"You don't. Not on a night like this."

"Then you'll have to go after her."

"Are you crazy? That's one h.e.l.luva storm. If she wants to get herself blown from here to Missouri, it's her business."

"You lazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Madison exploded. "If you had half as much interest in your daughter as you had in your chickens, she wouldn't be out there right now."

"How do you figure that?" Baker asked.

"You'd never understand even if I had time to explain."

As Madison headed back into the night, he felt certain that once again he had failed to guess Fern's destination. He was no more sure of his own. The only landmark Baker Sproull had given him was the Connor place. Once he pa.s.sed that, he was on his own. <><><><><><><><><><><><> The howling wind whipped the rain into a froth and flung it at Fern's face like thousands of tiny arrows. She would be soaked to the skin before she reached town. Her horse probably looked forward to reaching the livery stable as much as she looked forward to slipping into her warm, dry bed at Mrs. Abbott's.

She was tempted to turn around and wait out the storm at the soddy. She thought momentarily of stopping at home, but she doubted that her father would let her go back to Mrs. Abbott's. It was just as unlikely that Madison would let her remain without a confrontation. She wanted to avoid that.

Besides, she didn't want to see her father just yet. Tonight's ride had forced her to admit she wasn't ready to get back into the saddle. She might not want to admit that to Madison, but she had no trouble acknowledging it herself.

She also had some thinking to do about her own future. Madison had forced her to confront some truths about her relationship with her father. If she went back now, she would be stepping back into the same role for the rest of her life. She knew her father would never change. This was her one chance to be treated differently. She had to be certain of what she wanted. Once she made her decision, her father would never allow her to change it. He wouldn't want her to leave. But if she did, he wouldn't let her come back.

It hurt her to admit that, but she had known he had no warm feelings for her. If he felt anything, it was resentment that she was alive rather than her brother. All her life she had tried to fill the place of that dead infant. All along she had known she never could.

But what would she do if she left home? All of a sudden she knew what she wanted. And just as immediately she knew it was impossible. Madison would never ask her to many him. She was crazy to think he might. She would be even crazier to say yes if he did.

There couldn't be two more mismatched people in the whole country. It didn't matter that she thought he was the most handsome man in the world or that he haunted her dreams. It didn't matter that his kisses had planted hopes in her heart which even the most ruthless logic couldn't eradicate. It didn't matter that she kept telling herself she wanted nothing to do with being a woman and a wife.

She wanted to be with Madison for the rest of her life, but she didn't have the slightest idea how to bring it about. Not that the prospect of success didn't frighten her almost as much as the thought of failure. She couldn't work out the answers just now, not with the storm doing its best to sweep her away. She had to concentrate on getting back to town without being washed down some creek.

The presentiment that someone had followed her bothered her more than the rain. It grew stronger and stronger as it became more difficult to see the trail. A flash of lightning showed her an empty landscape, but she couldn't shake the feeling she wasn't alone.

Fern slipped her hand inside her slick and let her fingers close around the stock of her rifle. Just knowing she could protect herself made her feel better.

She peered into the night, straining to see and hear, but she couldn't have heard a stampede above the roar of the wind. Her body remained tense, her muscles taut. She fingered the rifle stock nervously.

She tried to think of what she could do to help Madison find Troy's killer. She tried to decide what to do when she went back to the farm. She even tried to think about going to the party with Madison, but she couldn't think of anything except that someone was out here with her.

The feeling was so strong she drew her rifle halfway out of the scabbard.

As the empty minutes rolled by, nothing happened. The lightning became less frequent, the rain eased off, but the wind whipped about her with such ferocity that she was conscious of little more than a nearly deafening roar in her ears. Even her horse wanted to find shelter in one of many dips in the prairie. Tomorrow morning Fern expected to see that virtually every tree had been torn up by the roots and blown away.

A bolt of lightning came to earth so close she could feel the searing heat; a deafening crash of thunder frightened a scream out of her; a rider appeared in silhouette less than thirty yards ahead.

Chapter Sixteen.

Instinctively Fern pulled her horse to a halt and drew her rifle. A second bolt of lightning threw the figure into silhouette once more, and she fired. Then turning her horse, she started back across the prairie at a gallop.

Common sense rea.s.serted itself almost immediately. No one in his right mind raced through a storm like this. She couldn't see. Her horse would almost certainly fall. Even if she didn't kill herself, the animal would probably have to be destroyed.

