I saw them coming up the trail and felt my every muscle tighten with anticipation. I counted four of them in all, lumbering down the narrow trail and through the deep snow as if it were not even there. They were magnificent beasts, their four green eyes gazing over the blank white landscape around them. Each of them would weigh an easy thousand pounds, with one of the bulls looking as if he could top out at a ton. Their thick hides were shaggy and matted with snow, their breath coming out in little clouds as their great bodies heaved though the deep snow.

My rifle was heavy in my hands, the steel was cold to the touch, and the sight was on the shoulder of the big bull at the lead of the small group. A few months from now they would be in giant herds of thousands of animals, but now they were scattered in hundreds of tiny family groups like this to make the foraging easier. Few other animals could survive the deep, cold winters of these northern lands and most of them had fled to the south where it was supposed to be warmer and where there was more food this time of year. It was as hard for us as it was for them when the winter came and the meat on those beasts down below would sustain our clan for at least a month. Already there was hunger in our village and the children had started to cry for lack of food. I had no children of my own, but the three other men with me were family men and were feeling the strain.

Mentally I judged the distance to my target, I eased back the hammer of the rifle with my finger on the trigger so that it wouldn't click, and with careful fingers I picked up some snow and slipped it into my mouth. The snow cooled the inside of the mouth so that the breath wouldn't come out in foggy clouds like that of the Radbuffs and could not give away the hunter's position. The Radbuffs had the keenest vision out of those four eyes and could spot the slightest movement at this range. Four hundred yards was an easy shot for the .45-70 in my hands, but a slight movement now would ruin the hunt. Already we had tracked this herd for days. My finger tightened on the trigger, I took in a breath and let it out, then took in another and let it out slowly.

The rifle in my hands was the best in the clan and a trophy of battle, taken from the body of a war chief of the Black Hands. It was a fine weapon, an improved version of the Brush Gun that many called a Medicine Stick. I let out the breath slowly and held my sight on target, just behind the neck where the muscle was thinner and the heavy bone of the shoulder could not ruin the shot. My finger closed around the trigger and the heavy rifle leapt in my hands and the report of it rang in my ears. Two other rifles spoke at almost the same instant and I saw the bullets find their targets. Mine tore into the bull's neck, the other two hit the cow that was trailing behind him. The bull jerked his head slightly at the impact of the bullet, let out a challenging bellow to the unseen man who had shot him, then took a tentative step forward before falling in a heap into the deep snow.

The last members of the group, a younger bull and a calf, turned at the sight of their dead comrades and bolted down the trail toward the frozen river again. The shots echoed into the distance and lost themselves in the vastness of the plains, melting into the snow and the chilling wind before fading away into nothing. I levered a fresh shell into the chamber and picked up the empty for later reloading, then took a cartridge from my belt and fed it into the tube. That belt was made of the same leather that would come from those hides we had just taken, was wide and thick and held twenty cartridges for the .44 Magnum Revolver on my hip and thirty for the rifle. On my other hip hung a large fighting knife that some called a Bowie that I had made from an old file and the leg bone of a Mole Rat.

Clumsily, I got to my feet and brushed the snow from my heavy buckskins. My legs were cold and numb from lying in the snow for so long and my hands were stiff from the frozen air, but a few minutes of activity would loosen them up again. Marcus and Hawk's-Eye left their perches a dozen or so yards down the ridge from me and did likewise, Marcus with his Hunting Rifle in the crook of his arm and Hawk's-Eye already drawing his knife from its scabbard. Down the hill I could see August coming up from the draw where he had been holding the horses. We had brought four extras to carry the meat and hides and we all had packs on our saddles that could carry more. We had our mounts and the others were strong draft horses, bred for the carrying of heavy loads. It was a good haul, and even they would be strained to carry it all.

We made fast work of butchering out the animals, all of us working with skilled hands and sharp blades, and within an hour we had skinned out the bull and cow and loaded their hides, loaded with meat, onto the pack horses and packed the rest into bundles we had brought for the purpose. What couldn't fit in the packs we wrapped in smaller skins and put in our saddlebags. There would still be plenty left for the buzzards, the coyotes, and the Snowhounds.

