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fancy house with tall, white pillars supporting a red-tiled portico roof. It was a stately residence for a recently retired judge and his new wife. Silas had married Luna a month ago, soon after Luna had discovered through Adam that she was a widow. The town was still buzzing about it. Luna had certainly done well for herself. The fact that she was thirty years her husband’s junior also hadn’t gone unnoticed by town gossips.
    For a woman who had come to Guthrie with nothing, she’d done well for herself. Working as a laundress and then as a hostess in a hotel restaurant, Luna had managed to marry up, not once, but twice. Zach hadn’t spoken to her since she had returned from her honeymoon with Judge Bishop. Folks around town said she was acting uppity and spending money like she was growing it in her garden.
    The judge was a wealthy man, mainly because he and his former wife had been frugal. They had both liked to have money more than they liked to spend it. Edith Bishop had taken ill shortly after Zach moved to Guthrie and had died that winter. The heartbroken judge retired and went to visit his married son in Dodge City. Folks said he would stay there and never return. He and his wife had moved from Kansas to the Territory a few years before the Land Run and the judge had worked in the circuit court.
    To most everyone’s surprise, he did return to Guthrie, but he shut himself away in the small house he had shared with Edith. A few widow women dropped by to invite him to church or to bring him a pie or some other enticement, but he kept to himself. Then one night he went into town for a good meal and he met Luna.
    They had become “friends.” He was lonely and she had been abandoned by her husband. Anybody paying any attention could tell that the judge was smitten, but he had possessed too much integrity to openly court a married woman.
    Mercy stopped in front of the house, but Zach didn’t make a move to dismount. He studied the house, his thoughts tripping back to when he had met Luna last fall. She had flirted with him, saying she might need a divorce attorney because her husband had deserted her. He met up with her again a few weeks later at a dance on the outskirts of Guthrie. That night he had imbibed a bit too much and was leaving when Luna materialized from the darkness. She wound her arms around him, touched him in an intimate manner, and then pulled him with her into a barn on the property. In one of the horse stalls, she unbuttoned his trousers and pleasured him. It had all happened so fast and, on his part, been totally unexpected that he hadn’t known what to feel about it or about her.
    Even now, remembering those hot, heavy-breathing minutes in the horse stall with her made him squirm inside. He had been with his share of forward women, but he had anticipated their caresses and kisses. Luna had come at him like a sidewinder. He hadn’t seen her coming.
    With a heavy sigh, he dismounted and tied the reins to a hitching pole. As he approached the house, the front door swung open and a woman dressed in a black dress and a white apron smiled at him. On closer inspection, he saw that he knew her. He had been her attorney when she had divorced an abusive husband.
    “Good afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?”
    “It’s Inez Rainwater, isn’t it?”
    She nodded, smiling shyly.
    “It’s good to see you again. Are you doing okay? No trouble with your ex-husband?”
    “No, sir. Thanks for asking. I’m doing fine.”
    “That’s good to hear. Could you tell Lu–Mrs. Bishop that I’d like a quick word?”
    “She expecting you, sir?”
    “No, but I believe she will see me.”
    “Come in, please.” She stepped back to allow him to enter the foyer. “Wait here, please.” She motioned to chairs and a settee backed against one wall.
    “Thank you.” He didn’t sit, but moved around the foyer to study a large oil painting of the Grand Canyon and another of a pastoral scene featuring waving wheat