Chapter 9: The Bait

I untied the ribbon and held it up in front of Kell's face.

He was still sleepy. He looked at it for a while.

"Hester's," he said.

"Hester's."

"Hester doesn't climb mountains."

"No. She pays people to."

The gutting was clean and fresh.

Not a wolf's work.

A knife's.

The blood hadn't been left to soak into the snow.

It had been carried.

A long, deliberate stain ran away downhill from the elk, through the pines, toward the far end of the valley.

Toward the old pass that led down to the ridge.

I felt sick.

"They're baiting him," I said. "Old Frost. They're laying him a trail."

"To where?"

I didn't answer. I was already walking.

We followed it all morning.

Every half mile there was another kill.

A deer with its belly opened, and a hare.

Then a goat, still warm, with its throat cut and a blue ribbon tied around its horn.

The cold had Kell slow, but the trail had him angry, and angry carried him.

At noon a red hawk dropped out of the sky and turned into Tobiah in a burst of feathers.

He landed on his knees in the snow, panting.

"Two of Hester's hired men," he gasped. "Left Saltmarket before dawn with a sled. Big sled. Covered. I followed them up."

"We found what was in it," Kell said.

Tobiah looked at the goat and went pale under his freckles.

"They're just ahead," he said. "Past the next ridge. I can hear them arguing."

We went low through the pines.

Two men knelt beside a sled at the edge of the treeline.

Saltmarket hunters, rough-bearded and red-nosed, in fox caps.

One was cutting open a sack of blood with his knife and pouring it on the snow.

The other was drinking from a flask.

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