Once in the saddle, we punted our mounts northwest and started for the mountain valley that was our home. The snow was falling less now and we made decent time down the already traveled trail. The plains around us were a sea of white, flat, dead, and void to the casual eye. I knew better. Out there were a hundred creatures that knew to remain hidden in the blinding daylight, waiting for the cover of night to come out and scrape away the snow for what little food was left after the months of bone-chilling cold we'd had already or to hunt the smaller creatures that fed the predators and the scavengers with their flesh. Only the might Radbuffs and the Snowhounds ventured about in the day, both at the top of their respective food chains and looking down on the smaller animals hiding in their holes and burrows. They were the lords of the plains, just as we were.

"Do you think it'll ever get warm again, Cain?", Marcus said beside me.

"You say that every year, Marcus. It's only been seven months."

"I mean like it used to be. You know, like the Old Ones say it used to be?"

"In the Time Before the Vaults? I doubt it. That world has been lost for a long time. Whatever is left of it is long gone. The old texts even say that the weather was changed by the Great War. I even found a book that said the winters used to only last four or five months. Five months? I couldn't imagine a winter so short."

"It must have been a wonderful thing to live back then."

"Why do you always go on about that stuff, Marcus? Ever since we were children you've been looking at the past and reading those old texts. It might have been wonderful back then, but it is all gone now. I live in the present. We have a good life here. All the game we can hunt, good water, the high mountains and the plains. What more could we want?"

Looking around at the white and windswept land around us, I knew that what I said was true. This was a land that was virtually untouched by the Great War and the nuclear warheads that had scorched the planet almost bare. Most of the major cities that had been hit were far away and this had always been an isolated part of the world even before the bombs fell. The animals here were largely unchanged by the mutations that had followed the nuclear apocalypse of so long ago. The Radbuffs were one of the few species who had been perverted by those mutations, as were the Snowhounds and the Yao Guai that had migrated north with the Radbuff herds, but in our mountains there could still be found large refuges where deer, elk, and moose still roamed wild and free just as they had always done. The horses we rode, some of the finest animals in the world and known even to our fellow horse tribes as some of the best to be found, had survived the bombs unchanged in the high mountain valleys and deep canyons where the radiation failed to reach them and where the water and grass were plentiful. Most of the tribes in the old states of Montana and Wyoming had found and tamed them once again after centuries of running wild. This had always been a horse country, and now it was even more so.

Of the many tribes that roamed the Northern Rockies, ours was by far one of the strongest. We were the Fire Hairs, named so for the thick and bright red and auburn color of our hair. Almost every member of our tribe was a redhead, with the few brunettes and blondes being the result of intermarriage with other bands or tribes. Our vault, Vault 94, had been an experiment like many of the vaults had been. Everyone that was sent to the vault was a natural redhead, the point being to see if the redhead genetic mutation could survive in a closed environment over so long a time. The result was a race of stout, tall, red-haired warriors who were known for our ferocity and our zeal in battle and for our strength and ingenuity in farming and building. Our vault had opened before many of the others and we had taken to the mountains as though born to them and quickly found them a paradise.

The other tribes of our area were less fortunate, but nonetheless fearsome and powerful. Our greatest rivals were the Black Hands, fierce warriors and hunters who lived by hunting and raiding their neighbors for what they needed and sometimes from scavenging old ruins and taboo places from the Time Before the Vaults. To the east of us were the Plainsmen, fine warriors and superb horsemen who lived mainly by following the Radbuff and elk herds across the plains and lived in hide houses that were sort of a mixture between a teepee and a wickiup. Nomadic and fierce, they raided for the little tech that they possessed and lived just as their ancestors had done for millennia. To the south and in the ruins of the old cities there lived the Psychos, the White Skulls, and the Ogawas, all of them savage tribes who scavenged for Old World tech in the remains of the cities and were constantly at war with one another and with anyone who entered their territories. They rarely hunted and almost never ventured outside of the old cities. To many they were known collectively as the Eaters of Men.

