We had meant to leave town the following day, but late in the night a deep snow came down and covered the trails in deep drifts, then the next day a heavy storm blew in that brought high winds and more driving snow. The trails were covered in drifts as deep as three or four feet, with the gullies and valleys being as deep as ten feet in some places. The walls of the town and the tightly packed buildings sheltered us from the worst of the wind and the cabins were well built and made warm by the good stoves that we had. There were two storehouses full of wood that had been cut in calmer weather, so we didn't want for fuel. Our horses were sheltered in the stable and our goods were safely stored, so in the warmth and safety of the cabins we waited out the storm.

I spent most of my time in the old barracks, now called the Brahmin Pen by the man who had turned it into the bar. The food was good and the bartender made the whiskey and beer himself. The stuff was good, although not quite as good as the Moonshine we made back home, and it went a long way toward holding off the cold outside. The thermometer outside the door was usually covered in snow and ice, but when I could see it the mercury was usually somewhere in the neighborhood of -12 degrees.

Boone was there most of the time and we often sat and talked over a beer or the strong drink that he seemed to prefer, something that he called coffee. I'd never had it before and at first I didn't like the strong, bitter taste, but it was warm and strong and it kept the cold out better than the whiskey and wouldn't get me drunk. Most of the other soldiers and workmen steered clear of us, knowing that I was a stranger and a Tribal and that Boone was an outsider who rarely came to town unless to trade or to take some caravan into the mountains or back down the trail toward the south. Through our conversations and the little talk that I could pick up around the settlement, I found out that he had been living up here for the better part of four years. Originally he had come as a caravaneer, like many of the men here had, and since then he had become a tracker, a guide, and a market hunter supplying meat and hides to the outpost. He'd fought the Plainsmen and the Eaters of Men and had lived with the Black Hands for two winters, built himself a little cabin high up in the mountains, and generally lived alone in his forests and hills. He'd been in town for a guiding job and a good romp in the bar when I'd met him and now he was snowed in by the same storm as us.

I'd heard about men like him for a while, so-called "mountain men" or "prospectors", but had never met one face-to-face. He was strong and solidly built, broad at the shoulder and in the arms but narrow at the waist and hips, he had the powerful legs of a walker and climber, and his face was covered in the thick beard that many men of the mountains wore. Shaving in the cold was always a chore and a thick beard kept a man warm in the snow or on a long ride. His hands were weathered and callused by hard work and his skin was like leather. He was a man of the wilderness through and through, and the more that I was around him the more I came to like him.

Like me, Boone had always been a loner. He didn't talk much about his past, nor did I ask, but from what he did say I gathered that he had left his home about six years past. Apparently there had been some great war in his homeland and he had left at the first opportunity. His company, the Happy Trails Caravan Company, had been opening new trails for trade and commerce and he had signed on as a caravaneer and guard. He'd been to Utah, guiding the caravans to the newly built New Canaan branch in Zion Valley, then to the New Reno branch in northern Nevada, and finally here to the far north while exploring new territories for the company and for his nation, this Nevada Federation that he said was made up of several tribes in his homeland of New Vegas. It was a good story and hearing it helped to pass the time, and he was a cheerful, talkative man that was only too happy to tell it.

The storm raged on for two days, the wind whistling and howling outside and constantly throwing snow against the buildings and the walls of the town, and when it finally did subside it only left the town isolated and completely cut off. The trails and valleys were choked with snow and ice and covered by a thick coat of white that was several feet deep, impassable to a man on a horse and certainly no weather for a horse laden with hundreds of pounds of gear and supplies. On the third day after the storm ended, Boone came by our cabin and asked if any of us wanted to join him for a hunt. The outpost was getting short on meat and he was ready to get out and do something after being cooped up for so long. I was going stir-crazy as well and was only too happy to accept the invitation. The others still didn't trust him and wanted to stay in town near the supplies, which we had been keeping a close eye on, and Marcus didn't like the idea of me going. That didn't stop me from getting my rifle down off the rack and pulling my coat tight around my shoulders as I stepped out into the cold.

A horse and rider had no chance in such deep snow, but Boone had already thought of that. When I came out of the cabin he handed me a pair of snowshoes that he'd made and I slung them over my shoulder until we were at the gate. We found a soldier there who lent us a sled that was normally used for hauling wood so that we could haul back any meat that we got. I tied on my snowshoes and tied the sled's lead rope around my waist, and then with my rifle in hand and Boone in the lead we started out across the frozen landscape.

Everywhere I looked, the land was a solid sheet of white. The trees, the hills, the grass, the frozen band of the river, all of it was coated in a thick layer of snow that shone with a blinding light in the midday sun. Our snowshoes crunched under our feet, the tightly woven rawhide sinking only an inch or two into the snow, and behind me the sled crunched and grated over the frozen ground. We followed the river for the first couple of miles before turning off onto a trail that Boone knew and followed it into the hills. The open prairie gave way to thick stands of aspens and then gradually they gave way to younger pines that had had supplanted the older trees. Aspens always grow after a burn and are one of the first trees to grow at this altitude, growing tall and thick to offer shade to the young pines that eventually grow taller and stronger than their protectors until they finally force out the older trees and leave only fallen, rotting logs to show that they had ever been.

