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When she arrived, she found instead a kind of frenetic chaos, as though something had thrown everyone into a panic. Officers were moving quickly through the halls, doors were slamming, men were shouting orders. In Whitlock’s outer office, his aide told Rayna that the general would certainly be back within a day or, at most, two days. For the first time, Rayna actually believed him, because it was clear that something had happened to upset the quiet routine of the military post. But of course no one would tell her what that was.

Frustrated, she left the office with a promise to return again that afternoon.

As she left the building she was nearly bowled over by an officer bounding up the steps. He muttered a hasty but heartfelt apology, then disappeared inside.

The parade ground stretched out in front of the building, and to the right of that were the officers’ quarters, soldiers’ barracks, and the office of Fort Marcy’s commander, Colonel Collingswood. Far beyond that, at the top of the hill that formed the northern boundary of Santa Fe, stood Fort Marcy itself, a small walled fortress that acted as a guardian of the city.

What was it guarding today? Rayna wondered as she paused to study the fort in the distance. What had happened to set everyone in such an uproar?

The most obvious answer was Indian trouble. Had Geronimo come out of his stronghold in the Sierra Madre, or had another tribe of Apaches gone on the warpath?

Despite the intense August heat, the question chilled Rayna to the bone. If there was trouble on the Mescalero reservation, Skylar could be in terrible danger, and there wasn’t one blessed thing Rayna could do about it.

Immobilized by fear and frustration, she stood by the white picket fence watching an infantry drill on the parade grounds without actually absorbing any of the intricacies of the soldiers’ movements.

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6

Skirting the edge of the parade ground, Meade moved briskly toward the headquarters building, ignoring the infantry drill taking place on his left. He’d seen the routine far too often to be impressed by the pageantry. He tipped his hat to the ladies strolling along Palace Avenue and waved away the cloud of dust that poured over him when a carriage went careening down the street.

Halfway down the long block he glanced at the headquarters, and when he spotted the woman at the foot of the steps he cursed his foolish imagination. He’d been back in Santa Fe less than twenty-four hours, and already every fair-haired woman he saw made him think of Rayna Templeton. This elegantly dressed lady in the slim-skirted walking suit and feathered boater was probably the wife of a visitor or some new officer. She was not the hot-tempered hellion who had been plaguing his sleep for the last fortnight. Miss Templeton was long gone, having most likely completed her business with the general before Meade had caught up with the men of Cavalry Company B on their way to the Mescalero reservation.

Unfortunately that near-certainty couldn’t keep Meade from glancing in the lady’s direction again and again as he progressed down the walk. By the 75

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time he reached the picket fence that framed the headquarters building, he was surprised and irritated to discover that his heartbeat was quickening like that of a randy schoolboy in the throes of his first bout with puppy love. The woman ahead of him gazing with apparent concentration at the infantry drill was indeed Rayna Templeton.

Meade’s first clear thought was that he should do an abrupt about-face and slink off like a thief in the night. His feet—and other parts of his anatomy—had other ideas, though, for his pace quickened rather than slowed. He managed to convince himself that curiosity fueled his haste, since he had been coming to headquarters in the hope of finding out how General Whitlock had resolved the injustice that had been done to the Templeton family.

“Miss Templeton?”

Startled, Rayna pulled her thoughts away from her dismal speculations about her sister and turned. When she saw the officer at her side, nothing could have quelled the flush of pleasure that coursed through her. “Major Ashford! Thank God you’re back.”

She grabbed his hands and squeezed them as though clutching a lifeline, and Meade was too shocked by her greeting to even consider pulling away. “I arrived last night,” he informed her. “But I’m amazed to find you here, Miss Templeton. I assumed you were well on your way to the Mescalero reservation with an order to free your sister.”

“General Whitlock left on holiday before I could get an appointment to see him. I’ve been waiting ever since,” she said hastily, then with a touch of desperation asked, “How is Skylar? When did you last see her? Was she well?”

Meade smiled reassuringly. “I last saw her six days ago, and she was fine when I left her. She’s understandably a little frightened and anxious to return home, but she was making a valiant attempt to keep her spirits high. I don’t believe she’s in any danger, if that’s your concern.”

“Are you certain of that, Major? Your military headquarters are in absolute chaos today, as though something dreadful had happened. Has there been another Apache outbreak?”

Meade chuckled. “As far as General Whitlock’s staff is concerned, something dreadful has happened, but it has nothing to do with the Apaches. At least not directly.”

Rayna couldn’t imagine anything that would be a subject for levity at a time like this, and she retracted her hands from his. “Then what is going on?”

“We learned today that the military departments of New Mexico and Arizona have been combined into the Department of the Border, and that new division has been placed under the control of General George Crook.”

“You mean General Whitlock has been stripped of command?”

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“Something like that,” Meade replied. “It is expected that Crook will make his command headquarters in Arizona, nearer to the heart of the Apache con-flict. No one knows for certain yet whether this office will be closed and everyone reassigned. Hence, the chaos you witnessed.”

Rayna couldn’t have cared less whether the insensitive officers she’d encountered were out of a job or not. Skylar was her only concern. “But will Whitlock have the authority to countermand his order and free my sister?”

Meade hadn’t considered that complication because he’d assumed Skylar’s problem had already been solved. “I don’t see why not,” he replied after a moment. “It was his order. He certainly has the power to remand it.”

Rayna turned her profile to him, wishing she had someone to vent her frustration on. “Damn him, why doesn’t he come back?”

“You may rest assured that he’s already en route, Miss Templeton. A telegram was sent to him early this morning at the Montezuma.”

Rayna whirled toward him. “The Montezuma? He’s taking the waters at a luxury spa? I thought he was bear hunting.”

“He hunted for only a few days, from what I gather,” Meade replied.

“Apparently his hunting party, which includes two senators and a European prince, got tired of roughing it in the mountains.”

“Damn him to hell. And damn all those bloody clerks who’ve been telling me they had no idea where he was!” Furious, Rayna pivoted toward the steps, hiked up her skirt, and was halfway up before Meade caught her.

“What are you going to do?” he demanded.

“I’m going to give those bastards a piece of my mind!”

“No, you are not,” Meade said sternly, taking her arm.

“Let go of me, Major! If Whitlock’s aide had told me where the general was staying, I could have ended this ordeal days ago! Skylar could be home now!”

She tugged at his grip, but Meade was unyielding. “Let go, damn you!”

“And what will that accomplish? If you storm in there and blast Lieutenant Bascomb, you’ll only alienate him—if you haven’t managed to do that already.

Now calm down and think this through rationally.”

Rayna stopped struggling and glared up at him, her jaw stiffened with rage. “I don’t need your advice, Major, nor do I appreciate your low opinion of me.”

“My opinion is neither here nor there,” Meade answered, dropping her arm as though he’d been scalded. “What counts is getting your sister back into the bosom of her family. Giving Bascomb a piece of your mind might be a great comfort to you, but it won’t help Skylar one iota. Bascomb is the keeper of the keys, so to speak. No one gets in to see the general without going through the lieutenant, and if you get Bascomb’s dander up, you’ll be twiddling your thumbs in Santa Fe well into the next century!” He took a step back 77

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from her. “Think that over, Miss Templeton, and then tell me you don’t need my advice.”

He turned on his heel and marched down the steps, leaving Rayna standing there, her cheeks flaming and her hands knotted into fists. He was right, of course. She needed Bascomb. Unfortunately Ashford was also right about her already having alienated the general’s aide. So far, she had been none too diplomatic in her handling of any of the officers she’d encountered.

Major Ashford, on the other hand, had been kind and courteous, despite his apparent dislike of her. The quiet moments they had spent in the courtyard at Rancho Verde had forged a kind of fragile truce between them, and Rayna realized she had just shattered it to pieces. He was the closest thing she had to a friend in the military, and it would be moronic to let him slip away.

Swallowing her pride, she hurried after him. “Major Ashford, wait!” she called, and added as an afterthought, “Please.”

It was the “please” that stopped him. He waited a moment, then turned, wondering what expression he would find in her beautiful eyes. Contrition?

Humility? Remorse?

Hardly. She was looking up at him with a mixture of defiance and defensive pride. This was a woman who didn’t back down from anything, even when she was wrong.

Meade raised his eyebrows questioningly, waiting. “Yes?”

Rayna took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” she said tersely. “You’re quite right.

Telling Bascomb to go to hell won’t do Skylar a bit of good.”

Meade sighed and shook his head in amazement. “How can any woman look as sweet as you do and be so accursedly unladylike? Didn’t your mother ever take a bar of soap to that foul mouth of yours?”

“I am not foul-mouthed,” she snapped, getting her back up again. “Any man could use the words I’ve used and be called hail-fellow-well-met.”

“Yes, but you’re not a man. Good Lord, it’s no wonder you’re long past the age when most young women are married and you still haven’t snared a husband. Who would want you?”

Rayna had suffered many insults in her life, but few as blatant as this.

“Why you bas—”

“I assure you, Miss Templeton, my parents were married. It wasn’t much of a union, but it was legal, so there’s no reason for you to question the circumstances of my birth.”

Rayna ground her teeth together to keep from spewing a string of invec-tive that would have turned the major’s sensitive ears blue. It was a very long moment before she finally had enough control to speak without her voice quavering too much. “Since you find me so offensive, Major, I’ll take my leave 78

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of you now. I wouldn’t want to tax your delicate sensibilities any more than I already have.”

She stalked off, and Meade watched her go, cursing himself and wondering what the blazes had come over him. He’d never been that rude to a woman in his life . . . but then, he’d never met anyone quite like Rayna Templeton, either. When he wasn’t fighting the urge to turn her over his knee, he was wrestling with the far more powerful desire to take her into his arms.

It took only a moment for him to realize that it wasn’t her he was disgusted with—it was himself. Rayna Templeton was too young and too headstrong for a man of Meade’s age and temperament who wanted nothing more from his life now than to lead a quiet existence as a gentleman rancher. Yet he was drawn to Rayna like a moth to a flame. It was outrageous and totally out of character for him. Passions were something he had always controlled easily, but it seemed that he’d finally met a woman who turned that restraint upside down.

By far the best thing he could do was allow her to sashay away from him and consign her to the past where she belonged.

But of course he couldn’t do that. Skylar Templeton was a gracious young lady who was suffering from a grave injustice, and Meade couldn’t turn his back on her, no matter what he thought or felt about her sister.

With a resigned sigh he took off down the concourse. Despite the constraints of her draping, layered skirt, she was moving quickly. He finally caught up with her at the intersection of Palace Avenue and Lincoln. “Rayna, wait,” he said, matching his gait to hers as she crossed the dusty street.

She was surprised that he’d come after her and even more astonished that he’d addressed her by her given name. “What’s wrong, Major? Did you suddenly remember some insult that escaped you a moment ago?” she asked without bothering to look at him.

Damn her sharp tongue! “No, I remembered that your sister needs help and that I may be able to provide it.”

Rayna stopped dead in the middle of the street, looking up at him eagerly, her anger forgotten. “What can you do?”

“I can get you past Lieutenant Bascomb and arrange an audience with General Whitlock when he returns.”

“You would do that?”

“Yes. If you don’t get us both run over in the meantime,” he said, taking her arm to usher her out of the way of an oncoming carriage.

“Thank you,” she said when they were safely on the boardwalk in front of the old Spanish palace.

“For rescuing you from the carriage or for offering to help with the general?”

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“The general,” she replied, a strained smile wisping around the corners of her mouth. “I wouldn’t have been in front of that carriage if you hadn’t accosted me in the street.”

Since she was teasing, Meade let the saucy remark pass and offered her his arm. “Come on. Walk with me through the plaza. I want to know what you’ve done so far to secure your sister’s release. I can’t imagine that you’ve spent all your time camping on the doorstep of the headquarters.”

Rayna considered his crooked arm with a critical eye. “Are you sure your reputation can survive a stroll in the park with a desperate, foul-mouthed spinster? I might try to ensnare you.”

“Yes, and I might be elected President tomorrow.” He lifted his elbow another notch. “Now, shall we walk? I need to know how many feathers you’ve ruffled before I start smoothing them over.”

Reluctantly she took his arm, and he led her across the street into the tree-lined plaza. “You really don’t like me, do you, Major?” she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral because she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about his low opinion of her.

Meade considered the question and decided he should be honest with her.

Well, partially honest, anyway. Since he had no intention of ever pursuing his inappropriate carnal interest in her, he saw no reason to reveal that. “Actually, Miss Templeton, I have a certain grudging admiration for you.”

She looked up at him with surprise. “The key word being ‘grudging,’ I take it.”

“Yes. I understand that this is a harsh land and it has yielded a new breed of Americans—a much rougher lot than those I was reared among back east.

But a young woman of your background and breeding shouldn’t be one of them, Miss Templeton.”

“According to you,” she accused lightly. “Who made you the arbiter of what’s proper and what’s not?”

“We are discussing my opinion, no one else’s,” he reminded her. “And you did ask.”

“Hmmm. Tell me, Major Ashford, have you ever pulled a bog?”

His eyebrows went up. “I beg your pardon?”

That was all the answer Rayna needed, but she elaborated, anyway. “Have you ever pulled an irate, frustrated longhorn steer out of a waist-deep mud bog, only to have the animal turn on you once it was free, cuff the seat of your pants, and send you flying?”

It was everything Meade could do to suppress a smile as he visualized Rayna in the predicament she described. “No, I’ve never had that pleasure.”

“Try it sometime, Major, and if you can accomplish it without muttering a single swearword, I will gladly mend my wicked ways.”

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He seriously doubted that it would be possible for her to live up to that bargain. “Miss Templeton, my point is that a real lady would never participate in the type of activity you described. Have your mother or sister ever . . . pulled a bog?”

“No,” she admitted reluctantly.

“I rest my case. You were raised by a lady to be a lady, but for some reason, the lessons didn’t take. You had the benefit of a genteel upbringing, and it’s obvious that no expense was spared to educate you.”

“You gleamed that from my refined speech, I presume?” she asked wryly.

Meade tried not to laugh. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d added a

“hell” or “damn it” after her question just to tweak him. “Let’s just say I know a finishing school graduate when I see one.”

“Well, I’m sure Mrs. Purdy would be happy to know that some of her training wore off on me.”

“Actually I was referring to your sister. I just assumed that if your parents sent one of you off to school, they’d have sent both of you.”

“I went reluctantly,” she told him. “I was dragged away kicking and screaming. You’d have loved that sight, I’m sure.”

Meade didn’t rise to the bait this time. “You tolerated the experience for the sake of your sister, didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

His insight into her personality caught Rayna off guard. “Yes.”

“That’s where my admiration for you comes from, Miss Templeton. I may not approve of your methods, but I admire devotion and loyalty. Here.” He guided her to a bench beneath a shade tree, and they sat down. “Now, tell me how you’ve been keeping yourself busy these last weeks. And what word have you heard on your father?”

Rayna was grateful for his questions, because she had no idea how to respond to his compliment. What she did realize in that moment was that his opinion had somehow become very important to her. “Papa is still weak, but apparently there have been no more seizures,” she replied, arranging her skirts around her.

“Does he still believe Skylar is with you?”

She nodded. “Mother has managed to keep up the charade, but I’m afraid it can’t go on much longer. Skylar is an inveterate letter writer. Always before when we’ve been away from home, she’s written our parents every day. If Papa hasn’t caught the inconsistency yet, he will soon.” A hopeful thought occurred to her. “I don’t suppose Skylar gave you any letters to post, did she?”

He was sorry to disappoint her. “No. Writing materials weren’t available to her on the trip, and I never thought to offer her mine. I’m sorry.”

Rayna shrugged. “Well, that’s Skylar for you. She wouldn’t have asked for fear it would be an imposition. Sometimes I think my sister is too good for this world.”

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“Have you always been her protector?”

“Yes,” she replied wistfully. “And she was my salvation. It was a more than fair trade.”

Meade frowned. “Salvation?”

“I was six years old when Papa brought Skylar home to live with us, and when you’re six, a ranch in the middle of nowhere is a very large and lonely place. When Skylar came, the loneliness went away.”

Meade understood that only too well. When he was a child, Libby had been his salvation. Their father had been away pursuing his military career most of the time, and their mother had cared more for the social whirl than for her two children. Libby and Meade had felt isolated and alone long before their parents died. They had taken care of each other, forging a bond that could never be broken. If Rayna loved her sister half as much as he loved his, she was most certainly in agony now; and one thing Meade knew positively about Rayna Templeton was that she loved her sister.

“What happened to Skylar’s Apache parents?” he asked.

“We’re not completely certain,” Rayna replied. “Skylar has very few memories of that time, and the Mexican slavers Papa bought her from were understandably loath to explain how she came to be in their possession. We do know that her entire village was massacred. Papa believed it was the slavers who committed the crime, but Skylar has a vague memory of other Apaches being on the scene.”

Given Meade’s knowledge of the history of the southwest territories, either version seemed completely plausible. Even before the arrival of the first white settlers, the Apaches had been preying on one another, and the hostilities between them and the Mexicans were legendary. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the culprits could have been a contingent of Americans, either. Senseless massacres of peaceful Apaches were still being committed by groups of “concerned citizens.”

“She’s very fortunate to have encountered your father,” Meade commented.

“I know. I shudder to think what might have happened to her otherwise.”

The sadness in her voice tugged at Meade’s heart. “And what’s happening to her now?”

Rayna nodded and looked away from him. “Yes.”

“Why don’t we go back to my original question?” Meade suggested, wishing he could banish her sadness. He liked it much better when she was prickly and obnoxious, because it was easier for him to erect barriers against her.

“What have I done to alienate everyone in Santa Fe? That question?” she asked with a hint of a smile.

“Yes.”

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Rayna thought back over the last two weeks. “To the best of my knowledge, the only people I’ve insulted were wearing uniforms similar to yours, give or take a few stripes and gewgaws.”

Meade glanced down at the gold-rimmed stripe on the shoulder of his tunic. “I’ve never heard gold oak leaves described as gewgaws.”

“Forgive me if I fail to show the proper degree of respect, but I don’t have much respect for anything military these days.”

“Perfectly understandable. Have you been able to gain access to anyone in the territorial government?” he asked, getting back on track.

“Of course. Believe it or not, I’m welcome in many of the best homes in the city.”

“That makes sense. You have a wealthy and probably somewhat powerful father.”

“Thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt,” she said dryly.

Meade grinned. “You’re welcome. All right, go on.”