But as soon as her horse slowed to a trot, Fern's thoughts reverted to the man behind her.

That could have been her father or any one of a dozen men who had a perfect right to be on this trail. Whoever it was, she had shot him. She must have. She never missed. She couldn't just leave him.

She turned back but left the trail for a path on lower ground. The run-off from the storm would soon make it a dangerous route, but she should have time to reach the rider unseen.

The roar of the wind was so loud, Fern couldn't hear if the man had fired his rifle to call for help. A flash of lightning illuminated the landscape.

Nothing.

The water rushing along the streambed was rapidly becoming a torrent. Even now it swirled around her horse's legs. Soon it would become treacherous. Trees, branches, and other debris would make it lethal.

Another flash of lightning revealed a horse nearly a hundred yards away, the rider slumped in the saddle.

The man she had shot!

Feeling terribly guilty, Fern drove her horse up the sloping ground until she reached the trail. As she drew near the man, her fear returned. He could be anyone. She wasn't safe just because he was wounded.

Fern shook off her misgivings. She had shot him without provocation. He could be dying. She must help him. If there was danger, she had to risk it. She had never before let herself be ruled by fear. She didn't know what had happened to her tonight.

She approached warily. Between the dark and her horse's skittishness, she couldn't make out the rider's features.

''Are you hurt?" she called out as she drew close.

"Of course I'm hurt, dammit," the man answered. "You put a bullet in my arm."

It was Madison, and he was furious.

Fern's heart beat wildly. The full impact of what she could have done made her so weak she feared she might faint. She gripped the pommel to steady herself, but it was several moments before the blurred scene stopped swimming before her eyes. She could have killed the man she loved. And she probably would have if she hadn't fired so quickly. And all because of blind, stupid fear.

"You did say you were going to have my blood."

"Are you bleeding a lot?" she asked.

"I don't know. How much did you want, a cup? A pint?"

"I'll take you to the house." They had to shout to be heard even though their faces were only inches apart.

"I'm certain your father will be delighted to give me a matching bullet hole in my heart."

She'd worry about her father later. Madison was hurt, and right now that was all that mattered.

"I'll lead your horse."

"No, you won't," Madison yelled back. "If I can't make it on my own, I'll stay here until I can."

His anger and sarcasm made her feel better. Maybe she had hurt his pride more than his arm.

The roar of the wind hurt her ears. Both the horses were becoming difficult to control. She almost reached out for Buster's bridle when he tried to veer from the trail. Only the knowledge that Madison would never forgive her enabled her to draw her hand back.

"Is the wind always this loud?" Madison asked. "It sounds like a train coming up behind us."

Fern hadn't been paying much attention to the wind. But now that she did, she heard the ominous timbre. Normal storms didn't sound like that. She had heard that sound before.

"It's a tornado," Fern exclaimed.

"What?" Madison shouted.

"A tornado," Fern screamed into the wind. "We've got to find a place to hide."

They were too far away to reach the Connor place before the tornado would strike. She wished she could see. The horses plunged almost out of control. She took hold of Buster's bridle and pulled as hard as she could to get him to follow her off the trail onto the lower ground that led to the stream.

"We've got to find shelter," she shouted. The wind tore her words from her mouth, taking them past Madison and into the black void of the night.

She could see nothing, but she could tell from the horses' skittishness that what her ears were telling her was correct. The tornado was coming toward them. She just hoped they weren't in its path.

If they were, nothing could save them.

The rain was to her back. She peered into the night, trying to find a small gully she remembered playing in as a child. It lay between two trees near the stream, but she didn't know if she could find them in the dark.

The barely perceptible shadows of the trees loomed against the black sky. Digging her heels into her mount's side, Fern drove the frightened horses forward.

When they reached the trees, Fern dismounted and tugged and pulled the horses into the lee of the first tree. "Can you get down by yourself?" she shouted at Madison, but he slid from the saddle before the words left her mouth.

She struggled against the wind and the horses to tie them securely to the tree.

"Follow me," Fern shouted as she took Madison's hand and started to lead him toward a gully which appeared as a dark shadow on the ground.

Without warning, the roar approached a shriek and she heard a tree limb overhead crack. Before she could react, Madison threw his good arm around her, lifted her off her feet, and started running. They stumbled in the gully and fell, with Madison on top.