We found little sign of game at first. Looking around as we walked, I saw nothing but the barren white snow for miles in every direction. We followed the trail, barely discernible under the snow apart from the strip of plain snow winding through the trees that marked the clear path below, into the higher hills and through a winding jumble of boulders that had fallen from the mountain above us in some bygone age. The name of the mountain in the Old World had long been forgotten and I knew of no name for it now. The trail followed the lay of the land, as most game trails tend to do, and as we approached the foothills we began to find signs of our prey.

The first sign were the fresh tracks of an elk that had followed the same trail we were following, then a fresh pile of scat that had been left by the same animal. Half a mile further we found where another elk had joined the first, and finally we came to more fresh tracks that had been made only a few minutes before. We followed them down into a little valley that was rimmed by tall cliffs, now with long ice falls that seemed to be frozen in time, and filled with snow-covered pines and cedars in their innumerable legions descending down the slopes of the mountains. Somewhere down in the valley I heard water running. The blue ribbon of a cool mountain stream wound its way through the valley floor and there, in a little glen a few young trees and some tall brown grass still grew, I could see two large brown forms pawing at the snow and drinking from the stream.

Boone led the way and we made our way down to a ridge that overlooked the glen, leaving the sled beside the trail so to as make as little noise as possible. The elk hadn't seen us yet, but the wind was in their favor and they were still a good three hundred yards away and downhill from us. The trees gave way to the open glen and to approach them was out of the question. They would see us and be gone before we even left the tree line. Looking down at the little valley and the long shot, we decided to chance it. We both took a rest, Boone over a fallen log and me in the crook of a forked tree. I eared back the hammer of my rifle, holding the trigger so it wouldn't click, took in a breath and let it out slowly, then squeezed the trigger.

Our rifles spoke at almost the same instant. I'd taken a sight on the cow by the stream and I saw her buckle, her head jerking to one side as my bullet took her in the neck, and as I levered a fresh round into the chamber I saw her fall. The bull let out a painful bellow, his leg folded under him, and then he slid down into the snow. We retrieved the sled and went down to the two fallen animals, finding them both stone dead. It took only minutes for us to get to work skinning and dressing out the kills. Both of us were skilled in this craft and both of us knew to waste nothing. We laid out the hides and put the meat in them for easy transport. We were almost finished and I was about to toss the last shoulder of the cow into the hide when I heard a sound from the trees, a sound that I'd heard before and had long since learned to fear. Boone heard it too and the both of us immediately froze in place. I looked over Boone's shoulder and that's when I saw them.

There were two of them, both big young males. I saw their white forms moving against the darkness of the trees, slipping from one to the other like ghostly specters. They had been hanging back, watching us butcher our kills, but now they were coming down the ridge and looking right at us. Snowhounds normally traveled in packs, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty to a bunch, but many times I'd seen young males like these driven out and forced to fend for themselves. I'd seen them do this before, listen for the sound of gunshots and then stalk a hunter for his kill. They were fierce hunters in their own right, with just one or two being able to take down prey as large as a Radbuff, but they had been known to steal meat from Yao Guai, Panthers, and even Deathclaws. No man wanted to face down a pack of the vicious predators, but even these two were more than most could handle.

Descended from the ancient wolves that had once hunted the northern lands, centuries of radiation and mutation had made a nearly perfect predator into an ultimate killing machine. These two were average sized, standing about four feet at the shoulder and weighing in and about three or four hundred pounds each, six feet long from nose to tail, and both with that solid white coat that gave them their name. Their large green eyes stared over the snow at us, peering into my very soul, as they came toward us on padded cat-like paws that made no sound and left almost no tracks. I could see their huge curved claws, yellowed from use and sharp as razors, and when they snarled I saw the huge canines and saw-like teeth.

Neither of us spoke. Boone stayed stock-still, shifting his knife to his left hand while his right reached down and gripped his pistol. The two hounds spread out now, circling to either side of us. My knife was still in my hand and I held the elk meat in the other, my revolver still lashed down in my holster and my rifle standing upright in the snow five feet away. It may as well have been in Wyoming. They were coming closer, ready to pounce, and I gave a nod to Boone. He nodded back, his every muscle poised like a crouching Panther, and then they came at us.

The larger of the two came at Boone and leaped for his back, but he rolled away at the last instant and drew his gun. He fired twice as the hound sailed over him, missing the first shot and hitting its paw with the second. The smaller, younger male came at me and I whirled around to face it, throwing the shoulder of meat right at it and hitting it in the face. It stumbled for a second, just long enough for me to sidestep and slash downward with my blade. If it had pounced on me it would have had me dead to rights, but this was a young hunter without experience hunting larger game. I felt the blade bite into flesh and felt warm blood spill over my hand as the hound let out a yelp of pain. He whirled around almost instantly, his jaws snapping for my arm. I jumped back just in time and the thing's teeth snapped shut within inches of my face. I slashed again and missed, stepping back as it came in for another try.

My foot caught on something and I fell backward into the snow. I felt the cold wetness fall over my collar and down my neck and smelled the fresh blood and meat and realized that I'd tripped over the carcass of the cow elk. The Snowhound came right in after me and pounced for me again, coming down at me before I could think. My hand shot up for its throat to push its teeth out of the way as its body came down on top of me. I felt something hit my hand an instant before the body hit me, heard a sound like a snapping carrot, then felt something warm spill over my arm and chest. The hound yelped and gurgled blood, its body jerked in my arms, then it went limp.