Rayna shrugged. “I’ve spoken to every friend of my father’s who might be even remotely able to help, but so far all I can boast of is a rather limited letter-writing campaign. Correspondence has been sent from several sources to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, senators, congressmen, the War Department, even the President himself. So far no one has responded.”

“Letters take time, especially when you’re dealing with the government.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Don’t be glum, Miss Templeton. We’ll get Skylar back.”

Rayna appreciated his confidence and his support. She was curious about one thing, though. “Why is it, Major, that you call my sister Skylar but refer to me as Miss Templeton?”

The question surprised him, and it took a moment to find an answer. “I suppose it’s less confusing than referring to both of you as Miss Templeton, and addressing you thus is a form of courtesy and respect.”

“Grudging respect,” she reminded him.

Meade cleared his throat. Apparently she was never going to let him forget that comment. “Yes.”

Rayna thought it over. “It’s odd. Earlier you called me a foul-mouthed, unladylike spinster. Addressing me as Rayna seems almost deferential in comparison.”

“Is that your roundabout way of inviting me to call you Rayna?”

“You did it once before and it didn’t choke you to death,” she reminded him, and was surprised when he began chuckling. “What’s so funny? My comment was meant to be a clever barb, not a joke.”

“It’s not you,” Meade assured her. “I was remembering something your sister—the other Miss Templeton—said to me.”

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“What?”

The laughter still sparkled in Meade’s eyes as he informed her, “She told me that you are such a horrendous cook that your biscuits had been known to choke a mule.”

Rayna glowered at him. “What else did she tell you about me?”

“That you’re terrible at needlework.”

Rayna threw up her hands. “Well, there you have it. All my dirty little secrets. You might as well take me out and shoot me now. I don’t deserve to live.”

Her rapid-fire delivery had Meade buckled in half with laughter that carried far across the plaza and caused passersby to stop and look. “You are a caution, Miss Templeton,” he said, still chuckling as he straightened.

“A foul-mouthed—”

“Enough! Enough! I surrender,” he said, straightening up and extending his hand to her. “Come on, I’ll take you to lunch at the Palace and apologize.”

Rayna looked at his hand, then directly into his eyes. “I don’t want an apology unless you mean it sincerely.”

“Do you want lunch?” he asked, raising one dark eyebrow.

She hesitated a moment. “Yes.”

“Then take my arm, and we’ll go. If you can manage to get through the meal without questioning anyone’s parentage, I’ll apologize sincerely over dessert.”

“I should warn you, Major. I’ve never lost a dare,” she informed him, slipping her hand into his as she rose. The innocent contact suddenly seemed very intimate to them both. Their eyes met, questioning the odd sensation, and several seconds passed before Meade found the presence of mind to release her hand.

They began strolling toward the Palace Hotel, and neither of them could think of a single thing to say.

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7

Skylar was accustomed to hard work, but her daily chores at Rancho Verde had not prepared her for the harsh realities of her new life. After a simple exchange of gifts with Naka’yen, the old chief had helped the Verde Mescaleros find a suitable location for a permanent camp, and since then the work had been unending. Alongside the other women, Skylar had cleared brush and helped erect sturdy lodges. From dawn to dusk she cooked, carried water, collected firewood, tended the livestock . . . and in her spare time she made clothes for herself from scraps of cloth and blankets given to her by her friends. Having had so little time to prepare for their journey, no one had much to spare. Mary Long Horn had given some of her clothing to Skylar, but her dress from the maiden ceremony and the calico skirt and overblouse Mary had given her wouldn’t last long. It wasn’t surprising to her that nearly everyone she saw on the reservation was dressed in oft-mended clothing that amounted to little more than rags.

Skylar knew that cleanliness was highly prized by the Mescalero, but under these conditions keeping clean was next to impossible. Water was scarce, and while the other women were able to make soap from the aloe plant, that skill had long ago been lost to the Verde Mescaleros. Even if one 85

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of them had known how, Skylar couldn’t imagine when anyone would have had time to do something as mundane as making soap. Tending a camp was a full-time occupation.

As difficult as it was, Skylar didn’t mind the work. Having so much to do helped distract her from her constant worry about her father and her desperate longing to go home. With every day that passed, that dream seemed to slip a little further away from her, though. She knew she had not been forgotten or abandoned, and that Rayna was doing everything humanly possible to secure her freedom; but at the end of each day when no one had come to take her home, she felt a little more hopeless and lost than she had at the start of the day.

Little by little she was learning about the other Mescaleros on the reservation. Like other Apache tribes, the Mescaleros were broken into small bands comprising several family units. Joe Long Horn, Mary’s father, had found a few distant relatives, but so many of the Mescaleros had been exterminated over the last few decades that there were few other connections between the Verdes and the other bands.

Their chief was Naka’yen, and Skylar had eventually learned the name of the brave who had so startled her that first night. He was Naka’yen’s son, and his name was a complicated phrase that had taken a considerable amount of study to translate. Skylar still wasn’t sure she had it right. To the best of her knowledge, he was called Angry He Flies Like a Hawk into the Sun. She had also heard him referred to as Iya’itsa—Sun Hawk—and it was far easier for her to think of him by that name. To her great surprise, she thought of him often.

She had seen him many times since that first night, and each time she fully expected that the breathless jolt of excitement she experienced would dissi-pate. It didn’t. Every time she caught a glimpse of him her heart began to race as it had when he appeared in the darkness.

The Verdes’ camp was situated less than a half mile from Naka’yen’s, and Sun Hawk often passed by, occasionally with other braves, but most of the time he was alone. If Consayka was outside his lodge, Sun Hawk would stop and speak with the old man; if not, he would pass by, rarely looking at any of the women in the camp, for that would have been bad manners.

Many times Skylar had caught herself watching for him, and it always took considerable effort not to stare. He wasn’t just handsome, he was mesmerizing. His every move bespoke a quiet power that drew Skylar like a mag-net. She had never exchanged a word with him, but several times she overheard parts of his conversations with Consayka, and she knew that he was a man committed to peace.

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moments, but if she dared look directly at him, his glance would dart away.

She suspected that his interest was merely curiosity, or perhaps even amusement. It was obvious to anyone who cared to study the workings of the Verde camp that Skylar was different from the other women. She had learned many things about her friends over the years, but she’d had little opportunity to put her knowledge to practical use.

As a result, Skylar was clumsy and slow at almost everything she did. On the day she attempted to erect her own lodge, Sun Hawk had been a witness to her ineptitude, and the memory of it still made Skylar smile. She had been grappling with the poles, trying to align them in an even circle when Sun Hawk passed nearby. He had given no appearance of being aware of anything taking place in the camp, but when Skylar caught sight of him she had tripped over one of the poles, causing the entire framework to come tumbling down around her.

Embarrassed, she looked up and found Sun Hawk still strolling along, but his shoulders had been jerking with what could only have been laughter. It was clear that he had been trying hard not to look at the spectacle openly, and despite her exhaustion and frustration, Skylar had laughed, too—for the first time since she had been abducted from Rancho Verde. She had Sun Hawk to thank for that brief respite from her despair, and her gratitude only increased her warm feelings for him.

Under other circumstances, Skylar might have been amused by her fascination with the brave. She had had schoolgirl crushes before. When she was thirteen, she had thought Gil Rodriguez’s son was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Of course, the word “man” had been loosely applied, since Tomás was barely sixteen at the time. Rayna had teased Skylar mercilessly and threatened to tell Tomás of her infatuation with him, but blessedly Skylar had outgrown her crush and Tomás had married a few years later without every realizing that he had been the object of her childish affections.

There had been other infatuations in her life, and once she had thought herself truly in love. Skylar had been in school in Boston at the time, and she had met Stephen Dodd through friends of the Templetons whom she and Rayna often visited. There had been nothing particularly handsome about Stephen, but he had been a quiet, considerate gentleman who loved poetry and knew how to flatter all the young ladies of his acquaintance.

Skylar had adored him, and had allowed herself to believe that he loved her in return.

Though she rarely thought of him anymore, Skylar liked to imagine that Stephen had loved her—in his own peculiar way. Unfortunately that way hadn’t included marriage, at least not to a young woman of Indian blood, though he had been perfectly willing to offer her a position as his mistress.

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After that crushing blow, Skylar had forced herself to face the reality of her situation: No white man was ever going to see her as a suitable wife. She had sworn never to open herself to such pain again, and so far she had kept that promise.

Sun Hawk was an unexpected—and decidedly unwanted—obsession. He was a bija’n, a widower, but that made no difference to Skylar. It was still foolish for her to long for a glimpse of him. He was a medicine man, greatly respected by his people, and since his father was a chief, he would likely be one, too, someday. He was a full-blooded Mescalero warrior who would eventually take an appropriately reared Mescalero wife; Skylar was an educated, fully Americanized Apache who wanted nothing more than to get back where she belonged as quickly as possible. The only thing she had in common with Sun Hawk was the color of her skin.

On the fourteenth day of her captivity she was giving herself that very lecture as she walked to the stream where the Verdes drew their water. The sun was low, the day was nearing its end, and the mantle of depression that always settled over her at this time of day was coming again. When night fell, there would be no more work to do and hence nothing to distract her from the hopelessness of her situation. Night had become her least favorite time of day.

Using a cut-out gourd, she filled both buckets from the trickling stream and then paused; her head bent over the wooden pail. She caught a glimpse of herself in the dark surface of the water and sighed. The woman looking back at her was a stranger, someone she barely recognized. Had she not been so exhausted, she might have wept.

“Hurry, Rayna,” she murmured sadly. “Please come quickly and take us away from here before I lose myself completely.”

With a weary sigh she eased back onto her heels and discovered that her reflection had been replaced by another. Startled, she looked up and found Sun Hawk standing over her, his arrival as dramatically unexpected as the first time she’d seen him.

“Why do you speak to the water?” he asked without ceremony or introduction, his head cocked in curiosity as he looked from Skylar to the bucket and back again.

Though Skylar had discovered many gaps in her knowledge of the Apache language, it was easy for her to slip into speaking it because her friends rarely spoke English any longer. She also knew from long experience that the Apache rarely wasted time with pleasantries. They spoke their minds and expected others to do the same. Skylar was finding that more difficult to adapt to than the constant use of their language, and locating her voice and her wits with Sun Hawk towering over her made it even harder. “I was speaking to my sister,” she replied after a moment.

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Sun Hawk’s dark brows went up in surprise. All of his people claimed kin-ship with various animals, but he had never known anyone related to water before. “The water is your sister?” he asked, crouching beside her.

“No,” she answered, wondering how she could explain her way out of this when her mind had turned to muddled mush. “When I looked in the water, I thought of my sister, and the words in my heart were spoken aloud.”

Sun Hawk nodded thoughtfully. “Why do you not say the words to her yourself rather than asking the water to do it for you?”

“Because she is far away.”

“She is free? Living in the mountains?” he asked with a kind of envy that Skylar might not have understood a fortnight ago.

“She is free, but she lives on a ranch far above this place.”

“Why was she not brought here with you and your father?”

Skylar was finding it increasingly difficult to remain still with Sun Hawk so close. His deep voice aroused feelings inside her that she didn’t want to be having. He was dealing with her matter-of-factly, and she wanted to be able to respond with the same detachment. “Because my Apache father is not hers.

My sister is not of the People.”

Sun Hawk frowned. He had heard this woman call Consayka “my Apache father” once before, and this puzzled him. And now he learned that she had a sister who was not a sister. Odd. There was so much about the Verdes that he did not understand, and this woman was the greatest mystery of all. Since the night he had first seen her in the glow of the fire, her eyes as wide as those of a startled doe, Sun Hawk had watched her. She was as beautiful as a sunrise, and her people treated her with great deference, yet it did not seem to Sun Hawk that she belonged here. He had learned that she was called Skylar, but the name was even more incomprehensible than she was.

That was why he had approached her when he saw her kneeling by the stream. He did not like mysteries. He wanted to understand her and the other Verdes so that he would know how to react if trouble sprang up between this woman’s people and his. Gradually he was learning about the others through his conversations with Consayka, but the old man had never volunteered any information about his daughter, and Sun Hawk could not ask for fear that his curiosity would be misinterpreted.

The best course, it had seemed to him, was to talk to the woman called Skylar directly.

“Why do you refer to your father so strangely?” he asked.

Skylar wasn’t sure how to answer him. “I have had three fathers,” she finally told him, unable to hide her sadness. “The first was a White Mountain Apache, but I do not remember him very well. I was taken from my village and sold as a slave to a white man named Templeton who took me home and 89

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loved me as much as he did the daughter of his blood. Now I have been taken from that family, and my good friend Consayka has given me his protection by calling me his daughter. It is an honor I carry proudly.”

Now Sun Hawk understood why she seemed so different. “You lived among the white men willingly?”

“I was only five years old, and these people were kind to me. What choice did I have?”

Sun Hawk nodded, but he did not think the white man Templeton had done this woman a real kindness. “Is it hard for you to be an Apache again?”

“You have seen that it is.” She lowered her eyes. “I want very much to go home.”

Sun Hawk looked down at her, studying the way her dark lashes brushed against her cheeks. She was beautiful and sad, but there was nothing he could do to help her. It surprised him to realize how deeply he regretted that, and how profoundly she touched him.

Perhaps I have been in mourning too long, he thought. The thought startled him so much that he stood up abruptly, drawing Skylar’s questioning gaze up with him. Her eyes were soft, but Sun Hawk had been immune to soft eyes for nearly two years.

If it was indeed time for him to lay his beloved wife to rest, it could not be for this woman whose heart yearned to be far away.

Without another word he turned on his heel and departed, leaving Skylar wondering what had happened and why he had looked at her so strangely.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were nervous,” Meade said, looking down at Rayna’s hands. They were clasped together, resting demurely in her lap, but her knuckles were white and there was nothing serene about her posture. Her whole body fairly radiated tension.

“I am nervous, Major, and this isn’t a good time to tease me about it,” she said matter-of-factly as she looked across the room to General Whitlock’s office door.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of your dilemma,” he said, then fell silent again. He really hadn’t meant to be callous; it was just that he always had difficulty controlling his burgeoning feelings for her when she looked vulnerable like this. In the last two days he’d spent a considerable amount of time with her, and in that time he’d experienced more emotional ups and downs than he had at any other point in his life. One moment he wanted to strangle her; the next, she had him laughing out loud with her tart repartee. A single glance from her could reduce him to speechlessness. She could flay him alive with her razor-sharp tongue, and the absurdity was that he had begun to look forward to the lashings. It was insane.

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General Whitlock had returned to Fort Marcy within twenty-four hours of learning that he was no longer the king of this particular hill. Meade had tried immediately to set up an appointment for Rayna, but to no avail. And it was just as well, he’d reasoned. Whitlock had arrived in a high dudgeon and had gone on an uncontrolled rampage, like a child whose favorite toy had been taken away. His bellowing and barking could be heard throughout the building as he took out his wrath on everyone who crossed his path. It wouldn’t have been a good time to try to get him to admit that he or anyone in his command had made a mistake.

Fearing that the general’s temper hadn’t had nearly enough time to mellow, Meade had counseled Rayna to wait another few days before putting her suit to Whitlock, but naturally she hadn’t listened. With or without Meade’s help she had been determined to get an audience with the general at the first possible moment, and Meade had been too much of a gentleman to abandon her.

He had pressed Lieutenant Bascomb to schedule an appointment and had demanded that Rayna allow him to accompany her to the meeting. To his amazement, she had agreed without a fight.

And now they were waiting in Whitlock’s anteroom, Rayna with her hands turning white in her lap and Meade trying to ignore his sympathy for her—as well as other, stronger emotions.

“Then send another telegram, damn it! Get me an answer! Dismissed!” The general’s booming voice shook the whole room, and a split second later a harassed-looking captain came out of Whitlock’s office looking as if he’d gone ten rounds with a boxing kangaroo. He closed the door behind him, but it flew open a moment later and a florid General Whitlock stepped into the opening. “And I want that report by the end of the day, Captain!”

“Yes, sir,” the officer said, making a hasty exit.

Whitlock turned away, but Rayna was already on her feet. “General Whitlock, a moment, please,” she said, hurrying across the room. Meade had no choice but to accompany her.

“Yes, what is it?” Whitlock snapped.

“I have an appointment, sir,” she said, careful to keep her voice polite. “I’ve been waiting for two weeks, and it’s a matter of great urgency.”

“You’re Miss Templeton, aren’t you? From Rancho Verde?” he asked.

“You’re the one who’s been plaguing my staff.”

Rayna managed a strained smile. “Yes, sir. I fear I’ve taken my considerable frustration out on some of your men.”

Whitlock nodded curtly. “Yes, I’ve heard all about it, and that was a damned fool thing to do.”

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contritely, “but my family has become ensnared in a very desperate situation, and you’re the only man in the territory who can possibly come to my aid.”

Meade was astonished by the honey in her voice. He hadn’t thought Rayna capable of the kind of feminine flattery she had suddenly slipped into.

On any other day Whitlock might have been susceptible to it, but not today.

“If this is about those Mescaleros I ordered onto the reservation, I—”

“Only peripherally, General,” she said hastily. She’d sensed an automatic rejection coming on, and she wanted to cut him off before he took a stance he couldn’t back away from. “If you’ll just hear me out, I believe the reason for my impatience these last weeks will become obvious.” She removed a packet of letters from her reticule and extended them to him. “I have letters of introduction from the governor and a number of other officials who hold you in high regard.”

Whitlock cleared his throat and took the letters. “Very well, Miss Templeton. Come in and we’ll discuss this problem of yours.” He looked sternly at Meade. “I take it you’re with the lady, Major?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“What is your role in this?”

“I’m merely a friend of the Templeton family, sir. I attended Miss Templeton’s father, Raymond, after his recent heart seizure.”

Whitlock was clearly surprised. “Raymond Templeton had a heart seizure?

I didn’t know that. When did it happen?”

“When your Captain Greenleigh kidnapped my sister,” Rayna replied, her pleasant tone slipping a bit. She’d told this story to everyone at the post who would listen and a few who wouldn’t. Why in blue blazes hadn’t anyone informed the general?

Whitlock’s pudgy face reorganized itself into a scowl. “Kidnapped? What the devil are you talking about? Greenleigh would never do something like that.”

“Oh, but he did,” Rayna argued, and would have said more if Meade hadn’t placed a restraining hand on her arm.

“General, please. If we could discuss this in your office?” he suggested mildly.

“All right. Come in, come in. I suppose I should clear this matter up before you damage the good name of one of my best officers.” He marched toward his desk, leaving Meade and Rayna to follow.

