Rain Shadow chuckled with amusement as he slipped away from the side of the cabin and headed toward the hill in back. He wasn't really afraid of that nosy old woman. His pa, Stone, would take care of her. After all, didn't his and Flower's Cherokee grandfather call Stone by the name Man Who Walks With Right?

  Rain Shadow winked at Mountain Flower as he passed, and his sister shook her head as she dunked a sheet into rinse water.

  "Are you done with your chores?" Flower asked.

  "You better believe it," he replied. "You don't think I'd be going hunting if I wasn't, do you? Pa would skin me alive."

  "No he wouldn't." Flower laughed. "But he might take away that gun you're so proud of, so you couldn't hunt for a while. He's not going to be in a very good mood after Mrs. Peterson leaves."

  His face puckered into a sudden scowl. "Flower, you don't think there's any chance the stupid white man's court will try to take us away from Pa, do you?"

  "I don't know, Rain." Flower shrugged. "I try not to worry about it. Pa always tells us that nothing is going to break up our family. But we're half white, as well as half Cherokee. I don't know if that makes us bound by white law too."

  "Pa will handle it," he said in a positive voice. He shifted his rifle to his shoulder and headed toward the corral. "I'll be back in time for evening chores," he called to Flower over his shoulder.

  Adirondack Mountains

  July 31, 1994

  "I wonder what's going to happen now?" Michael asked.

  "You know as well as I do that neither one of us is allowed to know what will happen." Angela sighed. "All you need to know is that your job is to stay near Tess and watch over her—make sure she doesn't slip up and let something foolish happen to her body before it's time for her spirit to leave it."

  Michael flapped his wings to follow Angela when she drifted toward another cloud. He shot straight through the fluffy mass and spread his wings wide to halt his plummeting descent. When he glanced up at the cloud, he saw Angela peering down at him, shaking her head.

  "I can't believe that all through eternity you haven't learned to have better control over your wings, Michael," she said in a scolding tone. "Surely you know that flying is more thinking than flapping."

  "Flying's more thinking than flapping," Michael repeated in a mimicking voice. He restrained the urge to shoot back up to the cloud and whisk right by that blond head, scaring Angela into tumbling backwards. Instead, he gently waved his wings, making a perfect landing beside her. "Look, this end of the business is all new to me. I'm trying to keep an eye on my assignment down there, listen to you, and fly all at the same time! That makes me clumsy, because I've never had to concentrate on several things at once before!"

  He caught the smirk of satisfaction Angela tried to hide at his indirect admission of her superior experience, deciding to ignore that un-angel-like lapse on her part. Besides, he was feeling a bit peevish toward his companion right now, and peevishness could be called an undesirable trait too. They had to work together while he was in training for his new position, and he'd been assured Angela was a very capable teacher when he had finally decided which new assignment he was going to ask for.

  "What were your duties before you decided you wanted a change?" Angela asked. "You never said."

  "And you never asked," Michael growled, still grumpy. The slight hint of hauteur in her voice overrode his resolve to get along with his teacher. "All you've got on your mind is how much more experience you have than me at being a guardian angel—and how much fun it is to laugh at my clumsiness while you boss me around."

  "Oh!" Angela said with an indignant sniff. "I'm not bossing you around." Michael glanced at her with a disbelieving look, and she continued, "Well, I'm not! I'm just trying to be helpful."

  "You can be helpful without sounding so dad-blasted superior."

  "Michael, please watch your language."

  "Michael, watch your language," Michael mocked. "Michael, I can't believe you haven't learned to control your wings better. Michael, you're tripping on your gown. Gosh darn it, Angela, you've been at this business lots longer than me. Give me a break."

  "I never said a word about you tripping on your gown," Angela defended herself. "And you're the one who decided you wanted to be a guardian angel. Would you rather go back and try something else?" she added somewhat hopefully.

