Buch lesen: «Bride of the Wolf»
Praise for the Novels of New York Times bestselling author Susan Krinard
“Susan Krinard was born to write romance.”
—Amanda Quick
“Darkly intense, intricately plotted, and chilling, this sexy
tale skillfully interweaves several time periods, revealing
key past elements with perfect timing but keeping the reader
firmly in the novel’s ‘present’ social scene.”
—Library Journal on Lord of Sin
“Krinard’s imagination knows no bounds as she steps into the
mystical realm of the unicorn and takes readers along for the
ride of their fairy-tale lives.”
—RT BOOK Reviews on Lord of Legends, 4½ stars
“A master of atmosphere and description.”
—Library Journal
“A poignant tale of redemption.”
—Booklist on To Tame a Wolf
“With riveting dialogue and passionate characters,
Ms Krinard exemplifies her exceptional knack for creating
an extraordinary story of love, strength, courage and
compassion.”
—RT BOOK Reviews on Secrets of the Wolf
Also available from Susan Krinard
from www.millsandboon.co.uk
COME THE NIGHT
DARK OF THE MOON
CHASING MIDNIGHT
Susan Krinard
Bride of the Wolf
In memory of all the great Western movie directors I love:
Anthony Mann, Delmer Daves, and John Sturges,
and for the great Western actors:
Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Glenn Ford,
Richard Widmark, William Holden, Clint Eastwood, Audie
Murphy, Jack Elam, Eli Wallach,
and Lee Van Cleef.
Acknowledgment
Thanks to Susan de Guardiola and Jeri and Mario
Garcia for their help with the Spanish language.
Prologue
Pecos County, Texas, 1881
JEDEDIAH MCCARRICK WAS DEAD.
Heath rode carefully around the body sprawled at the bottom of the draw, gentling Apache with a quiet word. The horse was right to be scared. Jed hadn’t been dead more than a few days, and the scent of decay was overwhelming.
An accident. That was the way it looked, anyhow. Half Jed’s skull was bashed in, and his legs stuck out at strange angles. The rocks were sharp around here, and plentiful.
But Jed was a damn good rider. You had to be, in the Pecos, so far from civilization. The old man had been on his way home, just as his letter had said. He would have let go the cowboys he’d hired for the drive once it was finished, and he didn’t trust many people. He would have risked riding alone rather than let some stranger get close to his hard-earned money.
That was his mistake.
Heath dismounted and scanned the horizon. Jed’s horse was gone, so there was no way to be sure exactly how it had happened. Maybe something had spooked the animal: a rattler, a rabbit, a gust of wind. Heath couldn’t smell anything but the stink of rot, no trace of another human who might have been around when Jed died. Any hoofprints or tracks had been blown away. If some drifter or outlaw had helped Jed to his grave and taken his horse, he was long gone.
I should have been with him, Heath thought. But Jed hadn’t wanted him along.
The old man hadn’t acted like the others when he found out, when Heath was stupid enough to forget all the hard lessons he’d learned. Jed wasn’t easily scared. He hadn’t yelled or run away or tried to shoot him. He’d pretended it didn’t matter, that Heath was still like a son to him.
But Heath had known Jed was lying. He knew what he saw in the old man’s eyes. Jed had understood that Heath would never hurt him, but he was still human. The only reason he’d kept so calm and reasonable was that he needed Heath at the ranch to keep Sean in check. He’d been willing to use Heath’s secret for his own ends—until Sean was no longer a problem and he could run Heath off like the animal he was.
Heath laughed. It was almost funny that Jed was more worried about his nephew than a man who wasn’t even human. The devil knew why Heath had stayed on. He supposed that three years of friendship, of letting himself trust the man who’d saved his life, had held him at Dog Creek. That and his contempt for Sean. He’d owed Jed, and he had meant to pay off the debt. But Heath had been ready to ride out as soon as Jed returned and could deal with Sean himself. That would have been the end of it.
He just hadn’t expected this kind of end.
Apache snorted and tossed his head. “Easy, boy,” Heath murmured, and knelt beside the body. He touched the bloody depression beneath Jed’s thinning hair. The old man had probably died quickly. No sign of knife or gunshot wounds.
Closing his nostrils against the stench, Heath patted Jed’s waist and pockets. Nothing. If he’d brought the money back with him, he would have carried it in the saddlebags. Everything he’d received for the sale of fifty percent of Dog Creek’s beeves, driven north to Kansas and the rail lines.