I could hear Boone cursing at the other hound and I struggled to push the dead beast off of me, finally shoving it off and rolling over to one knee. I looked up and saw Boone struggling with the Snowhound, its jaws locked around his rifle as he held it in front of him. He held it back for a moment and shoved the gun back, forcing it to go back a step, and suddenly I felt my gun buck in my hand and heard the report of the .44 magnum shell. The Snowhound's eye exploded in a shower of crimson and the thing fell dead at Boone's feet. I had no memory of drawing the gun or firing it, but there it was in my hand and there was the dead hound with the bullet through its eye. Boone looked over at me and at the gun in my hand, and for a brief moment I saw a smile creep across his face.

"You're pretty quick with that," he said.

"Some say so. I guess I never really noticed."

"Back home, they'd certainly take notice. Let's get this meat back to town. After all this excitement I feel like a nice juicy elk steak."

It took only a few hours to return to town. We went by a faster trail and found a game trail that cut through the foothills and came out less than a mile from the outpost. The sentries saw us coming and were only too happy to see our sled heaped high with meat and the hides and the antlers of the bull elk would fetch a good price back in their homeland. Marcus was at the Brahmin Pen when we came in and he was only too happy to buy us both a beer after the meat and hides had been put away. The bar was warm after the cold mountains and the beer and the food was good after the long walk. We told the story of our fight with the Snowhounds and raised our beers to each other's courage, in the tradition of my people, and for the first time in a long time I felt comfortable. I was warm, my belly was full, I was among friends. I was alive.

Five days after the storm hit the trails were clear enough for us to travel. We were eager to be going, having stayed far longer than we had originally planned, and as soon as the scouts came back with word that the snow was cleared enough for us to travel we were in the stable and loading up the horses. They were well rested and had been well fed, so they were fit and as ready to travel as we were. Buck had always been a trail horse and hated being cooped up. The stable was strange to him and I think it was the first time he had ever tasted oats. Hopefully his little vacation hadn't spoiled him to the southerner's ways and their comfy stables.

We led the horses to the gate and were met by Boone and Collins, the bartender at the Brahmin Pen, who gave us a bottle of hooch a pound of elk jerky for the road. We'd been in his bar for most of our stay and I'd come to like the big man with thinning blonde hair. Marcus and the others mounted up and started down the trail, but I hung back for a moment and said my goodbyes to Boone. He told us of some trails that would shorten our route and places to avoid after the snows, then after a few pleasantries he grasped my hand in his iron grip and said, "You're good people, Cain Lone-Elk. You ever need me for anything at all, you just come on down and I'll be ready to go. Happy trails, pard."

I stepped into the saddle and gave Buck a light kick to the ribs and within minutes I was caught up with the others. The snow was deep and I could hear ice crunching under the horses' hooves, but the clear weather of the past few days had allowed the sun to shine through and to melt away the worst of the snow covering the trails. Under every hill and in every nearby pass I could hear the sound of rushing water, the beds of the mountain streams flowing full with the runoff of this little melt. Come spring they would be running over their banks in raging torrents that would wash away everything before them. The debris of the winter, the deadfalls and the fallen branches and decomposing foliage that had accumulated under the snow, all of it would be washed away and the season of new growth could begin. Death would be replaced with new life, as it had always been and as it always should be.

We made better time than on the first trip, following Boone's directions and going by another route than what we had taken coming in. It was an old trick to never the same trail leaving as one did coming. An enemy could be laying in wait along that trail waiting for a man to come back along. We avoided the higher trails and canyons and passes that would be choked with deep snow. The drifts up there would be deep enough to swallow both man and horse if he wasn't careful. We made thirty miles the first day and Hawk's-Eye shot a young bull elk just before we made camp, so we ate well. Our camp was in a shaded glen that was hidden from view by thick stands of pine and had a gurgling stream beside it that gave cold, sweet water. I found myself missing the coffee from town as we sat around the fire, but the whiskey Collins gave us helped to stave off the cold and the elk meat smelled good over the burning pine logs.

The second day went by faster than the first. The trail we followed was one that was used by large game, elk, deer, Mole Rats, Snowhounds, and Panthers, and like all such trails it followed the lay of the land and went by the easiest route. The snow had mostly melted away from the trails and it ran in little rivulets that ran along the trail's course. The horses slipped in the mud from time to time and in some places we had to dismount and lead them along through the deeper snow that still stood in the shaded places where the sun never touched. We climbed steadily higher into the foothills as the day went on, pausing often to rest and to catch our breath. In this cold the worst thing that a man could do was sweat. Moisture on the skin could freeze into a thin film of ice under the clothes and would sap all the remaining heat from a body and bring on hypothermia in a matter of hours.

We camped along the bank of another stream and cooked more of the elk meat for our supper, finished off the last of the whiskey, and with August and Marcus on guard we bedded down and slept in relative safety from the cold and the wind. At dawn we were in the saddle and back on the trail. We had crested the ridge that we'd been following and so we made our way downhill and made better time.

All the while, something had been gnawing at me. All this time, we had not seen a single sign of another party of any human traffic at all. After such a storm and such a slight thaw, I would expect to see the tracks of hunting parties, scouts, scavengers, or of villages moving to a new camp or a spring encampment. It was just a couple months until the spring should be here, so the tribes would be out and about very soon. We had kept to the hidden ways, the devious routes that would keep us out of sight as much as possible, but in some places we had been forced to cross open areas and more traveled ways that would certainly have shown some indication of human traffic. I'd kept an eye out for horse tracks, moccasin prints, indentations of bare feet in the snow, anything that would signal that a man or rider had passed by. So far, nothing.

