"Rain, Geronimo's been dead for years!"

  "Gee, you must be pretty dumb in history. Flower and me, we like history best when we study. Pa says that's good, because he doesn't want us to ever forget our Indian heri... history."

  She sat in stunned silence. The little boy sounded like he meant it—like he believed every word. His brown eyes met her gaze without a trace of evasiveness.

  She stared around her again. Where in the world had she landed when she fell? She darned sure wasn't on Saddleback Mountain. But she had to be. She couldn't have traveled through space.

  "Rain." No, she couldn't ask that. It was outlandish even to allow such a crazy thought into her mind!

  The little boy must be an actor, thoroughly immersed in his role. Hadn't she read somewhere that the really good actors—the ones who won Academy Awards—sometimes had trouble returning to reality after taking on a demanding movie role? Wasn't he awfully young to have learned that immersion technique, though? But then, what did she know about acting?

  A blackout: She must have hit her head when she fell—had a blackout, as she'd heard alcoholics did at times—or amnesia? Somehow she had wandered away from the mountain afterwards.

  She remembered falling, though, just as if it was a minute or so ago. She remembered who she was—and the only pain was in her ankle, not her head. Frowning in concentration, she played over the moments during her fall. The debilitating fear when she plunged over the mountainside—the gasp of relief when she grabbed the bush.

  Her inability to swing her leg back up to the hiking trail—then... a sneeze? She definitely remembered a sneeze, and had thought that any second someone would hear her struggles and help her. But then the bush roots had given away and terror had crowded her mind as she fell.

  She remembered... a tunnel? Yes, darn it, a tunnel of blackness. She'd swept through it as though floating on an air current. Then there had been more blackness until she realized she was sitting here on this hillside which, after the little Indian boy arrived, she'd confirmed was definitely not Saddleback Mountain.

  She had to have blacked out—hopped a train—or a plane—nothing else made sense. During her blackout she had traveled to... Where the hell was she?

  "Rain, what day is it?"

  "Saturday," he said promptly. "Flower and I don't have to take classes from Pa on Saturday and Sunday, just during the week."

  Good. Or was it? It had been Saturday morning when she started up the hiking trail. If it was still Saturday, and from the looks of the sun, still just early in the afternoon, how had she traveled this far? Had she been in the depths of the blackout for a week?

  "What... what date is it, Rain?"

  "July thirty-first. In white man's time. Flower and I tell time in Indian, too."

  The same day!

  "Uh... uh... what year is it?" she forced out around a gulp. "In... in white man's time?"

  "Gee, you sure ask dumb questions."

  "Please, Rain," she whispered.

  "I'm sorry." Rain ducked his head. "Pa says we're never supposed to say something like that to our elders. Saying they're dumb, I mean. And I said it twice. You've got a right to be mad at me. Grandfather would punish me, too, if he heard me."

  "Please, what year?" she repeated.

  "It's 1893. In Cherokee, it's the year of..."

  "Rain, say that again. Slowly. Please."

  The boy frowned at her. "It's 1893," he said a little louder.

  "Not... not 1994?"

  "Heck, no. That's a hundred and one years from now. Flower and I are good in arithmetic, too."

  "Where's your brother, Flower?" Stone asked as he walked up to the clothesline.

  "Where do you suppose?" Flower smiled.

  "Hunting, of course," Stone said, returning her smile. "You're not supposed to be working today, either. Just your regular chores. There's time enough for washing and cleaning during the week."

  "I just did this one load. We didn't have any clean sheets."

  "The beds don't need changing until Monday."

  "Oh, you never know. What if company drops by?"

  "About the only overnight company we have out here is someone from your tribe, Flower. And they bring their own bedding with them. Fact is, they even bring a tepee to sleep in, except for Silver Eagle. He leaves a tepee in our barn to sleep in when he comes. But they'd all be insulted if you offered them clean sheets."

  "That's true," Flower said with an enigmatic smile.

