He used the trees effectively, dodging under the umbrella of green branches that reduced the accumulated snowfall to a dusting. He would cut across the base of a tree, dragging a sprig behind him and erasing his tracks as he went. When the trees were positioned closely enough together, he could make it fifty yards or more without tracks to follow. But eventually he was faced with deep snow again, forcing him to reveal his route. In summertime, he would have been nearly impossible to follow, he wouldn’t have been battling the elements, and he would have had an abundant source of water and food. As it was, he was sweating, cold, hungry and thirsty, and still trying to hold off using any of what he’d stolen from the cabin for as long as humanly possible. Then came the sound he’d been outrunning all day: the distant whine of the snowmobile. It wasn’t that they were close; it was their determination that ate away at his confidence. What he saw next intrigued him: a low, inverted semicircle amid a rock escarpment, fifty yards to his right.