Before he’d left, before Heath had made his big mistake, Jed had expected to make a good profit. Enough to buy better stock, make Dog Creek grow into a concern that could compete with Blackwater on its own terms. No more risky investments that brought Dog Creek to the brink of ruin. No more wild ideas. No more foolish dreams.
And no more free money for the worthless peacock of a nephew who thought he could bend Jed around his saddle horn like a twist of rope.
Heath’s lips curled away from his teeth. Sean had been Jed’s one weakness. It had taken the old man a long time to realize Sean didn’t care for anyone but himself. If Jed had lived, he would finally have shown his nephew that he wasn’t going to be led around by the nose anymore.
But Jed had waited too long. Once everyone found out the old man was dead and Sean got his hands on Dog Creek, he would sell it to the Blackwells. All Jed’s hard years of work gone for nothing.
The wind shifted, momentarily clearing away the stench and the raw feelings Heath couldn’t seem to kill. He caught a whiff of a new scent. Old leather and horse sweat, not Apache’s. He sucked in a deep breath and followed the smell to the base of the stony hillside that rose up from one side of the draw.
The saddlebags had been thrown far enough back under the rocky overhang that an ordinary man might never have found them. Heath crouched and dragged them into the light. They were full to bursting. He didn’t have to open the flaps to know what they contained.
Someone had put the saddlebags here. An outlaw would have taken them just like he would have taken Jed’s horse. Had Jed seen someone he didn’t know, gotten nervous and decided to hide the bags before he died?
Heath stood up, a knot in his belly. Maybe Jed’s death had still been an accident, and the old man had lived just long enough to try to keep the money out of the hands of any stranger who might run across him.
But there’d been another accident some years back, a trail boss who’d gotten his neck broken when Heath—who’d been using his own name then—was there to see it. Only, no one else had. And someone had figured out that he wasn’t who he claimed to be, a simple cowhand looking for work wherever he could get it.
Heath had never before been taken by the law despite all his years outside it. There’d been a jail cell and the endless wait for a trial, his fate settled before he ever stood in front of a judge. But they hadn’t reckoned on a prisoner who was stronger and faster than any normal man. After he broke out, they’d added another crime to his tally.
Heath tilted his face toward the sky and closed his eyes. If he’d been a normal man, he might have done the right thing and ridden to Heywood for the marshal. No one else in this part of West Texas knew what he could become. The money was still here. There was no reason for anyone to think he’d killed Jed. Even if someone remembered that other death hundreds of miles from the Pecos, no one had recognized him in three years, or made any connection between “Holden Renshaw” and Heath Renier.
But if there was a chance, even one in a million, that someone could put those facts together …
Not even a loup-garou could hang more than once. Heath had been ready to die plenty of times, even when the wolf inside him kept on fighting to keep him alive. But he could never go back to that cell, those bars, the man-made hell that left him alone in his human body, trapped by memories and feelings he’d outrun for so long. Remembering that the one man he’d let himself trust in nearly ten years had been just like the rest.
Apache nickered, feeling Heath’s anxiety. Heath calmed himself down and opened one of the saddlebags. A heavy bag of coins was neatly packed inside. Heath didn’t touch it. The other pouch held more coins. And something else. A bundle of small folded sheets, bound together with a bit of frayed ribbon, and a roll of leather tied up with a cord.
Thick paper crackled as Heath unrolled the leather. There were three sheets inside, dense with writing. He smoothed out the first across his knees.
Reading had never been one of his best skills, but he knew what he was holding. As he picked his way down the paper, the knot in his belly squeezed so he could hardly breathe.
The will left almost everything to him. The ranch, the proceeds from the sale—and money Heath hadn’t known Jed possessed, locked away in a bank in Kansas City. Money that made Jed a wealthy man.
Maybe Jed had been hiding that money from Sean, or from people he owed. Heath didn’t know what had been going on in Jed’s mind. He sure as hell hadn’t known about any will giving him Dog Creek.
Not that it mattered now. Someone had drawn a dark line all the way across it from corner to corner and blacked out the signature at the bottom of the page.
Hands shaking like a boy in his first gunfight, Heath unrolled the other two sheets. The second was a will leaving everything to Sean, dated two years ago. It, too, was crossed out.
