He’d shifted hours ago, criss-crossing their back trail and erasing it, but still the posse followed them. It made no damn sense. The man leading them, however, seemed to have the same grit and determination in chasing them as Cody did it trying to evade that posse. Three days since they’d had to abandon Scarlett in Dorado. Three days of cutting south and west until they were in the high desert and its hard, stone escarpments promised them no trail left behind. Below, horses picketed, the armed men were sitting around a fire, dining on beef jerky and bad coffee. Their leader, though, he was studying the rocky outcroppings, watching the landscape and time and again, his head turned to the overhang Cody hugged. His rested his muzzle against his paws, fur bristling. If he could angle the maneuver, he wanted to get close enough to their leader to sniff him. It was unnatural how well he stayed on their trail. Ike could do that, but Ike was gifted. He could track across blank landscape, following some sense that only he could see.
