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unclenched her hands at her sides, finding it hard to continue obeying a father who, since Mariah’s mother’s death twelve long years ago, had become unreasonable in his demands.
    â€œPapa, you can’t force me to cut my hair,” Mariah said, her voice flat with determination. “You can’t expect me to go that far to please you.” She glanced down at the way she was dressed and shuddered, then gazed angrily up at her father again. “I’ve worn these damnable shapeless breeches and scratchy shirts because I had no choice after you burned all of my dresses. You even burned Mother’s so I couldn’t sneak into one of them.” Her lips curved into a sullen pout. “Papa, I can hardly even recall how it felt to wear a dress.”
    Her fingers went protectively to her hair. She drew its long red tresses back from her shoulders and cupped as much of it as possible within her hands. “I shan’t ever forget how it feels to have long hair, because I won’t ever agree to cutting it,” she snapped, taking a step back from her father as he moved toward her, dragging his lame leg behind him.
    â€œAre you finished?” Victor Temple said in an impatient growl. “My, but you do go on sometimes, just like your mother used to. Not only do you have her looks, but also her temperament.”
    His gaze swept over Mariah. Each time, it was a new shock to him to see a daughter so startlingly pretty, with eyes so dark and velvet brown on a flawless face, and abundant hair that gleamed and rippled with such life it seemed more vivid than the brightest red. Her short straight nose was that of an appealing and mischievous young woman. Her lips were rosy and soft, and there was nothing weak about her pretty chin.
    She is so small and vulnerable, Victor thought to himself with a quick rush of tenderness. And so proud and bullheadedly stubborn!
    â€œIf I am like my mother, so be it,” Mariah said, lifting her chin proudly. She had been six when her mother had died, the mystery of it always troubling her. Her father had not let Mariah see her mother on her deathbed, nor had he explained how or why her mother had died at such a young age.
    But it was the remembrances of her mother the six years that she had shared with her that still filled Mariah’s heart with such love whenever she let herself get caught up in missing her. No mother could have been as sweet—as understanding.
    She peered intensely up at her father, recalling how he had been before his wife’s death. In appearance he had changed, now weathered with age at fifty-five. He was a round-shouldered man with a leathery face and brush of chin whiskers, and with a lame leg that made his movements jerky and sometimes uncontrolled.
    Those many years ago, before his leg affliction, he had been handsomely neat, always clean-shaven, and had always stood proudly tall and square-shouldered. Although Mariah had thought him to be a decent sort of man at that time, it was the years since that had colored her image of him.
    And it had not only been the death of his wife that seemed to have changed him, she mulled to herself. The change had happened shortly after the burial, when he had left to have council with some of the Indian chiefs in the area, having brought his wife and daughter to the Minnesota wilderness to establish a trading post long before Fort Snelling had been a part of the setting.
    At that time, as now, it was not unusual for her short-tempered father to get into conflicts with the neighboring Indians to establish his territorial rights if they would not meet with him and speak peacefully of sharing the abundance of wildlife in the area.
    This one time in particular, when her father had been gone for several days, he had returned from a skirmish with some Indians, wounded. He had almost lost his leg as a result of that battle, hardening his heart into someone Mariah did not even enjoy calling