Her eyelids went to half-mast. "Really?"

"Stop it," he said, letting go and stepping back from her. "You're supposed to be the sensible one."

"What? Since when?"

"Since I can't trust myself around you."

She licked her lips and laughed at the look on his face. "Okay, I'll be good. Really, really good."

"Starting when?"

"Right after I jump you."

Laughing, shaking his head, hands in his pockets so he wouldn't do anything stupid, Dan started off up the ridge.

"Wait," Carly called. "What about the snowshoes we borrowed from your folks?"

"We won't need them. This trail is pounded flat. Watch out for icy spots."

She didn't point out that she had on snow boots. She'd decided that watching out for others was built into Dan's bones. Giving unnecessary directions was the vice of his virtue of caring about others. She followed him up the bumpy trail and only slipped once.

Dan slipped more than that; his excuse was that he was watching other things than the trail. He glanced back, saw that Carly was keeping up, and concentrated on his footing.

At the top of the ridge, the trail unraveled into sled runs, snow angels, and some marks that defied explanation. Dan turned left, toward the spot where he and his father had watched the Senator's family funeral. Very quickly the trail drew together again. From the look of it, no one but Dan and his father had walked there. Jim Snead-if it had been Jim-had taken a different route to the ridgeline.

"Wrong turn," Dan called to Carly.

She waited while he came back to her, passed her, and went in the opposite direction along the ridgeline. Again, tracks unraveled in all directions. Again, they came together in a single trail. Dan stopped and studied the blurred prints. It looked like the man had come and gone in the same tracks.

"Figures," Dan muttered.

"What?" Carly asked, coming up beside him.

"He didn't break trail twice."

Carly looked down at the valley where the Quintrell ranch lay all but hidden by falling snow. "Weren't we about over there?" she asked, pointing back to the left.

"Yes, but he didn't know that when he started out. He worked along the ridge'this way."

"Somehow I think you know more about tracking than I learned in Girl Scouts."

"Somehow I think you're right." He touched her mouth with a snowy glove. "I hunted a lot as a boy, both with Dad and the Sneads."

"Why them?"

"They were the best hunters and stalkers in a hundred miles. At least they were until Blaine started seriously screwing with drugs and went to jail. He lost his edge real quick after that."

Carly hesitated, looking at the valley softened by swirling white veils. "Should I be worried that the snow is falling faster than it was when we parked?"

"Not yet."

"When?"

"About the time we're back in Taos." He touched her smile. "Try to stay in my footprints. It could get sloppy in the ravines and you're such a little thing I don't want to lose you."

Carly looked shocked, then threw back her head and laughed. "Little! I haven't been little since fourth grade."

"To me you're a fragile little flower."

She almost fell down laughing.

He winked at her and turned back to the man's trail. It was easy to follow. The man hadn't worn snowshoes, so he'd left holes in the snow that wouldn't fill up until the wind blew hard again. From the look of the storm moving in, that wouldn't be long.

Carly was so busy leaping from footprint to footprint that she almost ran into Dan where he'd stopped by a thick, bushy pinon.

"What?" she asked.

"See how the trail has zigzagged? Almost like he was picking a blind."

"Like he was blind?" she repeated dubiously.

"Looking for one," Dan said. "A secure place to shoot from, a place where he wouldn't be seen."

"He's sounding more like a poacher."

"Or a sniper."

Dan's matter-of-fact tone made Carly wonder all over again exactly what he did for a living. She didn't think it was selling shoes.

"So what could he see from the places he looked at and decided against?" Carly asked.

"The road from the highway to the Quintrell ranch, among other things."

"You're scaring me."

"It's about time."

Dan followed the man's trail, walking swiftly, mindful of the increasing snowfall. There were several more blinds or observation posts that he'd abandoned. Then he'd found one he liked and settled in.

Without hesitating, Dan went down on his belly and sighted along an imaginary rifle barrel.

Carly watched and swallowed a rising feeling of dread.

"And?" she asked finally, when she couldn't bear to watch him shooting imaginary targets anymore.

"Whatever he was waiting for probably was on the road, but could have been on the ranch," Dan said. "He's got the high ground and a clear field of fire in both directions."

"Which means?"

"Nothing useful. The sheriff would be the first to point out that poachers love roads and ranch pastures because animals have to cross them to get from one place to another, and they make such easy targets without cover around them."

Dan stood, looked at the tracks, and began crisscrossing the area. A few minutes later he found what he was looking for. "He switched directions here. See where the tripod rested? Probably heard us talking and started tracking us through a nightscope."

"I don't like the sound of that."

"It gets better." Dan walked to the side of the trail, where it crossed over and blended into the windswept side of the ridge. "He shifted positions again here, and here. He knows something about the country-all right, he knows a hell of a lot about the country-because he knew where the animal trail we were on would top the ridge. So he picked his spot and waited for us."

"Cougars and bears don't talk. If he was a poacher, why would he stalk us?" Carly said through cold lips.

"The sheriff would say he was afraid of being found."

"What do you say?"

"He didn't come up here on the ridge to shoot us while we walked on the ranch, because he had no way of knowing we were going to do more than drive in and drive out."

"But you got shot."

Dan shrugged. "Maybe he got cold and tired of waiting and decided to take the best shot he had rather than the one he'd planned."

"Wouldn't a poacher have come prepared to lie in the snow all night? Or are we talking an amateur here?"

"Now you're thinking like the sheriff."

"Quick, get me a brain transplant."

Dan smiled despite the feeling in his gut that they weren't talking about an amateur poacher trying out a new scope.

"He couldn't have had much more than five minutes to find his new blind, sight in the scope, and wait for us to skyline ourselves. But this blind looks as 'lived in' as the first one. He spent more than a few minutes here."

"Waiting until it was safe to make a run for it?"

"Maybe." Dan started off along the holes the man had made once he left his blind. "Maybe not. He didn't head right down the hill."

"Where'd he go?"

Instead of answering, Dan walked swiftly along the tracks. "He went to check on his kill, but he waited until we were gone. See where his tracks come down on top of ours?"

"Why did he wait?"

Dan looked down at the muddled tracks and the dark splash where he'd lain and bled into the snow. The man knew what he was doing. He'd waited, shot, missed Carly, and waited some more.

And not shot again.

"Dan?"

"Maybe he came back to look for a bullet."

"In the dark?"

"It's possible. The truth is, I just don't know what happened here."

"And the sheriff doesn't care."

"Looks like."

"A real clusterhug," Carly muttered.

A grim kind of smile changed the lines of Dan's face. "That's one way of putting it."