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friends get their hands on ‘em.”
    “What’s happened?” Winter Fawn asked. “What’s going on?”
    He swung down from the saddle and handed his reins to Hunter. There was anger in his eyes. “That’s what I be after findin’ oot.” With a roar of outrage, he shouldered his way through the throng of people who had gathered around the white man.
    Winter Fawn was adult enough to understand that these were extraordinary circumstances. She knew the look of rage in her father’s eyes was not directed at her, and that he had serious business on his mind.
    But she was also child enough to be devastated that he should arrive in camp for the first time since this time last spring and have not a single word for her other than about the white girls he had thrust at her.
    After a brief but hard-fought struggle, the adult in her prevailed. Her father had entrusted the girls to her care. She would keep them safe, as he bade.
    But she would also find out what was going on. With a white girl in each hand, she followed him.
    Crooked Oak had dismounted and gave the white man’s body a shove. The body slid head-first toward the ground and groaned.
    He was alive!
    Carson would have debated the fact.
    This time when he hit the ground, he felt it. He came to in mid air and was instantly aware of two things: one, that the back of his head was about to explode, and two, that he was falling. Instinct had him reaching out with his hands to break his fall. It was then that he discovered they were bound at the wrists. He thought, for a fleeting instant, that they were numb, until they met the ground with the full force of his weight jarring down on them. The pain knifed up his arms, across his shoulders, and up into his head, where it sliced behind his eyes and blackened the vision he’d only just regained.
    Then his head hit the ground, and he tumbled over onto his back. He heard laughter, and someone calling his name.
    Where was he? Cold Harbor?
    No, that wasn’t right. Petersburg. The siege.
    No, not there. It was too quiet for Petersburg, or any other battle site he could think of. He heard no cannon, smelled no smoke.
    He opened his eyes to realize that he must, indeed, be dead. Overhead the sky was turning dark, and all around him leering, painted faces stared. It looked real enough. But death was the only explanation for the angel staring down at him. If a man poured enough cream into his coffee, and added just the right amount of bronze and copper, he might come close to matching the color of her skin, but it would take a cool mountain fog to come close to those clear gray eyes. Startled fog, he thought with a touch of hysteria.
    Could fog be startled?
    Could just the sight of a woman’s mouth make a man yearn to taste it?
    He was definitely dead if he was thinking such crazy things. And he was going straight to hell for thinking them about an angel. He couldn’t, for his soul, take his gaze from hers.
    Dead. He was definitely dead.
    Winter Fawn blinked at the man sprawled at her feet. He was definitely alive. His eyes were open and staring straight into hers.
    For one shocking moment, Winter Fawn stared into the most startlingly blue eyes she had ever seen. The deep blue of a mountain lake, or the summer sky at twilight. Captivating. Mesmerizing. And for that instant, Winter Fawn had the unsettling feeling that she was staring straight into her own destiny.
    “Dulaney! Carson Dulaney, can you hear me?”
    MacDougall. Carson rolled to his side and looked around. There he stood, big as life and broad as a barn. Innes MacDougall.
    Memory rushed back. Oh, God! The girls!
    He saw them then, with the gray-eyed angel. He was shamed that he hadn’t noticed them immediately. The angel—no, not an angel. An Indian. Arapaho? “Megan,” he moaned. “Bess.”
    “Yer lassies be fine, lad, that I promise ye.”
    The nearest warrior snarled something at Carson and kicked him in the ribs hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs.
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