As soon as the general’s back was turned, Meade lowered his head to Rayna’s ear. “Calm down, or we’re sunk before we sail,” he muttered, then placed his hand at her waist and ushered her into the office.

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damage. “At the time Captain Greenleigh seized the Rancho Verde Mescaleros a grave misunderstanding took place, sir. Raymond Templeton has a legally adopted daughter of Apache blood who was participating in a ceremony with the other Indians when we arrived. She was dressed in Apache fashion, and Greenleigh understandably assumed she was one of the Mescaleros. However, when the mistake was pointed out to him he refused to acknowledge the error.”

“Well . . .” Whitlock was at a loss, but he seemed determined to defend his man to the very last. “As you said, Major, his mistake was understandable.

Greenleigh had orders to round up all the Mescaleros.”

“That’s right,” Rayna said argumentatively. “But my sister isn’t a Mescalero.”

She handed him another set of papers. “Here are her adoption documents.”

Whitlock looked them over reluctantly and handed them back. “Well, I’m no lawyer, but they do seem to be in order.”

“It was a perfectly legal adoption, I assure you,” she told him. “My sister is as much a citizen as you or I, sir, yet she is being forced to live on the Mescalero reservation against her will.”

Whitlock frowned and pulled at his muttonchops. “Actually, Miss Templeton, the question of your so-called sister’s citizenship might be debat-able, since the Apache people have no legal standing in this country.”

Rayna’s composure slipped another notch. “General, my so-called sister is—”

“Is a gently reared young woman ill-equipped for life on an Indian reservation,” Meade said placidly. “I had the good fortune of being able to speak with her a number of times on the journey to the reservation, and she wants very much to go home. Naturally she is deeply concerned about her father’s health.”

“Templeton is quite ill, is he?” the general asked.

Meade nodded. “Yes, sir. The strain of seeing his daughter taken away was too much for his heart to bear. From what I understand, he is slowly regaining strength, but I am deeply concerned about the effect this will have on him if Miss Skylar is not returned.” He went on to explain the charade that was being carried out to protect Raymond from the shock of knowing Skylar had been taken away.

Whitlock was leaning back in his chair, plucking at his whiskers again, giving every impression of a man who had much better things to do with his time. Even before the general began to speak, Meade realized he and Rayna had been wasting their time.

“Well, that’s all very unfortunate, Major, but I don’t see how I can possibly be of any assistance to you,” he informed them.

“What?” Rayna gasped, coming to the edge of her seat.

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matters regarding the Indians of the new Department of the Border are to be referred to him. This is now his problem to deal with.”

“You can’t be serious!” Rayna was on her feet in an instant, her hands planted on the general’s desk. “You caused this problem with your ridiculous order to incarcerate the Rancho Verde Mescaleros—now you can damn well solve it!”

“Rayna, calm down,” Meade ordered, coming to his feet.

“I will not calm down! This pompous ass—”

“I beg your pardon?” Whitlock said, rising indignantly.

“You heard me. You’re a pompous, unfeeling—”

“Rayna, shut up!” Meade demanded, grabbing her arm before she could do something stupid, like flying across the desk to punch Whitlock in the face.

“General, please forgive her. As you can imagine, this ordeal has put an incredible strain on—”

“Damn it, don’t apologize for me,” Rayna snapped, jerking her arm away from him. “How can you possibly toady to a man like this?”

“I am not toadying!” Meade snapped as his perspective on the situation slipped away from him. “This is my commanding officer, and he is to be treated with respect.”

“Well, you may have to kowtow to this petty martinet, but I certainly don’t!”

“You do if you want Skylar back!”

“That’s enough!” Whitlock thundered. “I have given you my answer, Miss Templeton, and you will have to live with it. Now get her out of here, Major Ashford.”

Meade managed to calm himself. “General, I beg you to reconsider. Since it was your order that resulted in Miss Templeton’s abduction, surely you have the power to rescind it regardless of the reorganization of the department.”

Whitlock glared at him. “Major, I gave you an order and I expect you to carry it out. I want this woman out of here. If she wants that Indian back, she’ll to have to write George Crook. I believe he’ll be arriving in Arizona shortly to take charge.” He plopped into his chair. “Dismissed, Major.”

It was everything Meade could do to force himself to offer the general a brisk salute. “Good day, General. Come on, Rayna,” he said, taking her arm.

“There’s nothing more to be done here.”

Rayna couldn’t believe it. Whitlock was blithely dismissing her as though Skylar’s welfare—indeed her very life—meant nothing. Epithets and accusa-tions sprang to her lips, but Meade was bustling her out of the office before any of them could form. Trembling with barely suppressed rage, she allowed Meade to lead her out of the building.

“How could you let that happen?” she demanded, jerking her arm out of his grasp.

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“Me?” Meade gasped. “If you’ll recall, I’m the one who warned you to wait until Whitlock was in a better mood. Having his military command usurped by General Crook has been tantamount to being told that he’s incompetent to handle the job of controlling this territory.”

“Considering the decisions he’s made, I’d say that’s a pretty accurate assessment,” she replied hotly.

“Oh, why don’t you go back in there and tell him that? I’m sure that’ll make him relent.”

“Damn you, Meade Ashford, don’t you understand what’s happened here?”

“Yes, I do. Quite well, in fact. You’re angry at Whitlock and you’re taking it out on me.”

“Well, who else am I going to take it out on?”

She had a good point. “You’re right,” he said calmly, spreading his arms wide. “Fire away.”

His feeble attempt at humor was Rayna’s undoing. Her failure and the devastating repercussions it was going to have, not only on Skylar but on their father as well, came crashing down on her. A sob of anger and anguish caught in her throat, and tears flooded her eyes. “Oh, God, Meade. What am I going to do? How do I tell Papa? What if he dies?”

“He won’t die, Rayna,” Meade said gently, pulling her into his arms as he’d longed to do so many times since he’d met her. To his surprise she didn’t pull away but instead lowered her head to his chest and let the tears spill out.

He held her close, trying to ignore his body’s intense and immediate reaction to having her pressed against him. The fact that he shared her concern and understood her sorrow only enhanced the sensations.

Be paternal, Ashford, he told himself sternly. After all, you are old enough to be her father. Well, nearly old enough. The twelve-year chasm that separated them was far too wide for either of them to cross. Unfortunately he couldn’t make himself feel paternal or even brotherly about Rayna Templeton.

He crooned comforting words to her, and to his great relief—and disappointment—she quickly regained control of her emotions. She allowed him to hold her until her sobs had subsided; then she pulled away. “I’m sorry,”

she said, still not fully in command of her breathing. “I’m not normally a weepy female.”

“I would never have mistaken you for one,” he said charitably, hoping it would alleviate her embarrassment. For the first time, Meade noticed that a number of soldiers on the parade ground were watching them. He encouraged Rayna to allow him to walk her back to the hotel, and she didn’t argue.

“What will you do now?” he asked as they moved down the walkway.

Rayna tried to collect her thoughts. “Go home, I suppose, and write to General Crook.”

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“I’ll make some inquiries this afternoon and see if I can find out where he’ll be making his headquarters.”

“Thank you.” She glanced up at him, but her eyes darted away quickly. She was too embarrassed about her ridiculous bout of weeping to hold his gaze.

“If you like, I’ll write a letter to Crook that you can include in your packet to him. I campaigned under the general during his first tour in Arizona, and I’m certain he’ll remember me.”

Rayna sighed. She didn’t deserve his kindness. “It seems that whenever I’m not cursing you, I’m thanking you. I am already deep in your debt, Major, but I won’t refuse this favor.” She fell silent a moment as they walked. “Do you think Crook will help me?”

“I’m positive of it, and you should be, too. General Crook is one of the most fair-minded men I’ve ever met. He’ll be as outraged about this as Whitlock was apathetic. But, Rayna . . .” He hesitated until she looked at him expectantly.

“This is going to take some time. Crook will act the moment he receives your letter, but there’s no telling when your dispatch will catch up with him.”

“Is that your way of telling me to be patient?” she asked without rancor.

“Yes.”

“Patience doesn’t come easily to me.”

“Neither does restraint nor prudence, but you’re going to need all three to get through this ordeal.”

Rayna didn’t have enough fight in her at the moment to be offended.

Instead, she felt an overwhelming surge of guilt wash through her, and she averted her face, looking across the street without seeing anything that was transpiring there. “Is this my fault?” she asked, her voice small and far away.

Meade wanted to take her into his arms again. “No, Rayna. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“But if I hadn’t gotten angry—”

“It still wouldn’t have made a difference,” he insisted. “Nothing you could have said or done would have changed Whitlock’s mind. He is a pompous ass even on the best of days. Calling him one didn’t make it less than true, nor did it change the outcome of the meeting.”

She gave him a weak but grateful smile. “You’re only saying that to make me feel better, but I appreciate it.”

If he had thought she’d believe him, Meade would have protested, but it didn’t seem worth the effort. For the moment all of Rayna’s fighting spirit had deserted her, but he knew she wouldn’t stay down long.

“When are you leaving?” he asked. The hotel was just ahead of them, and he was already dreading their parting.

“Tonight. There’s a train leaving for Albuquerque at six o’clock. I can stay there overnight and be home tomorrow.”

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“You have the train schedule memorized?”

She nodded. “I’ve had two weeks to plan my speedy, triumphant departure.

I hadn’t allowed myself to consider the possibility that I might return home in utter defeat.”

“You’re not defeated, Rayna. Merely delayed.” Meade pulled a pocket watch from his tunic. It was nearly 2:00 P.M. “If you’re leaving at six, I have plenty of time to write that letter to Crook and get it to you at the hotel. I have to stop by the hospital to check on a patient, but I can be back in two hours. Will that be all right with you?”

“Of course,” Rayna said as they stopped at the entrance to the Palace.

“Then I’ll see you shortly.”

“All right. Thank you again, Major.” She turned to the door.

“Rayna . . .”

She stopped and looked at him. “Yes.”

“It really wasn’t your fault. Believe that.”

The gentle look in his eyes was almost more than she could bear. “I’ll try,”

she said, then disappeared into the hotel.

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8

By the time Meade’s two hours had expired, Rayna’s bags were packed and she had nothing to do but pace and think. She had considered sending a telegram to her mother, but delivering this dreadful news in that fashion seemed too cruel. Somehow she and Collie would have to find a gentle way to break the news to Raymond, for once she arrived home there would be no way to continue the charade.

Rayna wished desperately that Major Ashford could come back to Rancho Verde with her. Though she told herself it was only because she wanted a doctor on the scene when she told her father the news, she had to admit that there were other reasons as well. In the last two days the major had made himself almost indispensable to her. He had been kind and helpful, but he had also been a much needed distraction. Most of all, he had bolstered her flagging spirits and given her a strong arm to lean on when she had needed it most.

She knew that he was doing all of this only out of sympathy for Skylar, not because he had any particular affection for Rayna. He’d made his opinion of her clear on more than one occasion and he had a knack for making her angry, but she was going to miss him. Despite their constant bickering, she felt as though she was losing a friend.

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At shortly after four he finally arrived with the letter he had promised.

Though he was late, Rayna hadn’t doubted that he would come. She admitted him to her suite, and once he had handed over the letter she invited him to sit, but Meade had a better idea.

“Let me take you out for a light supper,” he suggested. “You won’t have a chance to eat on the train.”

“Thank you, but I’m afraid I couldn’t eat anything right now.”

“But you could use the distraction,” he said wisely. “It’s better than pacing in here or at the train station until time to leave.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Meade smiled at her. “I’m always right. Haven’t you noticed that?”

He was trying to cajole her into smiling, and it worked. “I’ve noticed that you always think you’re right. There’s a difference.”

“Why don’t we debate this over supper?”

He raised his arm, and Rayna slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

“Very well. ‘Lead on, Macduff.’”

Meade’s dark eyebrows went up. “You know Shakespeare?”

“I’m educated, remember?”

They adjourned to the Palace dining salon and ordered a light supper that Rayna knew in advance she would barely touch. Meade ordered a bottle of fine Bordeaux wine, and they sat back to await the meal.

“To the return of your sister,” Meade said, raising his glass in a toast.

“Soon,” she added, touching her goblet to his. They drank, and Rayna began playing absently with the stem of her glass. “Major, what would be my chances of getting a letter or package to Skylar?”

“Hmmm. I don’t really know. I can’t imagine that it’s routine for any Apache to receive mail, so I suppose it would depend on how obliging Mr.

Newsome wanted to be.”

Rayna knew that Meade had made a point of explaining Skylar’s situation to the Indian agent. “Perhaps if I sent the package in care of him with a letter begging him to see that Skylar received it?”

Meade couldn’t imagine Rayna begging, but he had no doubt that she would do anything for her sister—even beg, if it came to that. “A letter to Newsome is a good idea. However, I wouldn’t put anything in the package that would tempt him to keep it for himself.”

“I was thinking of sending her writing materials so that we could correspond,” Rayna told him, her spirits sinking again. “But that would mean sending her postage stamps as well. Do you think Newsome would confiscate them?”

Meade reached out and covered Rayna’s hand with his own. “Give it a try and see what happens. You might consider sending Newsome a small amount of money to compensate him for any inconvenience it causes him, since 99

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Skylar won’t be able to leave the reservation to post her letters. And at the same time, I’d mention General Crook and the letters that have been written to everyone from the President to the head of the Indian Bureau. If he thinks there’s a chance that this could come back to haunt him, he might be more inclined to deal fairly with you.”

“I’ll try it,” she said, then leaned forward intently. “Meade, do you think he’d let me see her if I went to the reservation?”

Meade frowned at the thought of her making that hazardous journey.

“Would that be wise, Rayna? Even if you didn’t stay more than a day or two, the trip would take at least two weeks, possibly more. Discounting the danger involved, can you take the risk of missing General Crook’s reply? Someone will have to arrange for Skylar’s return once Crook acts, and your father is in no condition to handle any of this. Not to mention the stress it would put on him knowing that you were making that difficult journey.”

Every one of his arguments was valid. Discouraged, Rayna sank back in her chair, her eyes closed to stave off the threat of tears. “You’re right, of course. I really don’t have any choice but to wait, do I?”

“I’m afraid not.” Meade raised his glass again. “To patience.”

Rayna halfheartedly joined him in the toast, and they fell into a companionable silence that lasted through most of their meal. Meade understood Rayna’s preoccupation, and though he wanted very much to pull her out of her melancholy silence, he also respected her right to be discouraged.

“I think this is what I will miss most about Santa Fe,” he said as he divided the last draft of wine between their glasses.

“What’s that?”

Meade raised his glass. “The wine. I’ve been drinking cheap rotgut for so long that I’d forgotten what a delight a fine wine can be. I’ll miss it when I go home.”

Rayna was amazed to realize that she knew absolutely nothing about Meade Ashford. At some point she had gleaned that he was a bachelor, but that had made no difference to her. For the most part, she had regarded him as an entity whose existence began the moment she met him, and it had never occurred to her that he had a life that went beyond being her liaison with the army. “Where is your home?” she asked, genuinely interested.

“Arizona,” he replied. “Or it will be as soon as I resign my commission in a few months.”

“You’re not a career officer?”

“At one point I had planned to be, but I’m sick to death of it. I can’t wait to get out.”

“Then why not resign now?”

Meade grimaced and explained the trade he had made with the army—a course in surgical procedures for two additional years’ service.

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“And what will you do when that time’s up?” she asked.

“Become a gentleman rancher,” he announced grandly, and Rayna had to laugh. “What’s so funny?”

“I’m trying to imagine you pulling a bog or culling calves,” she said, chuckling at the image. “I don’t expect you know a branding iron from a salt lick, do you, Major?”

Meade couldn’t believe how good it felt to see Rayna genuinely amused. “I most certainly do. And as for pulling bogs, I said I wanted to be a gentleman rancher, remember? I’ll leave the pulling and culling to the experts.”

“While you sip fine wine on the veranda?”

“Exactly.”

“You’ll be bankrupt within a year,” she predicted.

“Not possible. What I don’t know about ranching might fill an encyclo-pedia, but my brother-in-law, Case Longstreet, is a genius—in more ways than one,” he added cryptically, thinking of the prediction Case had made several months ago. He had been absolutely right about Crook’s impending return. Astonishing.

“So you’re going into business with your brother-in-law?” Rayna asked.

“I already am. When Case married by sister, Libby, eight years ago, we jointly purchased a large plot of ranchland. Between the two of us—my capital and his know-how—the ranch has done very well. It’s not as grand as Rancho Verde, but then, few places in the Southwest are.”

Rayna’s smile thanked him for the compliment. “What’s your ranch called?

Where is it located?”

“It’s called Eagle Creek, and it’s located just west of the White Mountain and San Carlos Indian reservations.”

“Really?” she asked, impressed. “I’m amazed that anyone would deliberately choose a location adjacent to a reservation.”

Meade finished off the last of his wine. “Actually, the choice of location was Case’s.” He hesitated a moment, then became a little angry with himself for being embarrassed to admit the truth. “You see, my brother-in-law is a full-blooded White Mountain Apache. He was orphaned when he was twelve or so, and he was raised by a frontiersman named Jedidiah Longstreet. Case always maintained his ties to his people, though. He’s considered something of a legend among them, in fact.”

Rayna’s smile widened. “It seems we have something in common.”

Meade could have gone on to tell her that he was very reluctantly related to an Apache, but it would have required more explanations than he wanted to delve into at the moment. “Apparently so,” was all he replied.

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cian. She’d inquired about his sister and the remainder of his family. Though Meade’s answers were somewhat superficial, what emerged was a portrait of an idealistic young man whose outlook on life had changed drastically, courtesy of the harsh realities of being an army surgeon. He had become a cynic who felt he had grown old before his time. His only real joy in life, it seemed, was his sister Libby and her small family.

“Why have you never married?” Rayna asked, hoping he wouldn’t take offense at the personal nature of the question.

“Marriage is not an institution that appeals to me,” he replied, then turned the tables. “And what of you? Why aren’t you making some poor man’s life a merry hell?”

She bit back a smile. “My opinion is much the same as yours, Major. It’s not an institution that appeals to me, and I’ve yet to encounter a man I respected enough to make me change my mind.”

“You mean you’ve yet to encounter someone stout enough to handle you.”

