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    The Way Station
    The Way Station
    The Way Station
    Ebook124 pages2 hours

    The Way Station

    By Paul Lederer

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    In a dusty, far-off way station, trouble finds a retired gunman

    Virginia fell in love with Cameron Black as a young girl. The sight of a trained killer with guns on his hips set her heart fluttering. But as the years wore on, she drifted away, unable to bear her worry for him. Years later, after Black rescues Virginia from an Indian attack, she makes him an offer: Hang up your guns and I’ll be yours again. Together, they take a job running a lonely stagecoach station in the middle of the open range, hoping to find peace at last. But trouble is not far behind.

    An outlaw arrives, smuggling $50,000 in stolen gold. His companion is Becky Grant, a debutante on the run from her father. Thieves chase the bandit, marshals hunt Becky, and a storm closes in on the way station. Before it passes, Cameron Black will don his pistols once more.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMay 13, 2014
    ISBN9781480487581
    The Way Station
    Author

    Paul Lederer

    Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.

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    Reviews for The Way Station

    4/5

    710 ratings41 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This story of a human dealing with all sorts of alien beings who spend time with him and give him gifts is so wild and wonderfully imaginative. Included is his dealings with fellow Earthlings who live in his neighborhood. I was pleasantly astounded by the quality of this book! No wonder it won a Hugo.
    • 4/5
      Enoch is a former farmer and Civil War soldier who now tends a house which has become an indestructible fortress and serves as a connecting point for interstellar travel, even though Earth itself knows nothing of these alien beings and their technolog. As long as he remains in the building, Enoch does not age. He has met and befriended beings from all over the galaxy. But now, 100 years plus after he began this unusual life, unrest in the galactic federation threatens the station. Enoch must decide where his loyalties lie: with his primitive home planet Earth or with the more advanced galactic organization which represents the future. This is a great story, gripping and thought-provoking.
    • 5/5
      Loved it. Simak only writes good books. He has such a comfortable style that allows you to forgive him any miss-steps.
    • 4/5
      Simak at his best.
    • 4/5
      This is a classic sci-fi novel by Simak. When it came out, it won the Hugo award for best novel in 1964. In 1987 it was nominated for all-time best science fiction novel. Simak returns to the Wisconsin farmland of his youth. His main character is Enoch who is picked by Ulysses (his alien benefactor) to staff a waystation in the Wisconsin hills for alien travelers from the stars. For an unexplained reason, a waystation on Earth is needed for aliens who want to travel between the stars. Enoch is a 30 year old Civil War veteran when he is picked. The aliens furnish Enoch a time traveler waystation that has a significant benefit for Enoch. He never ages while in the station. A crisis occurs when the Earth appears headed for nuclear war and when the galactic civilization loses its Talisman which artifact promotes peace and harmony throughout the Galaxy. The crisis also pulls in a deaf mute girl (Lucy) who has extra sensory skills. The novel allows Simak to describe his Wisconsin background and to advocate his gentle philosophy which advocates peace and harmony on Earth. Enoch is the only well-rounded character in the book.
    • 3/5
      Way Station has a lot to recommend it: an interesting premise, lots going on, and a mood that is reflective without being slow. The protagonist, a Civil War veteran, is still a middle-aged man in the 1960s, living as a recluse on his long-departed parents' farm, subscribing to scientific journals and newspapers that are delivered by the mailman, one of his few human contacts. Simak doesn't withhold key facts; he sets up several plotlines, ranging from the personal to the national to the galactic, and then lets them unspool and collide.While the story was a pleasure to read, I found the ending unsatisfactory in nearly all respects. Enoch, the protagonist, is cast as an observer rather than a driver of the plot throughout, even when he is forced to decisive action. An early plotline, wound up by before the halfway point of the book, reappears unexpectedly in the denouement, without adding anything to the story. And some of the most interesting conflicts and solutions still lie ahead as the story ends. That said, it is a fast read, and worth it for the warm tone and the nuanced depiction of human-human and human-alien friendships.
    • 4/5
      Great little read. More about ethical issues with scifi/aliens as background than true sci-fi read by my reckoning, but nevertheless a good read.
    • 5/5
      This book won the Hugo Award in 1964. Written in Simak's unique and recognizable style, it tells of a happening in Rural America...the existence of a Way Station for non-humans passing through Earth on the way to elsewhere, with a human caretaker who took the job on right after the Civil War. Now, 100 years later, he is beginning to get some official attention. Watchers, of a sort. The watchers do something in ignorance (and greed for knowledge) that throws a spanner in the whole works. Their action threatens the caretaker's plans to help Earth become a participant in the galactic federation. How the problem is solved is a bit mystical for a science fiction story, but very typical of Simak's writing. I think it a wonderful book.
    • 5/5
      The UK 1976 Methuen paperback reprint has a cover by Chris Moore which is almost completely wrong in every respect, except that it captures extremely well what the book is about!
    • 3/5
      Audiobook - I enjoyed this SF book - I usually do not enjoy SF but this one was very easy to read and the story was very interesting
    • 5/5
      Another great one from Simak. Way Station is the first real science fiction book I ever read - and it hooked me for life. Enough said.
    • 5/5
      One of the best stories I have ever read. I have had this copy since I was twelve and re-read it at least twice every year.
    • 3/5
      It's curious this is so popular and so bad. It's the same old reactionary authoritarian world view endemic to most classic science fiction. Set aside the core message and there isn't much left, the writing is stiff, the characters wooden, the plot unmemorable. At best it's comfort food.
    • 4/5
      This book was amazing and made a good change of pace from epic, gritty, or intricate science fiction. This is the "bottle show" of the science fiction world. Set on 1960s Earth* (and written on 1960s Earth*) it is about a civil war veteran (not the grizzled type though, or, if he ever was, it has long smoothed over into a man full of wonder and love of life) who mans an interplanetary stopover station. This is the story of the upsetting of his routine.

