The Abducted Children’s Rescue (Preview)

Prologue

Alabaster, Kansas, 1881

Abigail covered Carl’s ears with her hands and prayed the boy would remain asleep. If they heard him crying—

A gunshot rang out, and she flinched and cast an anxious look down at her son. He remained asleep, but if those gunshots drew any closer, then Abigail’s hands over his ears wouldn’t muffle the noise. Besides, she couldn’t wait forever.

The Dalton Gang would eventually find her. She doubted the marshals would arrive in time to stop them. If they did find her, they might not kill her, not right away. She was young and beautiful, and childbirth hadn’t done anything to diminish that beauty. They would find a use for her, for a time, at least.

But they would kill Carl. Just like they had killed his father.

Hot tears came to her eyes. She was only twenty-two years old. She was supposed to have a lifetime with her husband. She wasn’t supposed to lose him before their son could even call his name.

She heard another gunshot and blinked her tears away. There would be time to mourn Travis, but that time wasn’t now. Right now, she needed to get their son safely to the train station. The next train would leave in a few minutes, and she intended to be on it.

More gunfire filled the air, and Abigail heard a cry as a bullet struck home. She didn’t know if it was a sheriff’s deputy or an outlaw who had been hit.

It didn’t matter. The sheriffs were outnumbered here. The Dalton Gang was twenty strong, and the sheriff only had himself and three deputies. One of those deputies had ridden for Dodge City the moment the gang arrived in their town. Another one of those deputies, her Travis, had been killed when he refused to let Art Dalton bed Abigail.

Abigail’s eyes burned as tears tracked down her cheeks. Those cowards. Twenty of them against one man and his wife. If Art wanted her, he could have come for her himself. She would have convinced him of the error of his ways. She wouldn’t even have needed Travis’s help. She would have—

Another gunshot, this one closer. Carl flinched, and for a terrifying moment, she thought he was going to wake. But he only stirred in her arms, sighed, and went back to sleep.

Her anger faded as she looked down at Carl. What a world her poor son had been born into. What a violent and cruel world filled with sadistic people who cared only about their own desires and didn’t care who they had to kill or hurt to fulfill them.

She would take him away from that world. She would take him somewhere he didn’t have to live in fear. She would do for him what her father had failed to do for her and give him a life where he didn’t need to carry a gun or a knife just to feel safe.

A branch cracked near where she crouched in an alley in between the Alabaster Inn—more a brothel than an inn—and the Alabaster Saloon. She stiffened and listened intently.

“She’s got to be close by,” a rough voice said. “She had the baby. She can’t have run far.”

Abigail took a soft, slow breath and let the fear release with the exhale. Her father had taught her this way of breathing when she was frightened.

“If I find that whore, I’m going to show her what she’s good for,” another, even coarser voice said. “A woman like that is wasted on a man like Travis Callahan.”

“You better not touch her, less you want Art to tear your manhood off,” the first voice warned.

“I’ll leave enough of her for him to enjoy. A woman like that’s good for more than one use.”

The two men cackled. She could hear their footfalls now. They were getting closer.

She brought her left hand slowly around to cover both of Carl’s ears and lowered her right hand to the butt of her pistol. It was a Smith & Wesson .44 Russian. She preferred the Smith & Wesson to the Colt revolvers popular in the West. It was sturdy, powerful and accurate, and in her opinion more reliable.

She had never fired it at a human being before. She prayed she didn’t have to today.

The next gunshot came from very close by, and this time, Carl’s eyes flew open. Her heart twisted in her chest, but his eyes slowly closed before he full woke.

The outlaws near Abigail cried out. “Shit!” the first voice said. “I thought they’d killed the sheriff!”

“I guess not,” the second one said. “You want to get shot standing here, or you want to find cover?”

He shouted that last sentence as his feet pounded the sand. Moving away from them. Oh, thank God, moving away from them.

“Hold on!” the first outlaw cried. “Wait for me!”

