Chapter One

Spring 2100

Juanita Little Horse wiped away her tears as she and her boyfriend, Carter Jennings, took the last of her possessions out of her parents’ house. Carter was white and although she knew her parents each had whites in their background, they had forbidden her to be with him.

When she could hide the evidence of her pregnancy no longer, she broke the news to her parents. Their immediate response was that she was no longer welcome in their home.

“You were taught better than to give into the demands of the first man to pay you any attention,” her father accused. “You are no longer a daughter of mine. If this man is so important to you, he can have you.”

She’d turned to her mother for support only to be met with a cold, hard stare.

“Fine,” she shouted, as she started packing her belongings. “This is your grandchild, but you will never see him. We’re going far away from here.”

Carter helped her load the last of her belongings into the cargo area of the hover craft. Once everything was secured, they took their seats and prepared for lift off.

With sadness, she looked back at the only home she’d ever known. She thought perhaps her parents would at least wave good-bye to her, but she was mistaken. The front yard of their neat home was empty. Even her younger brother and sister were conveniently out of sight.

“Don’t cry, honey. We can crash at my place until we know where we want to settle. It’s not as big as your parents’ house, but it’s in a good neighborhood. I have a lead on a job in Colorado. They said they’d let me know by the end of the week and we can say good-bye to Montana forever. It will be the two of us against the world.”

“What about your parents?”

“I told you, they are no longer with us.”

Juanita’s tears flowed faster. “It must be the pregnancy. I’m usually not someone to cry at the drop of a hat.”

She paused and suddenly remembered something. “I-I don’t have my identification. I was in such a hurry. I didn’t have time to look for my birth certificate. I have no way to prove who I am. We have to go back and get it.”

“Do you know how far we’ve come? If we turn back now, we won’t get to my apartment in Sundance until well after dark. This is an old enough model craft that the night vision doesn’t work for shit.”

Panicked, Juanita reached for the controls, sending the hover craft into a tailspin.

~ * ~

Sirens screamed through the night as emergency craft converged on the Laughlin Ranch, located at the southeast corner of the state of Montana.

“I saw it go down,” Pete Laughlin said. “It looked like the pilot lost control and it went into a spin before it crashed, right here in the middle of my cow pasture. From what I could tell, there were only two people in it.”

“It looks like the man is dead, but he’s so badly burned, I don’t know if anyone could identify him, Sheriff,” the first medical tech on the scene reported. “I don’t know how it happened, but the girl was thrown away from the fire. She’s still alive, but probably not for long. She’s also pregnant. If we want to save the baby, we’ll have to transport her to the closest hospital as soon as possible.”

The captain in charge agreed and watched as the rescuers secured her into the ambulance. He wanted to go with her and see if she could give him some sort of a statement as to how the accident occurred. Instead, he knew he needed to stay behind and try to figure out who these people were.

Debris was spread across the lush, green pasture. Checking it out, he decided one or both of them were in the process of moving to a different location.

“Who are you?” Sheriff Collins asked, knowing full well he wouldn’t receive an answer.

Turning to one of the officers with him he asked, “Were you able to get a VIN on the craft?”

“Everything was burned too badly. How the girl survived is anyone’s guess. If you ask me, I’d say this was a stolen vehicle, but who would steal something this old? The damn thing shouldn’t have been flying in the first place.”

“From the looks of things, they were just kids. The girl couldn’t have been anywhere near her twentieth birthday. It’s a shame, a damn dirty shame.”

~ * ~

The emergency room of the country hospital buzzed with activity. Dr. Christopher Parker got the call about a hover craft accident on a remote ranch several miles away from the hospital. He wasn’t looking forward to receiving the sole survivor of the crash. From the report he’d received, his patient was a young woman who was at least seven months pregnant. The prognosis didn’t sound good. It was entirely possible he would lose two patients before the night was over.

The air ambulance arrived and two med techs wheeled in a young woman lying motionless on the gurney.

Dr. Parker wasted no time in examining his patient. Although her skin color was fair, he could see her blood matted hair was originally dark black and her high cheek bones denoted a Native American heritage in her lineage.

It was evident she wouldn’t last the night, but there was a fetal heartbeat. He knew he had to do his best to save this tiny life. Calling up to the operating room he made the arrangements for a Caesarean section to be done to deliver the child.

An hour later, he received word the child had been born, but the mother had perished. Being so premature, the baby boy weighed only one pound, eleven and a half ounces. It was entirely possible he wouldn’t survive the night.

“Do you know the name of the mother?” the nurse who approached him asked.

“From what the police have told me, neither the boy nor the girl had any identification. I know we have to name him something. I’ll give him my first name and since the accident happened on the Laughlin Ranch, why don’t we name him Christopher Laughlin? It won’t matter because I’m certain the boy won’t make it through tonight, to say nothing of growing to adulthood.”

~ * ~

Six months later, Dr. Parker received a call from the neonatal unit that Christopher was ready to be released from the hospital. Over the past six months, he’d visited the unit often checking on the baby he’d saved when he couldn’t do the same thing for his mother.

The vision of the dying young mother and the premature baby who didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving came to mind. It was a night he would never forget no matter how many days, weeks, months or years passed.

“Who are you going to release him to?” he finally asked.

“Since he has no parents and we know of no other family, we’re sending him to Henderson Ranch in Nevada. They take in unadoptable children.”

Dr. Parker was confused. “Why is he unadoptable?”

“Don’t you know? No agencies want to deal in mixed breed children. His DNA came back and his origins are Cheyenne and European. The Cheyenne don’t want him and there’s not a couple listed in the system who want to take on someone like him. With his mother being Native American and his father completely unknown, it’s a risk to say the very least. It was the thought of the officers at the scene that the hover craft the parents were flying in when the crash happened was stolen. Of course, with the Vin number burned off, there was no way to verify their assumptions. Would you want to adopt a child with that kind of a background? Henderson Ranch is the best place for him.”

Dr. Parker tended to agree with the nurse, but he felt sorry for the child who would grow up without the love of his parents. At this point in his life, he wasn’t able to even think of adopting a child. He and his wife had three children. Between his busy schedule at the hospital and her position at a prestigious accounting firm, there was no time to take on what could turn out to become a very troubled child. It was for the best if he was sent somewhere equipped to handle such children.