  "Honey, you're only twelve. You need a couple of days' rest each week, just like Rain. Why don't you go for a ride? Rain and I'll help you with the wash on Monday, like always."

  "Come with me, Pa. Let's both go. We haven't been riding together all summer. Let's ride up the hill and see if Rain managed to get us any fresh meat for Sunday dinner."

  Stone studied his daughter closely. That dress was a mile too short, and when had she started budding on top? Darn, had he been that busy all summer—too busy to notice Flower growing up right under his nose? He'd promised himself that he'd never let that happen—never let his son and daughter grow up neglected. It was definitely time to ride over to the Widow Brown's place and have her make Flower some new clothing.

  "Rain'll have a fit if we ride up there and scare off his game."

  "No, he won't. He'll be glad of an excuse to hunt some more. Anyway, we'll be careful."

  "I suppose if Rain doesn't get anything, you're going to insist that I chop off the chicken's head again."

  "Uh huh."

  "All right, if you promise to make dumplings. But I think it would be a better idea for us to ride over to Widow Brown's. I brought a couple of bolts of material out from town that last trip—"

  "We can go over there tomorrow," Flower interrupted, ignoring his frown at her lack of manners. "Let's ride up and look for Rain. Please, Pa? It's my free time, too, and I'd rather go up the hill."

  "You act like there's something more up there than just maybe a dead deer for us to help Rain drag home."

  "You never know, Pa. You never know."

  Three

  "Stop!" Tess said with a squeak.

  "Shhhh." Rain laid a finger on his lips, then slowly brought the rifle to his shoulder.

  The loud blast so close to her ear was the last sound she heard for several everlasting seconds. Finally the wall of silence receded, and she glared at Rain.

  "What the heck do you think you're doing?"

  "Pa says ladies shouldn't cuss. He threatened to wash Flower's mouth out with soap one day when he heard her use a bad word."

  "Oh, and little boys are allowed to cuss, huh?"

  "Nope," he denied. "At least, not until we get older."

  "Where are you going?"

  "I've gotta bleed the deer. If I don't, the meat will spoil. I'll be back in a few minutes."

  "I keep telling you, it's not hunting season!"

  "You didn't say that. You said that I shouldn't be hunting here, but I don't know why not. It's Pa's land. And there's no season on hunting. It's just whenever you run out of meat."

  "Animals have young in the summer. What if that deer you shot had a baby somewhere?"

  "It was a buck, not a doe."

  She couldn't refute that, since she'd been too darned scared to look where Rain was aiming.

  "I gotta get over there now, Miss Foster. Oh, you're probably thirsty, since it's so hot. There's a canteen in my pack." Rain removed the pack from around his waist and handed it to her. "Don't worry. I'll be right back."

  "Rain, don't leave me, please! I can't walk...."

  But she found herself calling to Rain's retreating back as he scrambled across the hillside. Gritting her teeth, she shut her mouth and put down the boy's pack in order to concentrate on removing her boot.

  She tugged the left leg of her denims up past her swollen ankle and groaned in dismay. Already her leg was discolored and swollen, protruding over the top of the boot. She should have removed the boot first thing, instead of sitting there talking to a boy who insisted it was a hundred and one years earlier than it actually was.

  She glanced around her again. It darned sure wasn't Saddleback Mountain. But she would be just as crazy as that poor little boy appeared to be if she let herself even start to believe it could possibly be 1893, despite her lingering remembrance of that dark tunnel. It had to have been just a trick of her mind to shut out the pain and the realization that she was plummeting toward certain death.

  She licked at a drop of sweat dribbling down her cheek. The salty taste lingered on her tongue, and she glanced at Rain's pack. A drink of water would taste awfully good right now. She didn't bother carrying water in her own pack, since there were water pumps at the various campsites in the Adirondacks.

  Picking up the pack again, she untied the flap and spread the opening. There was the canteen. She pulled it out and unscrewed the top. After wiping the spout with her shirt cuff, she drank several swallows of surprisingly cool water. The boy must have filled the canteen recently.

