"All the color's faded from your face." Ryder acknowledged that he was in no condition to gainsay her. With Jarret gone, he didn't even try.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Mary picked up a damp cloth and wiped the perspiration from Ryder's face.

"I wish you had told me about your wife," she said after a moment.

"I know." The cloth was cool on his skin, and Ryder closed his eyes.

"It was so long ago," he said.

"I was married before my uncle found me, before West Point. I can almost believe it happened to another person. It's the same way I feel about my childhood in Ohio. Separate places. Separate lives." He was a man with roots in two worlds, she thought, part of both, belonging in neither.

"Where is it that you find peace?" she asked.

Ryder opened his eyes and looked at Mary steadily. The serenity of her features masked the ferocity of her temperament .. his warrior angel.

"In your arms," he said, as though the answer were profoundly simple.

"Only in your arms." Mary's breath caught in her throat. For a moment she couldn't move. It was the way he said it, with that air of inevitability and acceptance, that gave truth to the words. Leaning over, she kissed him full on the mouth.

"All the more reason to get well," she said, lifting her head.

"So you can be there again." Ryder murmured his agreement, his eyes closed again. Sleep was edging at his conscious mind. He felt Mary's gentle touch on his face, then his neck and shoulders.

The cloth was cool, her fingertips warm. Mary continued to wipe down his fevered skin even after Ryder fell asleep. She pushed back strands of his dark hair where it lay against his temples and brushed her knuckle across the pronounced hollow of his cheek.

"He's sleeping?" Jarret asked from the entrance.

"Or did he pass out?"

"A little of both, I suepect." Mary left Jarret's side to dip the cloth in the pool again.

"How did you find us?" Jarret dropped his saddlebags on the rocker and set down his lantern. He tipped his hat a notch as he looked in Mary's direction.

"There's a trail of blood a greenhorn could follow." Mary nodded.

"Ryder was afraid of that. Where did you pick up the trail?"

"Above the ravine where he fell. I went down first, just to make certain there were no bodies, then I climbed out, using the same route he did. It's pretty much a miracle he survived at all--and with no broken bones."

"Two ribs," she corrected. Jarret just shook his head.

"The man has a will of iron."

"He wanted to come back to me," she said simply.

"You would have done the same for Rennie."

"But I love your sister." Mary sat beside Ryder again.

"Well?"

she asked. Jarret's eyes went from Mary to Ryder, then took in both of them together.

"I see," he said.

"So that's the way it is. Do you return it?"

"If I do," she said, "I wouldn't tell you first. That's for Ryder to hear." Jarret grinned as he removed his hat and dropped it on the rocker.

"You were never one to show your hand early," he said.

"Just so you know, your mother thinks she has it figured out." Mary nodded, accepting it, but saying nothing. jarret sat in the wing chair and reached for the saddlebags. He placed them between his knees and began removing their contents.

"How long ago did he fall?"

"I don't know."

When Jarret looked at her oddly, she explained' "There's no means of telling time in here. Neither of us has a watch, and there's no sun--no moon to orient us. My best guess is that it's been a week since the accident. I just can't be sure." She began to wipe down Ryder's skin again.

"Was the ravine far from here?"

"Easily eight miles."

"I've been that way once in the daylight and once at night, but I don't remember it clearly. How far did Ryder fall?"

"Didn't he tell you?" She shook her head.

"And I didn't ask. It wasn't as important to know the details as it was to have him here."

"He went down about a hundred and fifty feet." At Mary's gasp, he added, "Not all at once. He dropped in stages.

The ground kept crumbling under him, and he slipped on his own blood as he tried to climb out. That gash in his leg was the result of slipping past a tree branch that was growing out of the side of the ravine."

"I thought it might be something like that."

She sighed.

"I suppose it would have been better if he hadn't gone after the clothes at all." At Jarret's curious look Mary explained why the clothing had been on the trail in the first place. Some of her guilt came through in the telling, because Jarret was quick to point out that the events that followed were not her fault.

"There's not much comfort in that," she told him.

"So I may as well feel guilty." Mary pointed to the items Jarret was moving from his saddlebags.

"What do you have there to help Ryder?"

"Balms and tinctures," he said.

"Your sister made me bring them just in case."

"Then thank Rennie for me."