      I enjoyed the sense of wonder and the warm, logical mind of the narrator.

      *Put in its perspective, the novel makes sense thematically as well as seeming less naive than if it was written today. For example, there is a deaf-mute girl who plays a central role in the story. The author (or at least the narrator) subscribes to the idea that because she can't communicate with the world, she must have this wondrous and extrasensory inner life. She is treated as more pure than the rest of us and eventually rises to be attain the holiness that is attributed to her from the get-go. It was my least favorite part of the story, but I just kept telling myself that there wasn't a reason why she couldn't be this way given the established rules of this universe.
    • 5/5
      O come on now. I've read this several times; I know I have. And part of the reason I keep rereading it is because my record of doing so gets lost. I'm not writing another review. Just know that this is probably the one that got me hooked on Simak, and it's probably the one that makes his reputation.
    • 4/5
      It's not often you get to read a SciFi set in your own state--when that state is Wisconsin. He put in a good description of the coulees of the Driftless region but made the residents a bit too much of backwoods hillbillies. Or maybe not; compare to Kenny Salwey's "The Last River Rat."Enoch, the protagonist, is a bit of a gentle, thoughtful soul, his response to the horrors of the Civil War. Now, about eighty years later, he can see earth heading toward another slaughter and wishes he could find some way to stop it. Most of the book is his exploration of what is a human, how can we progress, how can he use his position to help humanity.Not all of the story makes sense. I'm not sure why Simak added in the character of Mary--perhaps he needed to show the Enoch had some normal human yearnings. And for a station required to keep its presence unknown to other humans, there are an awful lot of aliens running around on the last night.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book, although I thought that the ending had some pieces that were not well thought out and appeared suddenly. However, the overall story was great and I enjoyed Enoch. Will see about reading other Simak stories.
    • 4/5



      I've been reading this book on and off for several years (first time I read it in Portuguese...). Once in a while I get the urge to pick it up again. It happened again... lol

      Storytelling, movie making, painting are all art forms. There is no right or wrong way to make art. There's no inherently proper or improper, no right or wrong, no appropriate or inappropriate way to craft artistic expression. Simak had his way. Heinlein had his way. Bach had his way. Eça de Queiroz had his way. Nick Ray had his way (Johnny Guitar...).

      One of the things that still makes me uncomfortable is its naked appeal to raw emotion. As a culture we've become very postmodern and ironically self-aware.

      This novels proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that great writing isn't just about writing tastefully and avoiding bloopers in current literary fashion. It's about striking a responsive chord in the reader and in that respect this book works perfectly.

      Clifford D. Simak was a great writer, and had the awareness of nature and environment that lent a depth and reality to his settings and characters."
    • 5/5

      Enoch Wallace returned to his family's farm after the Civil War, and farmed it with his father until a freak accident left him alone on it. Then, after some grieving and meditation on what the future might hold, he receives a most unusual visitor--a traveler from further away than he could have imagined.