  "What? Lay around all day and think up creative ideas for the writers on earth to write about or pretty pictures for artists to paint? I don't have any feelings one way or the other about a Van Gogh over a Picasso. Maybe I ought to help cook up meals to tickle everyone's tongue? Grow pretty flowers? I looked at all those options and at some others when I got tired of what I was doing. But I didn't count on feeling like a newly arrived spirit who had to be led around by the nose and shown the ropes."

  "Oh, Michael." Angela's laughter tinkled in the blue sky. "I'm sorry. Really I am. I'll try to be more patient. Was introducing newly arrived spirits what you did before?"

  Somewhat mollified, Michael nodded. "I guess that's what made me want to be a guardian angel. Those poor human spirits arrived pretty rattled and confused. I liked guiding them through their confusion, and I was always interested in the lives they'd lived. I figured it'd be even more interesting working more closely with people who were still living."

  "Surely you had to help the human spirits learn to control their ability to fly—"

  Michael glared at her, and Angela quickly bit off her words. "Uh... well, I'm sure you'll come along with practice."

  In the middle of carefully negotiating the rock-strewn trail halfway down the backside of Saddleback Mountain, Tess glanced skyward. Funny how the breeze sometimes soughed through the tall pines, almost sounding like human laughter.

  Suddenly her left foot slid on a moss-covered rock and her ankle twisted cruelly in a rut beside the rock. She screamed in pain while she wind-milled her arms and desperately tried to maintain her equilibrium. Overbalanced by the backpack, she stumbled nearer the edge of the trail.

  Fear joined the pain in her mind. The injured ankle gave way and she fell, her legs hanging over the precipice. Grabbing a bush, she hung on for dear life and tried to swing her body back to the trail.

  She didn't dare look down. That steep cliff face ran several hundred yards down the mountainside. The heavy pack dragged on her slender back, the pull of gravity making her sob in terror and cling to the bush until the rough bark cut into her palms.

  The roots of the bush slowly began giving way and she screamed again in panic.

  "Hurry, Michael! Use your powers. She's your assignment."

  "Okay. Okay. Don't rush me. I'm trying to..."

  "There's no time!"

  He glared directly at the bush, concentrating on making the roots hold. For a second, it looked as if he'd accomplished his task. Tess swung her right leg back up to the trail, the heel of her hiking boot making firm contact with the packed earth.

  Angela breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at him. "Michael! What's wrong?"

  "I... ah... gadda... sn... ah... ah... AAH-CHOO!"

  They both heard the bush roots give way and Tess's renewed scream as she tumbled over the edge of the trail.

  No matter what the rules, Angela had to interfere! She peered over the cloud, her total concentration on saving Tess.

  But Tess wasn't there!

  Angela blinked in surprise. The ledge on the side of the mountain that she had conjured up was there, close enough to the top of the trail for Tess not to have been too badly injured when she hit. And close enough to allow her to climb back onto the trail.

  But no Tess!

  "Oh, Michael, what have you done?"

  "Me? You jumped in and used your powers! This was supposed to be my assignment."

  "You were supposed to keep her from getting killed! You lost your concentration when you sneezed. No human body could have lived through that fall."

  "MICHAEL! ANGELA!" The voice boomed through the still air.

  "Uh-oh." Michael's wings cringed against his shoulders.

  She gave his sandy-gray head a comforting pat. "Come on. Let's stand up and face the music."

  "Yeah," Michael grumbled. "What can Mr. G do? Kill us?"

  Angela giggled softly and stood, toes clenched in the fluffiness beneath her the only sign of her timorousness. Michael sighed deeply and joined her.

  Two

  Oklahoma Territory

  July 31, 1893

  Rain squinted against the sun's glare and propped his rifle on a tree. Raising his arms, he rubbed the heels of his hands back and forth over his eyes, then cautiously peeked through his lashes.

  She was still there. Now she was sitting up and rubbing the heels of her hands against her own eyes. She hadn't been there a second ago. Instead, he had been aiming at a wild turkey, visions of a toasty brown drumstick dancing in his mind. The turkey was long gone now, after emitting a confused gobble of surprise and disappearing over the hill.