I had been riding with my rifle in the scabbard, but as we came closer to home I drew it and rode with it across my saddle. Maybe it was my warrior's sense, the gnawing feeling in my gut that something just wasn't right, or some deeper animal instinct warning me of some unseen danger, but for some reason I just felt wrong about this. There should have been someone out and around after the thaw, someone hunting or scouting or foraging, but the trails had been empty for at least the several days since the last snow. Someone, whether from our own tribe or some other between here and Hooverville, would have been out after the weather subsided. The only reason they wouldn't have been hunting or scouting was simple. Either they couldn't get out due to some unforeseen factor or they weren't around anymore to do any hunting.

We made our way along the trail and rounded the mountain that I had known since boyhood as a marker. We were almost home. We found the trail that led up and into the valley, climbed the slope just as the sun was starting to sink into the west, and when we were about to head down into the valley I smelled wood smoke. At first it was a comfort, a sign that all was well and that the evening fires were being lit for super, but as we came closer the smell got stronger and thicker. We rounded the bend of the trail and I found myself looking down into our valley at our village . . . . . and at the tall plumes of black smoke that rose from the ruins of several of the lodges.

Immediately we put heels to our mounts and we all but galloped down into the valley. Guards rose out of the brush and leveled rifles and bows at us as we approached, but we raised our weapons and shouted to them as we came in and they let us pass. We ran into the center of the village and were greeted by the sight of several bodies that had been laid out in two rows by the survivors, of which there were thankfully many. I counted twelve bodies in the two rows, all of them people that I had known. There several men, four women, and at the end of the top row I saw two children. One of them was a girl of about six years whom I didn't know and the other was a little boy. I felt my heart sink when I looked at the boy's bloody head and the way that his face had been smashed in by a club or a rifle butt.

Marcus was off his horse as soon as he saw the dead boy and I was on my feet a second afterward. He rushed to the side of the tiny body and looked him over, frantically searching for some sign that this was not his son. I heard him crying, begging the spirits and the southerners' God that this not be Adrian, and while he searched the boy's corpse I knelt down beside another of the dead. Finally I heard his exclamation of relief. Adrian had a bone amulet that always wore, an amulet that I had made for his last birthday, and this boy wasn't wearing such an amulet. Marcus looked over to tell me that it wasn't his son, but I didn't see his faint smile through my own tears. He followed my gaze down to the dead woman at my feet and immediately lost his brief composure. He dropped his rifle and fell to his knees, took the body in his arms, and for a few minutes I just sat back and let his tears fall on his wife's face.

From what I could tell, her passing had been mercifully quick. I could see a bullet wound in her chest and the dark stain of blood that covered her dress. The wound was over the heart and would have caused almost instant death. There was a stab wound in her side and there were defensive wounds on her hands and arms and I could see flesh and dried blood under her nails. She had fought them, then, and whoever had fought with her would know that he had been in a fight and would be marked by the experience. Her body was in rigor so she had been dead for at least a day or two.

"What happened?", I asked to no one in particular. I wanted to know what had happened, how this could happen in our sheltered valley, how they could get away with such an attack and get away clean as they must have done. Someone had come here to attack us and had killed our people, burned our village, and then gotten away. How could this have happened?! Who could have done this?! Who would have dared to come into our winter stronghold and do something like this?!

"Who did this?! Who did this to us?! Someone answer me!"

"We don't know," a frail voice said from the gathered crowd, "we didn't recognize them. I saw the White Legs with them, but there were others. They were dressed in red."

Red? No tribe in our region wore red or had it in their colors. A new tribe? Some new force that had migrated to the north from some other region? No, not this late in the winter and in the midst of a storm. The White Legs had been with them, so they must be some allies of theirs. But who would be allies of the White Legs? They were universally hated in the north and were the enemies of every tribe of both the mountains and the plains. Their only allies would have been in the south in their homeland around the Great Salt Lake, and most of them had supposed to have been wiped out when they were driven from the south and into the northern lands.

I wasted no more time with inquiries. Already my mind was on the trail and after the offenders. I looked at the bodies laid out in their macabre rows and felt no sadness, no shame, only anger. None of these people were my family, but all of them had been my kin. An attack on one of us was an attack on all of us. Whoever had done this had to pay. They had invaded our stronghold, killed our people, and burned our homes. This was no raid for horses or coups or loot. This was a murder raid, probably a revenge killing for the men they had lost when they attacked our hunting party. The hunting party . . . .

"What happened to the hunting party?", I suddenly asked, "What happened to the men who went out hunting just before we left for the outpost? Were they here?"

"No," the same old man told me, "we haven't seen or heard from them. They left the same morning as you did. They may have been caught in the storm or they might have been attacked before they hit us. I don't know."

"How many warriors do we have in camp?"

"Not many," a new voice said from the crowd. I looked over and saw the muscular, aged form of George Standing Bear come out of the crowd and come toward me, rifle in hand and with his pistol and knife on his hips. He wore his traveling clothes and his rifle had been cleaned. He wasn't an old man anymore, not now. At this moment he was a warrior out for revenge, a Yao Guai ready for the hunt. "With the five of you, we have just over two dozen in the village. We'll need to leave some behind to guard the people when we go."

