Copyright © 2013 by Rosanne Bittner
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Cover Design by Gregg Gulbronson
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
Fifty
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
One
Wyoming… Mid-May 1886…
Maggie paused to push back a strand of hair, hoping she’d dug the hole deep enough. Lord knew she was accustomed to hard work, but this was the first time the dirt and blisters on her hands came from digging a grave. Worse—it was her husband she was burying.
Shrugging off an urge to give up, she began shoveling again, not daring to stop for too long for fear her arms would give out. She flung more dirt high and to the left, then used her foot to push the point of the shovel into the wall of dirt at one end, starting another wedge in order to carve more soil to make the grave longer. The ground in these western plains didn’t give like the soft earth of the old farm back home.
Dig-fling-dig-fling—over and over. With every shovel full of dirt she flung out of the grave she vowed to get revenge on the evil men who’d attacked her and James. Lord knew James Tucker had not been the easiest man to live with, and she’d never loved him the way she suspected a woman ought to love a man, but he’d treated her well. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did, and she, by God, didn’t deserve what happened afterward. There were moments when she wished that the filth who’d shot James had killed her too, but anger bolstered her determination not to cry or be ashamed.
Finally, groaning with exhaustion, she tossed the shovel up and out of the grave, then collapsed against a dirt wall and studied the length of the hole. Lord, let it be long enough. What a horror it would be to bury James all bent up because he didn’t fit. And what if his body was already too stiff to bend at all?
Using what little strength she had left, she reached up and grasped the tall grass at the edge of the grave, hanging on as she dug her toes into the sidewall and gradually worked her way up and out of the gaping hole. She rolled onto her back and watched the rising sun turn from a huge red ball on the endless eastern horizon to its full yellow glory, bringing warmth to her aching body.
In spite of warmer weather, the nights were still bone-cold in this high country, and so far, the days still carried a spring chill. It felt good to lie here with the sun on her face. She struggled to banish the horror of last night, reminding herself that she was at least alive, able to breathe the morning air. An inner pride and stubbornness convinced her that what happened to her could not change who she was—Maggie McPhee Tucker, and proud of it. She was not about to let this bring her down.
A puffy cloud drifted by.
James, why didn’t you listen to me and take up with a wagon train so we wouldn’t be alone?
Grimacing, she rolled to her knees and managed to stand. She walked over to where James lay with a tiny hole in the center of his chest from a gunshot wound. One little hole, and life was ended. How could men be so callous and cruel as those who’d done this?
And after me cooking for those awful men—James offering our hospitality.
It didn’t seem right that God allowed such deliberate killers to exist. She prayed she would find a way to make them die like James died. She’d done plenty of hunting with her father back in Missouri. She knew how to track game. It couldn’t be much harder to track men, could it?
She headed for the canvas-covered wagon that had brought them this far and managed to find a flour sack among the remnants of what was left after the outlaws looted their supplies. She carried the sack over to where James lay and knelt down to kiss his forehead before pulling the sack over his head. She felt sick to her stomach as she tightened the drawstring around his neck. She couldn’t bear to put him in that hole and throw dirt on his face. Once she got him into the hole, she’d throw a blanket over the rest of him before filling in the grave.
James was a stout man… short, big around, with wide shoulders and muscled arms. Moving his body would not be easy, but it had to be done. Mustering every ounce of her remaining strength, Maggie grasped him by the ankles and dragged his body to the side of the grave. She stood back then and judged the hole to be long enough. She could only pray it was deep enough to keep the coyotes and wolves away.
She knelt beside James and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, James. I could have loved you more. Lord knows you didn’t know much about how to love somebody, but I never turned you away in the night or treated you bad or ever caused you any shame or tribulation. I came out here with no complaint. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back home, but I promise that before I do, I’ll find the men who did this to you.”
She rose and prayed the Lord’s Prayer, then asked God to take James home to heaven. “He was a hard worker, Lord, and an honest man.” She leaned down then and managed to push James into the grave. He landed face down. Refusing to bury him that way, Maggie took a deep breath and climbed into the hole. She managed to turn his body over, then scrambled back out, walked to the wagon, and pulled out a blanket to cover the body. She carried it over to the grave and tried to shake it open, but her fiercely aching arms would not even allow that much movement. She decided then that since James was at least in a proper grave, she could rest for a few minutes.
Lost in utter exhaustion and grief, she wrapped the blanket into her arms and lay down. Her muscles screamed with pain, and raw blisters burned her palms. She broke into deep sobs, hating to feel so lost and alone and afraid. She didn’t like weakness. She’d never had room in her life for such things.
Amid the sobs and a b
attle against dearly needed sleep, she heard the soft thud of horse’s hooves. Startled, Maggie’s tears left her, and she bolted upright to see a broad-shouldered man sitting nearby on an equally broad-chested horse. He looked down at her, the afternoon sun behind him so that his face remained a shadow under his wide-brimmed hat.
