The door was open.  Not a crack, as it would be to let in fresh air, but standing wide enough for him to enter.   It verified the Kendalls weren't home.  Lisa would never be so careless.
   Nate scanned the interior.  Immediately, to forestall being shot, he jerked back.  Once again no shots rang out.  Sucking in a deep breath, Nate drew his other pistol, then sprange inside, to the right of the doorway.  He had a jumbled impression of objects being where they shouldn't, of a table that was supposed to be on the left now in the middle of the room, and of a chest of drawers that had been moved.
   Waiting a full minute to confirm he was alone before he moved, Nate straightened and walked to the west window.  As he recollected, the Kendalls kept a lantern on a peg close by.  It wasn't there.
   Nate gingerly felt his way to the fireplace.  The logs had long since gone cold.  Fishing his fire steel and flint from his possibles bag, he lit a small fire that soon blazed high.  After adding more logs from the bin, he rose and turned.
   His first impression had been all wrong.  The furniture hadn't been moved around.  It had been thrown every which way.

   Seated on a stump at the clearing's border, Hawken across his thighs, Nate stared over his private domain.  This valley was his home.  Eighteen years earlier he'd claimed it for his own and held onto it, defying repeated attempts by the Utes and others to drive him out.  In all that time, non of the threats he faced were as unnerving as this new one.
   Confronting a known enemy was on thing, confronting an elusive foe who defied his every attempt to track it down, another.  Nate had no notion of who or what he was up against, and it was that, more than the absence of wildlife and the terrified horses, that disturbed him most.  How could he protect his loved ones when he had no clue what he was protecting them from?  How could he defend his domain when it had been invaded by a will-of-the-wisp.  An adversary who grew increasingly brazen, as the shredding of his son's shirt demonstrated.  How long, Nate fretted, before the skulker in the forest vented its violent urges on people instead of objects?   How long before someone he cared for was harmed?
   Soft footsteps jarred Nate's thoughts....