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Chapter One

Kingman, California

July, 1913

A gentle breeze stirred the grasses on the flat, rich farmland of the fifteen hundred acres of the Caulden Ranch The leaves on the fruit and nut trees s, walnuts and al heat As usual, it hadn’t rained a drop in twothe rains would hold off another feeeks until the hops were in

The hops, the major crop of the Caulden Ranch, were close to peak ripeness, hanging off fifteen-foot-tall poles, beginning to turn yellow and bursting with their wet succulence In another feeeks the pickers would arrive and the hop vines would be torn fros and taken to the kilns to dry

It was very earlyto rise and start about their chores Already, the day was hot andflat acres with no relief fro the day in the shaded hop fields, the vines overhead for sun

Through the middle of the ranch ran a well-used dirt road with other roads branching off it, all roads leading past enore, chimneyed hop kilns

In theCaulden house, constructed of local red brick, with a painted white verandah around two sides, balconies protruding fronolia sheltered the house from the sun and kept the darkened interior cool

Inside, in the west bedroo, her thick chestnut hair pulled back into a respectable braid Her sedate, characterless nightgoas buttoned to her chin, the cuffs carefully covering her wrists She lay on her back, the sheet folded perfectly across her breasts, her hands clasped across her rib cage The bedclothes were only barely disturbed, the bed looked as if it had just been turned down—yet a twenty-two-year-old woht here

The roo so utterly still, there were very few signs of life There was the bed, expensive and of good quality—as was the woman—and two chairs, a table here and there, a closet door, curtains on the three s There were no lace doilies on the tables, no prizes won by aslipper hastily kicked under the bed There was no powder on the dresser, no hairpins left out Inside the drawers and the closet, everything was perfectly neat There were no dresses shoved to the back that had been bought on the spur of the hteen books in a case under one , all leather bound, all of great intellectual i’s seduction by so

Up the back stairs, bustling, straightening her ihtened her spine and cal one quick, sharp knock then opening the door

“Goodtone that actually meant, Get out of that bed i you She rushed across the room to thrust aside the curtains as if they were her ene-footed, hands like gardening plows

Amanda woke as neatly as she slept One second she was asleep, the next she ake, the next she was standing quietly by the bed looking at Mrs Gunston

Mrs Gunston frowned, as she always did, at the slender delicacy of A to think that these two people were of the same species, for, just as Mrs Gunston was heavy and thick, A But Mrs Gunston only felt a kind of exasperation in Amanda’s femininity because she equated her delicacy eakness

“Here’s your schedule,” Mrs Gunston said, slapping a piece of paper on the table under the , “and you are to wear the”—she checked another piece of paper she’d taken from one of her numerous pockets—“the vieux rose dress with the lace yoke Do you knohich one it is?”

“Yes,” Amanda answered softly “I know”