Immediately Fern forgot the tornado, the splintering tree, the torrents of rain, the screaming horses. She couldn't think of anything except that night eight years ago when a man lay atop her, ripping off her clothes, clawing at her body.

She fought Madison with all her strength. He was much bigger than she was; his weight nearly crushed her, but she fought to bunch her knees and push him away. All the while she screamed and clawed at him, hitting him with all her might. She was only dimly aware of the gut-wrenching cracking sound, the tree limb that fell over the gully and pinned them in place.

"What's wrong with you!" Madison shouted. "You trying to tear my arm off?"

"Get off me!" she screamed.

"I can't!" he shouted back, his mouth close to her ear. "My arm's caught under you."

He couldn't get off her until he could get his arm free. He couldn't get his arm free until he moved the limb. He couldn't move the limb until he could move off Fern. They were trapped.

Fighting against the suffocating wall of terror, Fern tried to tell herself she was with Madison, that he wasn't going to rape her. But nothing could loosen the grip of the unreasoning panic that held her in its grasp.

They heard the horses scream, then the world seemed to be obliterated by a whirling, twisting, screaming wind storm which all but sucked the breath out of her lungs.

Seconds later it was gone. Even the rain seemed to be slacking off.

"Are you all right?" Madison shouted.

The weight of the limb had pushed his face into her left shoulder. She could hardly understand hi-words.

"Can you get off me?" she shouted back. She felt dangerously close to the edge of panic. Anything could cause her to slip over. She clutched her hands at her side, trying to keep from screaming, trying to drive away the memory of another man.

"You're going to have to lift up so I can free my arm," Madison said.

Exerting all her strength, Fern managed to lift her body enough for Madison to pull his good arm from under her. He rolled off to one side, and some semblance of sanity returned. Taking several deep breaths, she tried to calm her racing heart.

Madison tried to lift the limb, but failed.

"I can't lift it with just one arm," he said.

They moved the limb together. The effort left her weak and panting, but the desperate need to be free of the gully, free of being so closely confined with Madison, drove her to her feet. The rush of air as she stood up helped restore her sense of reality.

She was stunned to see that a twisted stump was all that remained of one tree. Everything else had been torn away and hurled though the sky. Turning to look behind her, Fern could hardly believe her eyes. The second tree stood as it always had, its limbs intact, their horses still tethered to its trunk.

"Good G.o.d!" Madison exclaimed, gaping at the mangled stump. "I'd heard about tornados, but I didn't believe half of it until now." He climbed from the gully and walked over to inspect the torn and twisted stump. "Do you get these often?''

"No." She looked at him standing there, so big, so strong, so protective even with his injured arm. How could she possibly think he would hurt her? He had ridden into the teeth of a storm to find her.

But when she remembered the weight of his body on top of her, the panic threatened to overwhelm her once again. She would never be free of it.

"Let's get you to the house and see about your arm," she called to Madison and started toward her horse.

The rain slacked off and the sky started to clear, but they didn't talk much. She didn't have the energy. The events of the evening had left her weak and drained.

A sense of foreboding filled Fern before she noticed anything wrong. They should be approaching the house, but the prairie lay still and empty. Only when they came closer did she realize that the posts she saw were not fence posts. They were all that remained of the barn. With a strangled cry she dug her heels into her horse's flanks.

Madison galloped after her.

The house had vanished, too. Even the floorboards. It was almost as though the farm had never existed. The pig pen, the chicken coop, everything. One chicken staggered about, dazed. The tornado had chewed a clean path through the spa.r.s.e growth of trees and bushes. Pieces of dismembered vegetation lay everywhere.

Madison could only guess at the desolation she must feel at seeing everything she and her father had worked for, everything she a.s.sociated with her home, simply vanish as if it had never existed. He could understand the feeling of being cast adrift in a world that suddenly seemed cruel, strange, and very frightening.

He could understand because it had happened to him.

He put his arm around her. Her body remained stiff, immobile. He didn't know what to say. There was nothing he could say that would make any difference. He wondered where her father had taken shelter. As far as he could see, the ground was flat, without dips or folds.

There was no place to hide.

"I've got to find Papa."

"I'm sure he left long before the tornado reached here," Madison said. "Maybe he's with the animals."

But he didn't believe it. He remembered how hard it had been to control their horses. He didn't see how Sproull could have driven his livestock to safety alone. He'd have had enough trouble taking care of himself.