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the South and all its reminders of war.
    Damn his hide to hell.
    The team stopped so suddenly that the wagon slewed sideways. Before it stopped skidding Carson had his rifle out from beneath the seat and was standing, turning, taking aim at the Indian who had Bess by the hair. He fired and swore. He’d hit the Indian in the shoulder. It was enough to make the bastard release Bess, but not enough to take him out of the fight.
    Megan had hold of his leg now, hampering him as he tried to turn back and face the others. Pain exploded across the back of his head.
    He never heard his daughter scream again for her daddy, never saw the look of horror on his sister’s face. Never felt himself fall to the ground.
    He never heard the wild shrill cry of victory as Crooked Oak raised his rifle into the air in triumph.

Chapter Three
    The sun was down, the sky turning a deep, dark blue and the air beginning to cool rapidly when the first shrill cries of victory echoed across the small valley camp. Winter Fawn was on her way back from the stream with a jug of water when she heard the commotion.
    The warriors had returned!
    Alarm skittered down her arms in the form gooseflesh. Victory? Over whom? Had they fought? Was the Army even now riding to destroy them? Would the children and old people be slaughtered, as they were at Sand Creek?
    Heart pounding, Winter Fawn dropped her water jug near the hide her grandmother was tanning and rushed toward the commotion at the center of camp.
    She was nearly the last to arrive. Yet even before she reached the returning warriors, she knew something was wrong. Most of the shouting was from the warriors themselves. Those who had come to meet them had fallen into an uneasy silence.
    “A captive?” someone said in a shocked voice.
    “What have they done?” said another. “Is he dead?”
    “Why have they brought him here?”
    Murmurs and mutters rose around her, growing and building until they sounded like a hive of upset bees.
    Finally Winter Fawn broke through the crowd.
    The warriors had returned, making as much noise as if they had just come victorious from some huge battle. Winter Fawn’s uncle, Two Feathers, rode in the lead. Then came Talks Loud, Long Chin, Red Bull, and Spotted Calf, who sported a bloody hole in his shouder.
    Crooked Oak trailed behind the others, worrying his horse to make it prance. With jaw set and eyes blazing, he held his rifle above his head and shouted victory. He led another horse which bore the body of a white man slung belly-down over its back. The white man did not move, except to sway with the horse’s movements. His hands and feet were tightly bound, and the back of his head was bloody.
    Had they done it, then? Had they gone out and found themselves a white man to kill?
    Why would they tie his hands and feet if he was dead? Why bring a dead man back to camp?
    But the answer to the latter was simple. To prove they had avenged the deaths of their friends.
    But really, Winter Fawn thought with irritation, a simple scalp would have sufficed.
    Then another shout rang out that took Winter Fawn’s attention completely away from the warriors.
    “Red Beard!”
    Winter Fawn whirled. He rode easily on his big sorrel horse. The wide brim of his hat hid half his face, and he carried a small white girl before him, with an older white girl riding the cantle at his back, but Winter Fawn would have known him if he’d had a buffalo robe over his head and a bear cub before and behind him instead of a girl. She knew those shoulders, that beard, the way he sat a horse. Oh, how she knew them! Shoving her way through the crowd, she rushed to his side. “Father!”
    Hunter echoed her cry as he ran to join her.
    Before dismounting, her father lifted the small girl from before him and handed her to Winter Fawn.
    “This be Megan, and her aunt,” he added helping the older girl slide down, “Bess. They be me guests. Keep them safe, lass. Don’t let your uncle or any o’ his bloody