His own footsteps retreated in the distance, and Abigail released a breath that was far more ragged than her previous ones. She got to her feet and ignored the shaking in her legs as she ran toward the train station. The train whistle blew, and Carl whimpered and squirmed in her arms.

“Hush, Carl,” she whispered. “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”

He sighed and stilled, and she bit back a sob as she sprinted toward the platform.

They nearly made it. They were almost there. Her left foot just landed on the platform when she heard a shout behind her. “Hey! She’s heading for the train! Stop her!”

The conductor, realizing that there was gunfire, opened the throttle. The train’s wheels screamed as the engine accelerated.

She could make it. She could just…

Make it! She jumped into the last car just as the train accelerated. She heard gunfire behind her and whirled around, drawing her handgun.

When she saw a troop of U.S. Marshals clashing with the Dalton Gang and chasing them away from the platform, she collapsed to her knees and released the only sob she would allow herself.

Carl finally woke, and as he cried, she rocked him in her arms. “There, there. It’s all right. You’re safe. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Chapter One

Granville, Texas, 1886

Abigail grinned and said in a hushed, excited tone, “And the wind blew through the sails, and the waves went, splash, splash, splash!”

She dipped her sponge in the bucket and splashed water and soap on the floor as she spoke. Carl giggled as a few droplets of soapy water splashed on his canvas work pants. He had begged his mom to sew him some work clothes just like hers, so for his sixth birthday two months ago, she had made him some.

“And the boat went back and forth, back and forth!”

“Back and forth, back and forth, whoa, whoa!” Carl echoed, pushing his own sponge back and forth over the soap while Abigail did the same with hers.

“And the captain called, ‘All hands brace yourselves! It’s going to be a rough passage to the Caribbean!’”

Carl giggled again as he and Abigail moved their sponges back and forth and side to side, in dizzy circles as their ship endured the stormy trip down the Atlantic Ocean to the warm, calm tropical seas of the Caribbean. Soon, they would enjoy the sugarcane syrup and fruit punch their destination promised.

That sugarcane syrup and fruit punch would be served in the form of sweetened tea and lemonade when their chores were completed. Lately, Carl had asked to help her with her chores, but being a small child, he still got bored very easily.

So, Abigail had come up with the adventures of Captain Codfish, the daring privateer and adventurer whose tales of derring-do were enough to swab the hair off a man’s chest and put it back on his face (hence the long, thick beard for which sea captains were famous).

She was rather proud of her stories. She doubted they would win any accolades among literary reviewers, but one grinning little critic found the tales fascinating enough that some days he would spend hours joining her on Captain Codfish’s adventures.

“And Captain Codfish looked on the horizon, and he saw a whale!” Carl exclaimed, throwing his arms wide to illustrate how big the creature was.

“Wow!” Abigail replied. “How big was the whale again?”

Carl stretched his arms as wide as they would go. “This big!”

“Oh my goodness! That’s almost as big as the ship!”

“It’s bigger than the ship.”

“‘It’s bigger than me ship!’ cried Captain Codfish. ‘Do you suppose it’s friendly?’”

“Mmhmm,” Carl said seriously. “It’s a nice whale.”

“Ah,” Abigail replied with equal seriousness, “that’s good. I’d be afraid of a mean whale.”

“It’d destroy your whole entire ship if it was mean!” Carl agreed. “But it’s a nice whale. It wants us to scratch its back.” He pinched his face and called in as deep a voice as his little lungs could muster, “‘Hello! My back is really itchy, Captain Codfish. Can you help me scratch it?”

“And Captain Codfish lifted his finger and thumb and scratched his thick sea-captain beard. ‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘what’s in it for me?’”

“And the whale said, um… the whale said…” Carl’s brow furrowed as he thought about what exactly the whale might have said. Then his eyes popped open. “The whale said, ‘If you scratch my back, I’ll give you some taffy.’”

Abigail narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You just want taffy after chores, don’t you, Carl?”

Carl giggled and bobbed his head up and down. “Uh-huh.”

Abigail sighed dramatically. “Well, if you must insist. And Captain Codfish cried, ‘Yar! You have yourself a deal!’”

“Yippie!” Carl cheered.

