Ivy Vanderbilt is a landscape artist, beautiful and rich, and her wealth came from sponges that were not used for bathing. Young Bill Foley is attracted to her, and she to him. The shadow on the romance is Wyatt Winslow. Wyatt was presumed killed in the War of Secession but has returned to challenge Young Bill because he fathered a child with his sister but refused to marry her.Young Bill is not worried, because he has been trained by Lyle Sanford, the quick-draw artist in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, but Wyatt outdraws Ivy's bodyguard, so Young Bill knows they are fast enough to kill each...

When a classical pianist opens a book of Greek history belonging to a cowboy from Texas, she reads something that brings a flood of questions the final one being, has fate planned this? Her grandmother had given the book to a lover whose professional name was THE GREAT OBOLUS. College mythology taught her an OBOLUS is an ancient Greek coin, so her next question is did Grandmother's lover realize a baby, like a new coin once put into circulation, cannot know where it will end up? Pickett's son, Shepherd, has not spent one night under his father's rood; he has slept in the barn since his...