he put his hand into a pocket of his camouflage coat pocket and pulled out the .22.

"I saw fire coming from his hand," Farmer says.