  As she started to replace the canteen in the pack, she automatically scanned the other contents. Several extra shells—some rope—a tattered comic book. She lifted the comic out and read the title, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, with a smile. Rain evidently liked to read as he whiled away the hours watching for game.

  Her hand rustled against a newspaper when she stuck the comic back in the pack. Probably Rain carried it to clean game, she guessed, recalling that her own brothers had sometimes spent entire days out hunting. They would clean the game they shot and roast it over a fire for meals.

  A newspaper. No, damn it, she wasn't going to look at that paper, for the very same reason she had refused to open the comic and see when it had been printed.

  She spread out the paper but closed her eyes tightly. She couldn't seem to stop herself from crinkling a corner in her fingers and listening to the crisp crackle of fairly new paper.

  Oh, shoot. She slit her eyes and stared down at the date on the paper: July 17, 1893. Before she could make an even bigger fool of herself, she rapidly re-creased the paper and shoved it back into the pack.

  A movie set. It had to be a movie set. But they'd sure gone to a lot of trouble to make everything on it so authentic!

  Angela blinked once, then again. The image beside her on the cloud wavered, became clearer, then disappeared again.

  Well, she guessed Michael was learning to travel through time a lot faster than the other objectives she had tried to teach him. Or... she frowned slightly. Maybe he had a better teacher than her. Maybe that black-haired angel. What was her name?

  Serena. All right, she had known the other angel's name all along. And jealousy was definitely not a guardian-angel trait. She quickly wiped the traitorous emotion from her mind.

  Oh, who was coming now? She didn't understand at all why the people living on earth so enjoyed watching movies and television—especially those things they called soap operas. Real life was so much more interesting.

  Hadn't Michael said something like that—about enjoying people? At least they had that in common.

  Stone wrapped his fingers more tightly around the reins and pulled back the gelding's head against its chest.

  "Settle down, darn it!"

  "You should've brought Bay Boy instead of Silver Mane, Pa." Flower giggled. "You aren't enjoying this ride very much on him."

  "Well, this one's got to be ridden if he's ever going to turn into a decent cow pony," he replied. "And you should have named him Hard Head, instead of Silver Mane. We can forget about not scaring off any of Rain's game while I'm riding this jughead."

  "I heard a shot while we were saddling up. I'll bet Rain's already got something."

  "Probably," he agreed. "He usually doesn't miss."

  His horse rounded a bend in the trail, and Stone unconsciously jerked roughly on the reins. The gelding reared abruptly, then pounded its front feet back to earth and humped its back, lashing out with its hind legs.

  Stone flew over Silver Mane's head, cursing his unresponsive muscles and carrying an inconceivable vision in his mind. Rolling his body to lessen the impact, he tumbled several feet, then sat up a bare yard from a pair of astonished emerald eyes in a face that jolted his senses with its beauty.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  Flower quickly slid from her saddle and ran to him. "Are you hurt, Pa?"

  With a wrench he tore his eyes away from the green ones. "Just my dignity, honey."

  But, despite the concern in Flower's voice, she wasn't looking at him. Her brown eyes rounded in wonder. Her mouth agape, she stared at the woman on the trail.

  "Hello," his daughter said in a soft voice.

  "H... hello," the woman replied. "Are you two part of the movie crew, too? Oh, please, tell me you're part of the movie crew."

  Four

  "What's a movie?" the young girl asked.

  "Oh, no!" Tess groaned and bent her head, hiding her face from the too-near, craggy-visaged man at her side. Against her will, her eyelids cracked open and she slid a look through her lashes.

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth to stifle an erupting giggle. Good heavens, he looked as astonished as she felt. And as helpless.

  His arms hung loosely from his broad shoulders, his hands cradled in his lap. He'd landed in a sitting position beside her, his legs bent at the knees, crookedly cocked to either side of his slim hips. Oh! She had no business looking at that bulge in those tight denims!

