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Madeline Baker/Amanda Ashley

Prologue

He sat astride a big dun stallion, watching her hang a load of wash on a line stretched between two scrawny pine trees. She was young for a schoolmarm, only twenty-two or twenty-three, and more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen. Her hair was the color of sun-ripened wheat. Her face was oval-shaped, the skin smooth and clear, unblemished by freckle or mole. Her nose was small and delicately formed, her mouth as pink as a wild rose, her brows slightly arched above eyes that were a deep, deep brown. She was tall and thin, but not too thin. Her breasts were high and proud, her waist narrow, her hips nicely rounded.

In the old days, he would have ridden into the yard, grabbed the woman, and taken her to his lodge in the hills. He would have kept her there until he tired of her, and then he would have given to another warrior, or sent her back to her own people.

But not now. His people were no longer warriors and fighters, but farmers and drunkards, their once proud spirit subdued by too many years of living on the white man's reservation and too much firewater. Often, he yearned for the old days, the days his grandfather spoke of, days when the red man rode wild and free across the vast prairies and plains. But those days were gone, and the world was changing.

Rapidly changing. At the fort, he had heard talk of two men in a place called Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, who had built a machine that could fly like an eagle. There were horseless carriages that could go an incredible ten miles an hour. He himself had seen one such motor car at the Indian Agency and had been amazed by the odd-looking contraption. It had clattered loudly as it rolled down the dusty street, smelling of oil and smoke, spooking every horse and cow it passed.

He could see no advantage in such a machine. It was useless in the hills. It could not navigate a narrow, twisting deer trail through a forest, or swim a river, or climb a steep arroyo, or forage off the land. You could not use such a thing for hunting, for the noise alone would scare away every deer and rabbit within miles. No, he could not imagine why anyone would want such a loud and ugly thing, and yet it was said that the people in the East were buying them by the hundreds.

Yes, he mused ruefully, life was changing, and he was not ready to change with it.

He sighed heavily as he turned his horse for home. In the old days, he would have ridden into the yard and taken the woman who had sparked his desire and fired his imagination.

But the old days were gone...