In the last few years, though, new tribes and new people had been entering our northern refuge. Traders and caravaneers from the east and the southwest had been following the old roads into our lands, bringing with them new trade goods and tales of new nations, new cities, and new wars in their respective lands. Some came from what they called the Capitol Wasteland and spun tales of a Lone Wanderer who had brought their factions together after showing them how to make clean water and allowing them to form what they called the New Republic. Others came from the southwest and told of a bright city that was untouched by the Great War and was rising to power in a distant land called the Mojave Desert where the nations of the NCR and Caesar's Legion had waged a long and bloody war over a place called Hoover Dam. We had heard of the Legion, for their ferocity was known far and wide and at times their raiding parties had even come this far north in search of slaves. Of the NCR and this New Republic we knew nothing and didn't particularly care to know anything at all.

To the west of us and in the old Wallowa Valley of the Bitterroot Range, a new tribe had moved in from the far west that called themselves the White Legs. They claimed that they had been driven from their traditional lands in Zion Canyon and the Great Salt Lake by a mysterious courier who united their enemies against them and all but wiped them out, but that a few of them managed to escape and make their new home here in the north. They, too, were raiders and hunters who knew nothing of farming and made war on all around them. Theirs had been a warmer land than this and for a time we were sure they would starve or freeze when the snows came, but they had proven resilient and were starting to make themselves great again little by little. They had raided our hunting grounds many times and once tried to attack our own village for slaves and horses. I had a scar on my arm and five scalps in my lodge that proved the futility of that particular decision.

Our horses crunched through the deep snow and in places we had to skirt wide around to avoid drifts in the gullies and low places. Snow piled in those declivities could be ten feet deep or more and would swallow a man and horse completely before they even knew they were in trouble. We crossed a frozen stream a few miles out, our horses barely getting their knees wet in the shallow but freezing water, and after wiping down their legs we continued on. All the time we rode with our rifles out and ready, for we were close to the boundary between our hunting grounds and those of the Black Hands. They were known to attack hunting and foraging parties in the winter months, stealing the meat and hides as well as the horses from our hunters and those of other tribes. Often when they couldn't find game of their own or when the winter had been hard they would raid for food and supplies even in the deepest of snows, and this winter had been especially hard.

Marcus and I were in the lead of the little column, both of us with our rifles across our saddles, with August and the pack horses in the center and Hawk's-Eye bringing up the rear. The wind howled and whistled over the bare plains and stung our faces with blown ice and snow. My cheeks were red and dry from it and my long red hair was swept backward in the wind, and I tried to huddle down in my scarf and heavy buckskins to keep out the worst of it. My rifle was cold in my hands and my fur-lined gloves did little to keep out the intense cold. We rode in silence, all of us with our eyes on the skyline and our fingers resting on the trigger guards of our guns.

Normally this was the easy time for us, the time of sitting in the lodges over warm fires and broiling meat and listening to the old ones tell stories of hunts, of battles, and of adventures of years past. In addition to being great warriors, we Fire Hairs were also known as wanderers and adventurers. Many of our kind had wandered the wastes in bygone years, some venturing as far out as Alaska to the north and Oregon to the west, although I had never heard of any of our kind going to the California or Capitol Wasteland that the newcomers spoke of. None that ever returned, that is, and many of those who ventured out to foreign lands never returned. This was the time that we prepared for during the rest of the year, stockpiling food and supplies from our hunts and crops in the short summer and long fall so that we could eat during the long winter. In the early and late months it was possible to hunt but when the deep snows came it was almost impossible to leave the villages and the high valleys where we sought refuge from the cold.

The horse I rode was a fine one, one of the best in our large herd. He was a tall black, stout for his age and able to run most other horses into the ground and still be going. I'd raised him myself and had broken him to the saddle when only a boy. I had four others back at the village, two that I had raised myself and two that I had taken in battle from Black Hands during the summer raiding months over the years. All were fine animals, but the black was by far the best and one of the best mountain and snow horses I had ever seen. His bulk moved easily over the snow, now two or three feet deep in some places, and the thick crust of white gave way under his powerful legs.

A movement caught my eye a few hours down the trail. It was a small movement, one that might easily have been the wind sweeping over the snow on a distant ridge, but it was there and it made me uneasy. Something had moved there, I was sure, and it was something that wanted to remain hidden because it was using the snow as cover. It was a flash of white on the crest of a ridge a few hundred yards away, the exact distance obscured by the wind and the blown snow, but it was there. A Snowhound? Doubtful. They would be feasting on those three carcasses back there by this time and they knew better than to follow so many men and horses in search of meat. I'd seen them take down colts and fully grown horses, but no Snowhound would challenge four men eight horses even for the huge haul of meat that we had in the packs. A Yao Guai? No, they would be easier to spot on this snow and they mostly kept to the thick woods near the mountains while hunting. That left only one thing that it could be; a man.

