"She was telling the truth about that. Whatever contaminated her water laid me out. It probably would have killed her if she had ever done more than sip it."

"Oh, I doubt she would have done that," Mary said frankly.

"How would she have known it was bad if she hadn't tasted it?" Mary sat back in her chair.

"Because she poisoned it, of course."

Chapter Twelve.

Ryder considered Mary's conclusion.

"You think Anna Leigh deliberately poisoned her own drinking water?" he asked.

"Why would she do that? What did she have to gain?"

Mary's eyes widened.

"Besides revenge?" He nodded.

"Goodness," she said softly.

"I am coming to admire Miss Anna Leigh Hamilton more at every turn. If I'm right, then she's really quite good at what she does." She leaned forward in her chair and explained patiently, "She poisoned her water to achieve exactly the end that happened."

"To create an opportunity to accuse me of rape?" he asked. Mary shook her head.

"That's been your mistake all along," she told him.

"You've made Anna Leigh's motives too personal. What happens if you consider she had a larger purpose?"

Mary did not have to wait long for Ryder to make all the same connections she had. The intensity of his thoughts was there in his eyes.

"That's right," she said, satisfied.

"She was the diversion. No one could have expected you to be pulled away from your duty by Anna Leigh alone. Certainly not Anna Leigh, not after her experience with you the night before. That's why she used some sort of drug in her water."

"She couldn't have known I would drink it." Mary recognized Ryder's pride was making him resistant to hearing her explanation.

"I'm sorry, Ryder, but I think she could. Anna Leigh was armed with the fact that you already had determined she was spoiled and manipulative. She used those very qualities to make you think she was lying about water. And it worked." Ryder stared at the far wall of the chamber, his half smile rueful. He considered how much Anna Leigh had learned about him the night before the Colter Canyon raid. He had shown that he did not suffer fools gladly, that he was not above humiliating someone to prove his point, and that he had no patience for feminine wiles. Anna Leigh Hamilton hadn't lost sleep over how to dupe him. He had built the trap for her. Ryder's light chuckle was humorless.

"I showed her." Mary smiled gently.

"It's probably little consolation, but I imagine you're not the first man she's taken in so completely."

"It's no consolation."

"Then how about this? I could be wrong." He looked at her.

"You've set about convincing me of one thing, and now you want to change your tune?"

"There's no proof," she said.

"That's all I'm saying. It's always been your word against hers."

"There was a little more to it than that," he said.

"Anna Leigh presented herself to the search party with a torn blouse and a few scrapes and bruises. The evidence, such as it was, was on her side. It seemed to offer an explanation for my absence during the raid."

"Can you remember any of it?"

"Nothing much after I drank the water. I was sick almost immediately and lost consciousness soon after. When I came around it was all over.

Anna Leigh had started walking back the way we came. She was found by Lieutenant Rivers and Private Carr. They hauled me out of the shelter and threw me over a saddle. I was in chains long before I understood the charges."

"So the trial centered around the supposition that you had been derelict in your duty, rather than that you'd been prevented from doing your duty. Is that the way it was presented?"

"That's right. Anna Leigh told her story once and it was all anyone had to hear."

"You must have had your advocates." He nodded.

"Character witnesses mostly. No one who could really refute Anna Leigh's story. The prosecution found a couple of scouts who had seen me with her the night before." He paused remembering how he had taken Anna Leigh to a more secluded part of the compound, how he had forced her back against the wall of the soldiers' quarters as if she were a whore, and how she had left angrily when she'd realized he didn't want her. He knew how it had looked to the witnesses.

They hadn't had to lie.

"The testimony was very damaging," he said quietly.

"Rosario?"

"He was one of them, but he spoke the truth about what he saw. There was no need for him to embellish the details to make a case against me."

"Then we'll have to find proof that undoes the case."

"That would be the gold itself."

"Perhaps." She rested her chin in the cup of her palm, thinking.

"If we assume Anna Leigh's role in your conviction was larger than a means of petty revenge, then we have a lead we didn't have before.

Finding the gold doesn't necessarily take us to the people who organized and carried out the raid, but following Anna Leigh may take us to the gold."

"Anna Leigh Hamilton is long gone from the Arizona Territory," Ryder said.

"She left with her father after she gave her testimony."

"Then the gold might have left with her."

Ryder looked doubtful. Mary's tone strove to be more convincing.

"We've been pouring over the maps as if they held the answer. They may have at one time, but now-so many months after the raid-the gold could have been moved."