  And look at those clothes she was wearing. Once Flower had dared to wear a pair of his old pants, insisting to Pa that her long skirts got in the way when she did her chores. Pa had squashed that idea right off. And Rain's old pants on Flower were baggy, not skintight.

  Suddenly a cloud materialized over the woman's head, then disappeared in a blink. Rain's eyes widened. He could have sworn the other lady—the one he'd had a brief glimpse of on that cloud—had seen him too.

  No, he hadn't imagined it. But there were still almost two years to go before he would return to his grandfather and prepare to seek his vision—the vision that would lead him into complete manhood at age twelve. He didn't dare try to speak to a spirit on his own before then.

  Rain studied the woman sitting on the trail again. That pack on her back looked awfully heavy. And what were those sticks the straps were wrapped around made of? Not wood, like the packs Indian women still used sometimes.

  The woman shrugged out of the pack, then bent to rub at her leg.

  Were those boots on her feet? None like Rain had ever seen. Bulky, they came to just above her ankles.

  The cloud appeared again, but the woman on the trail didn't seem to notice. She started unlacing her left boot, her head bent nearly to her knee.

  Rain looked at the cloud, and the blond-haired woman in the flowing white robe waved her wings and placed her index finger against her lips, winking at him. Rain nodded in return.

  Maybe these were white men's spirits, rather than Indians'. But white or Indian, the spirits weren't to be discussed without the proper fasting beforehand and reverence for their spiritual state. His grandfather, Silver Eagle, had told Rain that more than once. Silver Eagle, a shaman, would know.

  Angela wasn't surprised that the boy could see her. Lots of children could see angels. The boy still looked young enough—probably around ten. Usually by their teens, children had picked up enough stress to deal with in their lives to have lost their childish wonderment and closed their minds to things they couldn't explain.

  She sat down on the cloud. No telling how long it would be until Michael joined her again. He hadn't had to use the time-travel abilities angels have in his former assignment, and in order for him to follow her now, someone else would have to show him how to enact that power. She had to follow a very direct order to keep an eye on Tess until Michael showed up.

  A thought crossed Angela's mind, and she glanced overhead. She sure was glad Michael hadn't slipped and used that somewhat irreverent name during their attempts to explain how their lapse had allowed Tess to fall into that time warp. Mr. G, indeed!

  Tess stared at her hiking boot, biting her lower lip against the pain and debating whether to loosen the laces or try to pull them more snugly. The ankle felt broken, but maybe it was just a bad sprain. Either way, it would probably be less painful if she wrapped it in the elastic bandage in her pack.

  Still, Freddy wouldn't look for her until tomorrow evening, and it would be easier to try to get back up to the trail with the support of her boot.

  At least someone else might come by there. Other hikers would miss her down on this ledge if she happened to fall asleep, which seemed likely, given the fact that she hadn't slept last night.

  "You should take off your boot before your foot swells. Otherwise, the boot will have to be cut off, and you won't be able to wear it again. Boots cost a lot of money."

  Tess's head had swung up at the first word. She blinked eyes misty with unshed tears of pain to try to clear her vision. The little boy crouched a few feet away, and her eyes swept over him, disbelieving.

  What in the world was a child doing hunting on a hiking trail? An Indian child, wearing a plaid shirt—not the T-shirts children usually wore. His hair didn't look too out of the ordinary. A leather band held back the long, black locks from his face, but even young children these days set their own hairstyles.

  No wonder she hadn't heard him approach. He wore moccasins on his feet. She slid a sideways glance at the rifle held upright in the boy's right hand. That definitely had no place on a hiking trail.

  "Look," she began in a tentative voice, "I'm darned glad you're here, but there's no hunting on this mountain. Where are your parents?"

  "Mountain?" the boy repeated in a puzzled voice. He turned his head to study the area around him. "You must be from pretty flat land if you think this is a mountain rather than a hill."

  She followed his gaze and her jaw dropped. Where the hell was she? Rocks and brush littered the hillside, intermingled with jack pine and spruce, not huge white pines, white ash, and red cedar. Suddenly she became aware of the stifling heat—not cool mountain air.

