A Rich Man For Dry Creek And A Hero For Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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      The old man couldn’t chop anymore. He needed help. Robert offered to chop some wood to repay the man for supper.

      One meal led to the next and the woodpile grew. Robert’s days found a rhythm. He slept in a camper shell by one of the old sheds on the man’s property. The nights were a deep quiet and he slept more peacefully than he ever remembered.

      Each morning he woke up to the disgruntled crowing of a red rooster he’d nicknamed Charlie. Charlie had no trouble making his opinions known; he had never learned to bow down to the opinions of the rich. He didn’t even respect the opinions of nature. He seemed to be particularly unhappy with the sun each morning.

      Robert didn’t want to chop wood in the chill of the early morning—and especially not with Charlie strutting around. Robert had never seen anything as cranky as that red bird in the morning. You’d think the morning had come up as a personal insult to the rooster. At least Charlie took it that way.

      So, instead of listening to Charlie, Robert would jog down the hard-packed dirt road for several miles. He aimed himself in the general direction of the mountains even though they were so far away he’d never get there by running. But he liked to look at them anyway.

      His morning run took him past two run-down houses with an astonishing assortment of children spilling out of each. Toddlers. Teens. Boys. Girls. One morning some of the children started to follow him on his run. Before the end of the week, a dozen kids were trailing after him and he was carrying the smallest in a backpack he made from a blanket.

      It took a full week for them all to tell him their names.

      It was the second week before Robert noticed most of them were running in thin sandals and slippers.

      Robert almost scolded them for not dressing right for running, when he realized they were wearing the only shoes they had. The next morning he brought some old newspaper with him and had the kids each make a drawing of their right foot for him.

      Later that day he hitchhiked to the nearest post office and sent an overnight package to his secretary ordering fourteen pairs of designer tennis shoes just like his.

      The shoes arrived on a Monday.

      It was Thursday before Robert saw the children were all limping and he realized he had forgotten socks. How blind could he be? He’d realized then just how removed he’d always been from the needs of others.

      He gave money, but it was other people on his staff who actually worried about the arrangements. He, himself, paid very little attention to the needs of others. His contribution was reduced to a dollar sign. It was a picture of himself that he didn’t particularly like.

      Unfortunately, others still had a fascination with his wealth and the tabloids fed their interest.

      Too bad he wasn’t still living in the camper shell with Charlie, Robert thought. Charlie might like being in the tabloids.

      Robert had discovered he didn’t like being in tabloids. In fact, he could honestly say he hated it more than Charlie hated the morning.

      Robert removed the phone from his pocket and pushed the redial button. He wondered how much it would cost to kill the story.

      Not that it mattered. Whatever it was, he already knew he’d pay it.

       Chapter Two

       R obert Buckwalter didn’t ordinarily notice the stars in the sky. But, standing still, holding the cell phone in his right hand, he looked up and blinked. Montana had a blackness to the nights that calmed him. He’d spent too much time in cities with all their noise and lights.

      All of the commotion stopped a man from thinking.

      And he needed to think his way out of this situation. Money wasn’t enough this time.

      Jenny’s sister had crumbled when she realized who was on the other end of the phone. Robert had not even needed to be stern. The young woman confessed why she’d called her sister and apologized for asking questions.

      She was contrite. She was abashed.

      She was useless.

      Robert had groaned inside when he found out why the young woman had called. He had dreaded the bachelor list even before his five months in Arizona. What sane man wouldn’t?

      The bachelor list winners might as well enroll in a circus freak show. No one left them an ounce of privacy. Or dignity. Last year he’d been number seventeen. Some tabloid had printed the sizes of all one hundred men’s underwear. Ten different women had actually sent him silk boxers with their names screened on them.

      And the letters! He had over a hundred letters from strange women asking him to marry them.

      Just imagine if he was in the number one spot. They might as well shoot him now before his mailman filed for workmen’s compensation because of the backache from delivering those letters—a fair number of which would come with a string-tied package. Somehow the packages with string on them always included baked goods. Chocolate-chip cookies. Plum bread. One enterprising woman had shipped a pot roast in a gallon-size zipper bag because some tabloid story had mentioned he liked beef.

      And the underwear givers and the cookie bakers were not even the worst of the lot. The more aggressive called on the telephone and demanded to talk to him. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. They knew how to dodge every polite refusal. His secretary was likely to quit this time around.

      Maybe he should hire Charlie to take those calls.

      Robert, himself, wasn’t interested in a wife that came from a list.

      It was old-fashioned, but Robert knew if he ever did marry it would be a real marriage. One that lasted a lifetime. Not one based on lists or money. Odd as it sounded, he’d realized in his five months away that he wanted a wife who would want a simple home with him. Without servants and expensive antiques. Someone who would want him to mow the lawn and take out the trash. Someone who would talk to him and not just quietly pretend to find whatever he was talking about fascinating enough for both of them.

      A woman like that probably didn’t even read the tabloids. She certainly wouldn’t mail him a pot roast or a pair of boxers if she didn’t know him.

      No, if Robert ever wanted to live a normal Bob-like life, he needed to start it now. He needed to get off the list.

      The trouble was he didn’t trust the young woman he’d spoken with to simply tell her editors that Robert Buckwalter thanked them very much for thinking of him, but could they please think of someone else for their bachelor list.

      Fortunately, Robert knew one thing and that was the celebrity world. He’d been forced to learn how it worked. He knew stories were killed every day and that lists could go up in smoke with the wrong move.

      As Robert saw it, he had one chance to change things and that was to make himself very unpopular. He needed to do something that would alienate women everywhere. He’d asked the woman and she’d confessed that the list was to be released on February 29. Leap Year’s Day. Women’s choice. It was already February 20. He needed to act fast.

      First, a victim must be found. He found that nothing set off women better than СКАЧАТЬ