She did take the time to write her husband a letter, though, which was probably more than he deserved. Mr. Hawkins mailed it for her in Las Vegas when he had to drive up there on business. She could just imagine Jamie, red-faced and blustering, clad most likely in work jeans and steel-toed boots, storming into Las Vegas and demanding of someone, probably the first policeman he spotted, that they return his wife before he got really mad and wrecked the whole place. Jamie was like that, though he certainly had contained it well enough when he was courting her; he thought a wife was just another piece of property, like a monkey-wrench or an old comfortable pair of shoes, so he treated her accordingly. As near as he could figure it, being the wife of Jamie Olsen was a distinct privilege, something to be thankful for, and that should be enough to satisfy any woman. Nice clothes? Tenderness? A good life? Hell, that was for dudes and rich folks, not for Jamie. Hard dirty work and chasing the rainbow was all he knew, all his father and his father before him ever knew… and Sarah hoped he would be happy with it now that he had it all to himself.

They were on the road now, somewhere north of the Canadian-U.S. border and rolling further toward the oil field and construction camps of the Northwest Territories. It was ironic, in a way, that Sarah had escaped from one oilworkers' town and was heading for another, but it wasn't the same this time. She was on the move; the show's schedule called for not more than two days in any location, so she would see lots and lots of scenery between stops. And besides, there would be dozens of interesting people to meet along their full season's schedule that brought them back, by the coming on of winter, to California, not just the few boring souls back in Blackjack who were always the same – dull and uninteresting – day in and day out.