The harbor bustled with life when the cargo ship approached it after months spent at sea. But that's not what Amelia first saw when she peered over the railing on the deck across the wide span of wide ocean. She saw birds soaring over them, flying to and from shores and in circles overhead. They'd swoop down onto the ocean and she'd see them soar back up into the air again.

She'd been told by the sailors that they'd know when they reached land if they started seeing birds overhead and around them. So she'd gone out each day to look for them, she'd look towards the horizon and only see the water reach endlessly towards the edge of the world, no land in sight. Her father had put her on this ship. Her mother had remained back at the spread unable to say goodbye to her daughter. The sons remained behind, the ones that had survived life in the Outback except for the one who had jumped on a ship on his own to avoid being picked up for killing someone in a bar fight. He had told Amelia the night before he slipped away that he hadn't done any such thing.

Why don't you stay around and fight it, she'd asked him but he just smiled and she knew that he'd soon be gone. The trip on the boat had been arduous. She shared a cabin with the three other single women and she thought by the little time they'd spent there at night that they were keeping themselves busy elsewhere. She'd been sponsored by a well to do family in San Francisco who had paid her fare for her to come to grow up in a city that wasn't filled with outlaws. But that wasn't what had happened. They had picked her up off the boat and god, she'd so much wanted to sleep in a real bed and take a warm bath since both had been in short supply during the voyage.

They gave her a place to sleep and a place at the table…after the family finished its meal. They'd wanted a cheap, no make that a free domestic, a servant and so that's what she did in the new country. Then they were planning to arrange a marriage between her and a much older man. She'd been only 15 then and that had been when she'd met Pierce.

She'd been serving guests including some of the most prominent people in the city at one of the soirees at her host family's estate. After working in the kitchen all day, peeling vegetables until her hands turned red and then polishing the silver, she'd been told to carry out trays of refreshments to the guests who were talking in groups.

Pierce had crashed the party, as a cousin of the both the family and the man she'd been promised to without her knowledge. That man had been a banker in his 30s and though not bad to look at, he seemed to have a condescending attitude towards others not of his stature.

He'd been older than her too but not as old as the banker, very handsome, and extremely charming. Too charming as it turned out but she'd been too young and too naïve about her new world and the people who populated to see through him. He'd been educated at the finest schools including one back East or so he said. He's hung out with some of the most influential and powerful people including a couple of presidents or so he said. She never knew what was true in what he said and what would turn out to be some colorful tale he spun on the spot or kept building on to the point where he believed it.

They'd spent time together even though the host family didn't approve of it and she'd fallen in love with him but more than that she fell into his way of life. She knew she didn't want to marry some older man she didn't love, where was the romance in that? And back then, that had been what she wanted, romance and adventure and to see the world and experience it. Pierce had promised her all that if she'd go away with him.

She'd been a month shy of 16 when she'd married him. They eloped and he'd promised her if she did that, she'd be able to stay in American forever. Though she loved her family back in Australia, she knew she'd never be going back. Her father made her promise…and anyway with Pierce she had this exciting life in front of her…

It'd been good before it'd gone so bad. They did travel and see and experience things. But one moment he'd be charming her, the next he'd seem distant and then he'd take off and leave her for periods of time which gradually got longer…and his stories would grow less and less plausible. Still she loved him even though her instincts warned her not to do so.

They'd wound up in Paradise when the town boomed to the heavens with a gold strike and Pierce wanted into it. They wound up not just with a piece of a mine but the town's bank as well. The town had been Paradise and there, she crossed paths a couple years later with an enigmatic gunslinger named Ethan Cord.

Amelia's mind swam with all these images inside her head as she struggled to clear the darkness away that had fallen over her. She had felt intense and sharp pain but it had receded slowly away like a tide pulling away from a shore and then she just felt nothing. Was she dying or dead perhaps but she didn't see anything beyond this void let alone Heaven…or even Hell.

But what she felt was one thing…she felt a cord tugging her back to what she loved…the people that she loved including the man…but the tide against her proved to be unyielding…

Ethan had been searching for Burke and Trevor all day but neither man showed up. He had talked to Ernie again and the reporter couldn't give him any more information. He was going to head back to the ranch once Claire loaded Ben and George on the wagon to head on back. But as he boarded his horse and rode up to where they were waiting, he felt the pull to go to Bella's Ranch instead. Amelia had gone back there earlier he knew and he wanted to see her again before heading on home.

They hadn't made any plans and he supposed he could wait until tomorrow to see her but he didn't want to wait. He wanted to ride out to the ranch and see her there, spend time with her, making up for lost time. God, he'd missed her all those months. He'd sat on the porch swing of her old house hoping she'd come back and see him here. He felt sometimes if he left…she'd come back while he'd been gone. It had only been one sunlit afternoon when John Taylor had assured him that she'd return to Paradise that he'd been able to relax enough to trust in that, to live his life knowing that she'd be back to share it with him.

After all John Taylor had never been wrong in his predictions. He just knew people too damn well and he'd told Ethan several times that the road for him and Amelia would have its twists and turns in it…how else could it be for two people who were quite different from each other in many ways? They had argued often enough, been on the opposite sides of issues more than once but John Taylor reminded him that the two of them shared something more elemental and more important than what they didn't and that was love, deep and abiding. Try as one might, neither of them would ever be able to run away from that for long.

And he'd been right, not that they didn't face obstacles including what had happened to her but they'd get through them.

So he told Claire and the boys that he'd be riding out to Bella's ranch for a while but that he'd be home later that night.

He rode through the groves of trees and by the lake toward the winding road that would lead to Bella's spread but when he entered the clearing, he saw a different scene than what he'd expected.

Amelia remembered what it'd been like to be living in the days of prosperity in Paradise, back when she managed the bank that Pierce had won in a poker game and she'd straightened the mess it had become and got it working again. People didn't want to invest in it at first since a woman was running it but since it was the only game in town…they got over their reluctance quickly enough.

The bank had come with a nice horse, two stories with its very own parlor and when they'd moved into It, she had removed all the covers over the furniture and had made it their own. Putting her cleaning skills to good work while Pierce stayed away all day and into the nights conducting business as he called it…they had been talking about whether or not children factored into their life and she felt too young yet.

And she felt that that her husband still had some growing up to do himself much to her growing dismay. He'd been hooking up with some unsavory characters and one night…she'd been coming home late from working at the bank and saw two shady looking men slam her husband against the wall of a business and talk to him with loud voices. Her arrival led them to brush him off and walk away and when she'd asked him about it, he'd just smiled and said it had all been a simple misunderstanding.

She knew by then there was nothing simple about Pierce…even before the day arrived when she woke up and he'd simply been gone…

Her eyes sprung open and she looked up and saw an older man looking down at her, his eyes wrinkled in puzzlement.

"You're alive after all."

She tried to lift her head but she felt the sharp pain again.

"You hit your head hard it looks like…"

She frowned…no, she remembered it as something hitting her but the details were fuzzy and she felt the currents of the river threaten to pull her into darkness again, causing her to slip away…

Ethan rode up to where Bella stood with her own horse. He slid off of his and walked up to her.

"What's going on?"

Bella sighed.

"It's Amelia…she's supposed to have been back hours ago."

He frowned.

"She's not back?"

Then he saw her horse standing with its reins dangling down a short distance away.

"What's she doing here?"

"She came back on her own Ethan," she said, "We're about to saddle up and go look for her…something's happened…something bad."

He knew that too as certainly as he knew anything.

"I'll go look for her," he said, racing back to his own horse and the two of them galloped off across the clearing down the road.