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Letty, a girl from Virginia, train bound for her
cousin's ranch in the western prairies, meets Roddy, who hints at a marriage
proposal.
At the ranch, Cora's children and husband become too fond of Letty, and she is forced to leave. With nowhere to go, she decides to
accept Roddy's implied invitation to become his wife. When she
discovers him already married, she hastily marries Lige, a roughhewn son of
the soil at whom she had previously scoffed.
While Lige is away for a
round-up of wild horses during a particularly fierce windstorm, Roddy forces
his way into Lige's home and stays the night with Letty, urging her to go
with him in the morning. She refuses, shoots him when he becomes
insistent, laboriously drags his body outside, and buries it in the shifting
sand.
Letty spends a day of terror that approaches madness; but Lige
returns and Letty decides that she no longer wishes to return to
Virginia—they will face the wind together. |
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