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with you, or they wouldn’t have run away in the first place. It was you they were running away from, am I right?”
    Howard’s face reddened. “Yes, and for that they will both pay! I have been a patient man in the past—but I will no longer tolerate rebellion from either of them.” Howard’s dramatic skills came to his aid now. “They were my wife’s niece and nephew, God rest her soul. She has been dead these last six months. I owe it to her memory to find Joanna and Tag. Besides, I care deeply about my niece and nephew. If they had been left in your care, Captain, would you abandon them?”
    “No,” Harland agreed, “I can see what you are saying, but I think I should tell you that Joanna considers herself the wife of Windhawk, the chief of the Blood Blackfoot. She will never agree to leave him.”
    “So I’ve been told. Good Lord, how can Joanna turn her back on her own kind to live with some dirty Indian?” Howard asked, unable to believe that Joanna had gone willinglyto live with the Indians. “Who is this Indian, this Windhawk, everyone speaks of?”
    “To many people he is more fiction than fact. The stories that are told about him are not to be believed. It is said he is a great chief and that none of his enemies will dare attack the Bloods as long as he is their leader. He is respected and almost worshipped by the Blackfoot tribe. I saw him only once, and that was just for the space of a short time. I can tell you, in all honesty, I would not want to be the one to cross him or come up against him in a fight.”
    Howard looked speculative for a moment. “You say Joanna is this damned Indian’s…wife?”
    “Yes, without a doubt. At least, she considers herself his wife, which amounts to the same thing.”
    Howard turned white around the mouth. He had coveted the fair Joanna since the first day he had walked into her home in Philadelphia. She had a way of getting into a man’s blood and making him forget everything but possessing her. He knew, though, that he would have to concentrate on finding Taggart, since the boy was the whole key to the James fortune. If Tag had died, Howard would have lost everything.
    But Howard knew the real reason he had come to this God-forsaken country had been to get Joanna back. He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. His wife, Margaret, had known about his feelings for her niece. Poor Margaret had met with a most unfortunate accident. She had fallen down a flight of stairs, killing herself instantly. Howard frowned to himself. Before Margaret had expired, he had tricked her into signing papers, giving him power over all her affairs. He had thought he would inherit the James shipping empire through her. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The James’s lawyer, on learning that Russell James had died, read his will. Howard could still taste his disappointment like a bitter pill in his mouth. The will stipulated that the moneys and estate would be held in trust for Taggart until he reached his twenty-first birthday. While Howard was still allowed to remain in the house in Philadelphia, he received only as much money as ittook to pay the servants and run the household. He was also allowed a generous clothes and food allowance, but it could hardly be termed a fortune. So Howard knew he had to get his hands on the boy, since he was still classified as Taggart’s legal guardian.
    He remembered poor Margaret, and a sinister smile moved over his face. The doctor had said her heart couldn’t stand the strain of her fall. What the doctor hadn’t known was that Howard himself had given her the shove that sent her tumbling down the stairs. Howard had grown weary of Margaret’s constant complaining. She had been aware of his feelings for Joanna and had constantly badgered him with her jealousy.
    In the back of Howard’s mind, the thought nagged at him that if he didn’t get Taggart back, one day, when the boy reached manhood, he would make trouble for him. He had