They “scratched Mr. Whale’s back” by scrubbing the walls in the living room. They deep cleaned one room each day in addition to their daily chores, and today, it was the living room. After assisting the kind Mr. Whale, who promised to have the taffy waiting for them when the ship pulled into port, they fought off pirates by beating the drapes with “swords” made of brooms. Then they polished the ship’s cannons by dusting and polishing the furniture. They finished by swabbing the deck—a little unimaginative, but what else could mopping the floor be?

Abigail loved these days with Carl. She loved all days with Carl. She loved all days working on Mr. Bennett’s ranch.

She’d moved here two years ago, shortly after Mr. Bennett’s wife died. She’d spent the three years before that working as a maid in a boarding house in Breakwater, New Mexico, a town that was a solid five days’ ride from any water that wasn’t pumped from a well.

Breakwater had been fine. She couldn’t complain too much. No one had tried to shoot her or threatened Carl there. Men were… well, men were men, but the men there were at least reasonably well-behaved.

But here in Granville, Texas on Mr. Bennett’s ranch, things were just about perfect. The work was no easier than the work at the boarding house, but Carl didn’t have to spend all day cooped up in his room.

And the only men here were Tucker Bennett and his ranch hands, and they were just about the sweetest men she’d ever met. Tucker was a moody sort, but his brown eyes always held tenderness even if he wasn’t the best at expressing it. In the rare moments she allowed herself to think that way, she recognized that the tall, tanned rancher was handsome.

She heard a thump outside, followed by a stream of very choice language from one of the hands. She smiled wryly. They were sweet, but they were still men. Still, they were kind to her. They treated her with respect. And no one—not here on the ranch and not in town—ever drew their guns to shoot anything but a coyote.

She could stay here. She would stay here. And Carl would grow up free of the fear and hardship that had followed Abigail her entire life up until now.

When they finished “stowing their swabs,” they headed to the washroom. After all, every sailor needed to be clean as a whistle before enjoying his saltwater taffy. It was part of the sailor’s code.

“Where are you going?” a tiny little voice asked just before they stepped outside.

Abigail turned to the owner of the voice and smiled tenderly. Ellie Bennett was the same age as Carl, and she was the cutest little girl Abigail had ever seen. She was tiny, barely up to Carl’s shoulders despite being the same age, and had wavy brown hair and eyes the same soft brown.

Abigail wished her mother could see her. She had never met Mary Bennett, but from the little Tucker had shared with her, she was a saint of a woman who had loved her daughter fiercely.

Well, of course she did. That was her child. Every woman loved their child fiercely.

Ellie rarely spoke to the Callahans. Usually she could be found hiding in her room or peeking out from behind her father’s legs. Abigail hoped this was when she would finally come out of her shell.

She tried a gentle approach. “We’re going to wash up for dinner, and then we’re going to have some saltwater taffy,” she said. “Would you like to—”

“And you have to be a salty sailor of the seven seas to sail with us!” Carl shouted exuberantly, leaping in front of Abigail and pointing his finger aggressively at Ellie.

Ellie flinched backwards and Abigail sighed. She would have to teach Carl that not all people wanted to play loud sailing games.

Carl quickly noticed Ellie’s discomfort, though, and softened his tone. “I was just playing. You can join us even if you’re not a sailor.”

“But I want to be a sailor!” Ellie protested. “How do you sail?”

Carl grinned. Then he turned to Abigail. “First Mate Mother!” he said. “Hoist the sails! We’re taking this lovely lassie to the Isle of Tortuga!”

That meant the kitchen. Which meant an extra hour of scrubbing. They had time to do that since Tucker dined late, but Abigail was tired and…

And Ellie looked up at her with such big, hopeful eyes that there was only one thing Abigail could do. She smiled at the two children and said, “Aye aye, captain!”

Both children leaped for joy. Carl grabbed Ellie’s hand and practically dragged the poor girl to the closet to get the buckets and sponges. “First Mate Mother has to mix the lye,” he explained, “because it can burn your skin if you’re not careful.”