“I don’t want to be handled, sir. If I ever marry, it will be to someone who treats me as a partner and an equal. Frankly, I don’t see that happening. I’ve worked alongside my father running Rancho Verde for as long as I can remember, and that is all I want from the remainder of my life. Thus far, the only men who have expressed a serious interest in me have been those who were anxious to become Raymond Templeton’s heir.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Meade said, studying the graceful slant of her brow and the sculpted set of her jaw. “No young man could look at a woman as beautiful as you and see only land and cattle.”

The compliment momentarily robbed Rayna of the power of speech. “Th-thank you,” she stuttered after a moment.

Meade cursed himself for having given voice to his thoughts. “No thanks are necessary. I was merely stating the obvious. I just meant that if you’ve failed to attract the right sort of suitor, it’s because of your personality, not your looks.”

That was a subject that had become something of a joke between them, and he was obviously trying to lighten the mood because she’d taken his compliment too seriously. Had Rayna not been so emotionally vulnerable, the comment might have rolled off of her as so many of his others had, but in this instance she felt as though he’d slapped her.

“Excuse me, Major, but it’s time I left for the train station,” she said, slipping her chair back from the table.

“Rayna, wait, I’m sorry,” he said, realizing that he’d hurt her. “I meant what I said as a joke.”

“I know,” she replied. “It just didn’t come out that way.”

“I apologize.”

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“No apology is necessary.” She rose, and Meade stood up as well. “Thank you for supper, Major. And for all the other kindnesses you’ve shown me.” She offered him her hand, but Meade refused to take it.

“I had planned to see you to the train station.”

“You don’t have to trouble yourself. You’ve done too much already.”

“It’s no trouble,” Meade insisted. He couldn’t possibly let her go like this.

Seeing that it was pointless to argue, Rayna waited while he settled the bill. In the lobby he hired a porter and sent the man on up to Rayna’s suite to collect her bags while he ordered a carriage.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to make one more turn through my room to make certain I haven’t forgotten anything,” she told him.

“Of course.” Meade stayed at her side as she went upstairs. They encountered the porter as he was coming out of the room, arms laden, and Meade instructed him to deliver Rayna’s things to the carriage out front.

He waited near the door as Rayna walked through her quarters, and he noted that when she came out of the bedchamber she was carrying a book.

“Did you strike gold?”

She held up the volume. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I left it by my bedside.”

“Browning?” Meade craned his neck to see the book. “You’re a romantic after all, Rayna.”

He was trying to be friendly and polite, but she was in no mood to be teased. “It’s Skylar’s favorite,” she said defensively.

“But not yours?”

“Now, what would a woman with my prickly personality and prospects want with a book of romantic poetry?”

Meade sighed heavily and looked down at the floor. It was a moment before he looked up again. “I apologized for that, Rayna. I thought we had progressed beyond the point of contention on this issue, and I certainly didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“Yes, you are, and understandably so. I was callous.” He took a step toward her. “Now, tell me you forgive me so that we can say good-bye at the train station like the good friends we have become.”

His absolute sincerity disarmed her. He really did view her as a good friend. For some strange reason, that knowledge brought tears to her eyes. “I forgive you. I should never have taken offense in the first place.”

“That’s better,” Meade said with a smile, tipping her chin up so that he could look into her eyes. “I wouldn’t have let you go otherwise.”

“Why not? It’s unlikely we’ll ever see each other again,” she said, then felt a stinging, bitter sense of sadness when she realized what she’d said and how true it was.

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Meade suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “That’s precisely why I wouldn’t let you go away angry.” He lowered his head, intending to give her a perfectly decorous, brotherly kiss on the cheek, but when Rayna tilted her head questioningly, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears, all his brotherly thoughts faded. His lips brushed hers lightly, and he was lost. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he had taken her into his arms.

Rayna was stunned by Meade’s sudden display of affection, but nothing in the world could have made her shy away from his kiss. There was an urgency in the way his lips brushed against hers, and in the way she responded. A breathless ache blossomed inside her, and she pressed herself against him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders as the kiss deepened into something Rayna had never experienced before. It was sensuous and wonderful. It rocked her to the very core of her femininity and made her gasp with need. She moaned softly, a hoarse, breathy sound that caught in her throat and blended with a nearly identical groan from Meade.

And then suddenly it was over. His mouth was no longer slanted against hers; his arms were no longer around her. Meade stepped back, and it was everything Rayna could do to keep her knees from buckling.

“I’m sorry,” he said hastily, mortified by his behavior. “That was thoroughly improper, Rayna. Forgive me.”

It was a second before she recovered the power of speech. “I don’t recall protesting, Meade.”

The way she said his name made him ache to take her in his arms again.

But he couldn’t, of course. It was impossible. Ludicrous. “Well, you should have,” he scolded. “Good Lord, Rayna. I’m old enough to be your father.”

“No, you’re not,” she replied, feeling as though they were on the verge of another argument and not at all sure why. She certainly didn’t want to quarrel, not when her blood was pulsating with the most pleasurably frustrating sensations she’d ever experienced. “Meade, you’re not nearly old enough to be my father.”

“Yes, I am, and you shouldn’t be entertaining gentlemen in your room without a suitable chaperon.”

He was chastising her as her father would have, but instead of being irritated, Rayna found herself amused. He was embarrassed because he’d kissed her. She couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, really? In that case, would you like me to call up the porter or the chambermaid to be a witness to our next kiss?”

“There will not be a next kiss, Rayna,” he said sternly.

“Are you trying to convince yourself or me?”

Meade felt a painful stirring in his loins, and it infuriated him. “Don’t play the coquette. You’re no good at it, and I’m in no mood for it.” He moved toward the door. “Now, come on. You have a train to catch.”

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The reminder sobered Rayna, and the situation no longer seemed amusing or thrilling, for the truth was that this one kiss really would be their last.

“Well?” he prompted, holding the door open for her.

Not knowing what else to say or do, she let him escort her to the carriage.

A few minutes later he put her on the train and turned away briskly with only a terse but fatherly good-bye.

Rayna had hoped to make a quiet arrival at Rancho Verde so that she could break the disheartening news to Collie before they told her father. Even that small boon was denied her. One of the hands saw her coming, and by the time she stopped the buckboard in front of the house, everyone—including Raymond—knew that she had returned. Though his daily exercise was confined to a few short walks through the courtyard, Raymond was on his feet and waiting for her at the door with Collie at his side doing everything she could to draw him back into the house.

“Rayna, honey!” He held his arms out to her, and she flew into them, hugging him tightly, her head buried in his chest. He was thinner and pale, but he was alive.

“Oh, Papa, it’s so good to be home.” She let him go long enough to embrace her mother, but it was impossible for her to look Collie in the eye.

“Where’s Skylar?” Raymond asked as Rayna slipped one arm around his waist.

“Come inside, Papa,” she encouraged, trying to smile. “We have to talk, and I don’t want you taxing your strength.”

“Where’s Skylar?” he repeated, digging his heels in like a stubborn mule when Rayna tried to guide him into the house.

“Papa—”

“Damn it, Rayna Louise, talk to me!”

“I will, Papa, but you have to come inside and lie down.”

“She’s right, Raymond. Please,” Collie pleaded. “I couldn’t bear it if you had a relapse. Please come inside.”

He looked from his wife to his daughter and, for their sake, relented.

“Skylar’s not with you, is she?” he asked as he let them lead him into the house like a crippled old man. It seemed appropriate to the way he felt. “She never was in Santa Fe at all, was she?”

“No, Papa,” Rayna replied.

“Damnation,” he muttered. “I knew there was something damned peculiar going on when you left without saying good-bye. That bastard Greenleigh took her, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

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become his prison these last few weeks. The women sat on the bed, flanking him, and he demanded, “Now tell me what’s going on, and don’t leave anything out.”

With Collie’s help, Rayna explained how Skylar had been taken and that she had been delivered safely to the Mescalero reservation.

“Why in blue blazes didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked, giving his wife an accusing glare.

“Because Major Ashford said the shock might kill you,” Collie replied, holding her ground. “My daughter had just been stolen from me, and I couldn’t have survived losing you, too. Lying seemed like the only way to save your life, and I’m not sorry I did it.”

Raymond reached over and took his wife’s hand. “All right. I can accept that. I wasn’t exactly in any shape to go to Santa Fe and get her back.” He looked at Rayna. “I’m sorry you had to bear the brunt of this, honey.”

“You know I’d do anything for you and Skylar, Papa.” Her voice broke, and tears threatened, and she had to look away. “But I failed you both.”

Raymond wasn’t accustomed to seeing his daughter like this, and it frightened him almost as much as the thought of Skylar living unprotected among the Apaches. “What do you mean, honey? What happened with General Whitlock?”

Collie felt a stab of fear, too. “Rayna, you did get to see him, didn’t you?

Surely he ordered Skylar’s release?”

“I’m sorry, Mother. I did see him, but . . . he wouldn’t do anything.”

“Oh, dear God,” Collie murmured, and Rayna hurried on to explain about the reorganization of the territories and Whitlock’s insistence that her only recourse was to write General Crook. She also told them of the assistance Meade had given her.

“Before I left, Major Ashford asked around and learned that Crook is expected to make Fort Whipple his headquarters. I have letters from Meade, who once served under the general, and also a plea from Governor Denning. I wrote the letter to Crook last night and posted the whole lot from Albuquerque this morning.”

“Then there’s nothing to do but wait,” Collie said.

“I’m going to send a letter to Skylar, too, so that she’ll know what we’re doing to secure her release,” Rayna told them. “I thought if we sent her some writing materials we might be able to establish a correspondence that would help us all.”

“That’s a fine idea,” her mother said brightly, but then her brave front collapsed and tears flooded down her face. “Oh, my poor Skylar. My poor baby,”

she sobbed.

“There, there, Collie. She’ll be home soon.”

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Raymond pulled her to him, and they clung together. Though they never would have intended it, their closeness made Rayna feel like an outsider, and she quietly slipped out of the room. Standing outside the door, her teeth bit-ing deeply into her lip to hold back her own tears, she listened to her mother’s sobs and her father’s hollow words of comfort.

From somewhere far away, Rayna seemed to hear her sister’s voice calling to her, quietly begging her to come soon and take her home.

A sob she couldn’t control welled up in her throat. “I’m trying, Skylar. I’m trying,” she whispered.

Libby Longstreet stepped out onto the porch, and a shiver ran down her spine as she gazed at the tiny pinpoint of light up on Windwalk Mesa.

Upstairs, Jenny and Lucas were fast asleep. The house was quiet; the night sky was full of stars. It seemed inconceivable that Libby’s peaceful life was about to be turned upside down, but she knew the upheaval was coming just as surely as she knew the sun would rise in the morning.

George Crook had come to Eagle Creek today. Libby had been surprised and delighted to see him again, and Crook had greeted her warmly. He had crooned with grandfatherly pride over her two beautiful children and had even teased Libby about their first meeting eight years ago when she had shocked an assemblage of officers and their ladies with her liberal ideas about the Apaches. Crook had expressed his delight with her obvious happiness . . . and of course he had asked to see Case.

Libby was still cursing herself for not having comprehended the purpose of Crook’s visit the moment she saw him approaching with a small escort of cavalrymen. She should have known instantly that he had come to recruit her husband. But she hadn’t known, most likely because she hadn’t wanted to know. She hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility that Case might go away.

Now, though, she had no choice but to confront the truth. Case had spent hours talking to the general. Libby hadn’t been present during the conversation, but she knew what had been said. If Crook was going to succeed in capturing Geronimo, he needed Apache scouts, and eight years ago Case Longstreet had been the best the Gray Fox had ever had. Crook trusted him, and the White Mountain Apache trusted him; if Case enlisted, the other braves would follow suit.

The thought of her husband going into battle against Geronimo struck terror in Libby’s heart. It would be a difficult and dangerous campaign because Geronimo wasn’t going to surrender easily this time. Many would die.

And of course Geronimo wasn’t Crook’s only problem. There was considerable discontent even among the Apaches who had not revolted. They had been living with poor rations and broken promises for too long. Many differ-107

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ent Apache tribes—not all of them friendly to one another—were being concentrated on the White Mountain, San Carlos, and Rio Alto reservations, and this was causing even more trouble.

The entire territory was a boiling caldron that had been stirred up by Geronimo’s escape and the brutal raids he had been making to the south.

Libby had heard rumors that so-called citizens’ committees were springing up in towns throughout Arizona. In the past, such groups had been responsible for some of the most hideous massacres that had ever taken place in the territory. They acted under the well-meaning guise of solving the Apache problem and were heralded in the press as heroes, but for the most part they were just mean liquored-up cowboys who wanted something to brag about.

Libby had often feared that one of those committees would strike at Eagle Creek because she and Case employed a number of reservation Apaches as ranch hands. Case was respected by their neighbors, but all it would take to cause trouble was one drunken bigot who didn’t understand how much Case had done to keep the peace between the Apaches and the ranchers in the area. If Case went with Crook . . .

Libby didn’t want to think about that. It was too terrible to comprehend.

Yet she knew that she was going to have to face that fear eventually.

She looked again at the flickering light on the mesa and wondered what advice Case was receiving from the Apache spirits he was praying to up there.

Would they tell him to go or to stay? He hadn’t given Crook an answer today, but tomorrow or the next day he would ride to Crook’s temporary headquarters at Fort Apache. At the end of that day he would either come home or be gone for a very long time—if he ever came home at all.

“Please, God, don’t let him go,” she murmured.

Pulling her shawl around her to ward off the chill of dread she couldn’t escape, Libby sat in a rocking chair on the porch and waited until long after the light on the mesa vanished. When Case finally appeared out of the darkness, neither of them was surprised to see the other.

“Have you decided?” she asked quietly as he came up the stairs.

Case sat on the edge of the porch and leaned back against a post so that he could look at his wife. “Yes.”

“Will you go?” Libby held her breath.

“Yes.”

Libby looked down at her hands, fighting back a rush of tears. If he’d made his decision, nothing she could say would change his mind, and she wouldn’t dishonor either of them by trying. From the moment she had met Case, she had accepted him as he was, and over the years nothing had changed that.

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devoted father. He was also a man who had walked in two worlds, but felt that he truly belonged to neither. Together they had carved a place for themselves that was their own, and if the time had come for him to leave, Libby knew he had good reason and it wasn’t for her to question the rightness of it.

The brutal slaying of his parents when he was only twelve had set him on a path of vengeance that had led him into the white man’s world. With the help of Jedidiah Longstreet, Case had learned English—not only to speak it but to read and write it as well. He had studied manners and customs. He had visited cities in the East.

Guided by the mysterious visions that Libby still didn’t understand, Case had maintained his ties with the Apache and had waited patiently until it was time to extract his revenge from the Chiricahua renegade who had killed his parents and stolen his five-year-old sister. Gato, the renegade, was dead now, and for eight wonderful years Case had been at peace.

Lately, though, Libby had sensed a restlessness in her husband. Now she understood why.

“You knew Crook was coming back, didn’t you?” she asked, not looking at him. “You saw it in a vision.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t understand everything that I saw, and I had no intention of scouting for him. My place is here with you.”

She finally looked up. “Then why are you going?”

Case was silent a moment before he answered, “Morning Star.”

Libby was astonished. It had been years since she’d heard him speak that name. “Your sister? What has she got to do with Crook and Geronimo?”

“I don’t know, beloved, but there is a connection.”

Libby moved across the porch and sat beside him. “What have you seen?”

Case frowned as he took Libby’s hands. “It’s not what I have seen so much as what I have felt.” He shook his head. “I had given her up for dead years ago, long before I met you, even. After Gato kidnapped her, Jedidiah and I spent years looking for her, but we found no trace. Gato sold her to Mexican slavers, and the earth swallowed her up.”

Libby reached out and gingerly touched the simple carved medallion that hung from a buckskin cord around his neck. It was so much a part of him that she sometimes forgot it was there. It was an unadorned version of the magnificent Thunder Eagle necklace that Gato had stolen on the day he murdered Case’s parents. Case had made it to symbolize his love for his slain family, and even after the original necklace was restored to him, he had continued to wear the simple copy as a tribute to his missing sister. One eagle feather, representing her life, hung from the medallion.

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“And now you believe she is alive?” Libby asked, praying that he was right. It had been nearly twenty years since Case had seen his sister, but she knew he still grieved for the lost child whose fate had been a painful mystery for so long.

“Yes, and somehow scouting for Crook will lead me to her, just as it led me to you . . . and to Gato eight years ago.”

Libby took Case’s hand and laced her fingers through his. “Then you have no choice but to go with Crook.”

Case squeezed her hand and pressed his lips against her temple. “I knew you would understand, beloved,” he murmured.

“When will you leave?”

“I will go to Crook tomorrow. I promised him I would act as interpreter when he speaks with the other Apache.”

“When will the campaign against Geronimo begin?”

“Crook doesn’t know, but it may not be for a while yet. I won’t be leaving until the campaign begins.”

Libby sighed with relief. It might take Crook months to prepare.

Case wrapped his arms around his wife. “When I go, I’ll ask Jedidiah to come stay with you and the children.”

“Good.” She smiled up at him, pleased with the thought of having their old friend so close. Jedidiah’s small cabin was only a few miles away, but he was spending more and more time in the mountains these days. “He stays away too long.”

“And Meade will be home soon,” Case reminded her. “You won’t be alone, beloved. I’ll see to that.”

“I know you will.”

He cupped her jaw and raised her face to his. “You are my life, Libby,” he said softly. “If you tell me to stay, I will stay.”

“I know that, too,” she replied. “That’s why I would never ask.”

He gathered her close, and their long, tender kiss blossomed into the quiet passion that made them one spirit, one soul, one life.

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9

My dearest sister,

Even as I write this letter, I have no idea whether it will find you or not. I have begged Agent Newsome to deliver it to you, and I can only hope that he will take pity on us and place it in your hands along with the parcel I am including.

Father is alive and growing a little stronger with every passing day.

I know he has been your deepest concern, but you may rest easy. He longs to be as active as he was before, but seems resigned to the changes his weakened heart has forced upon him.

Naturally his greatest concern is for your welfare, and we all ache for news of how you are faring. We love you, and we miss you, dear Skylar, and we are doing everything we can to secure your release.

How I wish I could say that would be soon, but it seems that we have become trapped in a sea of bureaucratic nonsense. General Whitlock in Santa Fe could not help us, and I have been forced to initiate a correspondence with . . .

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The tears in Skylar’s eyes made the words blur beyond recognition, and she had to stop for a moment. It was the second time she had read Rayna’s letter since Agent Newsome had given her the packet less than an hour ago. She had devoured this one as well as the letter from her mother and the brief note from her father that proved he was indeed alive.