It was a distinct possibility. Most men knew better than to venture out in this weather, for just as the animals had learned to stay in their dens so we had learned to stay in our lodges when the snow grew deep and the wind blew cold. Then again, we were out here. It had been a hard winter for us and our people had been through a starving time, so it must be so with the other tribes. Whoever was up there was either on foot or was keeping his horse well hidden as he watched us. Likely he had a Snowhound hide for camouflage, for those hides were pure white and blended almost perfectly with the snow, and he was a good hunter and knew how to use the land to his advantage. That was something to consider.

His motives were obvious to me. This was a good haul of meat and the hides would make good winter clothes or bring a fortune in trade, not to mention our horses, guns, supplies, and the honor that our scalps and our gear would bring to the warriors who pursued us. Ours was a warlike time and all the tribes lived by war, the young warriors always searching for honor and glory and hunting trouble with their neighbors. I had ridden on many raids against many tribes in the warm months, hunting for horses, scalps, and counting coups.

The day passed by slowly, and when the sun was low behind the far mountains we hunted ourselves a campsite. There was a place we knew of and we made for it, a place in an arm of the foothills where a tall bluff formed a sort of cave out of an overhang of rock and a jumble of boulders that had fallen down the mountain in some bygone age. The pines were just starting their march up the steep slopes of the mountain, taking over the slopes where the aspens had sheltered them until they themselves fell away and were forgotten. In several places the golden canopy of the aspens could be seen in long groves higher up on the mountain and many others I could see the dead arms of the aspen and the tall green tops of the lodgepole pines. Here the younger pines grew close to the tiny cavern and formed a sort of shelter where we could hitch the horses and shelter them from the wind. The stone bluff would be a good reflector and what little smoke our fire would make would lose itself in the thick branches of the pines.

We stripped the packs form our horses and rubbed them down with rough cloths that we had brought for the purpose, then with a small shovel we cleared away the snow under the thick grove of young pines so that they could get at the grass underneath and picketed them where they could graze and be protected from the wind. Marcus and August set the camp while Hawk's-Eye and I took care of the horses and by the time we had them picketed they had a fire going and meat spitted over the flames. The smell of the meat cooking made our stomachs growl and I felt my tongue touch my lips in anticipation. None of us had tasted meat for weeks, our stores of dried meat having run out a month before and we had been subsisting on pemmican, grains, and the little that we could get out of our winter gardens. There was famine in our lodges and this meat would be a godsend when we got it back to them.

We all ate heartily and sat around the fire talking the sun out of the sky and the moon over the mountains and into the stars. Finally it was time to curl up into our blankets and Marcus and I volunteered for the first watches. Hawk's-Eye and August slid into their blankets with their weapons laid out close by in case of need, both of them asleep as soon as their heads touched their saddles. Marcus and I squatted on opposite sides of the fire and I added more sticks to it, looking away from the flames to save my night vision. Looking into a fire can be soothing and relaxing, but it also blinds a man when he looks away from the fire and into the darkness again. A knowing enemy could use split second of blindness for a shot or a movement. I'd seen more than a few men killed that way.

The fire was warm and it felt good after the long, cold ride. My mind was still on the mysterious movement that I had seen on that ridge, far away now, and the unseen watcher that I was sure was on our trail. He could be out there right now, watching the glowing dot of our fire from somewhere in the trees. If he was on foot, as I suspected, and was wearing good snowshoes then he could easily have kept up with and even overtaken our horses. A good man on shoes like that could cover ground with relative ease in snow this deep, whereas horses had to stomp and push their way through it and take much longer. He wouldn't be alone, either. More than likely the man I had seen was just a scout keeping an eye on us before the main force could ambush us somewhere along the trail home. There were many places where such an attack could be made, or they could try their luck here.

"Well, Cain," Marcus said after a while, "I think I'll take the second watch. I'll go bed down by the horses. You just wake me when it comes my turn."

