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entering the far northwest corner of the parade ground, the driver pulled up beside a large, flat-roofed, L-shaped adobe. Soft yellow light spilled from the windows onto the team, glancing off the metal rings on their rigging.
    Soldiers who had been heading for their quarters started running toward the returning detachment. Of the eight men sent out, five had survived the attack. The dead—the ambulance driver, and three others were being towed behind the troopers, tied facedown to the horses' saddles.
    The tranquility of the evening erupted into chaos as word of the detachment's return passed like wildfire from mouth to mouth. In less time than it took to brake the team, word had spread into the barracks and officers' quarters.
    Inside the curtained ambulance, Indy sat quietly in the right front corner, behind the driver's seat, trying to keep her eyes open and her mind alert for what she knew was coming. She heard variations of excitement, concern, and fear—the latter from the women.
    In a minute or two she would have to abandon the ambulance. She trembled at the thought of having to present herself to so many people at once, especially in her present condition. Besides her dishabille, and a bruising headache, she had yet to recover from the fear of the attack. She wondered if she ever would.
    "Stand back, now. Out of the way," ordered Sergeant Moseley in a tone that brooked no argument, not even from the commissioned officers. He waved his hand to move the people away from the back of the ambulance, then opened the drop gate. "Somebody get Doc and tell him he's got a couple of patients." On an afterthought he shouted, "And get Colonel Taylor."
    Indy shivered at the mention of her father's name. She dreaded the confrontation, had dreaded it from the moment the idea of joining him had been conceived, though she'd convinced herself that once he saw what a help she was, he'd forgive her for disobeying him. But now, after what Captain Nolan had unintentionally revealed, she wasn't so sure.
    Her eyes stung with welling tears, but she quickly squeezed them back, took a deep steadying breath, and straightened her shoulders. She would not let her father catch her with tears in her eyes; he loathed crying or weakness of any sort.
    Sergeant Moseley asked the man closest to him to help with the captain. Together, they lifted Nolan down to two other soldiers who carried him into the hospital.
    Captain Nolan had  not regained consciousness, but the  sergeant assured her that his chances were   good thanks to Shatto's field doctoring.
    Shatto.
    The formidable Apache warrior had not been out of her thoughts since they'd left Apache Pass. Stamped upon her memory were the hostile planes and angles of his face—lean and hard—his skin darkened by the sun and burnished by the wind. And his eyes . . . God, his eyes . . . She would always think of them as killing eyes . Looking into their cold, black depths had frightened her as nothing ever had, but later, when he'd come after something for a bandage . . . his eyes had fascinated her—the man had fascinated her in a way that was completely beyond her understanding. Even now, just thinking of him produced an odd emotional reaction and an even more peculiar physical reaction that made her straighten her spine and clamp her knees together.
    "Ma'am?" Sergeant Moseley stood before her.
    Indy looked up, interrupted from her thoughts. She rose slowly, holding on to his arm for support, and moved to the back of the ambulance. A collective gasp of surprise went up among the onlookers, followed by one woman's "Oh, the poor child."
    Sergeant Moseley jumped down, then reached up for her. Just as he set her on the ground there came a sharp command.
    "Attention!"
    Officers and enlisted men alike came to attention at the commander's order. The few women present, officers' wives and several laundresses, moved back out of the way.
    Colonel Charles Taylor, a flint-eyed career soldier, shouldered his