The joy of knowing that was more than enough to overshadow the disappointing news that Rayna had related in the rest of her letter. Skylar could endure anything now that she knew her father was alive.

At long last she had a tangible connection to her family. Smiling through her tears, she touched the packet of writing materials Rayna had sent her.

They were lying on the end of the wagon the Verdes’ had driven to the agency to collect their supplies, but otherwise the wagon was empty. Her friends were standing in the long line awaiting their weekly rations, and Skylar knew she should join them, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She wanted to savor Rayna’s letter, so she dried her eyes and read again how the military departments had changed, how Rayna had waited in Santa Fe for Whitlock’s return, how kind and helpful Major Ashford had been.

She read Rayna’s promise to write again soon, and she smiled. Rayna hated letter writing, but Skylar had no doubt that she would eventually receive another letter from home. When that might be was anyone’s guess, of course, since this packet had taken nearly three weeks to arrive. Whether that was due to the inconsistency of the mail delivery service, the remoteness of the agency, or Newsome’s neglect, Skylar couldn’t have guessed and she didn’t care. The packet was here, and that was all that mattered. Skylar could hardly wait to return to camp and begin a letter to her family.

When she finished reading Rayna’s letter for the second time, she glanced up and noticed that Gatana was watching her. She couldn’t delay going to the ration line any longer. Clutching the parcel, she hurried across the compound and was halfway there when she noticed a disturbance near the agency office.

Looking closer, she saw Naka’yen and several subchiefs. Sun Hawk was there, too, as was the assistant Indian agent, Frank Hawley, who acted as Newsome’s somewhat ineffectual translator.

Even from a distance Skylar could tell that Naka’yen was agitated. His voice was raised, but the words were indistinct. She didn’t have to hear him to know that something was wrong, though.

“What has happened?” she asked as she hurried to Gatana.

“I do not know,” the elderly woman replied, her face drawn into lines of concern.

Others had noticed the disturbance and had begun moving toward their chief. Skylar moved, too. Gatana tried to hold her back by placing a hand on her arm, but Skylar gently shook it off and joined the others.

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“We will not go! This is our land,” Naka’yen shouted at Newsome. “It is all we have left to us. The white man has taken everything else and left us with only this one small piece of land. Our hunting grounds are gone, and there is not enough food. We will not go!”

Go? Go where? Skylar wondered, desperately clutching the letters and papers to her breast. More murmurs went through the crowd as Hawley translated Naka’yen’s words.

Quickening her pace, Skylar forced her way through the growing crowd until she was standing between Sun Hawk and Newsome. “What’s happening?” she asked the agent.

“I’m trying to explain to your chiefs that this agency has been closed.”

“Closed?”

“That’s right,” he said, clearly no more pleased with this than the Apaches were. “All of the Mescalero are being transferred to the Rio Alto agency in Arizona.”

Skylar was appalled. “But that’s absurd! Why?”

“Damned if I know,” Newsome barked. “It’s got something to do with the reorganization of the Indian Bureau. They’re trying to consolidate all the Apaches into one area so that they can be controlled better.”

“You mean the Apaches will no longer have their own land? They’ll be sharing a reservation with other tribes?” she asked, trying to comprehend what was happening.

“That’s right,” Newsome answered. “They’ll be on the Rio Alto with the Tonto, the Lipan, and what’s left of the Chiricahua—those who didn’t take off with Geronimo.”

“Is the Rio Alto a large reservation?”

“No,” Newsome said, growing impatient with her questions. “It’s just a little bigger than this one.”

“But that’s insane,” Skylar said. “This reservation is barely big enough to support the Mescalero. You can’t expect that many people to survive on a tiny reservation.”

Newsome poked a finger sharply at his own chest. “I’m not the one doing this,” he said hotly. “These are the orders, and I’ve got to obey them—just like all of you do.”

Skylar discovered suddenly that all eyes were on her as she conversed in English with Newsome. Sun Hawk’s gaze finally captured hers, and in Apache he asked her bluntly, “What does he say to you? What do you say to him?”

Skylar realized with some embarrassment that she had taken over the conversation and that many would think what she had done was inappropriate.

She couldn’t refuse to answer, though, and she looked up at Sun Hawk hesitantly. “We are to be sent to Arizona. We will live on the Rio Alto reservation.”

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Sun Hawk frowned as more murmurs went through the crowd. “Where is this Rio Alto?”

Skylar had no idea, and she looked at Newsome. “They want to know where Rio Alto is located.”

“It is below San Carlos near the Pinaleno Mountains,” he replied, and Skylar translated to Sun Hawk and the others. There were more angry shouts, and Skylar felt herself being jostled as the Indians pressed forward. Sun Hawk called for silence and looked down at Skylar.

“Ask him who made this decision.”

“It was the Indian Bureau,” she told him.

“Can nothing be done to stop it?”

Skylar looked to the agent. “Is there any way to prevent this? Is there anyone we can talk to?”

He shook his head with disgust. “No. The Apaches are not going to like it, but they’re going to have to live with it. Soldiers from Fort Travis will be here this afternoon, and they’ll move out day after tomorrow.”

“You expect them to be ready to leave in a day?” Skylar asked, aghast.

“That’s right. Make that clear to them. As soon as they’ve collected their rations they should begin making preparations for the move.”

Skylar looked at Sun Hawk and reluctantly told him what Newsome had said.

The crowd erupted into shouts of anger as they surged forward, but when Hawley brought up his rifle, everyone stopped.

“Get back, all of you!” he demanded in his less than perfect Apache.

Newsome drew his own pistol and took a step back. “Hawley, put an end to this at once! Tell them that if they make trouble, there will be no more rations distributed and they will have to make the trip without food!”

Hawley raised his voice again and spoke to the Indians, but what he said did nothing to quell the disturbance. More angry shouts rent the air, and it was easy to see why. Instead of repeating Newsome’s threat in its entirety, Hawley had inadvertently told them that the rations were being cut and there would be no food for the journey.

The angry Apaches surged forward again, and Hawley raised his rifle, panic showing plainly in his eyes.

“Wait!” Skylar shouted, but she couldn’t be heard above the chaos.

Desperate to avert a tragedy, she grabbed Sun Hawk’s arm. “Wait, calm the people! Make them listen. There will be provisions for the journey. The agent said it. I heard him.”

“But that is not what this one said,” Sun Hawk replied, gesturing toward Hawley.

“He spoke wrong. Calm your people and let me tell them what the agent said.”

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Sun Hawk raised his voice, counseled his people to step back, and managed to quiet them enough so that Skylar could be heard. Ignoring the anger and suspicion in their eyes, she translated Newsome’s words accurately, then looked at the agent and switched back to English. “You should be careful, Mr.

Newsome. Your assistant’s poor command of the Apache language is going to get someone killed. He told them you were cutting off their supplies.”

Newsome shot an angry glance at Hawley, then turned to Skylar again.

“Then you speak for me,” he demanded. “Tell them to disperse and go back to the lines to collect their rations.”

She did as he asked, but no one moved. She looked beseechingly at Sun Hawk. “They respect you. Make them go back or there will be trouble.”

Sun Hawk exchanged a troubled glance with his father; then Naka’yen ordered his people to go back to the ration lines. Slowly the crowd began to disperse until only Sun Hawk and the council of elders remained.

Relieved that the crisis had passed, for the moment at least, Skylar stepped back as well, but Sun Hawk stopped her. “No, you must stay. We want our words understood, and we want to hear his clearly so that there will be no mistakes. You will speak for us.”

Klo’sen drew his shoulders back proudly. “I do not want a woman to speak for me! She is not even one of us.”

Sun Hawk turned to him. “She has lived among the white men, uncle.

She knows their ways and ours. We need her. If a woman can stop a tragedy from happening, I will listen to a woman. It does not make me less of a man.”

With Skylar interpreting, Newsome went on to give his instructions: At daybreak the day after tomorrow, all the Mescaleros were to gather at the agency, ready for travel. They would be counted. Anyone who was missing would be considered a renegade and would be shot on sight.

Naka’yen argued, and the others made speeches, which Skylar dutifully translated, but there was nothing Newsome could do.

By the time the soldiers arrived, Skylar and the other Verde woman had returned to camp, but the braves had remained behind to listen to the soldier talk. The story Captain Haggarty told the Mescalero was considerably different from the one Newsome had related. According to Haggarty, the Rio Alto was enormous, water was plentiful, and food was abundant. He made the reservation sound like the most beautiful place on earth, but the Mescaleros had heard too many lies to be fooled.

When Naka’yen said his people would not go, Haggarty replied that if they did not go willingly, they would be taken in chains. He made other threats, too, which were much more severe. In the end, Naka’yen could do nothing but submit to the will of the army.

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Many of his people did not agree with their chief’s decision, and that night a war council was held. Consayka and the other Verde braves were invited to attend, and Skylar learned later that many braves favored joining Geronimo.

Fortunately, Sun Hawk had not been one of them. Though the order to move was a terrible blow and an outrageous injustice, he had counseled peace.

Consayka believed that some of the braves would steal away in the night, taking their families with them, not caring if they were branded renegades.

The younger ones whose blood ran hot were sick of being treated like dogs.

To them, dying as warriors seemed preferable to dying as slaves.

Skylar knew that if the braves left, their people would suffer for it, and that saddened her. This move was all so unnecessary. It was also a great blow to her, but she tried not to dwell on the complications the move was obviously going to cause. This morning she had rejoiced because she finally had the means to communicate with her family, but already that fragile thread had been broken. Rescuing her from the Mescalero reservation was proving hard enough; how much more difficult would it be to get her off the Rio Alto, hundreds of miles away in the Arizona Territory?

Skylar waited until her friends had all retired for the night before she began the task of relating the events of the day to Rayna in a letter she dreaded writing. Newsome had promised to post it for her, but she had no assurance that the soldiers or the Rio Alto agent would do her a similar courtesy in the future. Knowing this letter might be the last her family would receive from her, she wanted to tell them everything that had happened to her and assure them she was surviving.

Sitting by the fire in front of her lodge, she wrote page after page. She would have a full day tomorrow striking camp, but she couldn’t bring herself to conclude the letter. She wrote long descriptions of the people she had met and the conditions on the reservation. She confessed the difficulties she was having and poked fun at the many mistakes she had made.

“I think you would have been proud of me today, Rayna,” she wrote.

“When Agent Newsome made his announcement of our impending departure, I stepped to the forefront with the assembled Mescalero leaders and began asking questions. Naturally, my boldness was motivated by self-interest, for I was thinking only of how this move would take me farther away from you, Mother, and Papa.

“Presently, though, I found myself acting as interpreter when Newsome’s assistant created a panic among us by inaccurately relaying one of his employer’s messages. A tragedy was narrowly averted, and as I think on it now, I am amazed at myself. It is not like me to leap into the fray. That has always been your forte, and I have always been content to stand back and let you fight the battles, even the ones that involved me.

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“Could it be that some of your fortitude has transferred itself to me? Truly, I often find myself thinking, What would Rayna do in this instance? My actions can be only a poor imitation of yours, at best, but I cannot deny that I am changing.”

She wrote on, losing all track of time, but finally a sense that she was being watched drew her out of the word painting she was creating. Frowning into the darkness, she looked up and saw a dark shape just beyond the rim of firelight. Her pulse quickened, but not out of fear, when she recognized the visitor. Sun Hawk was standing there watching her. With a smile of welcome she beckoned to him, and he came to the fire.

“My Apache father and the other braves are asleep,” she told him, keeping her voice low so that she wouldn’t disturb anyone in the nearby lodges.

Sun Hawk crouched beside her, careful to keep a respectable distance between them. “I know this. It was you I came to see, but I did not want to startle you as I have in the past.”

“I was not startled.”

“I know this, too. You are learning.”

Skylar found it difficult to hold his gaze and glanced at the fire. “Not quickly enough, I fear.”

In the small silence that fell between them, Sun Hawk studied her profile in the dancing firelight and wondered if coming here had been a mistake. It had been a long time since he had spoken to her at the stream and she had solved the mystery of why she seemed so different from the other Verdes.

With his curiosity satisfied, Sun Hawk had expected that his fascination with her would end. It had not. If anything, she called to him even more strongly than before.

He had made a pointed effort to stay away from the Verde camp, but that had not erased her from his thoughts. Her beauty haunted him, and the quiet dignity with which she carried herself in her daily struggle to survive touched his heart. Seeing her courageously stand up to Newsome and the others today had increased his respect for her, and he had found it impossible to stay away any longer.

Now, though, seeing her by the fire so composed and so lovely made his heart race and his loins tighten. He had been a fool to come, but he could not bring himself to leave.

Skylar knew he was watching her, and her face grew warm. “Why are you here?” she asked when she could no longer bear the silence or his intense scrutiny.

Sun Hawk roused himself from his foolish reverie. “To tell you what a good thing you did today. Had you not spoken, some of my people might have been killed,” he said, wondering if one of the deities would punish him for the half-truth he told.

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“I was happy to do it,” she assured him, pulling her gaze away from the fire to his face.

Sun Hawk nodded. He had said what he came to say, and now he should go. But he couldn’t. Instead, he gestured toward the letter Skylar had placed on the ground beside her. “What is this?”

She handed him several of the pages. “It is a—” She struggled for an Apache word comparable to “letter,” but since the Apache had no written language, there was none that she had ever heard. “A letter,” she said finally in English.

“Let-ter,” he repeated, looking at the strange marks on the parchment. He had seen paper, of course, and the white man’s scratching, since he was required to make a mark in a book when he received his rations. He had never seen so many scribblings all together, though.

He handed the papers back to her. “Why do you do this?”

“I am talking to my sister, telling her of my life here and that I will soon be at Rio Alto,” she explained. “Newsome has promised to send my words to my family so that they will know I am well.”

“I saw the agent give you a package today.”

Skylar nodded. “This was in it, along with letters from my parents and sister.”

Sun Hawk looked at her closely. “I saw it made you cry,” he told her, watching for her reaction. “Were the words they sent you sad ones?”

“No,” she said, smiling. “My tears were ones of happiness. When I was taken from Rancho Verde, the pain in my father’s heart was too much for him and he became ill. When I learned that he had not died, I cried with joy.”

Sun Hawk could see the happiness on her face, but strangely, it did not please him. This woman had ties to the white man’s world that would never be broken. “Then your white father will come for you soon?”

Skylar’s smile faded. “No. General Whitlock, the chief of soldiers, would not release me. Only General Crook can do that now, and my sister is waiting for his answer.”

Sun Hawk recognized both names and was surprised by the second one.

“Gray Fox has returned?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“I have not met him, but I have heard many good things about him. It is said he does not lie, and if he makes a promise he will keep it—even if the promise is made to an Apache.”

“I have heard the same thing of him.”

Sun Hawk’s handsome face hardened into a scowl. “Was Gray Fox the one who said my people must move?”

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trol over them. He must live with their decisions just as we must.” She was pleased to see that his face softened. Clearly he did not want to think ill of General Crook, and she could understand why. In a desperate situation it was a great relief to have at least one person who could be trusted.

“I was told you spoke of peace at the council tonight,” she commented, hoping to learn more about his attitudes. She had guessed Sun Hawk to be about thirty years of age, and she was learning that it was unusual to find so much wisdom in one so young. “That was a good thing,” she told him.

Sun Hawk looked into the fire. Her praise warmed him, but he was not altogether certain she was right. “Will you say that if our people perish at Rio Alto?” he asked quietly.

She caught a glimpse of his pain and confusion, and was moved by it. “Do you have doubts about the things you said at the council?” she inquired, her voice soft with sympathy.

It was a moment before he answered. “My friends called me a coward and said I was like an old woman.” He looked at her with a touch of defiance. “I am not.”

“I know that,” she assured him with a gentle smile. “You are wise to counsel peace. There are too many white men and too few Apaches. If you fight, eventually all the Apache will die.”

He looked at the fire again. “Some say that dying is better.”

“They are wrong.”

“My cousin, Dull Knife, believes that if we stand against the soldiers we can drive all the whites out of our land.”

“Dull knife is foolish,” Skylar said firmly. “I have been to many places far away from here and seen the villages of the white man that stretch farther than the eye can see.” She reached down and scooped up a handful of dirt.

“Their numbers are many times greater than all the grains of sand on this reservation. For every soldier killed, two more will come to replace him, and four will replace those if they die. The Apache cannot win; they can only survive and learn to live as best they can.”

Sun Hawk studied her face as he listened to her words. The images she created were frightening, but he did not doubt her, because the things she said matched his own beliefs. What was surprising was the way she spoke. It was good to find a woman who did not think of him as less than a man because he did not want to fight a battle that could not be won.

“You have much wisdom and knowledge for a woman so young,” he told her.

Skylar smiled. “I had thought the same of you.”

“I am not young,” he replied, and then a teasing light came into his dark eyes. “I only look young to you because everyone in your Apache family is old.”

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She laughed lightly, and Sun Hawk felt a stirring of desire so strong that it nearly took his breath away. His good humor vanished. “Where is your man?”

Skylar was astonished by the sternness in his voice. “My man?” she asked, frowning.

“You should have a husband and many children already.”

Skylar felt as though she was being scolded, and it irritated her. “I have no husband or children.”

“Why not?”

“Because I am an Apache, and no white man has wanted me as a wife.”

That made sense. “And no Apache would want you because you have lived among the whites too long to know the things a good wife must know,” he added crossly, following the thought to its natural conclusion.

He was right, of course, but Skylar was stung by his blatant rejection of her as a woman no man could possibly want. She knew it in her heart, but hearing someone say it—particularly this man—made her feel like the lowest creature that had ever walked on earth. Fighting back tears, she looked into the fire again. “As I said before, you are wise.”

Sun Hawk saw the pain he had caused her and regretted it deeply. “It is not your fault,” he said, softening his voice.

Skylar couldn’t look at him. “Maybe you think it would have been better if the Chiricahua who slaughtered my people had killed me as well.”

“Do you think that?” he asked quietly.

Skylar whirled to face him. “No! I have never thought that! Because I lived, I have known the love of very good people. I have laughed with joy, and when I cried there was always someone to comfort me. I have seen beautiful sunrises and thrilled to the sight of a coming storm. My life has been good, and if I must pay for that by living with the sorrow of never having a husband or children, it is a small price to pay for the gift of being alive.”

Sun Hawk sat back, startled by her ferocity—and by the way her flash of fire made him feel. But the needs she aroused in him were unwelcome ones.

They were not a betrayal of his wife, for he knew he had passed through his time of mourning, but they were wrong feelings nonetheless.