"Sure thing, Marcus. Say, did you happen to see that hound up on the hill a while back? He was a big one."

"I did at that. He was a big one, alright. I'll have to watch the horses close tonight."

I knew that he knew what I meant and that he had seen either the same movement I had seen or some other that I had missed. He was a canny man and a superb hunter, and we had known each other too long to need explanations. Without another word he took his rifle and bedroll and went to the little corral where our horses were held. I fed fuel into the fire and banked it so that it would burn longer, then took up my own rifle and went into the woods.

The snow here was hard-packed and thick and easily held my weight, and my moccasins made little sound on the thick ice that was just below the surface. I held my rifle low and kept my thumb on the hammer and ready for action. I was certain that someone was out there in the trees watching us and I had never been one to sit tight when enemy was about. My way was always to attack. Never let the enemy get set, always take the fight to him and keep at him until he was dead or driven off. This was in my mind as I made my way through the stoic pines, their dark trunks like the pillars of some ancient cathedral and the moonlight casting an eerie glow over the snow and the thick needles that hung in the air like the spines of some great beast. The shadows were dark an deep and the wind was lesser under the trees, making the forest a ghostly and silent land that offered neither sound nor movement. Somewhere out on the plains I heard the long, lonely howl of a Snowhound, answered a moment later by another that sounded miles away. A few minutes later a coyote yapped into the night from somewhere up the mountain. They were lonesome creatures casting their loneliness into the wilds, just as I was.

I had always been a solitary sort of man. I was born for the deep forests, the dark trails, the lonely places where man never roamed and few beasts dared to tread. I loved the wilderness, the wild lands, the places where a man could ride for days and scarcely know he had moved at all. This was my kind of land. The cold mountain air was like cool water, the smell of the pines wafted into my nose on the slight breeze, and the only sound was that of the wind in the pines and the echoes of the coyote's call. Another coyote called into the night, this one much closer than the first. Only this one was no coyote.

The sound was from close by, no less than three hundred yards from where I now sat beneath the cone of a young cedar. I was completely hidden under the tree's shadow and behind the green cone. My rifle grew cold in my hands and my breath made little clouds as it came out. I took a pinch of snow and put it in my mouth to cool my breath. That call came again, closer this time, and it was a different man answering the first one's signal. This man was no more than a hundred yards from me now, and he would be coming this way. I knew this land well and I knew there was a trail just a little ways ahead of me that was used by elk and Yao Guai. It should be clear of most of the snow and would make a good route for a man on foot. I started to rise from beneath the tree and put out a hand to grasp a limb when I saw a shadow move between the trees and the flicker of moonlight on something metal.

Instantly I froze. Had he seen my own movement? He was coming closer now, whoever he was, and he was moving like a ghost in the trees. This couldn't be the man who had made that second call. That meant that there were at least three men out there, probably more, and they would know where our camp was and that they had us surrounded. They were coming in close now, stalking through the darkness, and they meant to take us all at once. To warn the others was out of the question. A call or a signal would betray my position and invite a shot from the hunters, which would attract fire from the camp as well. They were coming in close now and I saw a movement between trees again, this time just a few yards away.

For the first time I got a good look at the stalker. He was lean and wiry, his muscular form covered only by a Snowhound hide and the raw skins of an elk. His knee-high boots were made of the same white hide, his arms and chest were painted with white streaks, and in his hand he held a knife. His dark hair was pulled back and hung over his shoulders and I saw more paint on his face that marked him as a White Leg. The only other weapon I could see was a Hunting Rifle slung over his shoulder. His moccasin boots made little sound on the hard snow and he had snowshoes on beneath them.

I let him come on and after a moment he moved to a thick pine trunk that would easily hide his slim body. I could see his eye sweeping the forest and his head was angled as if he were straining to listen. Looking for me, no doubt. He sat and listened for a minute or so before he moved again, taking each step with infinite care. We were about fifty yards from camp now and he still hadn't seen or heard me and he had to know that I was somewhere about. I let him go another three steps before I finished my move and left the cover of the cedar. My rifle was in my left hand and held by the action. This would be close work, anyway, too close for the rifle. My hand moved to my side and slipped the thong from the hammer of my pistol. I crept up behind him, my moccasins making no sound, and in a few steps I was almost directly behind him.

