Caleb’s hand moved smoothly from the rifle horn down to the leather holster at his hip, unbuttoning the retaining strap over his revolver. Another metallic crack echoed through the woods—the desperate, frantic thrashing of metal against bone and stone. Then, silence returned, heavy and suffocating.
Every instinct Caleb possessed told him to turn Rust around and keep riding.
Men disappeared in these mountains every winter. Sometimes because of sudden, blinding weather. Sometimes because of hungry wolf packs driven down from the high peaks. And sometimes because another man with a rifle wanted them to disappear, leaving their bones to be picked clean by spring.
Caleb nudged Rust forward with his heels. The gelding took two reluctant, high-stepping paces through the drift.
Then the groan came again. This time, the agonizing restraint broke completely, and it became a raw, gut-wrenching scream that echoed off the rock walls of the canyon.
Caleb cursed quietly under his breath. He swung Rust’s head to the left, turning the horse off the trail and into the dense, shadowed shelter of the trees.
The agonizing sound led him nearly half a mile deep into the virgin forest, where the canopy was so dense that the sun was reduced to pale, weak shafts of gray light.
Then Caleb saw the blood.
Bright, crimson drops were scattered across the untouched white snow like spilled ink on fresh parchment. The trail was messy—disturbed drifts, broken pine twigs, and dark, frozen spurts of red where something heavy had dragged itself across the forest floor.
Caleb dismounted smoothly, his boots sinking six inches into the powdery crust. He pulled his Colt revolver from its holster, holding it low at his side, the hammer pulled back to full cock with a quiet, decisive click. He left Rust tied to a low fir branch and proceeded on foot, stepping carefully in the disturbed tracks.
The red trail continued toward a small, rock-hemmed clearing where an ancient ponderosa pine had fallen during an autumn storm.
Caleb stepped between two thick tree trunks.
And froze.
A huge Apache warrior lay slouched against the base of a towering pine tree.
His right leg was crushed inside the massive, saw-toothed jaws of a rusted iron bear trap—a heavy, double-spring steel jaw intended for grizzly bears, chained securely to a thick log.
Dark, frozen blood had soaked completely through the warrior's leather leggings, staining the snow beneath his leg a sickening, dark brown-red. His bronze face was gray from shock and extreme cold, his chest heaving with shallow, ragged gasps of air.
Yet despite the agonizing pain, despite the lethal loss of blood, one hand still gripped a long, bone-handled hunting knife. And the very instant the warrior’s dark, feverish eyes caught sight of Caleb’s wool coat through the branches, that knife came up.
Fast. Ready. Deadly.
Caleb raised his revolver, aiming the barrel directly at the center of the warrior's chest.
For several agonizing seconds, the two men stared at each other across ten paces of red-stained snow.