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      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Back Cover Text

       Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       Extract

       Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

      IT TOOK A LOT TO MAKE Big John Jacobs nervous. He was tall, rawboned, with deep-set green eyes the color of bottle glass, and thick dark brown hair. His lean, rough face had scars left over from the War Between the States. He carried scars both inside and out. He was originally from Georgia, but he’d come to Texas just after the war. Now he lived in one of the wildest parts of southeast Texas on a ranch he’d inherited from his late uncle. He was building up the ranch frugally, heading cattle drives to Kansas and buying livestock with the proceeds. What he had was very little to show for fifteen years of hard work, but he was strong and had a good business head. He’d tripled his uncle’s land holdings and bought new bulls from back East to breed with his mangy longhorns. His mother would have been proud.

      He noted the deep cut on his left hand, a scar from a knife fight with one of a band of Comanches who’d raided his property for horses. John and his hired help had fought them to a standstill and put them on the run. His ranch was isolated and he had good breeding stock. Over the years he’d had to fight roaming Comanche raiders and renegades from over the Mexican border, as well as carpetbaggers. If it hadn’t been for the military presence just after the war ended, courtesy of the Union Army, lawlessness would have been even worse.

      John had more reason than most to hate Union officers. But in the part of Texas where his ranch was located, to the southeast of San Antonio, the peace had been kept during Reconstruction by a local commandant who was a gentleman. John had admired the Union officer, who’d caught and prosecuted a thief who stole two horses from the ranch. They were good horses, with excellent bloodlines, which John had purchased from a Kentucky thoroughbred farm. The officer, who rode a Kentucky thoroughbred of his own, understood the attachment a rancher felt to his blood stock. John had rarely been more grateful to another human being. Like John himself, the officer was fearless.

      Fearless. John laughed at his own apprehension over what he was about to do. He didn’t mind risking his life to save his ranch. But this was no fight with guns or knives. It was a much more civilized sort of warfare. In order to win this battle, John was going to have to venture into a world he’d never seen close up. He wasn’t comfortable with high society folk. He hoped he wasn’t going to embarrass himself.

      He removed his dress hat and ran a big hand through his sweaty brown hair. He’d had Juana cut it before he’d left the 3J Ranch. He hoped it was conservative enough to impress old man Terrance Colby. The railroad magnate was vacationing in Sutherland Springs, not far from the 3J. The popular resort boasted over one hundred separate springs in a small area. John had ridden out there to speak to Colby, without a single idea of how he was going to go about it. He had figured the details would work themselves out if he made the trip.

      He was uneasy in company. He’d had to pawn his grandfather’s watch to buy the used suit and hat he was wearing. It was a gamble he was taking, a big one. Cattle were no good to anyone if they couldn’t be gotten to market. Driving cattle to the railheads in Kansas was becoming ever more dangerous. In some areas, fear of Texas tick fever had caused armed blockades of farmers to deter Texas cattle from entry. If he was going to get his cattle to market, there had to be a more direct route. He needed a railroad spur close by. Colby owned a railroad. He’d just announced his intentions of expanding it to connect with San Antonio. It would be no great burden to extend a line down through Wilson County to the Jacobs’ ranch. There were other ranchers in the area who also wanted the spur.

      Old man Colby had a daughter, Camellia Ellen, who was unmarried and apparently unmarriageable. Local gossip said that the old man had no use for his unattractive daughter and would be happy to be rid of her. She got in the way of his mistresses. So Big John Jacobs had come a courting, to get himself a railroad…

      It started raining just as he got to town. He cursed his foul luck, his green eyes blazing as he noted the mud his horse’s hooves was throwing up and splattering onto his boots and the hem of the one good pair of pants he owned. He’d be untidy, and he couldn’t afford to be. Terrance Colby was a New York aristocrat who, from what John had heard, was always impeccably dressed. He was staying at the best hotel the little resort of Sutherland Springs could boast, which was none too luxurious. Rumor was that Colby had come here on a hunting trip and was taking the waters while he was in the area.

      John swung down out of the saddle half a block from the hotel Colby was staying at, hoping to have a chance to brush the mud off himself. Just as he got onto the boardwalk, a carriage drew up nearby. A young woman of no particular note climbed down out of it, caught the hem of her dress under her laced shoe, and fell face-first into a mud puddle.

      Unforgivably, John laughed. He couldn’t help it. The woman’s companion gave him a glare, but the look he gave the woman was much more expressive.

      “For God’s sake, woman, can’t you take two steps without tripping over your own garments?” the man asked in a high-pitched British accented voice. “Do get up. Now that we’ve dropped you off in town, I must go. I’ve an engagement for which you’ve already made me late. I’ll call on your father later. Driver, carry on!”

      The driver gave the woman and Big John a speaking look, but he did as he was instructed. John took note of the stranger, and hoped to meet him again one day.

      He moved to the woman’s side,