"Nice night, ain't it?"

Instantly he spun around flipped his knife for a throw. My gun bucked in my hand and the thunderous report sounded like a cannon in the close confines of the pine forest. His chest blossomed with crimson and his body jerked back a step, dropping his knife in mid-throw as he fell backward into the snow. His knife stuck in the snow and ice, the haft standing erect and the blade catching the blue light of the moon. I had no memory of drawing my gun, but the bone grips felt good in my hand and my wrist felt jarred by the heavy recoil of the .44 slug. It took only a glance to see that the man I had shot was dead, his lifeless body lying on the snow and his cold eyes staring off into nothing.

Running feet sounded on the snow behind me and I whirled around just in time to see a man charging out of the sparse underbrush with a tomahawk raised for a blow. My gun bellowed in my hand again and I saw the heavy slug tear open his chest, followed an instant later by another that hit only inches away from the first. His body jerked and he crumpled in mid stride before falling face first into the snow, stone dead.

A few shots came from the trees higher up the moutnain and I holstered my pistol and levered three fast shots at the muzzle flashes that I could see. More shots came from our camp and I heard the bullets whistle through the trees and clip limbs in a few places. The shots died away, the sound rebounding off the stoic walls of the trees and the mountains before losing itself in the loneliness of the night, and then all was quiet once again. Somewhere up the mountain there was a muffled rustle of movment, then nothing. They were gone. I thumbed shells into my rifle and reloaded my revolver, then turned and looked at the dead men laying in the snow.

The first man I'd shot was lying against the trunk of a pine, his knife still stuck in the snow and his blood staining the snow red aorund his body before it froze and turned to crimson ice. The other man laid face-down in the snow, not moving or breathing, and when I hooked a toe under him and rolled him over, my rifle held low and ready, I saw that his face was covered with powdery snow and his eyes were wide open and cold. His tomahawk was still clutched in his hand and I saw a knife clenched in the other fist, held overhand as was normal when fighting with the two weapons, and when I looked him over I could see a rusted 10mm Pistol stuck in his belt and there were two magazines hanging in a makeshift pouch on the belt. The scabbard for the knife was covered in beadwork that I had seen on some of the scabbards and clothing made by the Plainsmen. Perhaps he had taken it from one as a trophy, or maybe traded for it at some point. The Tomahawk was definitely of White Leg make, their strange markings adorning the haft and the blade, and under the thick hides he wore I could see the white paint that they wore when going to war.

Both men favored each other and when I looked back toward the first man I could see for the first time that he was hardly a man at all. Behind the thick black hair and the whtie war paint, I found myself looking into the face of a kid who could not be more than fifteen or sixteen. In our tribe, and most other tribes, that was fighting age. This was probably his first raid and the man with the Tomahawk had probably been his father or brother. That other man was a muscular one, deep chested and broad across the shoulder, and the younger boy would have been just as broad if he'd had a few more years of life. I felt no sympathy for either man. This was a harsh land where men had to fight to survive and where boys had to grow up fast and take on a man's responsibilities and fight a man's battles. I'd gone on my first raid and killed my first man when I was only thirteen years old and led my first war party at the age of sixteen.

The others came from the camp, all with guns out and ready, and a glance was all that was needed to tell them what had happened. We were all warriors and we had all seen such things too often not to know how it must have happened. I looked through the dead men's clothes and found little more than I expected; a whetstone and smaller knife for camp chores, a book of matches that had seen better days, a few cartridges for a Cowboy Repeater that must have been left back at camp or used by one of the others in the party, and a small pouch of pemmican and jerky that would have done duty for rations. Neither man carried a canteen or water bag, depending on the snow and the ice of the forest for water, and both of them wore snowshoes. The shoes were well made and had apparently been made within the last few days, for they showed little wear and almost no sign of use.

