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close, they didn’t look so scary. The black-and-tan hound’s floppy ears and sad-looking eyes made him almost cute. But he’d been the one that had leaped snarling into Jeep’s face and slashed his tender nose.
    â€œBack by the lake, when you said you were tracking trackers…” Sam paused as Jake began nodding. “They were the reason you went to Gold Dust Ranch? So, they’re Linc Slocum’s dogs?”
    â€œYep,” Jake answered.
    â€œYou’re lucky you weren’t riding Witch,” Sam said. She imagined Jake’s Quarter Horse mare trampling the dogs.
    â€œNot lucky.” Jake’s flat tone hinted he’d caught the dogs with skill and planning. “Also might’ve been a chore to bring ’em home on horseback.”
    Of course. Sam winced at Jake’s logic. It was just that she was so used to picturing him as a rider.
    â€œThey attacked Jeep.”
    Jake interrupted his level stare with a blink, then smiled. “ Attack ’s a pretty strong word.”
    â€œTalk to Dad,” Sam said.
    â€œWyatt saw it?”
    â€œDad was riding Jeep”—Jake’s only sign of surprise was the way his hand lifted from the windowsill, then flattened again, but Sam knew he wanted to hear more—“not far from High Grass Canyon,” she went on. “The whole pack came down from behind him. That black-and-brown one jumped up and bit Jeep on the nose. When Jeep went over backward, Dad went with him. He was thrown clear.”
    Jake gave a quiet whistle of amazement. “Never knew Wyatt to come off a horse ’less he meant to.”
    â€œI know,” Sam said. “That’s why I’m kinda scared of them.”
    She stared at the dogs again. All three tails wagged furiously at her attention.
    Typical. Jake didn’t ask if Dad was all right. He assumed she’d tell him if there was more he needed to know. Instead, he seemed to mull over the dogs’ behavior.
    â€œThey’re deerhounds,” Jake said slowly. “A blue tick, a Walker, and some kind of pointer.”
    â€œI don’t care what they are, or why he has them,” Sam snapped.
    â€œCalm down, Brat.”
    â€œI’m calm. And I don’t blame the dogs, exactly, but you wouldn’t be so understanding if you’d seen them, Jake.”
    â€œLike werewolves, were they?” Jake meant it as ajoke, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. He was as shaken as she was by Dad’s fall.
    â€œNo…like predators,” Sam told him.
    If Jake was right, the dogs had been trained to hunt. Maybe even bred to hunt. And, knowing Slocum, he wasn’t using them the right way.
    â€œWhy does he have them?” Sam asked. “I bet they’re part of some wild scheme like the buffalo.”
    Jake shrugged, but Sam could see that the memory of Slocum’s herd of bison—which he’d purchased to lure hunters to a Wild West resort he was planning—didn’t sit well.
    Linc Slocum had known nothing about the bison. He’d tried to herd them like cattle and they’d escaped.
    Just like these dogs, which might have passed for family pets.
    Yawning, the black-and-white speckled hound collapsed to the floor of the cage and rolled onto its back. Tail wagging, it begged Sam to scratch its belly.
    â€œI can see through your disguise,” she muttered, then suddenly she remembered the hounds Linc had rented to pursue the cougars last fall.
    They’d been speckled like this dog, and they’d helped Linc corner a mother cougar. He’d shot her, leaving her adolescent cub to fend for himself.
    Sam swallowed hard. She’d been riding Strawberry in Arroyo Azul when the young cougar had pounced.
    She remembered the pain between her shoulderblades and the terror of being overwhelmed by a wild animal.
    No thanks to Linc, she and Strawberry had survived the attack.
    Why couldn’t Linc see that his