She is a kind and gentle young woman. We were proud to call her our daughter for a time.”
“Do you think you can find her?” Gatana asked.
“I don’t know,” Case replied. “Would she try to make it home to Rancho Verde?”
“I do not know where else she would go,” Consayka replied. “I think she would trust that her father or Señorita Rayna would be able to help her.”
It was a natural assumption, but Case didn’t want to jump to a hasty conclusion. There were too many variables involved. “Is Skylar in love with Sun Hawk?” he asked.
Consayka looked at Case blankly, but Gatana spoke up at once. “Yes, she is. I think she is confused about her feelings, torn between loving him and wanting to go home, but I know her feelings are strong. Love is in her eyes every time she looks upon him.”
“Thank you for being so honest,” Case said. “I want very much to help her.”
Gatana searched his face. “I believe you do.”
Consayka glanced at his wife, then at Case. “Would you like to take her things?
She has very little, but if you find her, I know she would want to have them back.”
Case needed to travel as light as possible, but he couldn’t resist the offer.
“Yes, thank you.”
Gatana went to the back of the wagon and pulled out a bundle. She offered it to Case and he accepted it, never imagining the intense effect it would have on him. For a moment he was transported back in time to the day his parents and his eleven-year-old sister were murdered. He had been showing his father the arrows he had made when his mother returned to camp with her two daughters. One Who Sings was shy and quiet, but little Morning Star was a bold child, full of life, with sparkling eyes and a laugh that Case had never been able to forget. On that day, she had run to her father clutching several sticks that she had insisted were arrows.
Gray Wolf had taken her onto his lap, and Morning Star held the arrows out for Case to inspect. He took them from her, praised them highly, and returned them to her. It was his last happy memory of his family, and the sights, smells, and emotions were suddenly as clear to him as if it had happened yesterday rather than twenty years ago.
He had never felt closer to his sister than he did as he held the bundle Gatana had handed him. Unable to imagine what had sparked such an intense 196
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memory, he opened the burlap sack and removed a ragged buckskin dress that had probably been quite beautiful when it was new. There was a parcel of writing paper, a pen, and a bottle of ink, but nothing that might tell him if the girl called Skylar was really his sister.
Keenly disappointed, he picked up the dress. As he placed it in the bag, an object fell out of one of the buckskin folds and dropped to the ground. Case looked down at it, barely able to believe his eyes. It was the Thunder Eagle necklace that his father had given his mother thirty years ago and that Case, in turn, had given Libby. Pushing the bundle aside, he reached for the necklace, and it nearly seared his hand as he picked it up.
N o, it wasn’t the same, not exactly. The arrangement of turquoise and silver on the choker was different. There were no feathers, and the medallion was crudely carved. But the similarity was unmistakable.
“This was Skylar’s?”
“Yes,” the old man replied. “She made it many years ago when she was a young girl. In wintertime I would tell stories around the fire, and Señorita Skylar would sneak out of the house to listen to me. Her favorite was the story of Willow and Gray Wolf. Do you know it?”
Case could barely breathe. “Yes, I know it,” he managed to say.
“That necklace represents the one Gray Wolf gave to his bride. It had great meaning to Skylar.”
“She remembered,” Case whispered, clutching the necklace in his hand as he pressed it to his heart.
Consayka studied his intense reaction. “You wear the same symbol,” he said, looking at the plain medallion on Case’s chest.
Case took his own necklace and Skylar’s in the same hand. “I wear this for my sister, the daughter of Willow and Gray Wolf, who was stolen from me when our parents were murdered.” He looked into Consayka’s eyes. “I have been looking for her for twenty years, and now I know she is alive. Tell me everything you know about my sister . . . Please.”
Consayka did as Case asked.
The news Crook gave Rayna changed everything. She couldn’t go directly to Rio Alto now and liberate her sister by legal means, and there was obviously no reason to plan a daring escape. Sun Hawk had already done that, and no one had a clue as to where Skylar and the brave were or when they might be found. Even Rayna wasn’t foolhardy enough to think she could initiate her own search, but she couldn’t bear the thought of returning to Rancho Verde without Skylar. And she knew her parents would want her to remain in the Arizona Territory until this insane predicament was resolved.
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Since she had nowhere to go, Meade insisted that she come to Eagle Creek with him, and Rayna wasn’t in a position to refuse. She accepted his offer but made it clear that she would make other arrangements for accommodations as soon as possible.
“Fine. We can argue about it later,” he told her. “For the time being, I just want to get home.”
It took two hours of hard riding to reach Eagle Creek Ranch, but with each passing mile Rayna could see Meade’s excitement growing. When finally they came over a rise and saw the ranch house in the valley below, he stopped and took a moment just to feast his eyes.
“The ranch doesn’t look like much, does it?” he said, but his broad smile betrayed his pride.
“I think it looks wonderful,” Rayna replied. And it did. The house was a simple two-story frame building with a wide porch running along two sides. Cottonwoods and sycamores shaded the yard, and the stock pens, corrals, bunkhouse, and stable that sat away from the house testified to the fact that this was a thriving working ranch. Though it bore little resemblance to Rancho Verde, Rayna was nonetheless struck by a deep pang of homesickness.
When two children darted out of the barn and began running toward the house, Meade’s smile widened even more. “That’s Jenny and Lucas,” he said happily, spurring his horse into motion. He went charging down the hill, and Triton, who had grown accustomed to following Chicory, tried to match the breakneck pace as soon as Rayna signaled him to move. As they neared the ranch house, though, she forced the stallion into a more sedate pace so that Meade could arrive ahead of her. The family she would be intruding on deserved at least a moment alone to welcome Meade home.
The children saw the riders in the distance long before they reached the house, and by the time Meade thundered into the yard, Libby was on the porch with Jedidiah Longstreet at her side. Jenny and Lucas raced to see who could reach Uncle Meade first, but the seven-year-old boy, with his longer legs, won out over his very determined five-year-old sister.
From a distance, Rayna watched in amazement as Meade practically threw himself off Chicory in his haste to greet the children. He gathered the boy to him and a second later was nearly knocked down as Jenny threw herself into his arms, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. He kissed them both soundly, then stood as his sister ran into his arms with more decorum but no less enthusiasm than her daughter had displayed.
By the time Rayna rode up, the man on the porch had come down to the yard and was shaking hands with Meade, beaming happily, and telling him how good it was to have him home.
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