Page 180 of Track of Courage

But how far had she run?

Maybe the wolf would simply tear her body to shreds.

Okay. That was enough ofthat—she rolled back over and started to crawl again.

She would survive. Find her voice again.

Maybe even make peace with her choices.

Crunching sounds on the snow ahead of her made her look up.

Snowshoes. And leather boots. Snow pants and a thick leather jacket and a furry hat and a ...gun? The man who stood in front of her held his rifle loosely but aimed in her general direction and...

She might not be thinking clearly. Might not have all her wits about her, and maybe this guyhadn’tshown up out of nowhere tokill her. Maybe hewasn’ttracking her, like that character Jeremy Renner played in that scary winter movie about the Wyoming serial killer.

“Don’t kill me!” She lifted her arms—why hadn’t she hung on to Mack’s gun!

Barking—no,snarling—erupted behind her. She turned and spotted the wolf—no, adog? A wild dog, racing toward her, teeth bared—

Stay calm,stay calm—

Not a chance. She dropped into a ball and screamed.

He must have a touchof PTS because the scream simply lit Dawson on fire, found his bones, and shook them.

He wanted to stop, put his hands over his ears, haul in breaths. It didn’t help that his knee burned, fat and stiff and cumbersome, especially after twenty minutes of hiking-slash-running and thankfullynotfalling through the snowy forest. He’d shouted a few times, hoping that Caspian might abandon the stupid rabbit or whatever he might be chasing, but the dog refused to obey, like they were playing a game.

He’d thought, early on, that he’d been actually tracking someone, but after the first ten minutes, he’d given up that hope. Especially when Caspian stopped, looked at him.

“Caspian! Get back here!”

The dog barked, then darted off again.

Ever so briefly he’d considered leaving the animal behind, but the lineup of people who might murder him started with Flynn, with Hazel close behind, and probably even Tillie, who rolled her eyes every time Fluffy scratched at the back door.

No, Dawson was in this, despite the cold and the wind and the fact that he was probably out of cell range. Moose would be the one leaving him in the bush.

He’d let out another “Caspian!” and heard the wind take his shout. His trek had spilled him out to the edge of a forest overlooking a ravine—if the animal had gone over that, all bets were off. That’s when the scream lifted. Sharp and high and ripping through him.

A female scream. Maybe. Could be an eagle or a hawk. He stumbled along the edge of an old creek bed, a thirty-foot drop, and the barking turned to snarls.

As Dawson scrambled along the side of the ravine, he spotted—

Ohno. It looked like Caspian had attacked a man, a trapper from the look of his attire. The dog had put himself between a woman crumpled on the snow and the trapper, growling, barking, scary.

Huh.

“Stop!Caspian!”

Except then he spotted the rifle in the man’s grip.

“Don’t shoot him!” He searched for a way down, his hands up to distract the man.

The woman knelt in front of the spectacle. Her long blond hair spilled out of a white pom-pom hat, and she backed away on her knees, her hands up.

Whoever this man was, Dawson knew in his gut that Caspian had stopped him from something terrible.

All thought, all pain stripped out of him, and in that second, he shook out of the past, the ringing inside, and found himself, or at least who he’d been, and scrambled down the side of the ravine—only a few feet here—and across the creek bed.