  She swiveled her head to the left and fearfully glanced upwards, hoping against hope to see the hiking trail snaking down Saddleback Mountain. Instead, she saw more brush and what could have been a tumbleweed, caught between two bushes.

  A faint sound down the hillside drew her attention, and she gazed over the little boy's shoulder. Snuggled in the valley below sat a log cabin. A small figure struggled to drape what looked like a large white sheet over a clothesline in the backyard. An unpaved road led away from the front of the cabin, and Tess licked suddenly dry lips with a powdery tongue when she saw a horse trotting down the road, pulling a black buggy.

  "The dirt roads around here are all jeep trails," she said, a corner of her mind still hoping to deny that she wasn't on the mountain, though her eyes refused to leave the incongruous vision of the horse and buggy. "Why is there a buggy on that road down there?"

  "A jeep?" he questioned. "I don't know what that is, but that's Mrs. Peterson. And if you ever saw her, you'd know why she has to drive it, 'cause she couldn't ever climb on a horse. Poor horse, if she did."

  Tess took a determined breath. "All right. I don't know how it happened, but somehow I've stumbled onto a movie set. If you'll just go get someone from the crew to help me, I'll get out of the way and go to a hospital, so they can x-ray my ankle. Still," she continued in a musing voice, "what did they do with the mountain? How far down that mountainside did I fall?"

  "You didn't fall," the youngster said. "You just..." He shrugged his shoulders. "You just appeared."

  "What!?" she jerked her head around and stared at the little boy in amazement. "What do you mean—I just appeared?"

  "You scared the turkey away, too, and I was almost ready to shoot it. Good thing I saw you before I squeezed the trigger, or I might have shot you. And what's a movie?"

  "Oh, good grief. You know darned well what movies are. Just like the one they're obviously shooting here. Where is everyone else?"

  "You sure use funny words. There aren't even words in Cherokee like the ones you use. And there's no one else around here. Just my sister and my pa, down at our cabin. You saw Mrs. Peterson leaving. What kind of animal is a movie? Is it good to eat if I can shoot one?"

  She gritted her teeth, both against the pain in her ankle and her fast-evaporating patience. "Let's start over again. My name is Tess. Tess Foster. And you are...?"

  "Rain Shadow. But after I seek my vision, my name will probably change."

  "Your vision?"

  "Uh-huh. When I'm twelve. Grandfather said his name was Running Cub while he grew up, but now it's Silver Eagle."

  "Silver Eagle?"

  "My grandfather," the boy repeated patiently. "He's a shaman."

  "Okay. Look, Rain... uh... Rain Shadow..."

  "It's just Rain, since you're a white woman. Whites only use one word of their name when they talk to each other. My sister is Mountain Flower, but Pa just calls her Flower."

  "I see," She really didn't, but this conversation wasn't making a lick of sense. "And what's your father's name?"

  "He doesn't ever use his Indian name, even though he's got one that my grandfather gave him. Pa's name is Stone Chisum. He used to be a gunfighter, but he gave that up when he adopted Flower and me. 'Course, he really wasn't a gunfighter. He was a sheriff, and then a marshal. People just called him a gunfighter sometimes, because he was faster than anyone else with his gun."

  Tess shook her head, her curls swirling around her face. She blew back a stray strand from her forehead, then bent to lay her forehead on her knee. Her ankle throbbed, and she tentatively rubbed her fingers above the pain.

  "Pa said it was time to give up guns, anyway," Rain continued. "He said the country was gettin' civ... civilized now. Even Geronimo agreed to live on a reservation. Why, Pa says that one of these days a lot of men won't even know how to shoot a gun. Those that do will just use them to hunt animals."

  Her head snapped up. "What are you talking about?"

  "Guns?" Rain asked.

  "No. What did you say about G... Geronimo?"

  "He's Apache, not Cherokee, but I know about him. He was the last Indian to go onto a reservation with his people. Pa says there's talk of him getting permission to go around the country with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. He promised we'd go see that, if it ever came close enough."