Margaret Winterbloom knelt in the snow beside her best breeding goat and saw the ranch she wanted die a little. The wire snare had cut deep into the animal's back leg. She freed the goat, but the leg was ruined. It would never carry a kid to term now. She had three breeding animals left. She needed a herd of thirty to make this homestead the richest ranch on the frontier. She could not build anything while her stock kept getting maimed. She stood and pressed her cold hands together. Every morning she rose before the family to bake their bread. Every day she tended these animals herself. All of it was for one thing: to carry them through this lean stretch and out the other side, into something better. And a stranger's snare was undoing it, one animal at a time. Daniel came out from the homestead. Behind him the windows glowed and the greenhouse plants pressed green against the frost. He was her husband, blond and broad, the kind of man who fixed a bad roof by admitting he'd built it wrong. He looked at the goat's leg, then at her face. "Bad," he said. "She's done for breeding." Margaret's voice held steady. "Third animal this month, Daniel. I can't grow a herd out of nothing." He crouched and lifted the snare. He turned the wire in his fingers and studied the knot at the end. "Double loop," he said. "Same knot both times." He knew trapping craft. He'd taught it. "One trapper. Not ours." "Knowing his knot doesn't heal my goat." "No." He set the wire down. He put his arm around her and pulled her against his side. He didn't say it would be fine. He never lied to make things soft. "We can't save what he already cut. We fix what we can. We stop him from cutting more." Margaret leaned into him a moment. Then she pulled back, because leaning didn't rebuild a herd. "Then I stop him." She looked at the ruined leg, then at the two healthy animals huddled by the fence. "I move the sound stock inside the greenhouse tonight. Warm, walled, safe. No snare reaches them there." Daniel nodded slow. "Crowds your plants." "My plants can share." They led the two breeders through the snow and into the glowing house. The goats settled among the pots and the great fireplace threw heat across them. Margaret latched the door. For the first time in a month, her breeding stock was beyond the trapper's reach. But safe wasn't enough. Locked indoors, her animals couldn't graze or grow the herd she needed. And the man with the double-loop knot was still out there, setting wire, waiting for her stock to step wrong again. She had bought her animals one night. She hadn't bought the season. To do that, she would have to find him.