Ellie nodded soberly. Abigail’s heart glowed as he continued to talk a thousand words a minute while they walked to the well to get water. He had such a good heart. Just like his father.

Her smile faded as she thought of Travis. Most days, she didn’t think of him, or at least when she did, she was able to pull her thoughts quickly away and focus on Carl. But sometimes, his memory forced itself upon her whether she wanted to face it or not, and when it did, her heart broke anew.

“Can we, Ma?”

She blinked and turned her attention back to Carl. “Can we what, dear?”

“Can we share some of our saltwater taffy with Ellie?”

“Hmm,” Abigail said. “Well, we’ll have to ask Mr. Bennett.”

Ellie’s face immediately fell. “Pa won’t let me have any taffy.”

Abigail was genuinely surprised. “Why not?”

Ellie shrugged. “I just don’t think he will. He’s always grouchy ever since Ma died.”

Carl looked at Abigail, silently beseeching her to make Ellie happy again. Abigail hesitated a moment, but she couldn’t make herself say what propriety said she should.

So instead, she said, “Well, I suppose we don’t need to tell Mr. Bennett if it’s just one piece.”

Ellie brightened like a flower blossoming in the sun, and you know what, if Mr. Bennett had a problem with that, then Abigail would give that grouchy man a piece of his mind.

Two hours later, Abigail and the children were clean and dressed in fresh clothes enjoying taffy at the kitchen table. Gertie the cook promised not to tell Mr. Bennett about the taffy and beamed gratefully at Abigail.

Abigail doubted seriously that Tucker would mind Ellie having a piece of taffy. He was indeed a grouchy man, but he wasn’t unkind. He was only grieving the loss of his wife. Abigail knew what it was like to lose someone you loved, and while she had moved past her grief by focusing on Carl, she understood that not everyone could do what she had done so easily.

Besides, Travis had died five years ago. Mary had passed only two years earlier. Aside from the fact that it was more recent for Tucker than it was for Abigail, Ellie was old enough to remember her mother.

It hurt Abigail when Carl lamented that he never knew his father, but those moments were rare, and he was generally a happy child. Ellie had to walk around her house remembering her mother’s voice and never hearing it again. She couldn’t imagine how it must break Tucker’s heart to hear his daughter weep for her mother.

But Ellie was smiling now. She was laughing and playing with Carl, and her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright. She was having a good day, and if a little saltwater taffy helped make that happen, then it was time well spent as far as Abigail was concerned.

She allowed the children to play in the living room until Gertie called out that dinner was served. Then the three of them dined on a Caribbean feast and sang sea shanties while drinking their sugarcane punch.

It was another wonderful day.

Chapter Two

“You might want to curse a little louder, Jeb,” Tucker quipped. “I don’t know if they heard you over in town.”

Blake and Henry snickered at the joke. Jeb glared at the three of them and got up, dusting his pants off. “I don’t see any of you trying to tame that beast!” he challenged.

“Gee,” Tucker replied, “I wonder why?”

That brought more snickers. Jeb tried to stay angry, but finally he chuckled. “Well, I guess there’s one bull that Jeb Hoover can’t tame.”

The bull in question—a stout, lazy animal who spent most of his days standing near the grain trough waiting to be fed—had shown his devilish nature by shrugging Jeb off in less than three seconds. By Tucker’s estimation, the animal had used about as much energy as Tucker used to put on his hat. His eyelids never widened from their usual half-closed state.

But if Jeb needed to believe he had grappled with the fierce spawn of Satan himself, so be it. Tucker clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Come on, devil rider. Let’s get Lucifer and his buddies out to pasture. Then I’ll chip a block of ice out of the box for your delicate little backside.”

Jeb reddened fiercely as the other two laughed. “You’re lucky I like you, Tucker,” he said sourly.

“Aww, you’re sweet.”

Tucker heard a cry coming from the house. He frowned and looked toward it only to see the maid, Abigail, and her son, Carl, leading Ellie from the house toward the well. The cry he had heard was Carl saying something to Ellie.

