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witness the outcome of such an unequal contest.
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    He had long since determined the most convenient exits for a possible hasty departure. No one
    saw him jump from the train, more cleanly than any human could manage, and roll among the
    prairie grasses unhurt. He stripped out of his fine suit of clothes, and Changed.
    The world changed with him, becoming a place of myriad smells, sounds, and sensations that
    only un hombre-lobo could appreciate. Warm wind ruffled his brown coat. He nosed the pile of
    discarded fabric as if it were the bleached skeleton of another life, left for some wayfarer to
    discover.
    On four feet he began to run—not the steady ground-eating lope of ordinary travel, but a dead
    gallop that would see him to La Junta before the train arrived.
    Rowena stood on the railroad platform in La Junta, Colorado, her trunks at her feet, and uttered
    a very ladylike curse.
    The dusty town bustled, oblivious, all around her. This was the railhead, the end of the line
    while tracks were being laid across the empty prairie to the somewhat more established town
    of Trinidad, near the New Mexico border. So she had been told.
    She'd also been told that the next single-car passenger train to the end of the line, a few miles
    northeast of Trinidad, would not depart until dawn tomorrow morning. And there was no
    telling if Trinidad was to be her final destination.
    She remained in ignorance of such details—including where in this Godforsaken place she
    might find a dish of fresh tea, not to mention her brother—because Mr. Randolph had
    disappeared. Once the train had reached the station she'd fully expected him to turn up,
    apologizing for his dreadful manners.
    He had not, and she couldn't account for her inexplicable reaction toward him a few hours ago,
    or his peculiar behavior afterward. Certainly she'd caught him staring at her—it wasn't the first
    time—but until that moment when he'd looked ready to pounce, he hadn't given her legitimate
    cause for concern. She'd been the one to ignominiously flee from him, as flustered as a
    schoolgirl.
    The indecent mental images had appeared without warning and insisted on following her all the
    way to the ladies' dressing room. No amount of tepid water applied liberally to her cheeks had
    chased them away. It was almost as if someone else had planted the bizarre thoughts in her
    mind.
    She would never dress the way she'd seen herself in the first unwonted vision. It was like
    looking at some warped distortion of her own reflection. Barefoot, loose-haired, wanton.
    And that was not the worst. There were the feelings that came with the picture. Heat, yearning,
    recklessness, and… yes, desire. She guessed that must be what she'd felt, for it was unlike any
    emotion she had ever experienced.
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    Desire. She wished desperately for the fan she'd somehow managed to misplace. The closest
    she'd ever come to that sensation was when she was forced to Change in fleeing from her
    imprisonment at Greyburn three years ago.
    She'd vowed never to be driven to such extremes again, and had kept that vow. There was no
    reason in the world why the mere presence of a stranger should provoke any disturbance in her
    usual composure.
    It was all quite ridiculous. She was not prone to wild flights of imagination, especially not of that
    sort. What would Cole think of her now?
    She knew the answer to that question and did her best to put it from her mind. She tilted her
    parasol against the afternoon sun and smoothed her face of expression. She would not be so
    affected again—not by all the Thomas A. Randolphs of the world.
    Randolph, however, had not returned to witness her renewed self-possession.
    Instead, she found herself quite alone in a place that said very little for her brother's taste in
    habitat. The town had all the unruliness of a barbarian outpost. Rough men in dirty,