"George . . ."

"You're not talking me out of this, Cain, so don't even try."

"We'll need supplies."

"We'll take what we need from what you and the others brought. Pack for a week's ride."

"How many horses did they take? We may need extra mounts."

"They didn't take any horses. They were all on foot. We didn't even seen them coming. They were in the village before anyone knew it, creeping in close with Snowhound skins for camouflage. I didn't even know they were attacking until I heard the shooting. I killed two of White Legs before they got away. They took some supplies, a few weapons, and ten of our people. Cain, they took the children."

"Adrian?"

"And six others, plus three young girls."

I looked over at Marcus, who was still holding Shana's body, and I knew that he had heard every word. He didn't have to speak. I could see the fire in his eyes, the same fire that was coldly burning in my own chest. Whoever these men were that had done this thing, they had crossed the line when they attacked our camp. Killing our people and burning our lodges was just average warfare for us, a fact of life that we had sadly learned to live with, but taking our children had gone too far. We would hunt them down and kill them all if we could, I would hunt them down to avenge my friend and his family, but most of all I knew that Marcus would not rest until he saw each and every one of those men dead. He would hunt them all to the edge of the earth, every man jack of them, and I cringed to think of what fate awaited them at his hands when he found them.

We wasted no more time. None of us were tired from the ride, but we needed fresh horses. We went to the horse herd and switched out our mounts. I threw my saddle over the back of my big black and fed him a bait of oats that I'd brought just for him. He was well rested and ready for travel, almost as if he sensed the urgency in my voice when I told him that we were in for a long ridge. Hawk's-Eye divvied up the supplies from our haul to the men that were in the party gathering around Standing Bear's lodge. The five of us were all ready to go, plus six of the young men in the village who were hungry for revenge. Half of them were barely fighting age, just a few weeks out of their initiations, but they were all we had and I could see the same fire in their eyes that was in the eyes of Marcus, Standing Bear, and my own. No one was going to hold them back from this. Some of them had lost family or kin in this attack and in that fire there was a thirst for blood.

Within an hour of our arrival we were back in the saddle and headed down the trail to the south, a dozen men armed to the teeth and mounted on good mountain horses. The snow had wiped out all trace of our enemies' passing, but we needed no tracks to know where they were going. There was only one trail that led toward the south out of our valley and once in the hills it led down into one of the old highways that had once been the lifeblood of the Old World. All accounts suggested that our foes were on foot, which gave us a distinct advantage. In thicker snow a man on snowshoes can outpace a horse and rider that has to break through the snow and ice, but now the snow was thinner and the trails were mostly clear. The ground was damp from the snow water, but our horses were born and bred to such things and no we could cover much more ground than they could.

Standing Bear told us that several days had passed since the attack and that the people had fled into the forest until the attackers were gone, so they had a large start on us. We pushed our horses hard and kept up a brisk pace, going at a canter whenever we could and stopping only occasionally to walk or rest them. We rode until the sun sank out of the sky and we were forced to make camp. Marcus wanted to push on through the night and we had to restrain him from riding on without us, finally convincing him that to do so would only be to get himself lost and maybe kill his horse from exhaustion. All our mounts were done in and needed the rest. There was a hint of snow in the air and we all knew that there was weather moving in again. The previous storm had been bad enough, but now it seemed than an even worse front might be moving in on us. The snow had covered the party's trail and nearly wiped out all trace of their passing, which they had more than likely counted on, and if another such storm came in now they we would most likely lose them altogether.

We made a dry camp and slept in shifts so as to keep a good guard on the horses. There were far more dangers in these lands than the men that we pursued. We were nearing the edge of our hunting grounds and were dangerously close to those of the Black Hands and would soon be approaching the lands that were claimed by the tribes of Eaters. There were always the natural dangers as well.

Dawn's first light found us already in the saddle and back on the trail. Within two hours we found the campsite, nestled in a dip of the land near a hot spring. The fires had been large, all three of them, much larger than any Tribal would build. We found pieces of strange food mixed with the bones of local animals, and in a trash heap on the edge of camp one of men found a glass bottle that looked like those used by the southerners. The snow had obscured most of the sign, but a good tracker could still make out a few things. I could see that the war party, if such it was, had joined a larger party and made this camp no less than two days ago. There were at least thirty in the new party, most of them men with the smaller tracks of children and women mixed in among them. In one place I saw a track that had been sheltered under a tree. It was strange, not like anything that I had seen before.

The track was wide, flat, and there were what looked like studs in the track where the sole of the foot stepped down. There were other tracks that were normal tracks of moccasins and snowshoes, but these were by far the most common. It looked like some kind of studded sandal or moccasin of some kind. Who would wear such a thing? No tribe I knew of wore sandals like that. Some of the tribes of the eastern mountains wore boots like the southerners and I'd seen some warriors of the Eaters of Men wearing leather sandals that tied around their legs, but I had never seen anything like these.

Gradually the forests gave way to the plains and we left behind the mountains and the hills for the flatlands. We followed the trail of our prey along the banks of the Henry's Fork into Idaho and followed them farther and farther south. Finally we came to a range of foothills where the land was more broken. The snow was all but gone now and the trail was more defined in places, but the more I looked to the westward the more I began to be concerned. Thunderheads were gathering over the high mountains and there was an increasing chill on the wind. Another heavy snow now could ruin the chase and possibly let our foes get away, not to mention that we would be caught out in the flats with few supplies and in hostile territory.