There was little sound from the woods above and around us, so the others were either gone or laying low. I knew they were there, though. They were up there in the trees, the brush, and the shadows, probably looking down at us right this very minute and at the bodies of their dead laying on the reddening snow. I knew they were up there and I knew that they had marked me for death now, and I reveled in the thought. I leaned my rifle against the nearest tree and slid my knife from its sheath. I knelt down over the closest body and took hold of his hair, then slid the blade of the knife along the turf of his hair and felt the keen edge bite into the dead flesh and then the hair come free as his body fell to the snow once again. I held the scalp high and let out a war whoop that echoed down the canyons and the stoic walls of the mountains and the long halls of the forest. I held the scalp aloft and waved my knife so that the blade caught the moonlight, and I made sure they knew who I was.

"White Legs! I am Cain Lone-Elk of the Black Wolf clan of the Fire Hairs! This is my land and these are my people! I claim these scalps as my own! I challenge any that would come for me this night or any other, for I await you now!"

There was little talk between us as we made our way back to camp. We were all tired and we knew that a long, cold day of riding awaited us in the morning and within a moment we were all in our bedrolls. We set no guard for the rest of the night. Those White Legs out there had been confident and sure of victory, and now that arrogance had cost them two men and the element of surprise. Tribal wars were always fought in little skirmishes like these, with great battles being rare. Huge armies like those of the east and the south could afford to slug away at each other in long, bloody battles and drawn out wars over territory and riches, but in the tribes every man lost was a man that could not be replaced. The loss of even one or two men could break an attack by most tribes, for those were two men who could no longer hunt, no longer work, no longer make children to continue the line of the people.

Morning came bright and clear over the eastern peaks, bathing the long expanses of white and dull green in its light. The snow and ice caught the light like a million tiny diamonds, shining and sparkling on the branches and needles of the pines and cedars and on the iced-over boulders and stones where the snow had blown or melted off and left the ice behind. Dawn found us in the saddle and on the trail toward home, with me in the lead followed by Marcus and the pack horses, then Hawk's-Eye in the rear. We saw no sign of the White Legs, nor of any man for that matter, and for hours we wound our way down the thin sliver of trail that led up and into the mountains that we called home. We saw few creatures, once a lone Radbuff far in the distance breaking his way through the deep snow of the plain and once we startled a deer out of the trail ahead of us that darted off into the woods and vanished into the pines.

The trail we followed was barely discernible in the drifting snow. It was an ancient trail, as old as anyone could remember, and some even said that it had once been a road or a track of some kind back in the old times. In some places I could tell that the trail had once been a double track with a pair of twin ruts carved into the hard and dark earth. In the summertime it was especially so. In several places we saw the tracks of deer, elk, and once in the distance I could see where a group of wild horses had crossed a side trail and headed down off the mountain toward the plains where they could paw away the snow to get at the hidden grass.

We followed the trail higher and higher into a hidden valley where the meadows stretched away for a mile or more before us and high stone walls rose up a hundred feet or so on either side of the valley, which was about two miles wide by three miles long. A stream, frozen over now, ran the length of the valley and disappeared into the distance. At the head of the valley it fell away over rocky ledges and cascaded down the mountain in a series of waterfalls that were a sight to see in the spring and summer. The trail led up into out of the valley and into another valley, larger and deeper than the first, nestled between the forms of two huge peaks whose names had long been forgotten, if they ever had any to begin with. We called them the Two Brothers.

The valley that was our home was about five miles long and almost two miles across, the walls rose up nearly five hundred feet high and all of it sheer rock. The temperature was a little higher here than out on the plain and the higher mountains, the grass was a little greener, and the pines rose tall and in their innumerable battalions that marched on and away into the distance. The stream that ran down the valley was deep and swift, running fast enough to keep it from freezing for most of the year and running nearly twenty feet deep in the spring when the snow began to melt and the runoff from the Two Brothers swelled its banks. The best, clearest water that a man could ever drink. We topped out on the rise that swept down from a shoulder of the eastern Brother and looked down into our valley, all of us happy to be home after the long hunt.

Our village lay sprawled along the course of the river, dozens of lodges in tight little clusters around the open places where the meadows spread out around the long pools where the water collected. A lower meadow was farther down the stream, long and sprawling out into the mouth of the valley where the trees grew thick and dark and eventually spread out into the outer plains and the long, sweeping foothills where we would hunt our winter meat in the early months of the season. Sitting my saddle while the others rode down the trail and into the valley below, looking down at the meadow and at the countless forms that were grazing on the rich grass that grew along the river and in the sheltered places where the snow couldn't reach. There were around three or four hundred of them down there, all of them the finest horses to be found this side of the Plainsmens' herds of the Dakotas.

