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seemed
to go out of their way to secure feebleminded female decorations
unto themselves. She’d been hiding her own brain long enough to
have figured out that aspect of the masculine character.
    “Bother,” she muttered as she slid out of
her evening gown. The gown had been a success, at any rate,
although she knew she’d look good draped in a sheet. She never
failed to thank the good Lord for giving her looks, because she
knew they were the only thing that had saved her and her family
from a life of grinding poverty.
    Speaking of looks . . . She glared at her
reflection in the mirror, squinting hard. Was she losing her looks?
Was she getting old? Wrinkled? Did she have crows’ feet? Was there
something physically wrong with her, to account for Colin remaining
so completely unimpressed?
    No. Darn it, there wasn’t a single thing
wrong with her. She looked just as good as ever.
    So why was it that Colin Peters, the only
man she’d met in a jillion years to whom she’d even consider
getting close, seemed immune to her physical allures? It was all
very irritating, and she vowed that she’d try harder in the
morning.
    “No such Indians, my eye,” she grumbled as
she toweled her face dry after washing it in the sink. Thank God
for money and running water, which was so much easier to wash with
than ewers and pitchers. One never managed not to drip, and those
chintzy oilskin squares most hotels placed on the floor were never
big enough.
    After slathering cream on her face to keep
her complexion soft, she sank into her bed. It had been made up
with silk sheets especially for her by the hotel management,
because she was a star. If they only knew, she’d as soon sleep on
percale because the fabric didn’t slip so much.
    Cradling her head in her cupped hands, she
stared at the ceiling. “There’s got to be some way to get him to
climb down from his high horse. He probably thinks I’m nothing but
a pretty face.”
    And why shouldn’t he? She’d cultivated that
very image for half of her life. Anyway, so what? Men didn’t care
about anything beyond a pretty face, so why should her own pretty
face be a drawback in her attempt to get Colin Peters to teach her
everything she wanted to know about Indians?
    Shoot, this wasn’t fair. Why should her
success in one aspect of her life play hob with another one?
    “He’s not getting rid of me that easily,”
she vowed to the ceiling and to herself. “And I’m going to turn him
into a human being, too. I can do it. Heck, after creating myself,
I reckon I can create a human being out of a brick.”
    On that cheery note, she turned over and
shut her eyes, only to sit up straight in bed a second or two
later, a horrible thought having struck her.
    “Good God! Maybe he’s a fairy!”
    Feeling deflated, she sank back onto her
pillows, turned over, and decided Colin Peters could go straight to
hell.
     
    Two open flatbed trucks rattled into the
lodge yard at four o’clock the following afternoon. Brenda ran
outside to meet the Indians in the trucks, curious to get to know
them. She’d never met an Indian before.
    “Oh, there you are, Brenda.” Martin smiled
at her, and the two of them walked to the yard where the motorized
trucks were going to be unloaded.
    “Howdy, Martin,” said she, getting into the
spirit of a picture about the Wild West. “I hope you’re putting
these fellows up in the lodge and not making them sleep in tents or
something.”
    “Brenda.” Martin offered her a fake frown of
injury. “You know me better than that. Peerless honors all of its
actors, even the Indians.”
    Even the Indians . Brenda felt a slice
of bitterness cut into her heart. “That’s very nice of Peerless,”
she said, her voice betraying only a little of the acidity she
felt. “I’ve noticed that about Peerless. They’re even nice to
women, of all unworthy creatures.”
    Martin’s brows creased, and she felt kind of
mean. Never, in the few years she’d known him, had she