Once A Wolf by Susan Krinard Read Free Book Online Page B

child."
    "You're a gently bred lady, Miss Forster. Cole has told me that many times. You wouldn't last
    more than a day out here."
    She flushed, remembering how willingly she'd accepted Cole's insistence that she have no part
    in his family's business in the West. She should be in complete agreement with her future
    brother-in-law.
    It was mortifying that the first argument that came into her mind was the least acceptable, the
    one she refused to consider: that she was far more than any merely human woman. She would
    sooner be lost in the desert than admit that aloud.
    "Nonetheless, Mr. MacLean—"
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    "It's not open to discussion." He rose and adjusted the collar of his coat. "Would you care for a
    meal while you wait, Miss Forster?"
    "No, thank you."
    "Then please remain here until I come back." He touched the brim of his hat and strode out of
    the dining room.
    It appeared that she'd misjudged Weylin MacLean in one respect; he was good at giving
    commands, like Cole, and he was just as determined to protect her from her own folly.
    She wondered why she had begun to resent it.
    Nearly two hours passed before Weylin MacLean returned with a hired carriage. It was not an
    attractive vehicle, consisting primarily of a flat bed resting on four wheels fitted out with a
    bench like seat in the front. Weylin called it a "buckboard."
    "It'll get us where we're going," he said, lifting her trunks into the boot of the conveyance. "If
    we start now, we'll make the Bailey ranch by nightfall."
    Delightful, Rowena thought. She'd stooped once to arguing with him; she would not do so
    again. There must be some other way to learn if there was any truth to Randolph's news of
    Quentin.
    Weylin tied his speckled mount to the buckboard and helped her onto the hard wooden seat.
    He shook the reins over the scruffy horses and set off down the street toward the edge of town.
    Rowena tilted her parasol against the bright afternoon sun, studying every face they passed.
    Not one was familiar.
    Turning southwest, Weylin directed the buckboard along the barely visible dirt track that
    passed for a road across the plain. The land here was broken with low hills and dry washes,
    desolate in the extreme. Prairie grass, spattered with wildflowers, stretched for miles to the
    east, north and south, while mountains edged the western horizon with a faint blue rim.
    Of all the places Rowena had passed on the journey West, none was so daunting as this. She
    had seen prairie rolling past the train window, but hadn't ventured beyond the limits of each
    depot where they'd made brief stops. The very openness made her shiver as if with some
    strange foreboding. At first nothing seemed alive save for the grass, clumps of unfriendly cactus
    and a distant line of stunted trees. Gradually she became aware of small brownish rodents
    popping up from holes in the ground, the flash of a rabbit's tail, birds she thought must be larks,
    and a sort of hawk skimming across the sky.
    She wished she hadn't looked up to watch the hawk in its flight. The sky was enormous. It
    arched overhead like an ocean tipped upside-down. She thought that it might fall and drown
    her at any moment.
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    How could any man tame this country? How could anyone hope to remain civilized so far from
    human mastery?
    That was the danger. She knew there were Indians here, and natural forces formidable to any
    traveler. But those were merely physical perils. The greatest risk was that one might lose one's
    self… one's boundaries and inhibitions, the very qualities that raised people above the beasts.
    The powerful, almost erotic image of herself remembered from the train filled her mind. That
    stranger might belong here. She never would.
    She realized that she had been staring blankly across the prairie for several miles when her eyes
    caught movement to the south. Figures—mounted men. They were