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they’d caused an accident that took their younger sister’s life?
    A sob tore at Maggie’s throat. She’d been driving too fast, laughing at some silly thing Susie had said, when they rounded the curve. Laughing so hard she hadn’t even seen the oncoming truck until it was too late. She’d jerked the steering wheel to the right, barely missing the truck. She’d known a brief moment of relief, and then the car spun out of control, sliding down the embankment, crashing into a tree. Susie, who never wore her seat belt, had been thrown out of the car. Knowing her sister needed help, Maggie had crawled up the hill to the road where she’d flagged down an oncoming car and then she’d fainted.
    When she woke up she was lying in bed in a hospital room painted a sickly green. It was there, surrounded by doctors, that she’d learned Susie was dead. Susie, who had loved ice skating and dancing and playing tennis, who had found joy in everything, dead at nineteen because her older sister was a careless fool.
    Six months after the accident, Frank broke their engagement. He hadn’t made any flowery excuses, he hadn’t lied to her. He’d simply told her the truth, as kindly as he could. He was sorry, so sorry, but he had to be honest and he just didn’t think he could handle living with a woman who was going to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
    Maggie had cried for days and then she’d thrown herself into her writing, running away from the present by writing about the past, hiding from her own misery by penning fanciful romances where true love could overcome any obstacle and everyone lived happily ever after.
    She’d moved to South Dakota four months later, buying a small ranch located in a grassy meadow between Sturgis and the Black Hills. It was beautiful country. The Hills were breathtaking and she could understand why the Sioux wanted them back.
    The Hills seemed to have a life of their own, a presence that she’d felt the first time she saw them. There were eighteen peaks that exceeded seven thousand feet, an island of mountains in a sea of prairie grass and rangeland that covered roughly six thousand miles. She loved the pines and the aspen and the clear blue sky, the rolling miles of prairie grass, the sense of history that she felt each time she looked out her window and saw the majesty of the Black Hills rising in the distance.
    The Lakota called them Paha Sapa , meaning hills that appear black in color. They also called them O’onakezin , which meant a place of shelter, or Wamakaognaka E’cante , which meant “the heart of everything that is”.
    Soon after she moved to the ranch, Maggie put an ad in the local paper, advertising for help. Nineteen-year-old Bobby had arrived at her door the next day and she’d hired him on the spot. He needed the money, he’d said, to help support his brother, and he hoped to go to college and study medicine. She’d hired Veronica the same day, liking her no-nonsense attitude.
    With Bobby to look after the ranch and Veronica to take care of the cooking and cleaning, Maggie turned her attention to writing romantic stories of beautiful white women and handsome Indian men. She never saw anyone else, never went into Sturgis, the small town about ten miles south of Bear Butte. Veronica did all the shopping and picked up the mail.
    Maggie’s love for the land grew steadily. In days past, the Sioux and Cheyenne had come here, to the Paha Sapa , to celebrate the sacred ritual of the Sun Dance. She liked to think that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Hump and Gall had once walked the land where her house now stood. The Hills were a piece of American history made famous by people like Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Jim Bridger and the ill-fated General George Armstrong Custer.
    She’d always been fascinated by the Old West, especially the Indians. She was enchanted by their beliefs, saddened at their ultimate fate. When she’d started writing it had seemed the