The third will wasn’t signed or dated. The name at the top meant nothing to him.
Rachel Lyndon.
He picked up the smaller bundle of papers and lifted it to his nose. It smelled like Jed. And someone he’d never met.
Heath untied the ribbon, and one of the folded sheets fell into the dirt. The letter had been sent from Ohio. The paper was browned, the edges bent as if someone had read it over and over again.
When Heath was finished with it, he put it back with the other letters, rolled up the second and third wills in their leather sheath and set it on the ground. His heart was rattling around in his chest like brush tossed by the wind. He missed his first try at striking a spark; the second time he got it right, and nursed the tiny flame until it was just big enough to burn a sheet of paper. He watched the first will catch and smolder until there was nothing left of it but ash.
The leather sheath rolled sideways in the wind, and Heath picked it up. He was beginning to lose whatever sense he had left. Burning the will didn’t solve his problem. Jed hadn’t been much good with accounts and paperwork, but Heath couldn’t be sure that the ones he had were the only copies. The last unsigned will and what it contained could make it look as if Heath had a motive to kill his boss before Jed finished it. Before Jed went through with the crazy thing he’d planned.
But it didn’t make any difference if there were other copies of the will somewhere. Jed’s decision made it easier for Heath to be sure of his own. The old man had lied to Heath in more ways than one. Even if Heath hadn’t revealed himself, Jed would have ruined everything by bringing a woman to Dog Creek.
Any debt Heath had to the old man had been paid with hard work and loyalty. The woman Jed had planned to marry meant nothing to Heath, and he didn’t owe anything to most of the hands, who’d never much liked him anyway. Maurice was too good a cook not to find a place at some other outfit.
He would feel a little bad about leaving Joey, but he had some money he could give the boy before he lit out.
That was his last obligation. Sean could claim the ranch and sell it to the Blackwells, will or no will, and Heath wouldn’t try to stop him.
He pushed the sheath and the bundle of letters back inside Jed’s saddlebags, carried them over the hill and stripped out of his clothes. The Change was complete in a painless instant. The world came sharply into focus, every scent, every sound crisp as a December morning. He’d know if any human came within ten miles of the place.
Shaking out his fur, Heath picked out a likely spot and set about the task at hand. When the hole was wide and deep enough, he seized the saddlebags in his jaws and dropped them in. He covered the hole, scraping at the dirt with his powerful hind legs. Only when he was finished did he Change again and look over his work.
It was good. The ground was already rough, and a few tossed pebbles made the spot look just like everything else around it. No human would be able to find it.
Heath put on his clothes, secured his gun belt and returned to Apache, who sniffed at him and snorted. Heath mounted and urged the gelding out of the draw. The money could have been useful, but he didn’t want anything else from Jed. The old man could lie easy knowing he would keep something of what he’d earned.
A jackrabbit burst from the cover of a dead mesquite and bounded away. A cottontop cried from the brush. Heath felt the wide-open land all around him, beckoning.
One last trip to the house, and he would shake the dust of the Pecos off his boots forever.
“Adiós, Jed,” he said, touching the brim of his hat.
For the first time in three years, Jedediah McCarrick didn’t answer.
“SOMEONE’S COMIN’ TO Dog Creek.”
Sean could still hear Jed’s voice as he guided Ulysses down the steep slope of the draw. “She’ll be makin’ things different here,” the old man had said. “With her and the money I got from the sale, I’m goin’ to make Dog Creek what it ought to be. No more debt, Sean. No more money wasted on your gamblin’ and them bad ideas you talked me into.”
Only it hadn’t quite gone as Jed had planned. The coyotes and buzzards had done such a good job that Jed was already unrecognizable. Only his clothes and his gold tooth would identify him now.
Sean kept his distance and began looking for the saddlebags. He searched under every rock and bush, scraped at every rough spot in the dirt, circled the area in every direction until he knew he had to stop if he wanted to get back before the sun rose.
Cursing, Sean gripped the carved ivory handle of his gun and wished he had something to shoot. For the dozenth time he went over the encounter in his mind, searching for a clue, a hint of what Jed had been thinking when he’d hidden his money.
The old man had surprised Sean when he’d sent the letter asking his nephew to meet him at the western border of the ranch. Jed had made sure to arrive on the very day he’d promised. He’d planned it all carefully, just so he could give Sean the news.