  She quickly glanced back at his face, willing her eyelids not to open fully as she tried to hide her perusal.

  Lordy. Was this the Marlboro Man come to life?

  He'd lost his hat in the tumble, and that rather longish brown hair waved in soft fullness around his head. Here and there she even caught a hint of a reddish tint, but it wasn't quite as prevalent as the shade in her own hair when the sun hit it. All he needed was a filter-tipped cigarette dangling from the corner of that full mouth to complete the picture. What color were that Marlboro Man's eyes...?

  "I asked you a damned question!" Those lips snarled now.

  Her head flew up and she glared at him in return. "I'm hurt! I think my ankle's broken."

  The brown eyes softened a little, lost just a hint of their glare.

  "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. But I asked what you were doing here on my land."

  "Boy, don't I wish like hell I knew," she breathed.

  "Ladies shouldn't curse," the young girl said.

  Tess looked over at her and smiled. "You must be Rain's sister. And I apologize for cursing. Rain already told me I shouldn't do that. He said your dad might wash my mouth out with soap."

  "Where's my son?" the man demanded, drawing her attention back to him.

  "He said something about going to bleed a deer—the one he shot."

  "Guess you won't have to kill a chicken after all, Pa."

  Stone scrambled to his feet and backed away from the woman, though he felt like he was struggling against invisible strands trying to hold him close to her. Damn, she was a beauty. Auburn hair and green eyes like Abigail's, but there the resemblance stopped. Her hair curled wildly, tumbling unrestrained down her back. His long-ago love, Abby, always kept her hair in a knot on her head—or at least tied back.

  Abby had been little more than a girl at sixteen, though old enough to wed. Her breasts would have filled out more after she had children—indeed, they had been fuller when he had last visited her, not that he'd had any right to notice. They'd never gotten this full, though—and the woman's breasts weren't restrained, either. For God's sake, what had happened to her corset?

  All at once he heard a chastisement of his irreverent language, though he could've sworn he hadn't spoken aloud. "Sorry, honey," he murmured distractedly in Flower's direction.

  But when he followed his words with an apologetic glance at Flower, his daughter shrugged her shoulders and looked at the woman as though they both needed to tolerate some sort of strange behavior on his part. Neither of them appeared to understand why he'd felt the need to excuse himself, and his irritation flared. Just who the heck was in charge here?

  "I hope you've got a dress in that pack! I don't allow my daughter to wear pants, and you won't either, if you expect us to help you out. What's that thing you've got wrapped around your foot?"

  Tess clenched her fists, fighting against the confirmation of Rain's insistence that this was indeed the year 1893. Shoot, no, she didn't have a dress in her pack. Who on earth would carry a dress on a backpacking trip? At least, not in 1994! Soon enough she'd have to tell him that, though.

  For now, how the heck was she going to explain an elastic bandage to a man born years before vulcanization was even invented?

  Suddenly it dawned on her that she believed it herself. Somehow—some way—somewhere—she had slipped through a time warp. That's what the tunnel had been—a hole in time. Frantically, she pushed this acceptance aside. She couldn't think about it right now. She had to get some medical attention for her throbbing ankle, and her only hope for assistance was this Marlboro Man and his daughter.

  "Uh... uh... the bandage is just something to support the muscles in my ankle until I can get the foot x-... I mean, until I can determine if it's broken. Is... is there a doctor anywhere nearby?"

  "Nope," he said. "Not near, anyway. You better let me look at it and see if I can tell if it's broken, instead of just sprained."

  "No!" She gasped in pain when she jerked her foot away from his fingers. "I... I mean... don't you think it would be better for me to leave it wrapped until I get off this hill? It's not as painful with the bandage on it. I can ride, if you'll help me on one of the horses."

  "Where's your horse?"

  "Mine?"

  "You sure didn't get clear out here just walking," he said. "I've heard of you women having some newfangled ideas, but surely you've got sense enough not to travel around the county by yourself. Hell, even on horseback that's a stupid idea."