Most of the stock that we raised were mountain born and bred, many of them captured in the wild and broken to the saddle in this very valley or in the higher one through which we had passed a few hours before. I could see the four others that I owned grazing near the stream, my tall buckskin drinking the cool water and my strawberry roan pawing at the little bit of snow that had drifted down into the meadow from the higher slopes. The green grass grew richer and thicker there than in other places thanks to the cool water and it offered sufficient fodder to keep the happy for the duration of the winter months. Somewhere in the midst of the herd there was a chocolate-colored dun that stood fourteen hands tall and could cover ground at a pace that would eat up the miles with a space-eating trot and a dappled grey mare that I had raised from a colt and would soon be old enough to foal. Marcus had a stallion that would make a fine sire and we had plans to pair the two of them up in the summer.

Everyone came out to greet us as we came into the village, all eyes going from the bloody scalps on my saddle horn to the pack horses and their heavily laden packs that were stained with blood and stuffed to bulging with meat that would see us through the winter. I looked from one lodge to another and saw the remains of the winter's hunger on the faces of the old and the young of our clan. The past two months had been hard, cold, bitter ones where the wind had taken its toll on the people of the clan. Our winter crops had yielded much less than we had anticipated and the White Leg raiding parties, which had been much more frequent lately, had driven the game from the hills and forced us to go farther and farther afield to find our meat. We rode to the center of the village to the chief's lodge, and there we pulled the packs off the horses and laid them out for the elder to view.

George Standing Bear was the elder of our clan, what some would call the chief. He was once one of the greatest warriors of our clan, some said of our entire tribe, and although he was entering his sixtieth year of life and was old and feeble now, he still commanded a respect that only a seasoned warrior could. He stepped out of his lodge and watched us draw up in the village square and I saw him look to the bloody scalps on my saddle with a nod. He was as tall as I was and dressed in exquisite buckskins that were insulated with fur and decorated with red, blue, and yellow beads across the shoulders and along the seams of the sleeves where the fringe was sewn into the hide. On his cartridge belt there hung a large bone-handled fighting knife similar to my own and a .357 Magnum Revolver in a cracked and aged holster, both of which had seen much use. Tucked behind the belt was his tomahawk, the shaft stained dark and smooth with age and the steel blade colored to a dark patina from decades of blood and hard use. His face was drawn tight against the cold, his eyes were sunken behind thick wrinkles, and his once flaming red hair had now mostly turned white or a dull grey color.

Standing Bear looked over the large skins and Marcus opened one of them on the ground, showing the many pounds of meat that were held within. With a nod and a crooked smile, the old man gestured to the others to come and take what they would need. One person from each family came to us while we took down the skins and handed out rationed amounts to the fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives who came for their share of the meat. In the end it came down to a couple of pounds to each lodge, with those who had little ones or sick or old in their family getting a little more than the rest. I took none for myself and neither did Marcus. We had eaten back in camp and knew that the others needed it more, an action which Standing Bear noted and acknowledged with a nod.

Once the meat had been distributed, we went our separate ways. I went to my lodge and stripped the saddle from the black, rubbed him down after feeding him some handfuls of oats, then led him to the meadow to turn him out with the rest of the herd. I watched him join the other horses and loved the way they seemed to welcome him, nudging his neck and bobbing their heads as he came close to them. The two boys who were minding the herd sat their mounts and gave me a wave from the small knoll that overlooked the meadow, which I returned. The cold air came down from the high peaks, kissing the skin of my cheeks and neck and carrying with it the scent of pine and aspen. The snow swirled on the breeze in little clouds of white, the sound of the wind in the trees was like a melody to my ears, and somewhere far away on the lonely slopes of the mountain an elk bellowed his eternal challenge. It was good to be home.

Note from the Author: Hello again fellow Wastelanders! It's good to be back and I hope you all enjoy this new story! Feel free to leave a comment or a review on this chapter and I will decide whether to go further with it or try one of my many other ideas. Can't wait to hear from you and hope you enjoy it.