"Credit where credit is due," Anna said. "Thank you both."

"We stayed and petted him for one half of a hour," Alison added. "I kissed him on his head." That seemed to finish the subject in the child's mind. The top of her head disappeared from Anna's sight below the foot of the bed and sounds of rummaging ensued. Something ordinary being converted into a toy, Anna guessed.

"Thank you," she repeated, this time for Christina's ear alone.

Christina had brought a change of clothes, a comb and brush, hand mirror, colored hairbands, and some "Safari" cologne. "It seemed more fitting than 'White Shoulders,'" she explained.

Again, Anna started to cry. "Damn," she cursed herself and immediately regretted the fist she pounded into the coverlet in accompaniment. Pain shot up her shoulder and neck and into her skull. "I'm turning into a weeping willow," she complained.

"Heaven forbid!" Christina returned with easy laughter. "We can't have Anna Pigeon The Great And Terrible in tears. What is the world coming to? Here," she arranged Anna's pillows and, standing beside the bed, began to brush out her hair. "Hold this."

Anna held one pigtail in her hand while Christina French-braided the other side into a neat plait. "Already I'm feeling healthier, more together. The next braid might perform miracles. Where did you learn to do that?"

"Well, you can either go to beauty school or have a four-year-old daughter who is a little V. A. I. N."

"Vee, ay, eye, en: vain," Alison chanted by rote from the floor, where she'd dragged Anna's hiking boots from the closet.

Anna laughed. It hurt.

"Well, well," Christina said. "We learn something every day. So. Learn me. What happened? I thought you were Ms. Backwoodswoman, able to leap tall trees at a single bound."

"Fell off the trail," Anna replied. "Heavy gravity area." She was rewarded for the feeble and plagiarized witticism by the warmth of Christina's smile. She enjoyed even its reflection in the hand mirror where she watched the other woman's porcelain fingers weave her hair. "Will you come do my hair every morning till my collarbone heals?" Anna teased.

"Yes," Christina said simply and Anna believed her. "You don't whine half as much as Alison does when I pull too hard."

"Comb too hard, Momma," came a correction from the floor. "You make groves in people's heads."

"Grooves," Christina said mildly. "Gee, are, oh, oh, vee, ee, ess: grooves."

"Grooves," Alison repeated obediently and added: "In people's heads. Look! Magic! Alley shazam!" She stood. Anna could just see her head over the foot of the bed. The little girl held her finger out, a rock balanced on the tip. Slowly, she turned it over. The rock didn't fall off. "A sticky rock," she explained, as if to free her mother and Anna from unbearable suspense. With her other hand she plucked the magic rock from her finger and stuck it on her tongue.

"Alison!" her mother cried. "Stop that. For heaven's sake! You know better." If she hadn't held three strands of half-plaited hair strung through her fingers, Anna didn't doubt that she would have vaulted the bed and made the little girl spit the rock into her hand.

Unperturbed, Alison lifted the bit of gravel carefully off her tongue and stuck it on the bed's footboard. "Tastes like the paste in Dottie's toy box," she said.

Christina wrapped Anna's braids into a graceful figure eight and pinned them in place. As she put away the comb and mirror, Anna dabbed on a little cologne. She hoped Rogelio would come back. But not just now. She looked in the other woman's guileless face. The dark eyes were opaque today. "After the lion-taming episode, I was afraid you wouldn't ever speak to me again," Anna said.

"I thought about it," Christina admitted. "Sometimes you are such a pain in the pasta fazzouli, Anna!"

"Why did you come today?"

"I don't know. To clear my good name?" Christina smiled as she folded herself gracefully into the uncompromising right angles of the red plastic visitors' chair. "You're hurt. I like you. I'm here."

"Thanks," was all Anna could manage but it was, at least, sincere.

"I wouldn't take that kind of abuse from a lesser person, you know," Christina said. "I hope you're duly flattered."

"I hope you never take any abuse from anybody, ever," Anna said seriously. Christina looked a little startled at her vehemence, and Anna wondered if she'd hit a nerve.

"Will you come shoot anyone who tries?" Christina teased.

"No problem."

"Why, Anna Pigeon!" Christina said lightly. "I do believe you care. Say you'll come visit me in prison after you put me away for killing my lover."

"It's a promise. I'll bake you a cake with a file in it every year on your birthday."

Then they talked of baking, both glad to change the subject.

Christina and Alison stayed another hour, an hour that passed quickly for Anna. She was sorry to see them leave.

When she was again alone, she looked at the mail that Christina had brought. Too tired to read but not sleepy, she flipped through bills and credit card offers. Near the bottom of the tidy bundle was a phone message from the police lab in Roswell, New Mexico, where she'd sent the samples scraped from Karl's truck. All the note said was Tim Dayton had called and the number.

The next item was a blue, sealed, For Your Eyes Only envelope. Inside Anna found a copy of the four-page autopsy report on Sheila Drury. Paul had finally come through. She set the report aside to be read when her mind was sharper.

Last in the pile was a packet of photos. The pictures Anna had sent in a mailer to Kodak from Ranger Drury's camera. She opened the package. There was nothing of interest: photos of cholla in bloom, several shots of Gabe-the Dog Canyon horse-being shod by Karl, and four pictures of lightning over the hills north of Dog Canyon all taken from funky, artsy angles.

Rogelio didn't come and Anna began to feel depressed. Merely the drugs wearing off, she told herself. Partly, at least, that was true. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, she hurt.

Irritably, she rang the nurse and demanded more painkillers. She was given two Advils.

Simply to spite consciousness, Anna tried to sleep. She had almost attained her goal of temporary oblivion when she was pulled from the confused dreams of half-sleep by a tap on the door. Optimism kept her eyes closed for a second, in her drowsiness she hoped Zach would be standing at the foot of her bed.

Reality came with its usual quick brutality. Zach vanished. Anna opened her eyes, fully awake.

Harland Roberts stood in the doorway. He leaned against the doorframe. The setting sun, slanting through the hospital windows, dyed the white streaks at his temples a rich gold and glowed on his sunburnt skin.

Surprise cleansed Anna's mind of the lingering cobwebs of dreams. Two emotions filled her. Neither of which was particularly welcome: an annoyingly girlish pleasure at the sight of the hothouse flowers held negligently down by his thigh, and a sudden rushing love of Christina Walters for dressing her hair and giving her cologne.

"A bribe," Harland said. When he smiled the resemblance to Stewart Granger was startling. He held up the flowers. Yellow roses. "Can I buy your silence?"

"I'm easy," Anna said.

"I doubt that," he returned and there was that in his voice that would've made Anna blush if she'd been the blushing kind. He confiscated her water pitcher and began arranging the flowers with an expert domesticity that seemed natural to him. "My wife is a decorator-was a decorator," he amended and ducked his head to his work so Anna couldn't read his face.

"Yellow rose of Texas," Anna said. She could see the smile wrinkle the skin high on his cheekbone. "What am I to keep quiet about?"

He stopped his deft fiddling and looked straight at her, his gray eyes unwavering. "That stretch of trail above Turtle Rock should've been brushed and leveled. I've been meaning to send someone up to do it. I put it off. You could've been killed. It's fixed now. Nothing like shutting the barn door after the cows get out."