Dennis nodded apologetically. "Sorry," he said. "Speak of the devil. That's probably Grandmother right now. She's never quite gotten the hang of the time change. She usually rings up early Sunday mornings before I go out to take care of the birds. She likes to keep tabs on me."

Angie tried not to listen as Dennis chatted with his grandmother. The idea of someone calling all the way from England to visit on the phone with someone sitting in a camper parked in the middle of nowhere in the Arizona desert seemed strange to her. But then, the things Angie Kellogg did would probably seem strange to most other people, too.

While Dennis was busy talking, Angie contented herself with examining an old framed but faded photo hanging on the wall between the table and the desk. In brown and sepia-tinged tones, it showed an endless line of hundreds of men dressed in heavy winter gear and loaded with huge packs climbing what appeared to be an almost vertical snow-covered mountain.

"My great-grandfather took that," Dennis explained when he got off the phone. "It's called Climbing Chilcoot Pass." He took the picture off the wall and handed it over to Angie so she could examine it more closely.

"Where's Chilcoot Pass?" she asked.

"Alaska. These guys were all part of the Klondike Gold Rush. The shortest way to get from the States to the gold in Yukon Territory was over this mountain pass from Skagway, then down Lake Bennett and the Yukon River both."

"They look like ants," Angie said. "How come they're all carrying so much stuff?"

"The Canadian authorities were worried that the miners were totally unprepared for the hardships of a Yukon winter. They didn't want half of them dying of hunger, so they sent Mounties out to patrol the border and make sure no one crossed into Canada without at least a year's worth of supplies-literally, a ton of supplies per man. That's what these guys are doing-hauling their supplies up and over the mountains in hopes of striking it rich."

"Did he?" Angie asked, handing the picture back. "Your great-grandfather, I mean. Did he strike it rich?"

"In a manner of speaking, he did," Dennis said. "He'd always been something of a black sheep-an adventurer. Over the years, this particular picture has actually made him famous in some quarters. But the Yukon got to him in the process, made him a believer. He lost all of his grubstake and most of his toes before he finally wrote home and asked for help. His father paid for his return passage to England. In exchange, he had to shape up and go into the family business the way everyone thought he should have done in the first place."

Dennis stopped and glanced at his watch. "Come on now," he said. "It is getting late."

Outside, the sky was just beginning to lighten into a pale gray. Once again, Dennis handed Angie up into the vehicle, closing the door behind her the way a gentleman might treat a lady or like someone handling one of those delicate bone china cups back inside the trailer.

For Angie, who had never before experienced that kind of treatment, it was a strange sensation. It made her feel all funny-both good and bad at the same time-as though she didn't quite deserve it. Still, she was gratified to realize that, despite all her worries beforehand, nothing at all had happened. She and Dennis Hacker had eaten breakfast together and enjoyed it. The food had been delicious and the conversation fun. He hadn't made a pass at her. Hadn't tried to get her into bed. In fact, there hadn't been a single off-color remark. In her whole life, Angie Kellogg never remembered having quite such a wonderful time.

"With all this cloud cover, it should be a glorious sunrise," Dennis told her. "And just wait till you see all those hummingbirds. They're unbelievable."

The red Miata convertible came screaming down Highway 80, ignoring the speed signs, almost missing the curve. Joanna, merging into traffic from the downtown area of Old Bisbee, switched on her lights and siren and fell in behind the other car.

In actual fact, that part of Highway 80 was inside the Bisbee city limits and, as such, outside the jurisdiction of the Cochise County Sheriff's Department. Since this was a dream, however, jurisdictional boundaries didn't apply. In real life, Sheriff Joanna Brady had never once made a traffic stop, but in the dream landscape, that didn't matter, either.

"Pull over," she announced in a voice that reverberated as though being broadcast through a huge megaphone. "Pull over and step out of your vehicle."

Ignoring the order, the driver of the Miata shot forward, racing down the grade onto the long flat stretch of highway that runs along the edge of Lavender Pit. Generations of speeding drivers have given that part of Highway 80 the unofficial name of Citation Avenue. The driver of the speeding convertible seemed determined to do her part to help maintain the legend, but Joanna wasn't about to be outdone. This was hot pursuit, and she was determined to pull over the speeding motorist.

With Joanna's Crown Victoria right on the Miata's back bumper, they raced down through the back side of Lowell and then onto the traffic circle. Around and around they went, time and again. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Miata simply stopped. As Joanna approached the vehicle, weapon in hand, the driver's side door popped open and a woman stepped out. She was tall and blond, wearing a miniskirt and a pair of impossibly high heels.

"Hands on your head," Joanna ordered.

"You can't do this to me, Joanna Brady," Rowena Sharp Bonham screeched. "You can't pull me over like a common criminal. I won't stand for it. I wasn't doing anything wrong."

"Yes, you were," Joanna told her calmly. "You were cheating."

She woke up then, laughing. For a moment she was disoriented by waking up outside the house rather than in her own bedroom, but that momentary jar gave way to a feeling of well-being. Mourning doves cooed their early morning wake-up calls. Across the Sulphur Springs Valley, dawn was tinging the sky a vivid orange. But something was different.

For weeks now, clouds had drifted up from the south each afternoon, bringing with them the tantalizing promise of much-needed rain. By morning they would retreat back into the interior of Mexico without leaving behind a trace of moisture. This time, though, the clouds were still there, billowing up in tall, puffy columns above the far horizon. From miles away across the thirsty desert came the welcome scent of an approaching storm.