He felt a slight tremor in his heart at the sight of Abigail. She was a truly beautiful woman, tall with blonde hair, blue eyes, and the sort of figure men died for. If it weren’t for the memory of his wife, he might have tried to make her more than his maid.

But Mary was the only woman for him, and she was gone. She’d taken Tucker’s heart when she’d passed two years ago. These vague tremors were the closest thing he could manage to love anymore.

“Hey, boss, we can handle getting the herd to pasture if you want,” Jeb said. “I’ll call the other boys to come help so we can get it done quick. You can go say hi to Ellie if you want.”

Tucker pressed his lips together. He hesitated a moment, but finally shook his head. “No, that’s all right. I’ll see her at dinner. She’s playing with Carl.”

Jeb smiled compassionately at Tucker, but he knew better than to force the issue or show any sign of sympathy outside of that smile. He nodded and clapped Tucker on the shoulder, then walked with his boss to the waiting herd.

Tucker’s face stuck in a frown as they began leading the herd to pasture. The other hands seemed to sense the change in their boss’s mood and kept quiet.

Tucker hated that. He hated that he had become the sort of person they had to be quiet around more often than not. He hated that the only time he smiled was when he was being sarcastic. He hated everything about life without Mary.

Most of all, he hated that he was so… well, he didn’t know what he was around Ellie. He loved her. There was no doubt about that. She was the most important thing in his world, and if he needed to, he’d die for her in a heartbeat.

That thought deepened his frown. Of course that was what he’d think about. That’ll fix things right up, won’t it? If you die and Ellie’s alone in the world. Good thinking, Tucker. That’s why you’re the best father in the world.

He sighed. Damn it, this was the problem. He loved Ellie, but whenever he thought about her, his mind went to the worst places. His wife’s death, his own death, Ellie alone, Ellie sad, Ellie afraid. Why couldn’t he be happy? Even just a little bit. At least for her sake.

Abigail was happy. Her husband was dead, but she was still happy. She smiled at Carl, played with him, held him, talked to him. She could do all of that, so why couldn’t he?

Well, Ellie was talking to them now. Maybe Abigail could help cheer her up until Tucker figured out how to do it.

His thoughts lingered once more on Abigail. She wasn’t soft or angelic the way Mary was. She was a tough woman whose eyes showed the rough life she’d led, but she was still beautiful.

It still didn’t matter. He could be surrounded by thousands of beautiful women, and not one of them would hold a candle to Mary.

How could God have taken her? How could He have looked upon that beautiful creature and thought to Himself, “Hey, I should give her cholera so she can spend her last few days on Earth vomiting and shaking and miserable and leave her daughter and husband behind?” How could he…

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. As he did, he willed his fists to unclench.

That was worse than the moodiness. The anger. He hated that he felt so much anger. His temper was the one thing Mary hated about him.

“I don’t understand why you need to get so angry,” she would scold him, petite hands on beautiful, gently curving hips. “You act like you’ve been cursed by God.”

He would always apologize and say something sweet to her when she scolded him for that. She would sigh and kiss him and tell him it was all right, she loved him still, he was just an overgrown boy sometimes. His anger would vanish, and the two of them would cuddle on the porch and watch the fireflies compete with the stars for light.

Now?

Now he wasn’t angry that often. Just sometimes. Most of the time, he was sad. He just hated that Ellie had to grow up with him like that.

He looked around his ranch. His father had built this ranch with his own hands, one of the first ranches in the area. It had started as a small homestead fed by a well that Josiah Bennett had dug with the same hands that built the house in which Tucker had grown up, the house in which his daughter would grow up.

Now, it was a beautiful one-thousand-acre ranch that supported a herd of four hundred sturdy Longhorn beef cattle. The homestead had grown from the small house, barn and pen Josiah had built and now included a large stable, a much larger barn, a grain silo, and a tool shed, all hand built by Tucker and his hands, all sturdy and strong.

The small forty-acre pasture was now twenty times that size and included two separate pastures through which Tucker’s herd rotated, along with a chicken coop and a garden. The old well now fed a small pond, and Tucker had dug a stream from that pond down to the river a half-mile distant so that his cattle always had enough fresh water.

