The jeep track is invisible in the snow, but by roughly following the course of the Slate River upstream, I must eventually strike on Stone’s cabin, which is situated practically on top of it. Today the Slate, which was only ten or fifteen feet wide on my last trip, is a roaring flood of blue-black water sluicing down the valley like a logging flume. After a seeming eternity of slipping, falling, digging through drifts, and cracking my elbows and butt, I make my way past the entrance of an old mine, along the base of Anthracite Mesa, and up to the edge of a slot canyon, where the Slate is compressed into a raging chute that rockets over an eight-foot vertical drop. I pick my way along the edge of the canyon with care, knowing that a tumble into that water could easily kill me.

At last Stone’s cabin comes into sight, nestled among the tall spruce and fir trees between the jeep track and the river. There’s a welcome column of smoke rising from its chimney. I have not been this cold for many years. I stop to catch my breath and marshal my strength, then push on for the last two hundred yards like a climber going for the summit of Everest.

Stone answers his door with a pistol on his hip. The first words out of his mouth are, “You damn fool.” Then he jerks me inside, slams the door, and darts to the front window, where he stands peering through the curtains.

A fearsome array of weapons lies on the coffee table before the sofa—a hunting rifle, two shotguns, several automatic pistols—and a huge fire crackles in the fieldstone fireplace. The curtains over the back windows are shut, blocking the view toward the Slate and the trees beyond.

Stone must be close to seventy, but his vitality is intimidating. He’s one of those leathery guys who’ll still be jogging six miles a day when he’s eighty. The last time we met, he seemed charged with repressed anger. Now the whole interior of the cabin crackles with his fury, as though my first visit opened some channel to the past that made it impossible for him to hold in his rage any longer.

“What’s out there?” I ask.

He keeps staring through the window, his eyes narrowed like those of a marksman. “You didn’t see them when you came in?”

“All I saw was mountains and snow. No cars. No skiers. Nothing.”

“They’ve been out there all day. Four of them.”

“Who are they?”

“FBI, I hope.”

“And if not?”

He glances at me. “Then they only let you come in here for one reason.”

“Which is?”

“To make it easier to kill both of us.”

“Shit. Why are we standing here, then?”

“We’d be sitting ducks if we tried to make it out.”

“Call the police.”