“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Pritchard said, “but I’m plumb talked out. I just want to be left alone.”

“I understand your desire for privacy,” Woodruff went on. “My client desires the same. I beg you, please indulge her? She has traveled quite a distance for the opportunity to converse with you.”

“I’d rather not,” Pritchard said.

“I would be happy to compensate you for your time.”

“I don’t want your client’s money,” Pritchard said. “Frankly, Mr. Woodruff, I’m tired of being gawked at. I never wanted to be famous. If you’ll excuse me?” He tipped his Stetson and began to walk past the attorney.

“My client is aware of your preference for anonymity,” Woodruff said, sidestepping to block Pritchard’s path. “She distinctly remembers you wanted no thanks when she last saw you.”

“Last saw me?” Pritchard said, puzzled.

“Allow me to introduce my client,” Woodruff said, stepping aside.

A stunning auburn-haired woman, perhaps twenty years old, walked toward them from across the lobby. She had huge, deep brown eyes and was wearing an elegant, and undoubtedly very expensive, emerald-colored dress that did a poor job of concealing the contours of her extraordinary figure. While there was something vaguely familiar about her, Pritchard was certain if he’d seen so beautiful a woman before he would have remembered.

“Good evening, ma’am,” Pritchard said as he removed his hat. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?”

“We met once before,” the woman spoke. “On the Ouachita River. You saved me, just like those women of San Angelo I read about in the newspaper. My name is Caroline.”

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

A dumbstruck Pritchard sat across from Caroline at a candlelit table in a private dining room reserved in the Fort Worth Grand Hotel by Mr. Woodruff. He found it nearly impossible to believe the gorgeous young woman seated before him was the filthy, starved, abused waif he’d discovered tied to a chair in an Arkansas trading post, five years before. He found it even harder to keep from staring into her alluring brown eyes.

“I’m afraid you have me on my heels,” Pritchard said. “You don’t look a thing like the Caroline I remember.”

“Thanks to you,” she said, “I am no longer that girl. After you left me in the care of the pastor and his wife, I became very sick. No doubt it had something to do with what I had . . . experienced. I was at death’s door. Desperate, and not knowing what else to do, they took me to Hot Springs. It was the nearest town with a real doctor. By chance, a famous Texas surgeon named Dr. Jonathon Biggs happened to be visiting relatives there. Like you, he saved my life.”

“I’m indebted to him,” Pritchard said.