“Then may you live a long life,” he said tersely as he rose. Without giving her a chance to respond, he turned and became one with the darkness.

Meade threw the letter onto the table and moved across the room to pour himself another drink. Damn it to hell, why was Rayna Templeton writing to him? He had enough trouble not thinking about her without her harassing him with these constant reminders.

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her father’s continuing progress and her lack of the same in obtaining Skylar’s release. Except for her polite expressions of gratitude, there had been nothing terribly personal in either of the letters. She certainly hadn’t mentioned the kiss they’d shared.

Unfortunately that hadn’t stopped Meade from thinking about it.

He took a long swig of whiskey, but he already knew from experience that it wasn’t going to do any good. Eight years at Fort Apache hadn’t turned him into an alcoholic, but the memory of that accursed woman just might. Why the devil couldn’t he forget about her?

Simple, he told himself. It was because she was a damsel in distress and he was a gentleman who’d been conditioned to lend aid in a crisis. Nothing more. The problem of Skylar Templeton was still unresolved, and until it was, it would weigh on Meade’s mind. It was a natural, logical conclusion.

Except that Skylar Templeton wasn’t the one who’d caused him more sleepless nights than he could count, and thinking of her sister, Rayna, as a damsel in distress was nothing short of laughable. She was trapped in a mire of frustrating bureaucracy, but she was far from helpless. She was beautiful, yes. And she was fiery, spirited, unladylike, and damned infuriating at times, but helpless? Hardly.

Blast it all, he didn’t even like the woman! he tried to tell himself, but of course it was a lie. He admired her spirit and her courage. He respected her loyalty and her deep commitment to her family. He even respected her ability to stand up for herself, and what was worse, he actually missed sparring with her. Too often he found himself smiling for no reason as he thought of something she’d said or of an impudent look she’d given him.

What he thought about at night, though, was the passionate kiss they’d shared. The memory made him ache with the most ferocious need he’d ever experienced. There were places he could go to assuage that need, of course, but Meade couldn’t bring himself to seek the services of a whore. As a physician, he knew the hazards only too well, but if it would have obliterated his obsession with Rayna Templeton, he might have been willing to take the risk.

That wasn’t likely, though, and Meade had deep distaste for the base behavior he’d witnessed in so many of his colleagues and subordinates. He’d heard too many men boasting of their prowess with the camp followers who plied their trade in wagons just outside Fort Apache. The thought of paying for sexual favors didn’t appeal to him, and over the years he had disciplined himself to shut out unwanted desires.

But Rayna refused to be locked out of his mind, and she was wreaking merry hell on his body.

Angry and frustrated, Meade stalked across the room and retrieved her letter. “As you can imagine,” she had written, “this long wait without word from 121

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General Crook has taken its toll on all of us, but in some ways I am more fortunate than Mother and Papa. I, at least, can busy myself with the daily concerns of running the ranch. Only the great volume of paperwork daunts me, for I much prefer riding the range to being confined in Papa’s study. However, I’m sure this unladylike attitude comes as no surprise to you.”

Meade could envision her teasing smile as clearly as if she had been in the room with him. She would have bowed her head slightly and slanted a glance at him. Her eyes would have sparkled with mischief as she tweaked him, and then she would have waited expectantly for his tart reply—which he would have given, if only to keep himself from kissing that delightful smile away.

Groaning with frustration, Meade stomped into the kitchen where the coals on the hearth were just beginning to wane. Furious at his lack of control, he threw the letter into the fireplace, but before it had even begun to singe, he snatched the letter back, folded it, returned to the parlor. His personal journal was on the reading table by his chair, and he jerked at the leather band that held it together and shoved the letter into the back . . . right alongside the first one Rayna had sent him.

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10

“My, my, will ya take a look at that, gents?” Private Andy Norris said, giving his comrades his best hoity-toity impersonation. “I do believe I see me some rich Apaches comin’ our way.”

The small cluster of soldiers looked in the direction Norris pointed. What they saw wouldn’t have been impressive anywhere but on a reservation. In the midst of the long procession of Mescaleros straggling in to the agency on foot was a group mounted on fine horses and riding alongside two wagons. One of the wagons was even covered with a canvas canopy that swayed drunkenly as it bounced along.

“Well, fancy that,” Stan Talbot said. “Come on, boys, we’d better check this out. Lieutenant Zaranski said we was to make sure these heathens didn’t bring in no moonshine or no”—he drew himself up in imitation of the snooty lieutenant—”contraband. Apaches this rich prob’ly got lots of that.”

“Hell, Stan, you don’t even know what conterband is,” Norris snorted, poking his buddy in the ribs.

Talbot’s grin betrayed the loss of his two front teeth. “That don’t mean I can’t look for it, does it?” He turned to the other men in the detail that 123

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had been assigned to search the incoming “hostiles.” “You boys stay here and keep lookin’ through the bundles. Me an’ Andy is gonna check out them wagons.”

“Who died and made you general?” one of the men asked irritably, but Talbot ignored him. He and Norris walked down the line of Apaches toward the slow-moving wagons.

“Whew, boy! Would you get a load o’ that squaw,” Talbot crowed when they’d gotten a little closer.

“Where?” Norris asked, looking around.

“Boy, you been in the sun too long. Your eyes is plum gone. Lookee there, sittin’ up front on the first wagon. If that ain’t the prettiest Injun I ever saw, I’ll eat my boots.”

“Yeah? What’re you gonna use to chew ‘em with?” Norris said, then guffawed at the good one he’d gotten off on his friend.

Talbot shot his friend a mean glance. “Jest fer that, I ain’t gonna share when I get me a piece of that squaw.”

“You’re the one who’s been in the sun too long,” Norris said with disgust.

“Ain’t nothin’ could make me dive ‘tween the legs of no Apache.”

“Boy, you don’t know what you’re missin’! A good squaw is about the best there is. No other woman in the world can buck like an Apache. You just wait an’ see. After another week on the trail, they’ll start lookin’ real good to you.”

Quickening his pace, he hurried the final distance toward the wagon. The riders flanking the wagon shied out of his way but stayed close enough to protect their women and belongings.

“Hey, you! Injun! Where’d you steal them wagons and horses?” Talbot shouted up at Joe Long Horn, who was driving the team.

“The wagons were not stolen. They belong to Miss Skylar, and the horses are our own.”

Talbot hooted with laughter. “Well, how about that. Didja hear, Andy?

We got ourselves an Injun who speaks English better’n you do.”

“Zat right?”

“Yep.” It took only a slow walk to keep pace with the wagon, and Talbot looked up at Skylar. “What about you, squaw? You speak English, too?”

It was broad daylight, there were several hundred Mescaleros within shouting distance and at least half that many soldiers, but for the first time since she’d arrived at the reservation, Skylar was truly frightened. It wasn’t a vague fear of the unknown or concern for her father or any of the other emotions that she had called fear in the past few months. She had seen this man and his friend coming; she had seen the way one of them looked at her. What she felt was a genuine fear for her life.

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It was everything she could do to keep her voice calm and even. “Yes, Private. I do speak English. Mr. Long Horn was correct when he told you that these vehicles and animals belong to us.”

Talbot whooped again. “Whew, boy, don’t you talk pretty. Mr. Long Horn, la-di-da. I guess that must make you Miss Skylar.”

“That’s right,” she answered quietly.

“Well, tell this buck to stop the wagon, ‘cause Norris an’ me gotta search it.”

“Why?” Skylar asked, but Joe pulled the team to a halt and whispered, “We must do as he says, miss. Let him search so that he can go about his business.”

“Climb on down from there, you two,” Talbot ordered as he circled to the rear of the wagon. “And tell these old women to get out, too!”

There was no need to translate, of course, and everyone began climbing down. Talbot ordered Norris to get in the wagon and search the bundles while he gave the women a cursory once-over.

“Nothin’ in here but some food and clothes,” Norris said as he glanced through the bundles.

“Well, keep lookin’. They gotta have some conterband somewheres.” He moved back to the front of the wagon and leered down at Skylar. “Ain’t that right, Miss Skylar?”

She suppressed a shudder. “We have nothing illegal or forbidden with us.”

“I’d like to see that for myself if you don’t mind,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her roughly toward him. In an instant he was groping at her breasts under the pretext of conducting a search. As Skylar struggled against him, Joe tried to insert himself between her and the soldier.

“Let her go!” Joe demanded.

Talbot gave him a shove that sent him into the dirt. “Keep yer hands off me, you stinkin’ Apache. Andy, get your butt down here and help me search this squaw!”

But his friend didn’t comply. He was frozen by the sight of the dozen mounted Apaches who had closed in on the wagon. “Stan, you better quit that right now. We got trouble,” he said as one ancient old man urged his horse toward Talbot.

“Let her go,” Consayka ordered.

His voice was soft and cracked with age, but there was no denying the power of it. Startled, Talbot looked around and realized he was outnumbered.

With one hand dug tightly into Skylar’s arm, he whipped out his revolver and pointed at the old man. “You get yourself and these braves back, old man, or you’re gonna be a dead Injun.”

“When you let her go, we will move. You cannot kill all of us.”

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passing before his eyes, but he was too cussed stubborn to give in. He raised the gun and pointed it at Consayka’s heart.

With a strangled cry, Skylar lunged for the gun, trying to shove it upward. Her movement set them both off balance, and Talbot fell heavily against the wagon. His gun discharged in the air, and the horses shied away.

A second later Talbot heard the thundering charge of horses approaching, and he cast Skylar away from him, pushing her so hard that she fell to the ground.

“Make way! Make way!” someone ordered, and the Mescaleros scattered as a half-dozen cavalrymen charged through them. Only Consayka and the Verdes held their ground.

“Private, what’s going on here?” Lieutenant Zaranski demanded, gun drawn as he glared down at the soldier.

“Norris and me was searchin’ this wagon just like you ordered, an’ these Apaches tried to bushwhack us.”

“That’s a lie,” Skylar said, her voice trembling with anger and the remnants of her fear.

“I beg your pardon?” Zaranski said, looking around to see who had spoken.

Skylar stumbled to her feet and stepped toward him. “I said that man is lying,” she repeated. “He was using the search of this wagon as an excuse to assault me. My friends were only trying to protect me.”

Zaranski stared down at her with a combination of bemusement and irritation. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought himself in some grand lady’s parlor in Philadelphia. “You speak English.”

Skylar sighed heavily. “That’s right, Lieutenant. And so do all of the Mescaleros you see here.”

Zaranski nodded. “Ah, you must be the Apaches from Rancho Verde that Mr. Newsome was telling me about.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re the one Newsome uses as an interpreter, isn’t that correct?”

he asked.

“I have acted in that capacity, yes,” Skylar replied.

“Well, we have our own interpreter, so don’t expect any special treatment,”

he said somewhat haughtily.

“We have asked for none,” Skylar said tightly. “But we do not expect to be singled out and abused, either.”

Zaranski wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he looked at Consayka.

“Are you the chief of this band?”

“Yes.”

“Well, get them loaded up and join the others. Everyone with horses will be allowed to keep them, but you’ll have to be responsible for feeding and 126

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watering them yourselves. When it comes to forage, remember that the army’s livestock comes first. Understood?”

Consayka nodded. “We understand. Are you going to punish the soldier who attacked my daughter?”

Zaranski looked at Talbot, who had slowly edged away from the circle of Indians. “I believe Private Talbot has learned his lesson. Have a care in dealing with these people, Private,” he warned lightly. “We don’t want any more misunderstandings.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant looked at the soldier on his right. “Sergeant, get these people moving again.” With that, Zaranski wheeled his horse and returned to the agency headquarters. The sergeant’s command to load up came a little late, since the Verdes had all started climbing back into the wagon.

Still trembling from her disgusting encounter with Talbot, Skylar gingerly fingered the darkening bruises on her arm and tried to ignore the similar pain in her breasts. “That will happen again, won’t it?” she asked Joe quietly, too embarrassed to look at him.

He kept his eyes straight forward as he urged the mules into motion. “You should never go anywhere alone until we reach Rio Alto,” he advised.

It was good advice, but it was less than reassuring. If Talbot or someone like him wanted to have his way with any of the Mescalero women, a witness or two wouldn’t stop him. Any of the soldiers could kill an Apache, claim self-defense, and be heralded as a hero. Conversely, any Apache who tried to defend himself or herself would be shot without question.

Sickened by the injustice of a situation she couldn’t change or control, Skylar glanced at the growing number of Mescaleros gathered at the agency.

When she saw Sun Hawk looking at her, his face set into a hard, unreadable mask of marble, she looked away, too humiliated to hold his gaze.

She didn’t see that his hands were clasped in barely controlled rage.

It took most of the day to count the four hundred Mescaleros and get them on the trail. Captain Haggarty, commander of the cavalry detail charged with moving the Apaches, was anxious to get on his way despite the fact that more than a dozen braves and several of their women were missing. He wasted no time looking for them, since they were undoubtedly long gone, probably making their way to Mexico.

Before they moved out, Skylar was able to place her letter to her family in Newsome’s hands, and he promised to post it as soon as possible. What she considered truly miraculous, though, was that he had quietly given her the balance of the money Rayna had sent to him as a consideration for handling Skylar’s correspondence. It wasn’t much, but it could come in handy.

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They were less than ten miles from the western boundary of the reservation when they made camp for the night. Some of the soldiers erected tents, but there was no shelter for the Mescalero. They spread out as much as the soldiers would allow and built their fires.

The huge sea of humanity hemmed in like animals in a pen sickened Skylar, but she did her share of the work as always. Though fetching water was considered woman’s work, Joe Long Horn and the other braves accompa-nied the women to and from the nearby stream. No one commented on it, but Skylar knew they were hoping their numbers would prevent a repeat of this morning’s attack. Fortunately the soldiers kept their distance, and Skylar was relieved that she didn’t spot Talbot all evening.

When darkness came, the camp fell silent, the quiet punctuated only by the occasional wail of an infant or the abrupt bark of a laughing soldier.

Conversations around the campfire were hushed, and nearly all of the Mescaleros laid out their blankets early and tried to sleep.

Skylar made her bed alongside Gatana, but before they could retire, a shifting shadow that Skylar recognized instantly as Sun Hawk approached stealthily and crouched in front of Consayka.

Skylar studied his face in the light of the fire and found it as unreadable as it had been moments after Talbot’s assault on her.

“For your daughter,” Sun Hawk said, handing a long leather-bound object to Consayka.

The old man examined it and pulled on both ends. A flash of steel glinted in the waning firelight.

“Enju,” Consayka said. It is good.

He handed the gift to Skylar, and she realized that it was a wicked-looking knife in a Mescalero-made leather scabbard. Long laces, presumably to be tied around her waist, dangled from the sheath.

Astonished by the gift, she looked up and found Sun Hawk’s eyes boring into hers.

“For the next soldier who touches you,” he said, his voice hard and hushed.

Before she could reply, he was gone.

The next morning when they broke camp and moved out, their train formed a wide, straggling line more than a mile long, with soldiers in the front and the rear, and a number who rode back and forth in pairs among the Mescaleros. As before, the Verdes on horseback flanked the wagons, but Skylar noticed that today Sun Hawk’s family was traveling close to hers.

Coincidence? she wondered. Or did the brave’s presence have something to do with the knife hidden beneath her long overblouse? He never seemed to look in her direction, but was always in view.

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There could be no doubt that he was concerned about her; otherwise he never would have given her a means of protecting herself. After his brutally honest assessment of her by the fire, his show of concern was both surprising and touching. In one way, Skylar took great comfort from his nearness, but it also worried her. Was he planning some timely rescue of her if Talbot came back? If so, he was signing his own death warrant, and the same would be true of anyone else who might try to help her.

Fortunately the first day passed without incident, but by the end of it, Skylar was more exhausted than she had ever been in her life. Knowing that food and water for their animals would be scarce, the Verdes walked more often than they rode, hoping to tax the mules and horses as little as possible.

The elders took turns riding in the wagon, but Skylar stayed afoot most of the day. By the time they made camp for the night her moccasins were in shreds and her feet were bruised and bleeding. Before she could retire for the night, she had no choice but to repair them.

With so many others in similar straits, Skylar removed the canvas canopy from the wagon and divided it among her friends. She put aside one large piece, and after mending her moccasins, she quietly made her way to Naka’yen’s camp, adjacent to that of the Verdes. Not caring about the propri-ety of her act or the questioning eyes that bored into her, she approached Sun Hawk and handed him the canvas.

“One gift deserves another,” she told him, meeting his surprised gaze boldly.

A pleased smile teased the corners of his mouth. “Your kindness will be remembered.”

“As will yours,” she replied, then turned and went back to her Apache family.

Puzzled by the exchange, Naka’yen watched her go. He glanced at Sun Hawk and frowned. He had not seen such a tender expression on his son’s face in a very long time.

“We traveled with the Verdes today,” the old man said matter-of-factly.

Sun Hawk forced himself to look away from the Verde camp. “Yes, we did.”

Naka’yen searched his son’s face. “Why did you insist on it?”

His father’s scrutiny embarrassed him. “We had to walk someplace. That seemed as good as any.”

“It had nothing to do with the white soldier’s attack on Consayka’s daughter?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Sun Hawk sighed with exasperation. “You ask too many questions, Father.”

Naka’yen shook his head. “And you do not ask enough. You are not thinking with your head. That girl is not one of us.”

“But she is learning, Father,” he argued, wondering why he was defending her.

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“This is true. She is a hard worker, and she does many things to take care of her elders. It is clear she has a good heart, but you told me that she longs to return to the whites who raised her.”

Sun Hawk clenched his fists, collecting a handful of useless dirt. “Why do you say these things to me? I do not care if she goes back to her people.”

Naka’yen fell silent a moment, looking him over, and Sun Hawk prayed that the discussion would end. It did not.

“Where is your knife?” the old chief asked, looking down at the sheathed blade at his son’s waist. “Not that one, but the one you took many years ago in your first battle against the Mexican soldiers?”

Disgusted, Sun Hawk tossed away his handful of dirt and jumped up. “I told you, Father, you ask too many questions,” he said harshly, then gathered up his belongings and moved to the opposite edge of the camp, as far away from his father—and the Verdes—as he could get.

The next day, Skylar saw Talbot again. He was riding with Norris as part of the detail that swept through the Mescaleros several times a day to hurry them along and make certain no trouble was brewing.

