A Ride To Save the Innocent (Preview)

Chapter One

Ruby Blackwood’s arms ached under the weight of the wooden washtub as she made her way through the camp. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades despite the cool spring morning, and she shifted the load higher against her hip.

The worn handles of the tub had rubbed her palms raw—just another callus among many. Spring had come early to the plains, the land caught between seasons. Winter’s last bite lingered in the dawn air while the midday sun burned with summer’s promise.

“C’mon, Lily,” she called over her shoulder. “Keep up, now.”

Behind her, the three-year-old’s feet scuffed through the prairie grass, her small hand wrapped around a sliver of lye soap that had been whittled down to almost nothing.

The girl’s black hair hung loose and tangled past her shoulders—nothing like the neat braids Ruby had woven that morning—and her cotton dress was already smudged with dirt at the hem. Each step kicked up dust that clung to the sweat on her bare ankles.

Ruby navigated between the four canvas tents pitched in a rough circle. The air smelled of wood smoke. Last night’s scraps of leftover food still smoldered in the coals, mixing with the tang of gun oil and the sour reek of men who measured baths by the change of seasons.

Three of Roman’s gang huddled around the fire pit, passing a bottle while they cleaned their revolvers. Tucker, the youngest, barely out of boyhood with patchy whiskers and quick, twitchy hands. Simmons, tall and lean, with teeth gone yellow from tobacco and a knife scar splitting his right eyebrow, and Hayes, the oldest at forty-something, his left earlobe missing where a lawman’s bullet had claimed it.

None looked up as she passed, but she felt their attention track her movement, anyway. Four years with outlaws had taught her to recognize the danger behind men’s eyes.

A magpie cawed from atop one of the tent poles, its black-and-white feathers glossy in the morning light. The bird eyed her with a cold intelligence that made Ruby shiver despite herself. Bad luck, seeing one alone. Her Comanche grandmother would have told her to turn back, to wait until the bird had a partner. But Ruby had stopped believing in omens long ago.

Ahead, Roman Blackwood sat cross-legged on a bedroll, tying a series of knots with a length of rawhide. His prematurely silver hair caught the morning light like a halo. The silver strands made his eyes seem even paler, a blue so light it was almost colorless in the sun.

Lily ran and plopped down on the bedroll next to him. He handed her the length of rawhide, pointing to the line of knots.

From twenty paces away, they looked like any father and daughter sharing a quiet moment—his hands gentle as they guided her small fingers, her face tilted up in concentration. But Ruby saw the way his knuckles tensed when Lily fumbled a loop, the fraction of impatience in his posture.

“Lily,” she called, setting the tub down to ease her burning muscles. “Come help me with the washing.”

Lily glanced up, torn between her mother’s call and her father’s attention, rare as it was. A hawk circled overhead, its shadow briefly darkening her upturned face.

Roman’s smile thinned as he looked at Ruby. “We’re busy here. She’s finally getting the hang of this.” He held up the rawhide where Lily had managed a passable bowline knot.

“I need an extra pair of hands,” Ruby said, her tone firm but careful. She’d long learned when to push and when to yield with Roman. Today wasn’t his worst day, but the whiskey bottle at his side was already half-empty. “Won’t take but an hour.”

Roman’s jaw tightened as he considered her. Then he shrugged and released the rawhide. “Go on, then,” he told Lily with a nod. “Your mama needs you.”

Something in his tone made it clear he thought the need beneath him, women’s work that wouldn’t put food on the table or money in their pockets.

Lily scrambled to her feet, her small face brightening. “Can I play in the water, Pa?” Hope filled her voice—a child’s simple longing for joy that broke Ruby’s heart a little.

“Don’t wander off,” he warned, the edge in his voice unmistakable despite his easy smile. His accent thickened when he spoke to Lily, the flat vowels of his Kentucky upbringing softening his words. “Stay where your mama can see you.”

As Lily ran to Ruby’s side, Roman rose to his feet in one fluid motion, brushing dust from his jeans. He crossed to them in three long strides and laid a hand on Ruby’s shoulder, his grip closing just hard enough to remind her of his strength. The faint scent of leather and gunpowder clung to him.

“Don’t go far,” he said. His breath smelled of whiskey despite the early hour, the cheap kind that made men mean faster than it made them drunk. “We’re planning the Gold Creek job. Need to be on the move by tomorrow.”

“Gold Creek?” Ruby kept her voice neutral though her stomach clenched. Another job meant another town left behind in violence. Another set of faces that would haunt her dreams. “Thought we were headed north.”

