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didn’t.”
    â€œMr. Singleton,” Sam answered, “is a whole different kind of man than I am.”
    â€œWe didn’t mean to hurt him,” Terran said.
    Sam nodded. “I believe that,” he allowed. “But a prank can go wrong, mighty fast, even when nobody intends for it to happen. And there are ways to do a man injury that don’t leave any marks on his hide.”
    Terran’s cheeks blazed, making his freckles stand out in bold relief. He hitched up his pants and then stood with his feet spread and his hands on his hips. “You mean to mete out punishment, Mr. O’Ballivan?”
    Sam shook his head. “Not unless it’s called for, Mr. Chancelor,” he replied. He gave a sparing smile. “And I don’t reckon any of you will take a notion to try putting me down the well.”
    Terran tried to look solemn, but it was a lost cause. He grinned. “No, sir,” he said, “I don’t reckon we will.”
    Sam put out his hand, waited.
    The boy hesitated, then took it, and they shook on the bargain.
    Terran was the first to speak. “Maddie says you aren’t like any schoolteacher she’s ever seen,” he confided.
    Sam chuckled and shut the tailgate. “Is that right?”
    Terran hesitated a moment, as if he might say something more, but then he scrambled over the back of the wagon seat to take up the reins again. Looking back at Sam over one scrawny shoulder, he gave another grin. “She don’t appreciate having to take her supper at the Donaghers’s tomorrow night, neither.”
    â€œWhy’d she agree to go, then?” Sam asked, honestly puzzled, as the boy cranked the brake lever forward.
    â€œSaid she was roped into it,” Terran answered. Then, blithely, he added, “Maddie reckons as how if you’re stupid enough to step right into a scorpions’ nest, she’d better go along and see that you don’t get stung.”
    â€œKind of her to look out for me,” Sam said dryly.
    Terran swung the wagon around in a wide circle in the grass, and when he pulled up alongside Sam, his expression had turned somber. “She looked out for Warren, too,” he said, “and they still killed him.”
    Sam didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all.
    â€œSee you tomorrow,” Terran told him.
    Sam saluted and watched with his thumbs hooked in his gun belt as the boy drove back toward the road. Once Maddie Chancelor’s little brother was out of sight, he went back, took up his ax again and chopped the rest of the wood with more force than the job truly required.
    Â 
    M UNGO D ONAGHER SURVEYED his bride as she dashed from one end of the ranch house kitchen to the other, grabbing down china plates from the cupboard and inspecting them for God-knew-what. She didn’t bother with cooking—they had Anna Deerhorn to do that, along with the cleaning and other household work—but ever since she’d invited the schoolmaster out for a meal, she’d been in a fine dither of preparation.
    â€œIf I didn’t know better,” Mungo said sourly, “I’d think you were taken with that O’Ballivan feller.”
    Undine stopped her china-studying and turned to look at him, her eyes wide with innocent affront. “What a dreadful thing to say, Mungo Donagher,” she protested, putting one hand to her glossy black hair and pressing the other to her throat. “There’s only one man for me, and that’s you.”
    Mungo knew he was being a damned fool, but he went ahead and believed her anyhow. It would have been hard not to, the way she was looking at him with those big purple eyes of hers. Lord, but she was a pretty thing, and lively in private, too.
    He put out his arms, and she came to him with just the briefest hesitation and the smallest sigh. He ignored that, and held her close against him, filling his nostrils with the