We rode the day through and we began to see fresher tracks that had been made since the thaw. There were more men in the group now, my best guess being about thirty, and they were leading what looked like about fifteen to twenty captives. The way they were walking made it seem as though they were all tied together and being led along. We made camp in the lee of a low cliff where the rock would serve as a reflector for the heat and to mask our fire. We were close to our prey now and we were taking no chances on them spotting us. Again Marcus was ready to ride on and find them in the night, but we talked him down again and after some argument he rolled into his bedroll. I took the first watch and went with my rifle and out ready. They were out there somewhere, probably within a few miles of our current position, and they had to know that they were being followed. We had pushed our horses hard and they needed a rest, as we did, but our hard travel had paid off. We covered ground much faster than those men on foot. Tomorrow we would find them and we would get our people back.

Again dawn found us in the saddle and on the trail. We followed the trail deeper into the hills and soon it left the river and wound into more broken ground. The bluffs rose higher and steeper and the land was increasingly rugged. We began to see more pines and aspens and there was a preponderance of cedars along the ridgelines. We all rode with our rifles out and ready now and I rode easy in the saddle. The black was tired and I noticed a slight hitch in his step, but he was still eager to run and ready to go at any moment. I was in the lead of our little column and I could tell that the trail was getting fresher, some the tracks less than a few hours old and with skids in the mud, but the more we rode the more uneasy I became.

The first thing that made me nervous came at about midday. The trail had been going steadily south and southeast and I was aware that we had crossed out of Montana and into the Old World state of Wyoming, but just after midday the trail turned suddenly east. It was an abrupt change and there seemed to be no reason for it, no natural obstacle or discernible trail which they would be following, no obvious place of shelter they would be seeking, nothing that would make it appear that there was a reason for their change of course. Up until now, these men had shown discipline and skill in covering their trail and had been moving at a far greater speed than other groups I'd seen traveling on foot. Looking at the few clear prints that I could see in the soft earth, I could see that there several places where feet had slipped and stumbled from fatigue. The prisoners had to be getting tired by now. They had been pushed hard on little sleep and probably less food and water. Whoever these men were, they were good and they knew their craft. These weren't the kind of men to abruptly change direction without a definite reason.

We had been riding along the edge of the foothills of a tall mountain range whose name I didn't know, but now the trail veered into the hills and followed the course of a dry creek. There was a small valley, maybe a mile wide and at least five miles long, that spread out on either side of the dry creek bed and was mostly deforested thanks to the high floods that came through during the spring thaws. I could see the marks on the trees and rocks where high water had flowed during past floods and I had no doubt that when the higher snows melted in the spring that this valley would be running with at least ten or twelve feet of cool, clear water. A wall of tall pines rose on either side of us and in places I could see great spurs of bare rock jutting out of the hillsides and giant boulders that had tumbled down from the mountain tops in some bygone age, and in the distance a high ridge rose up at the head of the valley. The ridge was covered with more pines, a few aspen, and I could see the white trunks of sycamores mixed in with them.

I began to see what looked like little side trails branching off from the main group. At first I thought they were just places where a man or prisoner had stepped away from the group to perform their necessaries or just from normal straying, but then I started noticing more and more of them and decided to follow one. I left the front of the column and told the others to go on ahead, walking Blackie just a few steps off the main trail before seeing that the tracks and signs of tracks weren't just veering off and rejoining the main group. They were leaving the sandy creek bed and angling off toward the tree lines on either side of the valley. I sat my horse with my rifle across my saddle bows and looked at the dark wall of the trees, then at the tall ridge up ahead of us. Why would anyone just walk away from the main . . . . . oh, shit!

"Get back!", I shouted at the others, now a good thirty yards away, "Get back! It's an AMBUSH!"

The last word was lost in a thundering volley of gunfire from the ridge ahead of us. I saw the three men in the head of the column fall from their saddles and saw Marcus and August's horses go down. I saw muzzle flashes from the rocks and trees along the ridgeline and recognized the sound of the shots as coming from Cowboy Repeaters. Immediately I put my heels into Blackie's sides and he broke into a dead run for the front of our now disorganized cavalcade. The others had spread out in a staggered line and were firing into the ridge while Hawk's-Eye rode in and scooped up August just a second before I caught Marcus' arm and swung him into the saddle behind me.

We all knew that we were dead to rights as long as we were out here. We were completely exposed on the sandy bed and the nearest cover was a hundred yards away on either side. The gunfire was constant now and we fired over our shoulders as we made for the mouth of the valley and the open prairie beyond. Bullets whistled and popped all around me and I felt one of them whip through my hair within inches of my face. Marcus clung to me with one arm around my waist, the other holding his rifle, while I spurred Blackie on a full gallop. I heard a sharp cry and looked over just in time to see another man fall. We were nearly five hundred yards from the ridge now, almost at the edge of their range. If we could just make the mouth of the valley we would be clear. If we could just . . .

Another volley of shots rang out and in the corner of my eye I saw the flashes of rifles in the trees, on my left this time! I felt Blackie's body tense beneath me and saw his head jerk downward. Instantly I kicked free of the stirrups leaped from the saddle, landing on my shoulders in the soft earth, rolling to the side and onto one knee just barely in time to avoid being crushed by his body as it tumbled head over heels. Marcus hit the group in a heap and I heard him cry out in pain, but I couldn't look back at him. More shots and muzzle flashes were coming from the trees and I could see forms moving between the pines. I saw what looked like a White Leg moving from one trunk to another and fired, throwing my rifle to my shoulder and firing on pure instinct. The round went wild and I saw bark fly from the tree.

