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knowing the sorrel was well-acquainted with the path. Dev's association with Jared went back some eight years now. He had been seventeen the year they met, and he might not have seen eighteen if Jared hadn't found him lying unconscious near the border of his property and brought him back to the house for Mariah to nurse. A stupid, foolish act of his own had made the palomino throw him. He'd been crossing the Bryant land on his way home to the tribe, returning from a barely successful hunting trip. Game had been scarce that year and many of the braves had lit out on their own, hoping to replenish the dwindling food supplies in the village.
    Coming over a rise, he'd been startled to spot a deer, a large buck grazing beneath a stand of trees. Thinking only of how much meat he could bring home, he'd raced forward at breakneck speed, forgetting that neither he nor the stallion was familiar with the lay of the land. The horse stumbled, catching his foreleg in a gopher hole, and, though the animal recovered his footing, Dev was thrown and slammed to the ground, striking his head on a rock.
    Dev stayed with the Bryants for weeks, and when he had stubbornly insisted that he must get up and continue to hunt, an even more stubborn Mariah insisted he stay. Jared had wholeheartedly agreed that Dev hadn't the strength to travel, much less hunt. Jared had come up with the idea of taking some of the staples in their well-stocked cellar to the Blackfoot; and when Dev explained that Gray Hawk would be too proud to accept such an offering from a white man, Jared had made a cryptic statement that "he would from this white man."
    Despite Dev's doubts concerning the success of such a mission, he had silently been grateful and almost over-whelmed by Jared's generosity when the man left the next morning driving a wagon whose bed was packed full of provisions.
    Mariah, sensing that Dev was still puzzled over Jared's confidence that Gray Hawk would accept the offered bounty, explained Jared's previous association with Gray Hawk. She told him of her own Blackfoot heritage and hesitantly touched on the reasons for the split long ago between Jared and his blood brother, Gray Hawk.
    Perhaps it was the tenderness in her attitude as she cared for him or possibly the simple fact that he considered her the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but by the time Jared returned from the trip north, Dev was more than half in love with Mariah Bryant. It was a case of a boy's first love, idealistic and chaste, and he hid it well, unwilling to embarrass a woman who was obviously very much in love with her husband.
    Dev found he was actually reluctant to leave when he was finally well enough to travel. Jared and Mariah made sure he had adequate provisions and then joined him in the long, shaded gallery that ran the length of the front of the house to bid farewell. Jared had extracted a promise from him that he return to visit them as often as he could and had added that if he ever needed anything, to let him know.

    When at last Dev returned to the village, Gray Hawk had concerned himself with his adopted son's healing head injury and well-being, adamantly refusing to discuss Jared Bryant's visit or the food that had helped to ease the tribe's hunger. Though not one critical comment ever escaped the chiefs lips, Dev knew the second visit he paid the Bryants before they returned to England and the time he spent with them each year troubled Gray Hawk. Still, Dev enjoyed seeing Mariah and was drawn into easy companionship with Jared. At the end of each winter's snows, he looked forward to their arrival with warm anticipation.
    He and Jared grew closer with the passing years, and though the Indian life he'd been living for the past six or seven years was deeply ingrained, each time he headed for the Bryants'
    house, he had a feeling he was going home. The couple had only one child, a daughter Dev had never met, and though they were immensely proud of her, both of them