It was a beautiful homestead. He should have shared that homestead with Mary for fifty more years. Instead she had died before even reaching the age of thirty, and Tucker and Ellie were alone.

“Boss?”

He blinked and forced his attention back to the present. “Yes, Jeb?”

“On the horizon.”

Tucker frowned. There was something in Jeb’s voice that chilled him. He lifted his eyes to the horizon, and when he saw the reason for it, his eyes widened.

“Maybe it’s just cowboys?” Blake asked nervously. “Looking for directions to town?”

“You can see town from where they are,” Henry said. “They’re not looking for town.”

The riders drew closer, and even from this distance, Tucker could see that there were at least ten of them.

“Blake, go get Chuck and Garth. Jeb, Henry, get these cattle to the pens now.”

The hands snapped into action, quickly corralling the herd. Blake bolted for the stable where Chuck and Garth were polishing tack and probably spinning yarns about their adventures across the deserts of Arizona Territory before coming here to work the ranch.

They were about to have a rude awakening. Tucker had lived on this ranch his entire life without even a lick of trouble, but he knew a cattle rustling gang when he saw one.

And he knew they would get here before the cattle were in the pens. And would it matter if they didn’t? What were they going to do, fight the gang? He could send someone to town to get the sheriff, but that was an hour’s ride there and an hour’s ride back, and who knows how long in between to form a posse. Was he going to get his men killed over that?

Damn it, if only he’d learned to shoot properly. He’d never had a cause to shoot before. His hands kept the varmints away, and it wasn’t like he needed to hunt for his food. Granville rarely saw any kind of trouble, and when they did, Sheriff Gorman and his deputies took care of it. They’d never had trouble with rustlers or bandits before.

And Tucker didn’t like guns. He wasn’t a violent man. He didn’t relish the thought of killing someone else. And he never thought he was going to have to fight anyone like this.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

He heard whooping and hollering followed by gunshots no doubt fired by far more capable gunfighters than he. He turned around to see the outlaws laughing and grinning as they leapt over the fence to his property and bore down on them. Tucker drew his gun and shouted, “Get out of here! Go on before you get hurt!”

He fired two shots into the air.

That strategy worked wonderfully with coyotes. It did not work wonderfully with rustlers.

The gang laughed and aimed their own weapons at Tucker and his men. Jeb looked at Tucker for instructions, and Tucker sighed.

“Shit.” He holstered his weapon. “Just let them take the cattle. Ain’t nothing we can do, and I don’t want you boys getting killed.”

As though on cue, Blake and the other two hands rushed toward them, shouting and brandishing rifles.

“Hey!” Tucker called. “Put those away! It’s over!”

The outlaws were close enough to hear him now. One of them, a thin-faced young man with straw-colored hair that hung down to his back, called, “Better listen to your boss. We don’t want to hurt you, but we don’t mind it much if we do!”

Another outlaw, a stout man with more hair on his arms than his head, laughed coarsely and grinned at Blake. “Say, you’re purdy. Bet you’d look real nice in a dress.”

The two outlaws pulled to a stop in front of Tucker and his hands while the others began rounding up the cattle. A tall, weathered man around Tucker’s age with deeply tanned skin and a messy crop of dark brown hair poking out underneath a ten-gallon hat trotted from the others and joined his two companions in front of Tucker.

“Pleased to see you’ve done the right thing,” he said. “Like Toby said, we don’t want to hurt anyone, but we will if we have to. Best thing for you to do is to sit still and let us do what we came here to do.”

“Then get to it,” Tucker spat. “I ain’t gonna stand here jawing with you.”

The other two outlaws laughed. The tall man grinned and tipped his hat. “Name’s Silas Barlow. It’s a pleasure doing business with you.”

He and his friends spurred their horses, riding through Tucker and his hands. Silas’s horse bumped Tucker, throwing him to the ground. He got slowly to his feet, face burning with rage and embarrassment as the outlaw laughed at him.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.