Skylar knew that it had to be a tense job for them, outnumbered as they were by so many Apaches, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel sympathy for any of them—particularly Talbot. She was easy for him to spot because she stayed close to the wagon, and with his first pass through the slow-moving crowd, he drew his horse alongside her and stared down at her for a short time that seemed like hours to Skylar. She didn’t acknowledge him with so much as a glance, and he didn’t say a word. There were no threatening gestures, no posturing . . . but he made his presence known and his intentions clear.

He sought her out on his return pass and twice again that afternoon. The tension he created was almost more than Skylar could bear, for it went beyond her own jangled nerves. Whenever Talbot approached, all the Verdes became watchful, alert for any sign of trouble. When he passed on, Skylar invariably saw that Sun Hawk, too, had drifted a little closer to the wagon, but he never made an effort to speak with her or even acknowledge her presence.

The encounters with Talbot became a daily ritual, but repetition didn’t make them any less unnerving.

By the end of the first week as they reached the rugged trail that led through the Caliente Mountains, the forced march had become a grueling test of endurance. The heat was fearsome, rations were scarce, and water was even more so. On the seventh day, word circulated among them that an old woman had died. A detail of soldiers stayed behind while her family buried her in a shallow grave along with all her worldly possessions. In less than an hour the mourners rejoined the main body of the procession.

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That night they made camp near a tributary of the Gila River, and for the first time since they had crossed the Rio Grande, there was enough water for all to drink their fill and ample grazing for the animals. There were even trees for firewood in the glade where they made camp. Captain Haggarty announced to Naka’yen that they would stay there for two nights to allow them to “recuperate” before they began the difficult trek through the Calientes.

The Mescaleros were too weary to rejoice, but Skylar noticed a subtle difference in their demeanor that night. They were able to build fires for the first time in days and the next morning the women took advantage of the opportunity to wash clothing and bathe. This they accomplished by entering the cool swift river fully clothed, for soldiers had been assigned to patrol up and down the irregular banks because the rugged terrain hid the river from view of the camp.

Even the men had a great deal to do that day, but Joe Long Horn and several others took the time to escort the Verde women to the river near midday.

They were all keenly aware of the isolation on the trail, but once they reached the hill overlooking the stream, the number of women grouped in small pockets up and down the banks made Joe feel it was safe to leave Skylar and the others alone. They left with a promise to return shortly.

At first, Skylar felt perfectly safe, but as she and Gatana picked their way through the rocks to the edge of the stream, she realized that the area was more isolated than it had appeared from above. The soldiers were widely scattered, and occasionally she heard one of them in the distance shouting to the women in the water. Once, she looked upstream and saw a soldier standing on a rock overhead, holding out a string of beads. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his posture and his crude gestures made it clear that he was trying to trade sexual favors for the paltry trinket.

Thoroughly disgusted, Skylar returned to her bathing. Despite the restriction of her clothes, the water felt better than she had imagined anything could feel. It was shallow and swift in many places, but she found a pool deep enough to sit down in, and she let the current wash over her, cooling her skin and rinsing away the stench of the journey. She longed to strip off her overblouse and skirt, but nothing in the world could have made her do something so foolish. Instead, she lived with the limitations, enjoying every second of this respite from weariness.

Unfortunately her pleasure died a violent death when she looked up and saw Talbot and Norris conversing with the soldiers who had been patrolling this section of the stream when Skylar arrived. After a moment the first two disappeared back up the trail, leaving Talbot and Norris alone on a craggy shelf above the stream.

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The changing of the guard? Skylar wondered, fighting down a sense of panic. Or had her tormentor merely traded places with his comrades because he’d seen her coming down the trail?

It really didn’t matter. Skylar knew that she could be in for trouble. To her surprise, Talbot made no effort to climb down to the stream. What he did, instead, proved almost as bad, though. Like the other soldiers she’d heard upstream, he began shouting lurid comments at her. While she was in the water, he shouted in vivid detail the things he wanted to do to her. Skylar never acknowledged him with so much as a look, and certainly none of the soldiers paid any attention—if they heard him at all.

Skylar scrubbed her dress as best she could with it on her, but eventually she had to return to the bank to get the other clothes she had brought to wash. Gatana stayed with her as they knelt on the rocky bed near the shore, and Talbot finally came down from his perch above. Norris stayed where he was, taking advantage of his bird’s-eye view of the river, but the two men still talked back and forth. Or perhaps “argued” would have been a better term for it, since they were debating the issue of sex with white women versus sex with Apaches.

Though Norris was opposed to the latter, Talbot took great pleasure in proudly relating tales about the Apache women he had “had.” The word

“rape” was never used, of course, because taking an Indian against her will wasn’t considered a violent attack and an offense to human decency. Apaches weren’t human, so where was the harm?

Though Skylar tried to shut out his words, which she knew were directed totally at her, she had no language barrier to insulate her from his disgusting barrage. His constant verbal assault made her feel nauseated and weak, and the harder she tried to ignore him, the more abusive he became. Soon her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn’t hold the calico overblouse she’d been trying to scrub against the rocks.

“I cannot stand this any longer,” she said softly to Gatana. “I’ve got to get out of here. Perhaps if I complained to Captain Haggarty . . .”

Gatana kept her head low, not looking up from her washing. “It would do no good, daughter,” she replied. “Finish what you are doing and we will go back to the camp. Joe will come for us soon.”

Collecting her wits, Skylar did the best she could with her clothes and wrung them out. She had volunteered to wash Tsa’kata’s things as well, so the bundle she gathered up when she had finished was a large one. Gatana assembled her own clothes and Consayka’s, and they looked around for Joe, but he was nowhere to be seen. Desperate to escape, they looked for someone else who was ready to walk back to camp and spotted Naka’yen’s wife and two daughters gathering their things.

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Moving downstream, fighting the slippery rocks and current, they tried to hurry toward them.

“Done so soon?” Talbot asked, splashing into the water to catch up with them. “But you didn’t take a good an’ proper bath, Miss Skylar.”

“Stan, don’t,” Norris called after him, but the river swallowed his voice.

The water deepened, forcing Skylar and Gatana onto the shore, and Talbot stayed with them as they moved along the jutting inlets and crags that bordered the stream.

“What’s your hurry, squaw?” Talbot asked, leering down at Skylar. “I been waiting a long time for this.”

“Leave us alone,” Gatana ordered, but Talbot only laughed and ignored her.

“I’ll bet them clothes is heavy, ain’t they, Miss Skylar? Here, let me give you a hand.” He snatched at the bundle in her arms, deliberately knocking it to the ground. “Oh, ain’t that too bad.”

“Stop it! Get away from me,” Skylar demanded as she knelt to pick up the clothes. Gatana stooped to help her, and Talbot squatted beside them.

“I’m sure sorry, ma’am. I am a clumsy oaf. That’s what my mama always used to tell me, an’ she was right,” he said, plucking the garments out of her hands as quickly as she could pick them up.

Trying to quell her trembling, Skylar looked downstream to where Naka’yen’s family had been moments ago. There was no one in sight now, and panic washed through her.

“If you’re lookin’ for help, squaw, ain’t none gonna come,” he said gleefully.

“Get away from me, you foul-mouthed pig!” she said angrily, darting a glance over her shoulder, looking for anyone who might come to her aid, but a huge boulder blocked them from the view of the women and soldiers upstream.

“Ooh-ee, I found me a squaw with a mean temper,” he crowed, grabbing her as she tried to rise.

“Let me go!” she screamed. “Someone help—”

Talbot clamped his hand across her mouth, and Gatana lurched toward him, pushing with one hand on his shoulder while using the other to try to pull Skylar out of his grasp. She shouted for help, but her cry was silenced abruptly when he planted his fist in Gatana’s face. She fell back, cracking her head against a rock, and lay still.

“Gatana!” Skylar struggled to reach her, but Talbot’s hold was unbreakable.

“You pig, let me go. She’s hurt!”

Talbot slapped her across the face, bringing tears to her eyes, but somewhere inside her a wellspring of courage bolstered her and she glared at the private. “You’re not going to hurt me here, you bastard. There are too many people.”

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“What people?” he asked, digging his fingers into one of her breasts. “Ain’t none o’ them Apaches gonna come to help you, an’ none o’ my buddies is gonna stop me, either, squaw. They all want a piece o’ you, too.”

Frantically, Skylar groped for the knife beneath her blouse, but it eluded her as Talbot began struggling to get to his feet, jerking her up with him.

“Come on, squaw. You and me are going to find someplace quiet. I got me a nice little spot already picked out in them rocks up there.”

He pulled her up, and the movement freed Skylar’s right hand. Too pan-icked to think, she groped for Sun Hawk’s knife again, and this time she found it. It slipped loose from the scabbard, and as soon as she had sure footing on the rough ground, she slashed at Talbot’s arm.

With a yowl of pain and surprise, he let her go and whirled toward her.

“You dumb bitch squaw! You cut me!”

Keeping the knife extended between them, her eyes wild with fear, she began backing away. “If you come near me again, I’ll kill you.”

“Why you—” His wounded hand moved toward his revolver, and Skylar realized that if he reached the gun, he would kill her.

“No!” She lunged forward, slashing at him with the knife, and Talbot instinctively made a grab for her arm. When he missed, she slashed again, and this time he went for his gun. Desperate, she thrust the knife at him, and Talbot lurched back, losing his footing in the rocks. As he grappled for balance, he pitched forward and knocked Skylar to the ground.

She cried out in pain as his weight forced her down, pinning her on the jagged rocks. A wave of nausea coursed through her and she pushed at him while her feet clawed at the rocks, seeking purchase that would help her escape. She shoved at his shoulders, and when he finally fell away, she scrambled back.

But Talbot didn’t move. A dark, wet stain was spreading across his shirt, radiating from the knife, which had been driven to the hilt into his heart.

Sun Hawk looked around the Verde encampment, frowning. Consayka and the braves were there, but he saw only a few women. Obviously they had gone to the river.

Sun Hawk cursed himself as he moved off along the trail that led to the water. He should not be worrying about Skylar. If her family did not feel obliged to protect her, neither should he, but he couldn’t keep himself from going after her despite the other problem that weighed heavily on his mind.

Hacké’tisan’s wife had become ill, and her husband had asked for prayers to be spoken over her. Sun Hawk had not been able to refuse, but he doubted the song he had sung to drive the fever out of her body was going to work.

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sons, and many others. If he was right and the fever was spreading through camp, hundreds of his people might never live to see Rio Alto.

His concern for Hacké’tisan’s wife warred with his fear for Skylar’s safety, but that was foolish. She was not even one of his people. He should not be thinking about her at a time like this. He had sent Klo’sen to fetch the soldiers’ medicine man, and Sun Hawk knew he should have been scouring the camp for others who might be ill. He had no time to chase down a woman who was not his and whose life and welfare were not his problem.

That didn’t stop him from hurrying down the trail.

He was only halfway up the hill when the first group of soldiers appeared above him, dragging Skylar between them. Her wrists were bound, her face was wet with tears, and blood stained the front of her dress. A few paces behind, more soldiers were carrying the body of Talbot.

Skylar was speaking desperately to her captors, but Sun Hawk couldn’t have understood her words even if he had been close enough. He didn’t need to know what she was saying. It was clear to him that she was telling the soldiers that Talbot had attacked her and that she had defended herself. But Talbot’s friend was also there, shouting her down, pointing and accusing.

If Skylar and the cavalryman told different stories, as it appeared they did, Sun Hawk knew the soldier would be believed.

Knowing he could not help her, Sun Hawk vanished into the trees and rocks, making his way back to the camp. His mind was racing, and his blood burned with rage.

Skylar was an Apache. She had killed a soldier. There wasn’t a doubt in Sun Hawk’s mind that the white men would take her life for it.

And he was the one who had given her the knife.

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11

The dark clouds gathering over the Datil Mountains warned Rayna of an approaching thunderstorm. The weather was always fickle in New Mexico; clouds promised rain and then evaporated like will-o’-

the-wisps, but late September was the worst. The summer drought ended, and when the rains came, they were torrential downpours that turned streams into rivers, flooded dry creek beds, and transformed certain ravines into death traps.

Dead Man’s Wash was one of them, and it was Rayna’s misfortune to have found a knot of skittish cattle in the arroyo as she’d been making her way back to the ranch. For her own safety, she wanted to beat the storm home, but she couldn’t leave the small herd to perish. Kicking Samson into motion, she used her coiled lariat to hurry them along, determined to get the stubborn cows to safety before they died of their own stupidity and took her with them.

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and managed to guide the herd up it. She scattered them with a loud “Eee-ya!”

and urged Samson into a gallop toward home.

A few minutes later she was charging into the ranch yard with lightning nipping at her heels. Gil Rodriguez was outside the stable, grinning at her.

“You are still trying to outrun the thunder, Señorita Rayna?” Gil asked with a smile as she dismounted. “I thought you had stopped playing that game.”

She grinned at him. “I like to keep in practice every now and then.”

Gil reached for Samson’s reins. “Here, Señorita. I will take care of him.”

“That’s all right, Gil. I lathered him up, I can cool him down.”

His smile faded. “Let me, please. You must go to the house now. Your mother has been asking for you.”

Rayna’s heart tripped in alarm. “Is Papa—”

“No, no,” he assured her hurriedly. “But Flint went into Malaventura to pick up supplies this morning and there was a letter from Señorita Skylar.”

“Thank God,” Rayna murmured, her face wreathed with a brilliant smile as she tossed Samson’s reins to Gil and dashed to the house. She was too excited to wonder why Gil hadn’t been happier about the news, but the chaos she found inside dashed her buoyant spirits.

“Raymond, you can’t! I forbid it!”

“Damn it all, Collie. I’m not sitting still for this any longer. By God, I’m going to take Sam Whitlock apart piece by piece if he doesn’t do something about this!”

The voices were coming from the upper balcony, and Rayna looked up to find her father stalking down the gallery and Collie scurrying after him as they moved toward the room they had shared before his illness. Just the fact that he was up there was terrifying, for he was still too weak to be navigating the long flight of stairs.

“Papa, what’s going on?” Rayna demanded, taking the stairs two at a time.

“I’m going to Santa Fe!” he roared, almost drowning out the rumble of thunder overhead.

“You can’t do that!” she protested.

“The hell I can’t!”

Rayna ran down the gallery and caught up with them just as they entered the room where only Collie had been sleeping for the last two months. “Tell me what’s happened, damn it! Gil said there was a letter from Skylar. What did she say? What’s wrong?”

“Hellfire, Collie, where are my shirts?” he snapped, throwing open the armoire. “And get me a carpetbag.”

“I will not! I’m not going to let you kill yourself!”

“Damn it! Tell me what’s going on!” Rayna roared, startling both her parents.

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Collie looked at her daughter. “Skylar isn’t on the Mescalero reservation any longer.”

Rayna knew that what should have been good news actually wasn’t.

“Where is she?”

“The goddam Indian Bureau closed the reservation and is sending the Mescaleros to the Rio Alto agency in Arizona,” Raymond answered.

“Oh, my God,” Rayna muttered, her heart skipping a full beat. “When?

When is she going?”

Collie wrung her hands together. “She’s already gone. Her letter was posted a week ago, the day after she left the reservation.” She dug into the pocket of her skirt and handed a thick packet to her. “Skylar wrote letters to us all.”

Rayna took the packet of letters gingerly, as though it was something precious to be treasured and handled with the greatest care. As, of course, it was.

“Is she well?”

“Yes,” her mother replied. “The work of daily living is very hard, but she is surviving. Consayka and Gatana have taken her under their wing.”

That wasn’t at all unexpected. As much as Rayna wanted to devour Skylar’s letter, there was a more important consideration now that she had the facts.

Her father was still tearing through his wardrobe and had already tossed his best suit carelessly onto the bed. “Papa, you can’t go to Santa Fe.”

“Oh, but I can and will, missy,” he argued. “I’m going to get my little princess back if it’s the last thing I do in this world.”

Collie moved to him. “If you go to Santa Fe, that’s exactly what it will be.”

She grabbed his arm and looked up at him imploringly. “Raymond, please.

General Whitlock has already said there’s nothing he can do.”

“Well, maybe I can change his mind. Crook certainly isn’t helping us. It’s been six weeks, and we’ve written him three letters in that time!” He shook off Collie’s hand. “I’m sick and tired of waiting around here like a crippled old maid. I’m going to see Whitlock, and there’s not a damned thing you can say to change my mind. Now, where the hell is that carpetbag?”

As Rayna and Collie exchanged helpless looks, Raymond charged across the room to his wife’s armoire. He snatched the bag from the floor, but as he straightened and whirled around, the room began spinning faster than he did.

A gray film blurred his vision, a prickle of pain spread through his chest, and before he fully understood what was happening to him, his wife and daughter were flanking him, leading him to the bed. He sat heavily, his breath coming in heavy pants.

“Dam . . . nation,” he gasped as Collie gently guided him back onto the pillows. Rayna lifted his feet and pulled a coverlet over his legs. “Hang . . . it all, I’m not . . . cold,” he groused.

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“Be quiet,” Collie said sternly, torn between anger and fear. “Just rest. This will pass. Please, God, let it pass.”

“Papa, you have to take care of yourself.” Rayna slipped around the bed and sat next to him.

“But Skylar—”

She took his hand. “I’ll handle it,” she vowed solemnly. “I’ll go to Whitlock again and get down on my knees and beg if I have to, but I will find a way to get Skylar back.”

Raymond closed his eyes tightly, and the tears that pooled in the corners nearly broke Rayna’s heart. “My poor princess,” he muttered, his strength fading to nothingness. “She’s so far away.”

“But not for long, Papa,” Rayna promised. She patted his hand and let it go, then hurried out of the room and down the gallery to her own. The storm had arrived, and sheets of rain were washing through the courtyard like waves pounding onto a beach, but Rayna ignored the downpour.

Hastily she removed her own carpetbag from the wardrobe and began selecting clothes.

Whitlock wouldn’t be able—or willing—to help her. She already knew that, but she would try for her father’s sake. It was the first and most logical step to take. And when that failed . . .

A plan had already begun forming in Rayna’s mind. It was only a vague shape with rough edges, but it was a plan nonetheless. It was dangerous. It was probably even foolhardy. But if no one in the United States Army would help her, she had no choice but to take matters into her own hands.

Though she ached to read Skylar’s letter, she packed first and then washed away the trail dirt she had accumulated that morning. By the time her mother came looking for her, Rayna was dressed for travel and the storm was beginning to abate.

“How is he?” she asked as Collie came into her bedchamber.

“Sleeping.”

“Is he in pain?”