      Ulysses--the name Enoch gives him, suitable to the human tongue--is an emissary from Galactic Central, here to recruit Enoch to operate a way station for galactic travelers. A century later, he's still running it, and hasn't aged a day.

      People are starting to notice.

      And stresses are appearing in galactic civilization, even as Earth appears to be sliding toward a third and more terrible world war.

      That description may make it seem strange that this is a very gentle book, quietly moving rather than brimming with action and excitement. Enoch, Ulysses, and Enoch's few human friends, the mailman Winslowe, the deaf-mute neighbor girl Lucy Fisher, and a new arrival in his life, CIA agent Claude Lewis, have some very knotty problems to work through in very little time.

      This is a story about good people taking on literally world-changing problems, in a quiet, pastoral setting.

      And it works.

      Get to know these people. You won't regret it.

      Highly recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 4/5
      Pastoral science fiction, a rural setting, a hermit who is still young after 124 years, and a CIA agent sniffing around. Simak was a journalist, so every paragraph does something, even with the leisurely pace.

      Well worth a read and available at the Mountain View Library.
    • 4/5
      Is Humanity Inherently Violent

      Published in 1963, Clifford Simak’s novel won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964. The novel deals with whether war is inevitable, if violence is ingrained in the human genome, and what price might be too great to avoid conflict, even nuclear destruction, the last a key consideration in society of the time as the world was in the midst of the Cold War.

      Enoch Wallace, returned from the Civil War, settles in his hometown of Millville, Wisconsin, (Simak’s hometown). There a stranger calls on him, a visitor from the galaxy. He and his galactic organization have been watching Enoch and believe him the suitable candidate to operate their new Earth way station. The way station serves as an intermediary point in the transmission of aliens from one world to another, a concept Simak explains thoroughly through Enoch in the novel. Enoch agrees and from then to the time of the novel he manages the way station, becoming familiar with a myriad of alien cultures. He pays careful attention, learns from each, and records his experiences in a series of notebooks. Alien engineers reconditioned his old house for the assignment, the result of which makes it imperious to nature and man, with the added benefit to Enoch of stopping the normal aging process. Because of this, with the passage of time, Enoch limits his contact with the few people who live in the area, excepting his mailman, and a small rowdy clan close by. Within that clan is a young deaf and mute girl who, Enoch notices, seems to process unique abilities, but most of all appears incredibly sensitive to her own life spirit and that of the those around her.

      No man can live in isolation forever, especially if it becomes apparent that while all age and die around him, he continues unchanged. So, the government becomes aware of him and dispatches a CIA agent to observe him, and this eventually grows into a larger operation. The agent removes the body of an alien who died during transit and whom Enoch honored with transitional burial, an act that also preserved the peace. The agent removes the body and this creates conflict with the alien’s home planet, as well as giving a faction against expanding into our part of the galaxy fodder for their opposition. Additionally, the young girl, Lucy, in conflict with her family, endangers Enoch and his mission. In the end, with international tensions high on Earth and threatening war, with pressure from the galaxy faction endangering Enoch’s tenure, and with a spiritual object that helps keep the galaxy worlds in harmonious balance stolen, with all at its bleakest, Lucy comes to the rescue of humanity and worlds beyond. And with this, therein lies the answer to humanity’s to exercise its better part.

      All in all, readers will find this remains a good example of intelligent science fiction that grapples with existential issues in a manner accessible to everyone.
    • 3/5
      I had fond memories of Way Station, but it has not aged well, or perhaps more accurately, SF has matured a lot in 60 years. To its credit, this jumps right into the central idea -- one human running a way station for alien travelers passing through on their way to a big universe Earth is not part of. And it tries to get away from the pulp adventure Simak arose from. But in its place is endless navel gazing, a much too neat and not credible plot resolution that is obvious long before the end, and a denouement that seems forced in the extreme.

      Disappointing.
    • 4/5
      This is the best regarded book from the third Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master, and unlike most books from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, it has aged pretty well. The protagonist is a man out of time, a civil war era soldier whose life has been unnaturally extended, and the antagonist (as much as there is one) is the specter of global thermonuclear war.

      This story contains passages with a wide variety of tones, but overall the tone is light and hopeful. Maybe because it never got too depressing, I was surprised to feel a frisson of joy as elements of the story came together.