I worked the lever and fired two more shots at likely places of cover, moving as I shot. Marcus was down and in pain and I had to get to him, help him up, get him and rest of us out of here. We had to get out of here! I turned and ran for the others, thumbing shells into my gun as I went, and that's when I saw the others. More men were down, both dead and wounded, and there were four horses laying dead in lines on both sides of our cavalcade. Guns were roaring from both sides of the valley and when I glanced at the ridgeline I could see a line of figures coming down the slope, all dressed in red and in a nearly perfect skirmish line, firing as they came down toward us.

Fire was coming from all sides now, bullets were cutting the air, and all sound was lost in the din of the guns and the screams of wounded and dying men and horses. Marcus was laying behind Blackie's carcass, his rifle resting over my dead mount's neck as he fired into the trees, and I dove down beside him and followed suit. Bullets peppered my once proud animal's corpse, the dead flesh and stiff wood and leather of the saddle stopping them cold. The men on the north side of our tiny perimeter were likewise huddling behind their fallen mounts. I could see that to run now would be pointless. We would be cut down one by one if we tried to run for it. We would never make it to the flats, and if we did we would be caught on open ground. We had only one chance now, we had to fight.

"Kill the horses!"

"What was that, Cain?!"

"Kill the fucking horses! Line 'em up and kill them for barricades!"

"Are you insane?! How will we get out?!"

"We'll never get out if we don't fight now! Just fucking do it!"

A horse whinnied and fell, then another a second afterwards. A third jerked and screamed in pain, a bullet through its rear shoulder. They were already targeting the horses, and now our only chance was to at least let their deaths mean something. Horses were sacred to us, the symbol of our tribe as one of the first to re-tame them after the vaults were opened, and to ask one of our men to kill his own mount was as close to a sacrilege as we knew. Even to kill an animal who was suffering was considered an irreverent act, but we had no choice. All of us who were behind cover laid down suppressing fire on the trees and the line of red-clad figures advancing down the valley while the rest led our remaining horses into a line of defense, a solid square around our tiny perimeter, and after a few swift slashes we had a wall of dead fortifications. We stripped the saddles and laid them across the gaps between the bodies, put our wounded in the center of the square, and then they came at us.

Shrill war cries came from the trees and I looked over the saddle at the trees, seeing a dozen or so White Legs coming out of the tree line with weapons up and charging right at us. I thumbed the last shell into my rifle and threw it to my shoulder, the barrel resting over the saddle, and fired into a warrior coming out from behind a thick pine. His chest blossomed red and he dropped in his tracks, so I worked the lever and shifted to a larger man lifting a Cowboy Repeater to his shoulder. I took a quick sight on his head and squeezed the trigger, then saw the massive slug rip away half his head before his body fell to the ground. I levered another shell in and shot point-blank into a third man's chest just as he was raising his tomahawk. They were on us then and another warrior came at me with his tomahawk swinging down on my head and blocked the blow with my rifle.

They came out of both sides of the valley, charging our little fort and peppering us with suppressive fire while the others stormed us. They came over our little battlement and it was hand-to-hand for the next few seconds. Men came over the dead horses and I saw knives and hatchets come out, as well as the cracks of pistol shots being fired at point-blank range. The man came at me with his tomahawk and I caught the shaft just below the blade on the receiver of my rifle, immediately twisted the gun to the side and wrenched the weapon from his hand. His other hand comes up and I see a large fighting knife clenched in his fist. I twist to the side just in time to avoid catching the blade in my gut, the bring my gun up and jam the heavy barrel into his chin. The gun jars in my hand and I hear the stifled choking scream, then swing the stock up and in a vicious blow that cracks his skull and knocks him to the ground.

Marcus shouts to my left and I see a White Leg on top of him, fighting for his pistol and twisting his injured leg beneath him. I drop my rifle and draw my knife, grab the White Leg's hair and pull him off of Marcus as I plunge the blade into his back up to the hilt. A war cry comes from behind me and I duck to the ground just in time to avoid a flying tomahawk that lodges itself into the now dead man falling over Marcus with my knife still in his back. My hand flashes and I feel the buck of my .44 in my palm and the White Leg's chest jumps with the impact of two bullets that sounded almost as one shot. A man comes over the front of the battlement and grabs my shirt, raising some kind of long blade for a killing blow. His grip is like iron and I swing my revolver hard for his knee. The stock strikes with a sound like an axe cutting wood and his leg buckles, his blade swinging wild within an inch of my face, but his grip is still strong. I hit him again, then again, and finally his grip fails and I spin around to face him.

He's not like any man I've ever seen before. His skin is dark, tanned by a sun hotter than any we in the north would ever know, and his face is covered by a black bandana and goggles under some kind of old helmet. His thick red tunic is covered by chest armor and shoulder pads, his wiry, muscular frame is smaller and shorter than mine, and on his feet he wears tall sandals that wrap around his leg from the ankle to the knee. A sheath for his machete hangs on his belt, as well as a holstered .357 Magnum Revolver with a row of shell loops behind it. He was barrel-chested and his long sleeves bulge with thick arms, but otherwise he is a smallish man. He was shorter than my six feet by a good five inches, his hair was almost jet black, he had some strange symbol on the breastplate of his armor. It was a rearing bull, painted in yellow over the red of his armor and tunic.