Sean closed his eyes and leaned over the saddle horn. The first words had been a shock. He’d always had what he wanted from the old man before. The allowance, the education back East … everything but the life he deserved. The life Jed owed him. The life he could have when he sold Dog Creek to the Blackwells.
Now that was all undone. Sean had shouted at Jed, cursed him, even pleaded at the end. For once Jed hadn’t backed down.
“You think you’re gettin’ the ranch,” he’d said. “You ain’t gettin’ a penny, not of this money or off the property. As soon as we’re married, it’s all goin’ to her.”
Some woman he’d found in an advertisement for mail-order brides. A female so desperate that she would expose herself in a newspaper, begging for a man to support her. A bitch from some little town in Ohio who had no claim on anything belonging to the McCarricks.
Sean had only meant to scare the old man at first. He’d pulled his gun and asked Jed where he’d put the money.
But Jed hadn’t talked. Sean had almost shot him then and there, until he realized just how stupid that would be.
It had to look like an accident, of course. One shot past the horse’s ear was all it took. Jed was damn fond of the bronc, but he should have known it had never been fully broken. It tossed Jed so hard that Sean didn’t have to lift a finger to finish the job, though he’d had to work a little harder to drive the horse far enough away that he could run it over a convenient cliff.
He’d meant to stay and look for the saddlebags. But he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Now he was paying for his lapse.
Jerking sharply on the reins, Sean turned Ulysses for home. The saddlebags might be lost to him, but he wasn’t about to give up on the rest. He’d already gone looking for the will Jed had spoken of, searching the house as soon as he could manage it without being seen.
But there had been no will, only a handful of receipts and random papers stashed in a hole in the wall behind the massive kitchen range that Jed had hauled in all the way from San Antonio.
Sean nicked Ulysses’s sides with his spurs, and the stallion leaped into a run. The cursed thing had to be somewhere. Maybe Jed had it filed away in some bank for safekeeping. If it was anywhere to be found, Sean would find it.
He rode at a reckless pace back to the house, running Ulysses to complete exhaustion. Most of the other hands, including Renshaw, were still on the range, and Maurice was nowhere in sight. Sean rubbed Ulysses down and returned to the tiny foreman’s cabin he’d taken when Holden moved into the house with Jed. He threw a chair across the room, smashed the mirror over the washstand and nearly put his fist through the window. When he could think again, he sat on the edge of the bed and composed his thoughts to an icy calm.
Jed had said the woman would be arriving on the next stage. The stage only came to Javelina twice a month, and Jed had been dead less than a week. Another was due in a matter of days. Rachel Lyndon would arrive expecting to marry a settled rancher who would provide for her needs.
But Jed was gone and she had no lawful claim on Dog Creek. If Sean planned things right, Rachel Lyndon could be encouraged to turn right around and go back to where she came from.
Sean allowed himself a smile and stretched until his bones popped. He would have a little talk with the drifter who’d come by the other day looking for work. Like most men, he was a sheep, easily led and ready to obey a man who knew how to balance bribery and threat.
Whistling a tune he’d heard last week at the Blackwells’, Sean went to clean himself up.
Chapter One
THE BABY THRUST its tiny fists in the air and wailed.
“It’s yours,” Polly said, pushing the bundle toward Heath. “Frankie said so right before she died.”
Frankie was dead. It was strange to think the woman he’d visited every month for two years, who’d given him what his body had to have, was gone. For just a minute he almost felt sorry. Whore that she was, she’d done nothing to deserve dying before her time.
But this …
Heath backed away, staring at the red and wrinkled face.
His? It wasn’t possible.
But it was. The last time he’d seen Frankie had been about eleven months ago. Heath didn’t know a damn thing about babies, but he thought this one was pretty new.
“He’s two months old,” Polly said impatiently, holding the baby closer to her chest. “Frankie died bringin’ him into the world. The least you can do is own up to your part in it.”
The letter in Heath’s pocket was fit to burn a hole through his vest. It had been waiting for him at the house the day he’d found Jed. He’d gotten only a handful of letters before, all from the old man. Never one like this.
Come right away, the letter said in Frankie’s stiff, uneven writing. You have a son.
The first thing he’d done was laugh. Frankie was a whore, but she did like her little jokes. Only after he’d read it twice more did he start to think she meant it.
