Read Chapter 3: The Deerhide Pouch

The human track didn't waver once it left the crash site. That was either very good or very bad—a person in genuine panic wanders, doubles back, makes mistakes. This was a person moving with intent, cutting a straight line through the spruce and fir toward higher ground. Whoever made these tracks wanted to go somewhere specific, and they weren't slowing down for the snow stacking on their heels.

Declan killed the snowmobile engine a hundred yards past the treeline and let the silence swallow him. The wind had died to a whisper between the trunks, which meant the storm was still gathering itself. He had maybe two hours before it hit with everything it had. Maybe less.

He dropped to one knee beside the freshest print, brushing the loose powder from the depression. The track was deep, heel strike clean, toe push-off strong. A man, six-foot or better, carrying weight. The stride length had shortened in the last twenty yards—not from fatigue, but from caution. The walker had started looking over his shoulder.

Declan unclipped his rifle from the sled and slung it across his chest. The snow came up past his knees in the deeper drifts, but he followed the line of prints without breaking his rhythm. One foot in front of the other. Read the ground. Trust what it tells you.

That was the first lesson his mentor ever taught him.

The wall of rock rose sudden out of the white, a granite face streaked with ice and black where the lichen had died. The tracks led straight to its base, where a fissure opened like a mouth—three feet wide, maybe seven high, leading back into darkness. The entrance was partially screened by a deadfall of spruce, which told Declan the walker had taken time to arrange the branches. Deliberate. Hiding.

He stood at the mouth of the cave and listened. No sound from inside. No movement.

"Search and rescue," he called out. "I'm coming in. If you're in there and you're hurt, make noise."

Nothing.

He ducked under the deadfall and stepped into the dark. The air inside was still and cold, carrying the faint mineral smell of old stone. He let his eyes adjust before pulling his headlamp from his pocket. When he clicked it on, the beam cut a white cone through the dark and found a shape against the far wall.

A backpack. Osprey pack, the kind expedition guides favored. It lay on its side like it had been dropped in a hurry, the top flap unzipped, the contents spilling out. Declan crossed to it and knelt, sweeping his light across the mess.

Spare socks. A titanium cook pot. A roll of toilet paper. A folded map of the Selkirk range with grease-pencil markings around the target valley. A satellite phone with a cracked screen, dead as a stone.

No emergency beacon.

Declan picked up the map and studied the markings. The valley was circled twice, with X marks at three different points along the ridgeline. Someone had been planning to search that ground, not just pass through it. This was Cole Wainwright's pack, or whoever had been guiding the team. Everything fit the profile Nolan had given him.

But it was the pouch that made his breath catch.

It lay half-buried under the map, made of smoked deerhide, worn soft with years of handling. The stitching was uneven, the edge of the flap worked smooth by thumbs. A thin leather cord was tied around it in a knot Declan knew like his own heartbeat.

He reached out and picked it up. The hide was cold but somehow alive against his palm, carrying the faint ghost of woodsmoke and cedar. His hands moved without thinking, untying the knot, folding back the flap.

Inside was the medicine bundle. A small stone carved in the shape of a bear. A bundle of dried sage tied with red thread. A single eagle feather, split down the quill. And a photograph, creased at the corners from years of folding and unfolding—a man and a woman with two young children standing in front of a log cabin, the mountains rising blue behind them.

Declan stared at the photograph for a long moment. His thumb brushed the edge of the man's face.

He knew this pouch. He had watched it hang from a belt for close to a decade while a quiet voice taught him how to read the ground, how to move through snow without leaving a trace, how to find the people the mountain didn't want found.

Thomas Blackwood had been dead for nine years. Declan had stood at his grave in a bitter wind while the priest said words about a good man taken too soon. He had seen Thomas lowered into the frozen earth, had thrown the first handful of dirt onto the coffin.

There was no way this pouch should be here. No way Thomas's hands could have tied that knot, filled that bundle with the same stones and feathers and sage he had carried for his entire adult life.

And yet.

Declan sat back on his heels, still holding the pouch. The cave pressed close around him, the dark a physical weight. The storm had reached the valley—he could hear the first gusts now, a low moan that worked its way through the fissure like fingers probing a crack in a door.

He thought about the blood on the snowmobile seat. The tracks that looked like an animal's but didn't behave like an animal's. The way the human prints had led him here, straight to this cave, straight to this pack, straight to a dead man's medicine bundle in the exact condition it should not have been in.

Someone had left this here for him to find.

Not for Nolan. Not for the RCMP. For him. The knot on the pouch was a Blackwood family knot, taught only to Thomas's apprentices. There were maybe three people in the world who could have tied it, and Declan was one of them.

Which meant the walker had known he would come.

He tucked the pouch inside his parka, against his chest, where the warmth of his body would keep it safe. It was heavier than it should have been for something made of deerhide and feathers, weighed down with meaning he couldn't name yet. He zipped the parka closed with a sense of duty settling into his chest like a cold stone.

Thomas had taught him to track. Thomas had taught him to carry the dead with him when they couldn't carry themselves.

Whatever was happening in this valley, whatever had made those tracks and spilled that blood, Declan was not leaving without finding the person who had worn Thomas's pouch. Not leaving without finding the man who had tied that knot.

He gathered the rest of the pack's contents, cataloging them by feel—gloves, a water filter half-frozen, a leather journal with grease-smeared pages tucked into the side pocket. He took the journal too. If the walker had left the pack behind, whatever was written inside might tell Declan more than the tracks could.

He crawled back out of the cave into a world gone white. The storm had arrived early, punching through the ridgeline with a fury that stole the breath from his lungs. The tracks he had followed were already gone, erased like they had never existed.

No going back. No signal. The snowmobile was buried somewhere behind him, unstartable in this blow even if he had known which direction to push.

Declan checked his compass, fixed the cave in his memory, and turned north.

The journal pressed against his ribs beside the pouch. Two ghosts, riding with him now.

He dropped his chin against his collar and started walking into the white, trusting the ground to show him the way even when it was hidden. Thomas's voice echoed in his memory, patient and dry, the way it always was before a lesson.

*The snow lies, old son. Same as people. But it can't lie about everything. Look close enough, you'll find the truth under the surface.*

Declan looked close.

The truth was waiting somewhere in this blizzard, wearing a dead man's pouch and leaving tracks that didn't make sense.

He was going to find it, or the mountain was going to keep him.