Josh was the first man to leave the bunkhouse that morning. Disgusted with the way the others were primping and preening in preparation for having their portraits made, he went on up to the house. There he found Candace waiting for him with his best suit sponged and pressed, and a clean white shirt and collar all laid out. Scorning the finery, he went on into the dining room, determined to see the girl face-to-face. He wanted to get their first confrontation out of the way. The meeting was bound to be awkward, but once it was over with, she would know he was unaffected by her charm and unchanged in his manner toward her. Then life could get back to normal.

But by the time he got to the kitchen, Felicity was long gone. Josh figured she was probably avoiding him. Unless, of course, the kiss had not bothered her. Perhaps she had forgotten all about it. For some reason this possibility was extremely annoying.

Felicity watched the men pouring out of the house after breakfast and hurrying over to where her wagon was parked. Anticipation sparked along her nerve endings. This was the first time she would be making photographs without her father beside her, but as much as she missed him, she also knew a surge of excitement at her newfound independence. If her stomach also quivered when she thought about facing Mr. Logan again, she did not allow herself to admit it. She forced herself not to watch the front door to know the exact moment when he joined them.

"Would some of you men pull my wagon over closer to the pump?" she asked Cody and several others who were the first to arrive.

The men eagerly fell to the task. Felicity had to smile at their amazed reactions when they discovered the weight of the wagon. Apparently they had no idea how much equipment the production of one simple photograph required.

When the wagon was at last in place, Felicity glanced around one last time. Mr. Logan had not yet come out of the house. Did he not want to have his picture made? Or was he simply avoiding her? Uncertain which idea she found more disturbing, Felicity pushed all thoughts of him aside and returned to the task at hand.

She entered the wagon through the rear door, and once again memories of her previous life assailed her-the hours she had spent working frantically in the dark preparing plates for her father, the equal number of hours she had spent developing those plates and then making prints from them. Because of the physical strength required to haul around the huge cameras, few women became photographers unless they had the luxury of a fixed studio from which to operate. Of the few women who did know anything about the "black art," as photography had been nicknamed, most of them had been relegated to the developing room with its monotonous tasks of rinsing and washing and coating and watching.

Felicity had been lucky, though. In addition to teaching her the mechanics of making the pictures, her father had taught her the art, too. Indeed, he had been more than encouraged in this direction by the fact that she had a natural "eye" for a shot, and a way of dealing with people that calmed the most restive adult and stilled the most rambunctious child.

Today she would finally put all her father's teachings to use without his guiding hand. Pausing over the task of unpacking the glass plates from the barrel in which they had been so carefully placed, Felicity sniffed back a threatening tear. It wouldn't do to cry over him. Her father wouldn't have liked it. Any time he had spoken to her about the mother she had lost, he would quote the verse, "Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him."

Felicity knew that her father didn't approve of crying over those who had gone on to their heavenly reward. She should be happy for her father because now, after so many years, he was with the wife whom he had loved and missed so very much. Felicity was being selfish to wish him back. Still, she sent a small, sad smile heavenward and said, "I sure would like to have his help with the camera right now, though."

Just then Cody Wells stuck his head through the open door of the wagon. "Need any help?" he asked.

Jumping a little, Felicity remembered to send up a "thank you" before taking Cody up on his offer.

The camera with its tripod was as tall as Felicity and weighed almost as much, but Cody, accustomed to wrestling several hundred pounds of angry steer, had no trouble at all setting it up exactly where Felicity indicated. Then, with the help of the other men, they hung one of Felicity's backdrops on the barn wall. It was the one that pictured wide-open spaces and cacti in the far distance. While the men marveled at how realistic it looked, Felicity glanced anxiously around again. Still no sign of Mr. Logan. She put a hand over the flutter in her stomach and told herself, not to think about him. Quickly, before she succumbed to the temptation to look for him again, she ducked back into the wagon and closed the door securely to prepare her first plate in the resulting darkness.

After donning the heavy, black India rubber gloves that would protect her hands and putting on a huge rubber apron to cover her new dress, she thoroughly cleaned and polished the first glass plate. Then she poured the prepared mixture of collodion onto the upper left-hand corner of the glass. Balancing the plate carefully on the thumb and forefinger of her left hand with practiced ease, she slowly worked the thick fluid all over the plate until it reached the near right-hand corner.

When the collodion had set long enough to become tacky, she immersed the plate in a bath of silver nitrate to sensitize it. It was the silver nitrate with its capacity for turning a person's skin black that had given photography the nickname the black art, so Felicity was always careful to wear the rubber gloves, just as her father had taught her.

After about five minutes, she slipped the still-wet plate into the plate holder, where it would be protected from light until exposed inside the camera. She pulled off the rubber gloves. Then, juggling the bulky holder, she opened the wagon door and stepped out.

"Who's going to be first?" she asked brightly, slipping easily into the role of managing photographer, the role her father had always played before.

Suddenly all her eager helpers froze into silence and stared stupidly back at her. Felicity bit down hard on her lip to keep from laughing at them. It was always the same. None of them could wait, but none of them wanted to be first, either.

Felicity's ingrained modesty made her hesitate to order the men around, but common sense prevailed. If she didn't tell them what to do, who would? "Cody, step right up and let's show them how it's done," she commanded, sliding the plate holder into the camera. She didn't have time for coaxing. The plate had to be exposed while it was still wet, so she only had at most ten minutes in which to make the picture. "Is that your saddle?" she asked when he made no move to follow her instructions.

"Yeah, but-" he hedged, but Gus interrupted him.

"It sure is. He spent half the night polishing it up, too!" Gus hooted, drawing raucous laughter from the rest of the men.

"Well, put it over here," Felicity ordered, pointing to a spot in front of her backdrop. "Have you got a lariat handy? Here, this one'll do," she decided, snatching one from a nearby cowboy. "Come over here, Cody." Brooking no further argument, she took Cody by the arm and directed him to the proper spot. "Hold the rope like this," she said, placing it into his hands. "Where's that saddle?" While one of the cowboys rushed to move the saddle to the appropriate position, Felicity reached up and adjusted Cody's hat to a rakish angle. Then she showed him how to prop his foot on the saddle and how to hold his hands, before racing back to duck under the black cape to focus the camera on her subject.