If he’d been in his right mind, he would have ridden north, the way he’d planned, crossing the Pecos at Horsehead and heading into the Llano Estacado before anyone knew he wasn’t coming back.
He didn’t know if it was the human part of him or the wolf that made him turn south to Heywood, or which part was most scared when he looked at this helpless little mite that had spit on its face and a head almost smaller than Heath’s fist.
“It could have been any of the men she saw,” he said roughly, heading for the door. “Find someone else.”
“Renshaw!” Polly yelled, coming after him. “We can’t keep him here!” She shifted the baby in her arms and gestured with one hand at the garish wallpaper and cheap, gaudy furniture that made Polly’s room of a piece with the rest of the whorehouse. “We don’t have time to look after him, and what kind of life could he have as a whore’s son?”
Heath shoved his hat farther down across his forehead. “That ain’t my problem.”
“He’s your kid, Renshaw!”
The hair on the back of Heath’s neck bristled. He turned around and closed his eyes, letting the wolf take over.
At first all he could smell over the rank stench of the bordello were traces of the kid’s scat, the soap someone had used to wash it away, and a kind of milky musk. Below that was a human scent, but different, like the smell of a colt was different from its dam.
And under that …
Heath tried to tell himself he’d imagined it. It wasn’t as if he’d smelled loup-garou cubs before. But it was there, undeniable, faint but true. The odds against Frankie lying with another loup-garou at just the right time were bigger than Heath could calculate.
Hellfire.
Without warning, Polly pushed the infant into Heath’s arms. He nearly dropped it; only his animal reflexes spared it a nasty fall.
“Be careful!” Polly scolded. “Here. Hold him like this.”
She adjusted his arms so that they supported the baby’s head and tiny body. “There you are, little one,” she said in the gentlest voice Heath had ever heard out of her. She tickled the baby’s shapeless face with a fingertip. “See? Your daddy’s here.”
Heath was too numb to say a damn thing. Polly moved to the bed and gathered up a threadbare carpetbag. “This is what you’ll need at first. All of us pitched in. Warm blankets, cloths for diapers, a bottle. Enough cow’s milk to get you through tonight, and a bottle of formula for afterward. It would be good to find him a wet nurse.”
“I don’t know any wet nurses,” Heath mumbled.
She put her hands on her hips and stared at him with disgust. “You ain’t got no tits yourself, do you? If you don’t know how to keep him, take him where they’ll never know he’s a whore’s son and find some woman who wants him.”
Some woman. Heath caught himself before he could bare his teeth and snarl in Polly’s face.
But Polly didn’t know what the kid was. What could happen to a ‘breed if he ever ended up being raised by people like the humans who’d taken him in, then rejected him as a monster. Or like his real mother, who’d thrown Heath out for being half-human.
Quarter werewolf might never be able to Change at all.
Heath felt the fragility of the wriggling form beneath the blanket and thought of the future he had planned. He couldn’t just ride aimlessly into the plains with a baby tied to his saddle.
He would know better what to do when he was away from this place and out on the range where he belonged. Where he’d always belonged.
Polly tossed the carpetbag on the stained rug. “You’d better git. I heard Will Bradley thinks you cheated him at poker last time you was here, and I’m sure you don’t want no trouble.” She put up her hand to give Heath a shove, then thought better of it. “Mind you do right by him, Renshaw. If we find out any hurt has come to—”
Heath looked hard into her eyes, and she drew back. “Forget you ever saw him—or me.”
Her throat bobbed. Someone gave a raucous laugh, and a drunken cowhand, leaning on a skinny whore’s shoulder, staggered past the open doorway. Polly rushed out the door and closed it behind her. The baby opened its blue eyes and seemed to look at Heath with a kind of yearning. As if it knew …
With a curse too profane even for the most jaded harlot, Heath transferred the baby into the crook of one arm and picked up the carpetbag. He walked out of the room and left by the back stairs. They creaked under his boots, laughing at him all the way down.
It wasn’t easy to figure out how to carry the kid. In the end he rigged up a sling out of one of the well-worn blankets, tying it around his neck so the small, warm bundle was cradled against his chest. Apache snorted in surprise and craned his head around to stare.
