Paint the Wind Excerpt
Paint The Wind Excerpt
Prologue
From the Journal of Matthew Hart McAllister
They called her Any Man’s Fancy – but it wasn’t true, of course. She loved two men in her life, and perhaps a third, at least a little. But that’s hardly very much in a life like hers, and not near as many as there might have been if she’d been less particular.
Because of her I bankrupted one man, ruined another’s reputation, and killed a third, and would again if it needed doing. But that’s the end of my tale and not the start, so perhaps we’d best get to the beginning….
Hart McAllister let the pen come to rest and raised his eyes, unseeing above the paper. It was not the wall of his study that met his unfocused gaze. Then, resolutely, he began to write again.
My brother Chance and I were born in Kansas in the late 1840’s fifteen months apart, he being the older.
He was the best brother anyone could have in thick or thin. And nothing ever really came between us, not even Fancy. But that’s a long story and maybe not one you’ll understand.
“Christ!” he whispered into the silent room. “How I loved them both.”
History isn’t written in history books-it’s seared into the hearts of men and women…branded deep and washed with their sweat, their toil, and their hearts blood.
Resolutely, the old man raised his pen again and let his mind drift back and back to what might be called the beginning. There were two beginnings, really. Theirs and Fancy’s.
She was the center of it all…the catalyst and the loadstar. Without Fancy, perhaps none of this would have happened. Or, if it did, perhaps it wouldn’t have broken his heart…