Joanna had grown to adulthood with a desert dweller's unbridled delight in the prospect of a summer rainstorm. What she wanted to do more than anything that morning was to sit on her porch and watch the storm build. She wanted to track the wind and surging clouds of dust as they marched across the desert just ahead of the rain. She wanted to sit back and watch jagged flashes of lightning electrify the entire sky, and to listen to the rolling drums of thunder, but first, she wanted to make a pot of coffee and read the Sunday paper. In order to do that, she'd have to collect the paper from the tube down by the cattle guard.

She went inside. The house had been dreadfully hot when she came home the night before. To counteract the heat, she had left the swamp cooler running all night long. Overnight, both indoor and outdoor temperatures had dropped enough that now the house seemed almost chilly. The first thing she did was switch off the cooler. As soon as she did so, she was startled by how quiet it was. Far too quiet.

Don't stand around dwelling on it, she told herself firmly. Do something.

Throwing on a pair of jeans and one of Andy's old khaki shirts, she hurried into the kitchen to start the coffee. Then, after stuffing a carrot into her pocket and with both dogs trailing eagerly behind, she walked out to the corral.

In the last few months, since Bucky Buckwalter's horse Kiddo had come to live on High Lonesome Ranch, one of Jenny's weekend duties had been to ride the horse down to the end of the road to bring back the Sunday paper. Before Kiddo's arrival on the scene, Joanna herself would have driven down in the Eagle. This morning, while water dripped through the grounds in the coffeemaker, Joanna decided to take the horse herself and go get her newspaper.

As soon as the nine-year-old sorrel gelding heard the back door slam shut, he came to the side of the corral and peered eagerly over the fence. Ears up, whickering, and stamping his hooves, he shook his blond mane impatiently while Joanna stopped in the tack room long enough to collect a bridle. When she came into the corral, Kiddo gobbled the carrot and accepted the bridle without complaint.

"I'll bet you miss Jenny, too, don't you?" Joanna said soothingly, scratching the horse's soft muzzle once the bridle was in place. "That makes four of us."

Joanna had worried initially that Kiddo would be too much horse for Jenny to handle, but the two of them-horse and child-had become great friends. Jenny had taken to riding with an ease that had surprised everyone, including her mother. She preferred riding bareback whenever possible. Girl and horse-both with matching blond tresses flowing in the wind-made a captivating picture.

Joanna herself was a reasonably capable rider. For this early morning jaunt down to the cattle guard, she too rode bareback. The sun was well up by then. On the way there, she held Kiddo to a sedate walk, enjoying the quiet, reading the tracks overnight visitors had layered into the roadway over the marks of her tires from the night before. A small herd of delicately hoofed javelina-five or six of them-had wandered down from the hills, following the sandy bed of a dry wash. In one spot Joanna spied the telltale path left behind by a long-gone sidewinder. There were paw prints left by a solitary coyote. She saw the distinctive scratchings of a covey of quail as well as the prints of some other reasonably large bird, most likely a roadrunner.

Butch Dixon-a city slicker from Chicago-had come to visit the High Lonesome and had marveled at how empty it was.

It isn't empty at all, Joanna thought. I have all kinds of nearby neighbors. It's just that none of them happen to be human.

Coming back from the gate, with the folded newspaper safely stowed under her shirt, Joanna gave Kiddo his head. They thundered back down the road with the wind rushing into Joanna's face. It was an exhilarating way to start the morning.

No wonder Jenny liked Kiddo so much. It was almost like magic. On the back of a galloping horse it was impossible for Joanna Brady to remember to be sad.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Angie and Dennis arrived in the meadow off the south fork of Skeleton Canyon just as the sun came up. Settling into a rocky cleft, Dennis reached into his backpack and pulled out two pairs of powerful binoculars, one of which he handed to Angie. "There's no real trick to this," he said. "You just have to be patient. They'll show up eventually."

As promised, the hummingbirds appeared half an hour later. There they were, hundreds of them, hovering in vivid color against an overcast sky. "The dark green ones with the black bills are Magnificent Hummingbirds or Eugenes fulgens," Dennis explained. "The lighter greens-chartreuse almost with the orange bills-are called Broad-billed or Cynanthus latinostris. The ones with distinct red caps are male Anna's-Calypte anna."

Enchanted but also self-conscious that he knew so much more than she did, Angie held the binoculars glued to her eyes. "And the ones with the purple throats?" she asked.

"Male Lucifers-Calothorax Lucifer. I spotted some Black?chinned in here the other day, but I don't see any of them now.

Angie watched until her arms grew tired of holding the binoculars. When she took them down, she was surprised to find Dennis Hacker looking at her rather than the birds. Nervously, she cast around for something to say. "It doesn't seem fair that the males are always so much prettier than the females," she said.

"That may be true for birds," Dennis told her, "but it certainly isn't true of humans."

Embarrassed, Angie looked back at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He grinned. "It means you're beautiful," he said. "You're willing to hike a mile and a half uphill to watch birds at six o'clock in the morning. You're interested in my parrot project. What else is there? I think I'm in love."

Not knowing how to reply, Angie put the binoculars back to her eyes and said nothing.

"I'm serious, you know," Hacker continued. "I told my parents once that I was going to marry the first woman I ever found who was as interested in birds as I am."

In the few hours they had spent together, Angie had found Dennis Hacker to be pleasantly likeable, but she could tell from the way he spoke that he was serious. There was no point in letting things go any further.