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.”