"The general is my son, and he and I are quite clear about orders." The guard swallowed hard.

"Very well, ma'am." He felt the cane being removed from his boot and offered a relieved smile. Turning quickly before she could get him again with it, he went to retrieve a chair. Florence now applied her cane to the bars of Ryder's cell, running it back and forth to get his attention.

"You could say you're happy to see me," she said with some asperity.

Ryder came to his feet in a fluid motion, pocketing the dollar that had provided him with his sole amusement until now.

"Here comes your chair, Flo." He pointed to the guard who was trying to bring it in quietly. Florence turned on the fellow again.

"There's no need to sneak up on me, young man. Give me an attack of angina and my son will see you on kitchen duty for the rest of your Army career."

"She means it, Harry," Ryder told the guard.

"Don't I know it," Harry muttered before he shuffled off. Florence and Ryder exchanged glances as Harry made a point of closing the door between the cell area and the guard room.

"Does the general know you're here?" Ryder asked.

"What do you think?"

"That he believes you retired early." She gave Ryder a prim smile.

"Know-it-all." She arranged the chair so it was close to the bars and sat down.

"There's no need for you to stand." she told him. When he didn't respond immediately she added brusquely, "Go on with you, you'll give me a crick in my neck." Ryder slowly sat down on the edge of the cot, stunned by the fact that she was fighting tears.

"What are you doing here, Florence?"

"I had to see you for myself," she said, "though it pains me terribly that you are here. Are you being treated well?"

"Well enough." She studied his face. The single lantern in the corridor shed enough light on him that she could see shades of bruising on his cheek and temple. One of his eyelids was slightly swollen. If these were the marks she could see, Florence wondered about the ones she couldn't.

"My son didn't give orders for you to be beaten," she said.

"Joshua isn't like that."

"I know." He shrugged.

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. I'm going to tell-" She stopped, realizing that she wasn't going to tell her son anything.

It would only go worse for Ryder if the men guarding him were reprimanded, and then she would be forbidden from entering the stockade again.

"Can I bring you anything next time? Witch hazel?

Bandages?"

"You shouldn't come again." She dismissed that with an unladylike snort.

"You're in no position to tell me what I should and shouldn't do."

"Point taken." He paused and absently rubbed the back of his head.

"Witch hazel, then."

"What happened to you there?" Florence asked. Ryder's hand dropped away.

"It's not important. I've got a gash and a lump, nothing I haven't had before." Florence's mouth thinned. She hated the thought of Ryder being mistreated under her very nose.

"No," he said.

"It's not what you think. It didn't happen here. When I came around en route back to the fort I already had it."

"It happened in the fighting?" Ryder didn't say anything for a time, wondering what he could or should say.

"You must have heard that I wasn't part of the fighting," he said.

Florence Gardner's shoulders sagged a bit, and in spite of the fact that she was sitting down, her hand rested more heavily on her cane.

"So it's true," she said with a certain unhappy finality.

"You were with her when the attack came."

"I was."

"Why?" The only indication of Ryder's surprise was the fractional narrowing of his pale gray eyes. He didn't answer her question directly.

"Haven't you heard the answer to that as well?" The subtle accusation in his tone got Florence's attention. She pounded her cane once against the floor where it made only a dull thud in the packed earth.

"Don't lump me with the rest of the idiots around here--my son included. I'll draw my own conclusions, thank you. Now tell me why you were with that baggage."

"Lieutenant Matheson and I agreed she needed to be away from the company." He added carelessly, "I lost the toss."

"Why did she need to be separated?"

"Her safety. I suspected there was some danger."

"You knew the attack was coming?" He shook his head. It was no easier to explain now than it had been then.

"No," he said.

"I knew there was danger but not the form it would take. There were no signs of Chiricahua anywhere in the area."

"Yet they attacked."

"So I've heard," he said without inflection.

"You didn't see any of the attack?"

"None." Or the scene afterward. Ryder only knew what he had been told. The company had literally been cut in half, men slaughtered where they stood.