There was an area of trampled snow where Shannon had stood. Spent shotgun shells lay where they had been pulled out of the chambers and dropped as she reloaded.
A closer examination of the deer tracks gave a picture of animals eating shrubs one minute and running flat out the next. There was no sign of blood in the tracks.
Must have been a clean miss, Whip thought.
The rest of the tracks made it clear that Shannon and Prettyface were in hard pursuit of their quarry. The deep, skidding impressions in the snow told of a girl running recklessly across the meadow and into the forest, leaping small obstacles and scrambling over larger ones. The tracks of a large canine ran alongside Shannon’s. The raggedness of the dog’s stride told Whip that Prettyface was favoring his wounded haunch.
Abruptly Whip flung his head up toward the peak looming above and listened with every sense in his body.
He heard only silence.
Uneasiness blossomed darkly in him. He had a clear, uncanny certainty that Shannon had just called his name.
He listened again with an intensity that made him ache. Nothing came to him but the increased wailing of the wind.
Grimly Whip forced his attention back to the tracks in the snow.
Shannon never should have taken Prettyface along. What was she thinking of? he asked himself bitterly.
Hell, if she was thinking at all, she never would have left the cabin.
But Whip was too late to do anything about that, just as he had been too late to prevent Shannon from setting off into the frigid morning in search of food he could have — and would have — hunted for her.
A tracking snow might be pretty as the devil’s smile, but like the devil, it hides a lot of mischief.
The tracks led across a boulder-strewn creek where snow hid broken branches and logs slick with snow and water. Sugarfoot was a fine trail horse, but he had to pick his way with care.
Suddenly, spots of blood gleamed brightly among the tracks. The spots dogged one deer’s tracks, sticking with them no matter what the terrain or where the other deer veered off to find cover.
Shannon didn’t miss after all. Not completely.
When Whip saw clear signs that Shannon had slipped and fallen, his temper mounted. A bleak, unspeakable anxiety was pressing against his guts, chilling him.
He kept hearing Shannon calling his name with an urgency that was making him wild.
Yet he knew that the only sound in the landscape was that of the keening, ice-tipped wind.
The little fool. She could break an ankle running like that. A wounded deer can go for miles or days, depending on the wound. If she keeps running she’ll sweat and when she stops running the sweat will freeze.
Whip didn’t want to think about what would happen after that. He had found more than one man dead of cold or wandering around with no more brains than a bucket of sand, too numbed by cold even to think.
The reckless trail went on, crossing and recrossing the creek as the deer bounded ahead. The signs of blood became more pronounced and frequent. One deer was tiring, struggling to keep up with its companions.
The ravine gouged out by the creek became steeper and the way got more rough. Even the deer that weren’t wounded had a hard time of it. Despite having four agile feet apiece, there were signs that the animals slipped on the rough, snowy terrain almost as often as Shannon and Prettyface did.
Abruptly Shannon’s tracks shortened from a full running stride to a complete halt. Spent shotgun shells poked up from the snow, telling their own story.
Whip stood in the stirrups and looked around. He quickly sported the remains of the deer. Shannon had dressed it out with an efficiency that told Whip this part of hunting wasn’t new to her. What meat she couldn’t carry, she had strung up on a rope over a high branch, keeping the venison beyond the reach of other predators.
Well, Silent John was good for something, I guess. The hide itself won’t be worth much from all the buckshot holes, and a man will have to be real careful not to crack a tooth on stray chunks of lead, but the meat will fill an empty belly just fine.
Shannon’s tracks aimed toward a notch just ahead, a side ravine that snaked up and over the shoulder of the mountain. Whip’s past explorations told him that the notch would open out into a steep forested slope about half a mile from the cabin. Except for having to cross a fork of Avalanche Creek several times getting through the notch, the trail was a handy shortcut back to the cabin for someone on foot.
Whip wasn’t on foot.
For a moment he was tempted to push as far up the notch as he could on horseback, just to ease the clammy fear in his gut that something had happened to Shannon.
Don’t be a bigger fool than you already are, Whip advised himself harshly. The trail ahead is no worse than the one behind. There’s no point making Sugarfoot walk in ice water and take a chance of breaking a leg on those damned slippery rocks just to see Shannon’s tracks heading up and out of the notch.
Yet Whip wanted very much to do just that. The uneasiness that had begun shortly after he started tracking Shannon had grown into flat-out fear.
Common sense told Whip that Shannon was all right.
Instinct whispered a different message, her voice calling wildly to him in the silence.
Abruptly Whip reined Sugarfoot around and headed back down the ravine. Although he was savagely uneasy, he didn’t hurry the big gelding as it picked its way over the uneven ground. He kept reminding himself that by the time he reached the cabin, Shannon would already be safe inside. There would be a cheerful fire and mint-scented water to wash in and fresh biscuits baking.
But not for Whip.
The thought did nothing to shorten the two miles back to the cabin.
When Whip arrived, there was no smoke coming from the chimney, no scent of biscuits baking — and no tracks coming in from the direction of the notch. The uneasiness that had been riding Whip exploded into raw fear. He spun Sugarfoot around and examined the sparse, windswept forest where Shannon would have descended from the notch to the cabin.
Nothing was moving.
Whip yanked open the buckle on his saddlebags and pulled out a telescoping spyglass. He snapped it out to full length and held it up to his eye. Between spaces in the trees, snow gleamed whitely in the growing light.
Not a single track marred the perfect snow.
17
Whip was nearly all the way to the notch itself before he found Shannon. She was in ice water up above her knees, pushing hard on a branch stuck between boulders in the creek.
Suddenly there was a dry, cracking sound. The branch splintered and Shannon fell headlong into the small pool of water.
Only then did Whip see what was wrong. Prettyface had slipped while scrambling across the stony creek. Somehow the dog had managed to wedge a hind foot between two boulders. The boulders were too heavy for Shannon to shift aside even an inch.
From the looks of the broken branches thrown beyond the creek, she hadn’t had much luck finding a sturdy lever to help her free Prettyface.
When Sugarfoot came to a plunging, snow-scattering stop near the stream, Shannon was pulling herself upright. Her motions were clumsy, as though she had little feeling in her hands and feet.
Whip dismounted in a rush.
«Get out of there before you freeze to death,» he ordered curtly.
If Shannon heard Whip above the chatter and splash of the icy creek, she didn’t respond. She simply picked up the longest of the discarded branches, jammed one end beneath the smaller boulder, and heaved upward with all her strength.
The branch broke.
Only Whip’s quickness saved Shannon from another ice water bath. He grabbed her, lifted her high, and dumped her into Sugarfoot’s saddle. With swift motions he peeled off his jacket and stuffed her into it.