“Ma’am? Can I help you?” he asked in a deep voice.
Maggie jumped up, realizing that she’d been so engrossed in the chore of burying James that she hadn’t noticed anyone approaching, never even heard anything. How had he snuck up on her like this? She clung to the blanket and backed away, fear kicking in. Her recent ordeal with other strangers stabbed at her gut, and she turned and ran to her wagon, quickly pulling out an old Sharp’s carbine that once belonged to her father. It was the only gun left behind by her abductors. It took all the strength she could muster in her overworked arms to raise the rifle and point it at the stranger.
“What do you want?” she demanded. “I’ll have you know I’ve shot bears with this gun! I know how to use it real good!”
The stranger raised his arms outward. “I asked if I could help. I’m not here to hurt you. It’s obvious something terrible happened, ma’am. There’s a man dead, your dress is ripped up pretty bad, and your face is bruised.”
Maggie realized then that her dress was torn half off in front, some of the skirt ripped away, revealing the one and only slip she’d worn, and showing some of her camisole. She struggled against deep embarrassment.
“I… you… throw your guns over here, and then we can talk,” she ordered.
The man grinned a little.
He probably thinks I’m just a silly, helpless thing. “I mean it!” she spoke aloud. “I’ll shoot your hat off! Do you want to take the risk of me firing so close to your head? I’m tired and hurting. My aim might be off!”
“Take it easy.” The man lowered one hand, gripped the butt of his own rifle, and pulled it from its boot, then threw it aside. Keeping his left hand in the air, he pulled a six-gun from his holster and threw that aside also. “Now, put that thing down and rest. I’ll finish filling in that grave for you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Name’s Sage Lightfoot, and you’re on my land. You could ride for miles more and still be on my land. This is my ranch—called Paradise Valley. I’m after some men who killed my best foreman and stole money from me. Figured maybe the same men made your acquaintance in an unpleasant way.”
Maggie sidestepped her way to where his guns lay, keeping her own rifle in her right hand, while she picked up the man’s six-gun and wrapped a couple of fingers into the trigger guard on his rifle, then managed to back away with all three weapons. She threw the rifles into the back of her wagon, but kept his six-gun and faced him with it. She’d never fired a six-gun in her life, and though she hated to admit it, the big man looking at her could probably jump off his horse and get the better of her easily, the shape she was in. He darn well knew it too, but he didn’t make his move.
“I suppose they might be the same men,” she answered him. She stepped a little closer, able to see him clearly now in the bright afternoon sun. His eyes were dark, set in a finely chiseled face. He was a big man, unusually handsome, and there was an honesty in his eyes that made her feel a little calmer in his presence. “All right. I… I guess I don’t have much choice but to trust you… and I could use the help.” She finally lowered the six-gun, her arms so tired she simply couldn’t keep it aimed at the man any longer. “I’m Maggie… McPhee… Tucker…” The words trailed off as she felt blackness envelop her. The gun fell from her hand, and gravel stung her face as she hit the ground. Seconds later, she felt someone lifting her, then soft quilts beneath her, then more blankets covering her.
“Ma’am, you’re in sore need of rest.”
Maggie managed to open her eyes for just a moment, long enough to realize she was inside the wagon. All three weapons lay near her. The man left them, apparently, to reassure her she needn’t worry about his motives. She heard a horse whinny, and that’s all she remembered before drifting into sleep. She would later wonder if it was truly sleep, or if she’d simply passed out from shock and overexertion.
Two
Sage stretched his arms to relieve a slight ache from the repetition of shoveling dirt. He carried the shovel to Maggie Tucker’s wagon and set it into hooks at the side of the wagon bed, then made a fire from wood tied to his pack horse. As he unloaded the wood and a sack of coffee beans, his thoughts were on the young woman whose lovely green eyes betrayed her show of bravery when she pointed his own six-gun at him. He could see she’d been as frightened as a rabbit in a foxhole, and from her appearance, he had no doubt what had gone on here.
Now he wasn’t sure what the hell to do about Mrs. Maggie McPhee Tucker. Finding and helping her had already put quite a dent in his plans, and now, he was stuck with her. By the time he built a fire and made coffee, Sage detected movement near the wagon and glanced over to see Maggie climbing out. She still clung to a blanket. Her red hair was a tousled mess, her face and hands still filthy, her dress torn. As she approached him, he thought how her tiny frame made her appear more girl than woman, and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, nor could he control a deep anger at the men who’d abused her in the worst way. No woman deserved that.
He kept his cheroot at the corner of his mouth as she hesitated once she drew near. She studied him as though he were a crouched bobcat, ready to pounce.
