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dark, but the eastern sky had lightened slightly. A dream had terrified him, and he found he’d cut into the palm of his hand with his fingernails and drawn blood.
    In the dream, Caleb sneaked into his camp, rolled him over in his sleeping bag, and took a vicious bite out of the back of his neck. The pain was horrific, worse than anything he’d experienced.
    To assure himself it had been his imagination, he glided the tips of his fingers along his nape to make sure the skin wasn’t broken.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27

3
    THE ONLY SOUNDS JOE COULD HEAR AS HE RODE FROM THE trees into a sun-splashed meadow were a breeze that tickled the long hairs of Buddy’s black mane and made far-off watery music in the tops of the lodgepole pines, the huffing of his horses, and the squeaks and mews from his leather saddle.
    That was until he heard the hollow thwap somewhere in the dark trees to his right, the sizzle of a projectile arcing through the air like a shooting spark.
    And the thunk of the arrow through the fleshy top of his thigh that pinned him to the saddle and the horse. The pain was searing, and he fumbled and dropped the reins. Instinctively, he gripped the rough wooden shaft of the arrow with his right hand. Buddy screamed and crow-hopped, and Joe would have fallen if the arrow hadn’t been pinning him on the saddle. He felt Buddy’s back haunches dip and dig in, and suddenly the gelding was bolting across the meadow with his eyes showing white and his ears pinned back.
    Horses, after all, were prey animals. Their only defense was flight. Joe let go of the arrow shaft and held on to the saddle horn with both hands. The underbrim of his weathered Stetson caught wind and came off. He got a flash vision of how he must look from a distance, like those poor monkeys that used to “ride” greyhounds and “race” at tracks and arenas, the monkeys jerking and flopping with every stride because they were tied on.
    Buddy tore across the meadow. Blue Roanie followed, hooves thundering, gear—Joe’s tent, sleeping bag, food, clothing, grain—shaking loose as the canvas panniers caught air and crashed back and emptied against the ribs of Blue Roanie.
    Both animals were panicked and thundering toward the dark wall of trees to the left. Joe threw himself forward until his cheek was hard against Buddy’s neck and he reached out for a fallen strap of leather in order to try for a one-rein stop. He knew the only way to slow the gelding down was to jerk his head around hard until his nose was pointing back at Joe.
    He reached for the rein and the world shot by and in his peripheral vision he saw Blue Roanie suddenly sport an arrow in his throat and go down in a massive dusty tumble of spurting blood, flashing hooves, and flying panniers.
    Joe thought, This is it . They never had any intention of letting me get away after I met them and saw their camp.
    And: This is not where I want to die.
     
    JOE MANAGED TO SLOW BUDDY to a lope just before the horse entered the wall of trees on the edge of the meadow and he welcomed the plunge into shadowed darkness because he was no longer in the open. Buddy seemed to read his mind or more likely think the same thought and he continued jogging his way through the thick lodgepole pine forest, entering a stand where the trunks seemed only a few feet apart. The canopy of the trees was so thick and interlaced overhead that direct sunlight barely dappled the forest floor, which was dry and without foliage and carpeted with inches of dead orange pine needles. It smelled dank and musty inside the stand, and Buddy’s hoofprints released ripe soil odor through the crust of needles.
    The shaft of the arrow jerked back on a skeletal branch that seemed to reach out and grasp it. Joe gasped from the electric jolt of pain and bangles of brilliant red and gold shimmered before his eyes. Buddy cried out and shinnied to the left and thumped hard into the trunk of a lodgepole, crushing Joe’s left leg as well. The