He recovers from the pain of his leg quickly and takes a swing with his machete. My arm comes up and I block his swing, bringing up my gun for a shot at his chest. He leans in and butts me in the head, his helmet hitting me so hard that I see stars, and as I go back a step my gun falls from my stunned hand. Immediately he moves in on me with his blade held low and coming in for a thrust. On pure reflex I threw a stiff jab that takes him in the jaw, stopping him cold and giving me the second I need to recover my faculties. He comes back at me within an instant, swinging his blade in a backhanded slash for my face, but I step back just in time and grab for the tomahawk in my belt as he comes in. Another jab hits him in the jaw, then another, and as he goes backward I come in with a swing of my own and feel the blade of my tomahawk hit him hard on the helmet and glance off. I dodge another cut that leaves a red line on my arm and swing for his neck, which he dodges as well.

The battle rages all around us, the bark of the guns, the screams of charging and dying warriors, and the rising wind howling in my ears, but for the moment we are focused only on each other. He is by far one of the most skilled warriors I've ever fought. His moves are catlike, graceful, deliberate. His blade moved like an extension of his arm, darting in and out of action and slashing at me with unbelievable speed. He was smaller than me, but much faster and striking like a Cazador with lightning speed and then retreating back into a solid defense. His blade is longer than mine, giving him the advantage of reach as well as speed.

We circle each other warily, each looking for a weakness in the other's defense, and then from the ridgeline to the east there came a sound like thunder. No, not thunder . . . . a horn. I'd heard only one other horn in my life, used by a tribe far to the west called the Bighorns who used them to signal each other. The horn blew long and loud, the echo sounding off of the mountains and hills around us and drowning out even the sounds of battle. My enemy takes advantage of my momentary distraction and steps in for a swipe at my neck. I feel the tip of the keen blade cut a neat little line along the line of my chin as I step back. This time, though, he steps on a patch of wet mud and he slips for a moment. My tomahawk comes up and I swing down as hard as I can, lodging the blade in the shoulder of his armor and raising a scream of pain from my foe. He reels back and grabs for the shaft of the weapon, but it's too late. I step in and take his sword arm in my hands, twist the machete from his grip, and with a battle cry of my own I bury the blade deep in his neck. His scream is stifled by blood flowing from his wound, and after a moment he falls to his knees before falling on his face in the damp soil.

Immediately I look for my weapons, finding them a few feet away beside the dead White Legs and the carcass of my faithful old horse. I scoop them up and holster my pistol, sheath my knife, and begin thumbing cartridges into my Medicine Stick. My tomahawk is still buried in my machete-wielding foe's shoulder, so I don't take the time to retrieve it yet. I rush to the battlement and search frantically for an enemy at which to shoot. There are none. The bodies of the dead are strewn across the valley on three sides of our little redoubt, the scars of the battle are visible in the trees and churned earth, and I see the bodies of more men inside the ring of horse carcasses that was our defensive wall, but the rest are nowhere in sight.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. The echoes of the horn and the gunshots died away, fading into the vastness of the mountains and the forests, and then all was quiet and still. There's a kind of silence that can only be appreciated immediately after battle. The roar of the guns and the sounds of the wounded and dying assault the ears and the senses, and then suddenly the din is gone and one is left with only a deafening, ear-splitting silence that seems almost as terrifying as the battle itself. The mountains and trees sat before me now, silent and stoic as they had ever been, and in the distance I could see the snow-capped top of a high peak that seemed to be almost mocking us with its serenity.

Looking around, I took in the grim scene. I counted thirteen dead enemies in or around our defensive wall, most of them White Legs. Two of them are the strange men in red, one of them the man I had killed and the other sprawled over a dead buckskin mare on the east side of our defenses. We had made them pay for this attack, but the cost was not all on their side. Of the eleven that were in our original party, only four were left now. Three of the younger men had been killed in the first volley, a couple more during the chase, and the rest had been killed during the attack. The square of our little wall, which measured all of thirty feet across, was filled with the bodies of both friend and foe. Several of the younger warriors who'd come with us, some of them barely out of their teens, would never be going home. August, whom I had known since childhood, was sprawled over his dead mare with a bullet through his head. Hawk's-Eye, whose name came from his famed accuracy with a long rifle, lay in the churned earth of the center of the square where the wounded had been taken. His arm was in a makeshift sling and I could see where the top of his sleeve was cut by a large blade and stained with blood.

Of the four of us that remained, only myself and Dead Shot were unharmed. Hawk's-Eye had taken a machete slash to the arm, probably from the same man I had killed, and his arm would be useless until it could heal properly. Marcus' leg was wrenched terribly by the fall he'd taken from my tumbling horse, and when I looked more closely at I could see that it was indeed broken. I set the bone and tied splints made from the broken stocks of two of the White Legs' rifles, then sat him against the cold bodies of the horses to rest. A few shots came from the hills to keep our heads down and we fired back occasionally, but after two hours we neither saw nor heard any other sign of our enemies. They were gone, and now we had an even greater threat to deal with. In the distance the sky was growing ever darker, the air was getting colder, and after an hour or so I began to see tiny white flakes floating on the wind. A storm was coming, we were out in the open, and now we had no horses.