“Come have some coffee,” he said. “You need it. And, ma’am, if you needed to be afraid of me, you’d know it by now.”
She kept the blanket closed to her neck. “I suppose.”
“I finished filling the grave. Was the man in it your pa or your husband?”
Maggie glanced at the grave. “My husband.” She looked back at Sage. “Outlaws shot him and looted our camp and…” She walked around the other side of the fire, her voice hardly audible. “…and they weren’t very kind to me.”
“No need to explain.” Sage removed the smoke from his lips and poured himself a cup of coffee, taking a sip. “I’m sorry for what happened, especially that it happened on my land. These are men I suspect once worked for me.”
Maggie sat on a log across the fire from him. “So, you’re pretty sure who they were?”
Sage nodded. “More than pretty sure. I’m damn sure.”
Maggie swallowed. “Well, then, I’d be obliged if you’d tell me their names, Mr. Lightfoot, as I intend to find them and kill them.”
Sage struggled to contain a snort of laughter at her matter-of-fact statement. Maggie Tucker looked to weigh maybe a hundred pounds at most. “Is that so?”
“Yes, sir. I’m good with my pa’s old Sharps, and I can’t let those men get away with what they did to me and my husband. I just need a horse. Perhaps you’d sell me one. I have some money hidden in the wagon that those men didn’t find. I can pay you.”
Sage couldn’t help admiring her. In spite of what she’d suffered, this woman was no shrinking violet. “Ma’am, I would never allow you to ride off with no idea where you’re going, or how you’ll find those men, or how in hell you expect to get the better of them if you do find them.” He poured another cup of coffee and handed it to her.
Maggie took the cup, still eyeing him warily. “What I do and how I do it is none of your concern, Mr. Lightfoot.”
Sage rolled his eyes in exasperation. “I just spent close to two hours filling in that grave for you. I cleaned up your camp a little and made you some coffee—and I let you sleep while I did it all because I figured you needed it. You owe me, so sit down, and tell me more about what happened here. Then we’ll decide what to do about it.”
Maggie looked at the grave again. “I guess I should thank you.”
“I guess you should.”
She took a sip of coffee. “You said this is your land. I don’t see a house anywhere.”
“That’s because my house is a three-day ride from here.”
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br /> Her eyes widened. “It takes three days to ride across your land?”
“Actually, about four, if you go beyond the house and to the other fence line. And that’s if the weather is good. In winter, it takes longer. Sometimes out here, you don’t go anywhere in winter. Snow’s too deep.” He swept his hand to point out the surrounding horizon. “All this is part of Paradise Valley Ranch.”
Sage stuck the cheroot between his lips again, while Maggie drank more coffee. He wondered why she didn’t appear to mourn her husband’s death, but that wasn’t his business. Besides, she was probably still in shock. She shifted restlessly, her demeanor reminding Sage of a nervous colt.
“Tell me more about yourself,” he said, “how you and your husband ended up way out here alone. And I still need to know what happened here and what the men looked like.”
Maggie wrapped one end of the blanket around the still-hot coffee cup and drank a little more of the stiff brew, then set the cup on the ground and folded herself into the blanket. “The man you helped me bury is James Tucker, my husband for the last four years.”
Married for four years? Sage thought she looked barely fifteen or sixteen.
“We’re from Missouri—lived there our whole lives. My grandparents came to America from the Scottish Highlands and settled there.” She spoke quietly, staring at the crackling fire. “Last winter James decided we’d go to Oregon to farm in the Willamette Valley. He’d heard a lot about the place, what great land was there. The farm we had in Missouri was played out.” She pulled the blanket closer. “There were other reasons we left, but mainly, it was to start over someplace new. My pa died, and there was nobody left—”
She stopped mid-sentence and blinked back tears. Apparently, her loss was finally setting in. Sage waited for her to compose herself.
“James, he was a real independent sort,” she finally continued. “He was one to make up his mind quick-like—didn’t always think things out. We drove a wagon up to Omaha, then sold it for train fare to Cheyenne, where we bought that wagon over there and a team of mules.” She looked at the wagon, then met Sage’s gaze. “We left town and headed northeast, but we kind of lost our way. We got held up here because of a lame mule.” She paused and closed her eyes. “Three men came along. They weren’t very clean, but they seemed friendly enough. They wanted to know if they could use our fire for the night—said they’d been riding for quite a long time. My husband offered to let them eat with us, but after eating our food, those men started drinking. They got kind of wild—said things about me that alarmed my husband. He ordered them to leave our camp, but before he could get hold of his rifle to back up his words, one drew a gun and shot him.” She met Sage’s eyes again, her own showing utter devastation. “Just… shot him… just like that… point blank.”
Rosanne Bittner Page 1