Collie swallowed hard. “He says not, but I don’t know that I believe him.”

Rayna went to her, and they hugged each other tightly. “It will be all right, Mother. I’ll talk to Whitlock and make him see reason.”

“And if you fail?”

Rayna released her and stepped away. This was going to be the hardest part. “Mother, if Whitlock won’t do anything . . . I’ll go to Arizona and find Crook myself.”

Collie was stunned. And frightened. “Rayna, that’s too dangerous. You can’t make a trip like that alone,” she said desperately.

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“I don’t care!” Rayna retorted as her temper flared again. “I’m sick to death of being helpless, and by God if Crook won’t do anything, I’ll snatch Skylar away from that damned reservation myself!”

Flanked by two soldiers, with four more stationed around the perimeter of the command tent, Skylar stood in front of Captain Haggarty’s desk fighting back hysterical laughter that had nothing to do with humor. She was frustrated and terrified because no one believed her story. She had killed a soldier, and Haggarty wasn’t the least bit interested in hearing the truth. In his mind, he had captured a dangerous renegade, and as near as Skylar could tell, his only concern was whether or not he would eventually be able to persuade his superiors to hang a woman.

The soldiers had been at this for hours, dragging her in front of Haggarty for questioning, then shackling her to a wagon outside while the captain thought up new questions. The one he had just asked her—why she had ambushed Talbot—was an old one, though.

“I have told you again and again, Captain, I did not ambush him. He attacked me and dragged me into the rocks, where he made it clear that he intended to rape me. My only thought was to keep him at bay until I could escape, but he lunged at me and fell on the knife!”

“That’s not the story Private Norris tells,” Haggarty replied. “According to him, you enticed Talbot away from his post and attacked him without provocation.”

“Norris is lying!”

“He is a valued member of the United States Army,” the captain said arrogantly.

Skylar shook her head. “That doesn’t change the fact that he’s lying to protect the reputation of his friend—and to save his own skin. Talbot attacked me, and Norris did nothing to prevent it.”

“So you’ve said before,” Haggarty replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Tell me, where did you get the knife you used on Talbot?”

This was a new question, but it was one Skylar didn’t want to answer.

“That type of weapon is not forbidden to us, Captain,” she said evasively.

She was in enough trouble as it was; bringing Sun Hawk into the picture wouldn’t do anyone a bit of good. “A knife is considered essential to survival on the reservation.”

Haggarty picked up the bloodstained knife and the leather sheath they had taken off Skylar. “True enough. A brave needs a knife for killing and skin-ning game. But as I recall, you were searched thoroughly when you came into the agency, and nothing like this was found.”

Skylar could hardly deny it. “That’s true.”

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“Then where did you acquire the knife? This is an exceptionally fine weapon—certainly not Apache made. Ergo, it must have been stolen.”

“Have any of your soldiers reported a knife missing that matches the description of that one?” she challenged.

He paused a moment, his weathered face furrowed into a frown. “No,” he finally admitted. “I’ve had the men check, and no one reports anything of this nature missing.”

Skylar raised her head defiantly. “Then how can you accuse me of stealing it?”

“It had to come from somewhere,” he argued stubbornly. “Now, who gave it to you?”

“It wasn’t given to me, exactly,” she said hesitantly, feeling her knees about to buckle. “The morning after Talbot’s first attack on me at the agency, I woke up and found it on the ground beside me.”

“You’re lying.”

“Prove it,” she flung back at him.

The soldier on her right slapped her soundly across the face, splitting her lip and knocking her to the ground.

Haggarty came to his feet. “Get her up,” he commanded, coming around the desk. The soldiers pulled her roughly to her feet and supported her until she could shake off their hands. The captain took a stance directly in front of her and glared down at her. “You murdered one of my men, and before we reach Fort Stanford, you’ll confess the deed, squaw! I don’t care what it takes!”

“I did not murder him!” Skylar shouted desperately. “Why would I?”

“Because you were offended by his search of you at the agency,” Haggarty replied, giving every appearance of being convinced of the accuracy of the conclusion he had drawn. “You didn’t like the manner in which he performed his duty, and you wanted revenge. When you caught him unaware at the river, you saw the perfect opportunity.”

Skylar felt nauseated, but she managed to hold her ground. “That’s one version of the truth. Personally, I have another.”

“I would be delighted to hear it.”

“I think that having one of the soldiers under your command accused of attempted rape would be bad for your career.”

Skylar saw his blow coming, but before she could react, Haggarty back-handed her across the jaw. This time the soldiers grabbed her before she could fall. “Get this squaw out of here at once! Place her in irons and withhold all food and water. I want her under twenty-four-hour guard. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Zaranski said, stepping forward from his post at the tent door. “Come on, men. Get her back to the wagon.”

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and she could taste her own blood in her mouth, but she squared her shoulders proudly as she trudged between the soldiers. It wasn’t until they threw her to the ground at the base of a wagon wheel and reattached the heavy irons that she finally gave way to her anguish. With her shoulder leaning heavily against the wheel, she drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around her legs, lowered her head, and let the tears come.

Such behavior was decidedly un-Apache, but she didn’t care. The soldiers were the only humans within a hundred miles who even saw her as an Apache. Sun Hawk and his people knew better. Certainly Skylar knew better.

She was a dismal failure as a white woman and as an Indian.

Skylar had always known that there was no real place for her in the world, but she had never imagined that her life might end in this fashion, chained to an army wagon, accused of a murder that was, at the very least, a case of self-defense.

But die she would. She had no doubt about that. If she could survive long enough to reach a military tribunal at Fort Stanford, she might have a slim chance of convincing her judges that she hadn’t committed cold-blooded murder. Having a natural compunction against hanging women, they would probably only sentence her to spend the remainder of her life in some filthy Indian agency jail. If that happened, Rayna and her parents might have a chance to effect her release and eventually take her home.

But Skylar knew she wouldn’t live long enough to reach a tribunal at Fort Stanford or anywhere else. Haggarty would see to that. He would try to starve a confession out of her, and when that failed, he would have his men beat it out of her. If she somehow managed to survive the beatings, he would have her shot “while trying to escape,” so that no one would ever learn of her abuse or of Talbot’s assault.

There was certainly precedent for such an occurrence. Skylar couldn’t count the number of stories she’d heard about Apaches who had foolishly tried to flee from their captors. In not one of those accounts did the army ever admit to having been at fault. Haggarty had already tried and convicted her. Somehow he would see that a sentence he considered appropriate was carried out.

Going without food that night was no problem for her. Even the smell of the evening mess brought bile to her mouth and increased her nausea. The blood on her dress was dried and crusted, and residue of it on her hands made her even sicker. It reminded her of Talbot’s bloody corpse and the way he had touched her.

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his fault; he’d brought it on himself. The only tragedy was that Skylar was going to suffer for it.

As the evening wore on, a steady procession of soldiers began finding excuses to stroll past the wagon on the perimeter of the camp. With her armed guard looking on, smiling, they jeered and cursed her. They spit at her. They made threats. Occasionally one would squat beside her and grab her breasts or roughly try to shove his hand up her skirt. Skylar fought them as best she could, but her efforts were useless and her screams were ineffectual. Her only salvation was that her guard seemed to draw the line at out-and-out rape, but by the time the camp fell silent for the night, Skylar already wished she were dead.

The defiant words she had flung at Sun Hawk about the beauty and value of life came back to haunt her. Tomorrow’s sunrise was one she never wanted to see.

There was no moon that night, which was good. The pitch blackness would make what Sun Hawk had to do easier. He had said nothing to his father before stealing away after everyone had fallen asleep. If he was not dead when the morning came, Naka’yen would know what he had done.

The thought of leaving his family behind saddened Sun Hawk, but he refused to dwell on it. His family was large; he had many sisters with fine husbands who would see that his mother and father were cared for. The soldier medicine man had looked at Hacké’tisan’s wife and decided that the fever was one caused by bad meat, not an epidemic that would sweep through the camp like wildfire. Though Sun Hawk trusted the word of no white man, the fact that the medicine man had not separated the woman from the rest of the camp convinced him that his people were safe from that horror.

They would survive without him. Skylar would not.

Leaving the camp without being detected had been simple. Throughout the journey, braves had been stealing away with their entire families under the cover of darkness. The soldiers had noticed the absence of some and sent details out to look for them, to no avail. However, many of the absences were as yet undiscovered. Sun Hawk knew he would not be one of those, but it didn’t matter. By morning he would be a renegade.

The wooded hillsides made it easy for him to circle around the camp to a place above the wagon where Skylar was chained. Like all the Apaches, he had studied the routine of the soldiers during the past week, so he knew that they stationed guards at intervals around the camp and that those guards changed twice during the night. All afternoon one guard had stood over Skylar at the wagon.

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Biding his time, Sun Hawk crouched near one of the outer guards.

Sometimes the man sat on a rock and dozed, and at other times he meandered around while he smoked a fire stick of tobacco. Presently another guard came to replace him, and Sun Hawk knew it was almost time. He waited until the newness of the soldier’s job had worn off and he had relaxed; then Sun Hawk slipped silently away and began working his way toward the wagon.

When there were trees and boulders for cover, he used them. When there was only open ground, he crawled, never moving quickly, but never stopping unless a noise reached his ears. Some soldiers had made their camp between the hillside and the wagon, but they were not an obstacle. Their snores told him they were sound asleep, and he crawled among them, making no more noise than the gentle breeze wafting over the sand.

He reached the back of the wagon and smiled with satisfaction. The tiny red glow of a fire stick made the guard easy to find. Crouching low, knife in hand, Sun Hawk crept around the wagon until he was behind the guard, and then he sprang. With one hand he covered the man’s mouth, and before the guard could utter a single strangled sound, drove his knife between the soldier’s ribs.

After dragging him beneath the wagon, Sun Hawk quickly searched the soldier’s pockets until he found the key to Skylar’s shackles. Then he removed the soldier’s revolver and cartridge belt. He secured them around his own waist and crawled out from under the wagon. He could barely make out Skylar’s form, but the angle of her head as she leaned against the wheel convinced him she was asleep. Knowing no way to prevent her from being startled, he clamped his hand over her mouth.

Skylar came awake instantly and began struggling, her eyes wide with fear as she strained to see her captor’s face.

“Be silent,” Sun Hawk whispered with his mouth next to her ear, and she stopped struggling at once. He removed his hand from her mouth and unlocked her shackles. The rusty hinges creaked, and he paused, listening, but the only sounds he heard were the uninterrupted snores in the distance.

It was incomprehensible to Skylar that Sun Hawk was really here. Her mind was still drugged with sleep, and she wondered if she was still dreaming.

He had no reason to take such a terrible risk for her. “You must not do this,”

she whispered. “The guard—”

“Dead,” Sun Hawk told her as he moved past her to grab the soldier’s rifle, which was leaning against the wagon. He turned back to her and pressed his mouth to her ear again. “Do as I do and make no sound.” He yanked her toward the opposite end of the wagon, then let her go as he fell onto his stomach.

Questions soared through Skylar’s mind. Why was he doing this? Did he realize the terrible consequences of his act? Where would they go? What would they do? How would they survive when the soldiers came after them?

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But of course she couldn’t ask the questions, and she couldn’t refuse to go with him. If she stayed, she would die anyway. Beyond that, Sun Hawk had killed a man to save her life. If they were discovered, there would be no long day of questioning for him as there had been for Skylar. The soldiers would fall on them like a pack of wolves until nothing was left but their bullet-riddled corpses. The die had been cast, and Skylar could only follow the man who was risking death for her.

Mimicking his position, she crawled slowly beside him, painfully aware of every rustle of her skirt and the scrape of every pebble that was dislodged by her body. When they came to the sleeping soldiers, she knew it was all over.

She could never pass among them without waking them, but Sun Hawk slipped ahead of her and they crawled between the soldiers in single file like a long-bodied snake.

No one stirred.

They reached a crop of boulders well away from the soldiers and paused.

“We will go to the trees,” he whispered into her ear. “When you are there, walk lightly or we will not get past the guards.”

Skylar couldn’t see the trees, much less the guards, but she trusted Sun Hawk. If he said they were there, they were. But she had much less faith in her ability to navigate as silently as he could. The crack of one broken twig could kill them both, but they crept forward until they reached the trees and the ground began to slant upward. And then, after what seemed like a life-time, Sun Hawk stood up, took Skylar’s hand, and began to run.

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12

Over her mother’s protests, Rayna left for Malaventura and barely arrived in time to catch the evening train to Albuquerque. The eastbound from Los Angeles arrived shortly before midnight, and a few hours later she was in a room at the Palace Hotel once again. She felt no sense of nostalgia at her return, but she did manage to catch a brief nap before going to the Military Headquarters office early the next morning.

Fueled and ready for a fight with Whitlock, Rayna quickly had the wind knocked out of her sails when she arrived and discovered that the general was no longer stationed at Fort Marcy. He had been transferred to the Department of the Platte, and in his place sat a colonel with less rank, less authority, and much less personality than his predecessor. Colonel Duncan McLeash was a pleasant, round-faced, placid man who listened patiently to Rayna’s tale of woe, clucking his tongue and nodding in commiseration.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a blessed thing he could do to help her but nod and cluck. His greatest contribution to the conversation was to inform her that General Crook was indeed in Arizona and that he was making his headquarters at Fort Apache, at least temporarily.

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This wasn’t news to Rayna. Several weeks after she left Santa Fe, Meade Ashford had written a letter to her father passing along that information.

It was the first and only time she’d heard from the major despite the two letters she’d sent to him. She certainly hadn’t expected him to fall on his knees in gratitude for her effort, but she hadn’t anticipated being ignored, either.

The insult was just one in a growing list of grievances she had been trying to catalog against him. He was a pretentious, irascible, weak-kneed milksop. And that was only the beginning of her inventory. At the bottom of it was a small notation that somehow outshone the rest: The thought of the way he’d kissed her made her own knees weak.

Since Rayna detested weakness, particularly in herself, it wasn’t something that counted in Meade’s favor. That was why she found it incomprehensible that after her meeting with Colonel McLeash the first thing she did was head for the post hospital.

On her last day in Santa Fe, Meade had told her he would be leaving the army soon, but she didn’t even entertain the idea that he was already gone.

Despite the way he’d ignored her letters, she knew in her heart that he wouldn’t have left New Mexico without contacting someone at Rancho Verde to inquire about Skylar, if nothing else.

At the desk in the front hall of the hospital, she asked about him and was told that Major Ashford was in the wards. A solicitous young corporal ushered her into a spartanly furnished consultation room off the hall, and after she refused his offer of a cup of tea, he disappeared.

Corporal Engberg hurried upstairs and located Meade as he was about to enter the officers’ lounge. “Major Ashford! A moment, please.”

Meade stopped and looked at the corporal. “Yes?”

“There’s a lady to see you downstairs, sir. She’s waiting in the consultation room.”

“A lady?” Meade asked, unable to imagine who would be calling on him.

“Did she give her name or give you her card?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Engberg said hesitantly. “I forgot to ask.” He started to add that she was a very beautiful lady, but he didn’t think the major would approve of his comment.

“It’s all right, Corporal. Return to your post. I’ll see to it.”

As he made his way downstairs, buttoning his tunic as he went, Meade decided that his mysterious guest was probably the wife of the soldier he’d been treating. A supply wagon on its way from Fort Waring had overturned, crushing the man beneath it. By the time he’d been brought to the hospital, gangrene had set in, and Meade was being forced to discharge him; the army had little use for one-legged sergeants. His wife had been sent for, naturally, and had undoubtedly arrived.

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With that explanation fixed in his mind, Meade was understandably taken aback when he opened the door and found Rayna standing at the window.

The morning light spilled in, creating a golden halo around her, and Meade suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

Damn it, why does she have this effect on me? he thought irritably, and on the heels of that question came another: And what the hell is she doing here?

In a few days he would be out of New Mexico completely, with hundreds of miles between himself and Rayna Templeton, which would, logically, leave him no choice but to forget about her. Now she was here, probably because she’d remembered that he was leaving the army and she just wanted to stir him up again for spite.

When Rayna turned at the sound of the door, it finally occurred to Meade that something could be wrong. He hurried toward her, wishing he could read the odd expression on her face. “Rayna, has something happened? What are you doing here?” he demanded.

It wasn’t the greeting she had hoped for, but she knew better than to take offense at his brusqueness. His attitude did help her quell the impulse to fly across the room and embrace him, though. “That kind young corporal obviously mistook me for a lady and offered me a place to wait while he went to find you.”

He sighed with relief. If she was joking with him, nothing could be drastically wrong. “I meant what are you doing in Santa Fe? Is Skylar home yet?”

Rayna’s face fell. “No. Things have gotten worse. Have you heard that the Apaches on the Mescalero reservation are being transferred to the Rio Alto?”

“Oh, good Lord,” Meade muttered, lowering his head in disgust. Would the idiocy of the Washington bureaucrats never end? He raised his head. “No, I hadn’t heard, but I’ve been exceptionally busy. I presume Skylar is on her way there now.”

“That’s right. And I’m going to Arizona to get her.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. Crook hasn’t answered any of our letters. I can only assume that they have gone astray or he just doesn’t give a damn.”

“If he had received your letters, he would have done something,” Meade assured her.

“That’s neither here nor there,” Rayna replied tersely. “I’m sick of waiting.

As soon as I leave here, I’m heading for Fort Apache. Colonel McLeash says that to the best of his knowledge, Crook is still there.” She didn’t go on to say that if Crook refused to help her, she had plans of her own. She trusted Meade after a fashion, but he was a military man. He’d probably see it as his duty to report her.

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“Rayna, you can’t possibly make a journey like that,” he argued. “The train can take you only as far as Holbrook, and then it’s ninety miles through some of the most ungodly mountain terrain you’ve ever seen.”

Rayna nodded. “The Calderos. Yes, I know.”

“And do you also know that there’s no stagecoach route through the mountains because there’s nothing south of them but reservation land? The only trails are ones that were forged by army supply wagons, and those are dismal at best.”

He was treating her like an idiot, and she didn’t like it. “Of course I know it. I plan to hire a guide in Holbrook.”

“Oh, that’s delightful,” Meade said grandly. “Trust your welfare—not to mention your virtue—to a complete stranger.”

“I can take care of myself, Meade. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“Yes, in the bosom of your nurturing, loving family on a ranch where your father is king and no one would dare lay a hand on his royal offspring. If you go to Holbrook, you’ll be totally alone, and no one’s going to care one jot that your father owns one of the largest ranches in the New Mexico Territory.”