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delighted. "You are the last person I expected to see here."
    "Jacob asked me to meet you. You're looking well, my friend."
    "As are you. But I must confess, I almost didn't recognize you."
    "Times change," said Falconer, rueful. "A man must change with them."
    Delgado had met Hugh Falconer on two previous occasions. The first one he did not remember, as he had been but two years of age. Falconer had come down the Santa Fe Trail on his way to the Shining Mountains and the life of a trapper. Angus McKinn had outfitted him and introduced him to several other buckskinners, including Wolf Montooth, who was about to lead a brigade into prime beaver country.
    What had happened next became mountain legend. The trappers had run afoul of Blackfoot Indians, and one of the men was mortally wounded. Montooth had abandoned the man, but Falconer had refused to do the same. Only when the man had breathed his last did Falconer leave his side, miraculously escaping the Blackfeet. Later, he hunted Montooth down and killed him. Or so went the story. There had been no witnesses, and Falconer was tight-lipped about the whole business.
    The last time Delgado had met Falconer was three years ago, just weeks prior to Delgado's departure for England and the ivy-colored halls of Oxford University. Falconer had been hunting two men who had robbed Oregon-bound emigrants of their grubstakes. These two men were also fugitives from Santa Fe justice. One of them had killed a prominent local man. Falconer had ventured alone into Comanchero country and slain one of the men, bringing the other back to Santa Fe tocollect the reward, which he in turn passed on to the luckless emigrants. This had made of Falconer something of a hero in Santa Fe, at a time when all Anglo outsiders were suspect; Mirabeau B. Lamar, the president of the Republic of Texas, had recently dispatched a military expedition with orders to seize Santa Fe for the new republic. Lamar's grandiose scheme to extend Texas to the Pacific had been stymied, and bred animosity among Santa Feans toward the land-grabbing Anglos. Falconer's subsequent exploits had somewhat improved that situation.
    Wounded in the fray, Falconer had spent a few days with the McKinns, until Angus could expedite the payment of the bounty. Against a doctor's advice, Falconer had promptly taken his leave once the gold was in hand. He had left the emigrants to winter in the high country, and he was anxious to get back to them. Delgado remembered being impressed by the buckskinner's toughness. To venture into the mountains in the dead of winter while suffering from a gunshot wound seemed foolhardy, perhaps even suicidal. But then Hugh Falconer was no ordinary man.
    He was in his mid-forties now, but looked ten years younger, in spite of a life of tragedy and travail. He was tall, broad in the shoulders, whipcord lean, with brown eyes and yellow hair. His beard, darker than his shoulder-length locks, was close cropped now. In place of buckskins he wore a kersey shirt and stroud trousers tucked into mule-eared boots. A Bowie knife with staghorn handle rode on his right hip in an Indian sheath. His left arm was nestled in a sling.
    "I never thought you would forsake the mountain life," Delgado told him.
    "I have responsibilities now, to others than myself." Sensing that this answer did not satisfy Delgado's curiosity, Falconer added, "A wife and son."
    "Congratulations. I see you've been wounded. Again."
    Falconer grimaced. "I guess I'm slowing down in my old age, Del, I didn't duck quick enough. Jacob's son had joined up with the United States cavalry. Led his own squadron of dragoons into battle. You haven't made Jeremy Bledsoe's acquaintance, have you? Well, he's a good lad, but reckless to the extreme. At his father's behest, I went along to make sure no harm came to him. But I failed in my mission at Resaca de la Palma."
    "He was killed?"
    "No. But it was a near thing. As for this"—Falconer indicated the arm in the