      The only thing that held this book back from being really amazing were some silly mystical elements that felt out of place and which would've benefited from more groundwork being laid earlier in the book.
    • 5/5
      I like this quiet story a lot. It's in the "pastoral science fiction" corner, with philosophical musings and a lonely hermit who maintains a way station in the woods for extraterrestrials.
    • 5/5
      Way Station (1963), by Clifford D. Simak, is one of the classic science fiction novels that all fans should read. It is a well-written and very enjoyable novel, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1964. Enoch Wallace, a Civil War Veteran, was chosen to be the keeper of a way station on Earth for interplanetary travel by aliens. He has been administering the way station for about 100 years or so, which has prevented him from having much of a human life on Earth, except for daily walks to meet the mailman and to exercise. However, his exotic position has kept him young because he doesn’t age within the way station. He only ages when he steps outside the way station for his walks or just to sit on the steps and enjoy the outdoors. Most of the time, Enoch finds that he is not too lonely inside the Way Station because he receives frequent visits by many alien beings from many planets. In fact he considers many of those travelers to be his friends, he enjoys conversing with them, and they bring him many gifts from all over the galaxy. In addition, he has much work to do as part of his station duties, including keeping detailed journals about each visitor and all station events. However, his only human contacts are his mailman and a few acquaintances that he may encounter during his walks in the rural area around the way station. This is a fascinating and engrossing story that has almost no violence and little action. However, Enoch is a smart, compassionate, dependable and endearing character. He also engenders much sympathy from the reader as he goes about his duties inside the impenetrable way station helping travelers from all over the galaxy, while having really no in-depth relationships with any human beings. This is a very contemplative story and the reader gets to know Enoch very well. The book rewards the sympathetic reader when Enoch gets an opportunity to provide a very important service to his beloved Earth and her citizens. I found reading this book to be a truly moving experience. It is a beautiful read, and I recommend it to everyone!
    • 5/5
      Enoch Wallace, a Civil War veteran living on in rural Wisconsin into the twentieth century has a unique job. He is the station keeper for an interstellar transit system. Earth is not a destination for the extraterrestrial aliens that arrive and then depart from this way station on their way to another planet. Its status as a primitive world has so far kept it from being considered for membership by the Galactic Central government which has its own factions and political considerations to balance to maintain peace, therefore Wallace is the only human who knows from firsthand experience of the existence of other non-human civilizations, and his job is to remain inconspicuous. Unfortunately, a federal agent is curious about how a veteran of the battle of Gettysburg could possibly appear to be only about thirty years old and starts to investigate Wallace.

      Reading this 1963 novel reminded me why I admire Simak’s vision whose short stories first thrilled me back in junior high school as a novice science fiction fan. His stories were equally at home with the farthest reaches of space and in rural America. In this Hugo winning tale there are conflicts arising from poverty and fear of witchcraft, international tensions which are paralleled by galactic ones, and the denouement is achieved by an individual with the rare gifts of a person able to connect with a spiritual force known only as “the force.” Fans of “Star Wars” may recognize a foreshadowing of the Jedi.
    • 5/5
      This is not a space opera. There are no space ships or laser guns or daring space flights. This is a simple, quiet sci-fi novel, with a deep well of thought and meaning. The end question is - do humans deserve the chance to find our own way or are we too dangerous to be left to our own ways? Enoch, with his gentle manner and striking intelligence, seeks to find a way to convince his employers (not humans) that Earth deserves the change to live.
      Woven into this is Enoch’s own journey – to let go of the past, to embrace the future, and to accept what may come. In the end, it is the way being a Station Master has changed his own perceptions that allow him to find the answer. There is a deep philosophical bent to this story.
      That isn’t to say there isn’t action. The plot is brisk, with constant changes. Simak prose is heavy with imagery, the kind that makes the story alive in your mind.
      It is easy to see why this book won the Hugo. A well-deserved award for a fantastic science fiction story.
    • 3/5
      It's hard to review the substance without spoilers, so I will just say it is part of the sub-genre projecting hope of pan-galaxy comity, despite the factions on and off Earth.
      The spoiler tag conceals one particular plot detail, as a matter of craft.
      The episode of burying the alien, despite the extreme care they take to conceal themselves from Earth, is jarring and unbelievable, even in the context of impossible events.