“I don’t need no lip from you,” Heath muttered, reining the gelding away from the bordello. The baby yawned, showing naked pink gums, and Heath’s stomach dropped to the soles of his boots. It was so damn alien. He could kill it without even meaning to.
That day was just about the longest of Heath’s life. He managed thirty miles by dawn, using his night vision to steer Apache along a path over the rough terrain of the desert. Just after dawn the kid started to cry, and it didn’t take Heath long to realize that he wasn’t saying he was hungry. Heath used one of the other diapers and water from his canteen to clean the baby as best he could, fumbling with fingers made clumsy with uncertainty. Then he found the bottle, filled it from the small flask of milk and stuck the Indian-rubber teat near the baby’s lips. It only yelled louder.
Patience was a virtue Heath had learned in long years of running from the law, but it did him no good now. The baby wouldn’t take the teat. It was pretty clear that nothing Heath did was going to make it suckle, so he mounted up again and kept on going. The kid was strong. It was loup-garou. It would eat when it was hungry.
But he knew there was something wrong when he was forty miles from Javelina and it still wouldn’t take the bottle. Its cries got soft, like the whimper of a pup, and it didn’t look so pink anymore.
The slow panic Heath had felt only a few times in his life welled up like foul water. There wasn’t much of anything between here and Javelina. Dog Creek was ten miles to the north.
There weren’t any women there now, unless the Lyndon female had come in on the stage while he was gone. He hadn’t figured he would be around to see the spectacle, but instinct told him to run for the only place he’d ever thought of as home.
Instinct had a way of getting him in trouble almost as much as his human heart. The wolf wasn’t always right. But he could get the kid proper shelter and a bed at Dog Creek. Even if Jed had already been found, Heath didn’t see that he had any choice. He would find himself a wet nurse to look after the boy until he was well again, even if he had to drag some female to the ranch kicking and screaming.
RACHEL LYNDON STOOD at the door of the small general store, watching the dust rise from the street as a heavily laden wagon rolled by. The aged woman crossing the single main street hardly seemed to notice. She brushed absently at the sleeve of her drab dress, her gaze fixed on the faded sign of the tavern next to the store.
She was the only other woman Rachel had seen. It was a rough place, Javelina. A world away from Ohio. A world dominated by the plain, hardy folk of West Texas, a country with far more cattle than people.
Or so Rachel had read. Yet not all the reading in the world could have prepared her for this.
I will have a home, she thought. A home, and a husband who would be steady and respectable and would care nothing about her former life.
But she was still afraid. Afraid of the horses that seemed to be everywhere, snorting and stamping. Afraid of the riders who stared at her as if she were a rare and exotic beast in a cage—she, who was as plain as a sparrow.
She straightened and lifted her chin. Let them stare. They would never see her nervousness. She had as much right to be here as anyone.
Mrs. Jedediah McCarrick. Ellie Lyndon would cease to exist, along with her past. No more loneliness. No more taking any employment she could find, hoping that she might at last outrun the scandal. The end of wondering where her next meal would come from. Of fearing to get close to any man, lest he turn his back on her.
Lest he be like Louis.
She shook off the thought. Here she could be useful. Here she would never be tempted to return to what she had become.
Here she could forget.
A cowhand tipped his hat as he rode by. She nodded, unsmiling. A spotted hound wandered past the door, wagging its tail. She offered a pat. Dogs had always been kind to her. Forgiving.
The sun sank a little lower, driving long shadows before it. She had sent a letter to Jedediah informing him of the anticipated date of her arrival, but the stagecoach had been late. Apparently he had decided not to wait in town all day.
Lamps were lit inside the houses and public buildings, such as they were. The saloon door swung open, and a pair of inebriated men staggered out, singing off-key. Rachel hugged her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
Everything had gone so well until now—at least compared to the rest of her life. She’d advertised in the Matrimonial News, only half daring to hope that some respectable man from a place far away from Sheffield, Ohio, might respond. I am a single woman, aged twenty-eight, dark haired and with brown eyes, five feet four inches tall and slender, seeking correspondence with an honorable man of some means. Hardworking, excellent housekeeper, experienced in teaching and good with children.
Jedediah McCarrick had been the fourth to answer. His reply had been the best that could be hoped for: Dear Miss Lyndon, I am a gentleman of fifty-two years, height five feet ten inches. I own a ranch in Texas and am seeking a wife who will work hard to make Dog Creek a going concern.
