“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.

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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?”