    • 4/5
      This book is Hugo Winner from 1964. I can see why it won - its beautifully written, with a great leading character, and a very interesting premise - Aliens need a way station that gets them to their next stop, and Earth is just one station in this large network. It read a bit like Sand Country Almanac at times, with the lead character pondering over nature and what has changed in the years since he became keeper of the station.

      however, its not perfect. At times, there is too much niceness. The Government men in this story, for example, actually being reasonable in a situation that I wouldn't consider reasonable. Or the ending of the story, the came out of left field, and solved all the problems, from the Galactic Government breaking up, to the Earth being admitted to the alliance... It came out of nowhere.

      One last thing, this book doesn't feel dated at all. Outside of a few things (lack of automation, for example), the book feels modern. It even has a modern feel about accepting diversity and not judging on looks.

      Overall, a very well written book and worthy of the awards won.
    • 4/5
      This is a Hugo award winning work of science fiction, written by one of the early writers of the genre, Clifford Simak. The premise is that a backwoods hermit operates a “way station” of sorts for the transportation of intergalactic travelers. Because of his remote location and lifestyle, he is able to operate for over a hundred years, without aging, and without attracting undue attention. Finally, the wrong person takes notice, setting off the chain of events that form the basis of the story.

      Despite being quite old, the story has aged well and contains numerous very thought provoking issues and plot elements. With only one exception, the alien constructs mentioned in the story all appear to be bi-pedal humanoid beings, which would seem to be quite unlikely, however other aspects of the story display more imagination. All in all, a very pleasant, entertaining story.

    Book preview

    The Way Station - Paul Lederer

    ONE

    In the coolness of early dawn Cameron Black stepped outside of the way station and studied the long land, the garishly colored desert sky. It was a primitive place to make your last stand, but that was what he and Virginia had chosen to do. Finish up their long, troubled careers in the virtual isolation of the desert. A few doves had already taken to wing, flying toward water holes hidden among the stone-flanked hills. A coyote glanced at Cameron and slunk away furtively. A tangle of fifteen-foot high ocotillo plants, now flowering at their tips, cut dark, thorny silhouettes against the sky which had gone from gray to crimson to gold-limned blue and soon would become a white vault above them.

    Whitey Carroll, who had arrived three months before from parts unknown, was already at work cutting wood for the kitchen stove which had to be kept burning so that six meals a day could be prepared – for the westbound stagecoach, for the passengers on the eastbound and, of course for the station crew. There was no way around that although during the summer the kitchen was a furnace. But then by noon on an August day, Borrego Springs was a furnace outdoors as well as in. Lucia, the young cook would already be up, muttering small Spanish curses as she banged iron kettles and copper pots around, a lot of the action unnecessary as Cameron knew. The woman had to protest her condition in some way. Cameron tried to keep his visits to Lucia’s sanctum to a minimum. If there were any problems, Virginia would see to them. Her manner was more soothing.

    Passing the corral, Cameron looked over the coach horses. They were still frisky at this time of the day; later a slow torpor would settle over them, only the twitching of their tails to chase away the horseflies indicating that they were alert in any way – and a part of that was probably reflex. They had plenty of hay and enough water – Cameron would have to tell Whitey to fill up the trough again when he was finished with his wood cutting.

    The kid never objected to any job he was assigned, although he moved with painful slowness. Cameron could never tell if the young man was sun-struck or simply none too bright. Nevertheless, Whitey did all that was required of him and he would not be easy to replace out here on the empty land.

    Cameron entered the dry shade of the barn. In the loft Archie Tate would still be sleeping until the heat awakened him later in the day. Tate was the hostler, and the wiry, bearded man seemed to have an internal clock which awakened him fully when it was time for an incoming stage. Then he was quick with his movements, unharnessing, hitching a fresh team with rapid skill. The rest of the time he lazed the days away in whatever shade he could find. He, too, did all that was required of him, and he, too, would not be easy to replace out on the desert. Both men were trustworthy in their own ways, and Cameron seldom interfered with their ideas of what their jobs entailed.

    Having made his brief tour of the yard, Cameron returned to the way station’s office where Virginia was already going over their tally books, making up a list of supplies they were running low on to send to the head office in Santa Fe. She looked sleepy to him, but not tired, really. Her gray-streaked dark hair was tied back loosely. She had a cup of coffee at her elbow.

    ‘Hello, Scopes,’ Cameron Black said, entering the room which was still cool thanks to its thick adobe walls. Virginia smiled.

    It was an old joke, greeting her that way. Her name now, of course was Virginia Black, but when Cameron had first known her it had been Virginia Scopes. And when he had grown angry with her for small crimes, instead of calling her ‘Ginnie’ as he had when they were both much younger, he had taken to calling her Scopes.

    If Borrego Springs might seem to be a kind of a hellish life to others, they had already been through several kinds of hell along life’s trail, and this wilderness living was a kind of comfortable solitude to them at this point in their lives.

    ‘Could you ask Lucia how we’re doing with beans and rice? How many sacks we need for next month?’ Virginia asked, turning her young-old eyes toward her husband.

    ‘You want me to enter her kitchen?’ Cameron asked with mock horror which caused Virginia’s mouth to twitch into a smile.

    ‘You can’t be that afraid of her,’ Virginia coaxed. ‘A grown-up man like you?’

    ‘She’s already banging pots and pans around and the sun’s barely risen.’

    ‘I’m not asking you to move in with her,’ Virginia said. ‘Just ask her how we’re doing with beans and rice.’

    ‘If I have to,’ Cameron replied and Virginia’s smile deepened. He kissed his recent bride and started toward the kitchen. Virginia watched him go: once one of the most feared gunmen in the territory afraid of a tiny Spanish cook! She knew he was mostly kidding with her, but also that he felt uneasy about confronting any of their employees. Things were just fine the way they were; he didn’t want to disturb anyone, step on any toes.

    She had met Cam so long ago that it did not seem possible that so many years had passed. As a girl she had admired the young gunfighter, cocky and sure of himself, his two guns worn low, his shoulders heavy with muscle, his dark curly hair always uncombed. She had seen Cameron take out two members of the Carson Plenty gang with a total of three shots. Her heart had fluttered with fear and pride at once.

    Later the guns became too much for her. Cameron accepted all sorts of jobs, which he approached recklessly, returning to her only when he was exhausted or wounded. It was too much for a girl of her age to bear. Going to sleep at night, wondering where he was; waking in the morning wondering if he were dead. One morning when she felt that she could take no more, she had simply packed her bags and left.

    He had drifted; she had drifted. Virginia had begun working in a dancehall and eventually turned to more profitable and dubious enterprises. When she had again met Cameron Black, twenty years on, she was besieged in an army outpost surrounded by Indians with her caravan of three camp-follower girls. That was when he had started calling her ‘Scopes.’ Debilitated so that he could no longer even draw his left-hand pistol, Cameron Black had nevertheless pulled them all out of a very dangerous situation.*

    They had had a long ride to Santa Fe to discuss their past and their future. Neither was sure there could be another chance for them or where to even try it. They could not get past their mutual feelings of abandonment and blame, but they decided to go on with life. Cameron had landed a job with the stage company – one which no one else wanted – managing the way station at Borrego Springs and here they had landed, a tired former whore and an ex-gunfighter. They still had not worked out all of their problems, but they had married and come to Borrego, sure of one thing – their troubled past could not follow them there.

    At least that was their constant hope. The long desert, barren and blank, was their final refuge, their final home. Virginia sighed and got back to the books.

    Cameron found himself hesitating at the kitchen door as another pan clattered to the floor. Lucia was in a mood today. He grinned, reminding himself of the times he had not flinched at stepping into a room to face half a dozen gunmen … all those years ago … and swung the door open to find Lucia, frozen in motion with another pot held high over her head. Her dark eyes sparked, her full lips twitched, but she said nothing and slowly lowered the pot.

    Lucia was young still, slender, usually friendly, but mercurial.

    ‘What’s the trouble, Lucia?’ Cam asked.

    ‘Always the same trouble!’ she spat. ‘Where is Renaldo? He does not come for me. He left to go off to make money for us so that I could be his wife and not a cook-slave.’ Her eyes suddenly moistened, and she sagged onto a straight-backed wooden chair, bowing her head. ‘I am stuck here,’ she murmured, ‘and he is off riding, I do not know where.’

    ‘I understand, Lucia,’ Cameron Black said. Whether the girl believed him or not, he really did. ‘All you can do is be patient. Remember, Renaldo misses you as much as you miss him. He will return.’

    Lucia dabbed at her eyes with her apron and nodded her head. ‘Thank you, Señor Black,’ she snuffled.

    Cameron was briefly embarrassed by the gratitude in her eyes. ‘Talk to Virginia after a while. She can probably give you better advice than I can. For now, will you check the larder and tell me how many more sacks of beans and rice you need for next month? Virginia says the list has to be sent to Santa Fe today on the eastbound

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