“We are,” Roman said, the lines around his pale blue eyes crinkling. His left hand rested on the grip of his Colt, a habit so ingrained he didn’t seem to notice it anymore. “But we need traveling money if we’re gonna make it to Wyoming before winter.”

He ran a rough thumb along her cheekbone in what might have looked like tenderness to anyone watching.

“You want a proper roof over Lily’s head when the snow comes, don’t you?”

Ruby nodded once. There was no point arguing, not when Roman had that particular glint in his eye—the one that said his mind was already counting the take. She’d seen that look before Elk River and before Blue Fork, and both times they’d ridden out with blood on their horses’ flanks.

“We won’t be long,” she said, hoisting the tub again. A hundred yards away, a prairie dog stood sentinel by its burrow, whistling a warning to its kin.

Roman’s gaze drifted to where his men had gathered around a crude map spread on a crate. Ruby could tell his mind was already back with them, calculating angles and escape routes.

“Be back by noon,” he said, turning away. “We got work to do.”

Ruby nudged Lily ahead of her and they walked in silence until they’d crested the small hill that separated the camp from the creek. The landscape opened up around them, rolling grassland stretching to the horizon, broken only by the occasional cottonwood standing crookedly near water.

It was miles of nothing but wind-combed buffalo grass, paintbrush blooms leaving splashes of orange in the distance, and the eternal blue bowl of sky pressing down. The vast emptiness of it still took Ruby’s breath away sometimes, even after years spent drifting across the territories.

“Why’s Pa’s hair white?” Lily asked, skipping ahead down the slope. A grasshopper leaped from her path, its wings catching the sunlight.

“Just the way he was born,” Ruby answered, though she sometimes wondered if it had been fear or guilt that had turned it.

She had seen Roman’s hair go from streaked to fully silver in the four years they’d been together, each robbery taking another piece of whatever softness he might once have possessed, leaving him harder and colder each time.

They reached the creek, a modest ribbon of clear water cutting through the prairie. Yesterday’s rain had swelled it some, the current tugging at the reeds along the bank. Ruby set down the tub on a flat rock and straightened, working the stiffness from her lower back.

The sun had climbed higher, burning off the morning chill, and the openness of their position suddenly struck her. The camp lay exposed on a rise about four hundred yards back, nothing but grass between them and the horizon in every direction. No trees to hide behind, no rocks large enough for cover. Just open ground and the creek, shallow enough to cross on foot.

“Shoes off?” Lily was already trying to pull off her worn boots, the leather cracked and molded to feet that grew too quickly. After some struggle, she finally removed them and started walking down to the creek.

“Stay where I can see you. And don’t get your dress soaked. It’s the only clean one you’ve got.” Ruby watched her daughter’s eager movements, her heart aching at the simple childish pleasure in something as ordinary as cool water against bare skin.

Ruby knelt by the creek’s edge and began sorting through the pile of dirty clothes, shirts stiff with dirt and worse, bandanas crusted with sweat, socks gone stiff in muddy boots.

The work of washing for seven men and a child never ended, especially when those men seemed to collect grime and blood like a dog collected burrs. The water ran copper over her wrists, blood and prairie dust mixing as she dunked each item.

“Roman said this spot was safer,” she murmured to herself as she pushed a shirt into the creek. “Nothing to hide behind means nothing for others to hide behind, either.” But the prickling between her shoulder blades wouldn’t ease.

Maybe it was just that she never felt truly safe anymore, not since the day she’d discovered what kind of man she’d married. She plunged her hands back into the creek, welcoming the ache as the cold water bit into her skin. Better to feel something, even pain, than the numb resignation that threatened to swallow her some days.

Lily splashed in the shallows a few yards downstream, singing a nonsense song to herself as she arranged pebbles in patterns on a submerged rock. The childish soprano rose and fell with the gurgle of the creek, and for a moment, Ruby could almost pretend they were alone, just a mother and daughter enjoying a spring morning with no blood money or wanted posters or men with hard eyes waiting back at camp.

No past they were running from or future that narrowed with each passing day.

She worked the lye soap into a lather on Roman’s red flannel shirt, scrubbing at a dark stain that was likely blood. The iron tang of it rose in the water, familiar enough that it no longer turned her stomach. Her fingers were red and raw within minutes, the spring water numbing them until she could barely feel the fabric.

She lost herself in the rhythm of it—soap, scrub, rinse, wring, repeat—while keeping one eye on Lily’s dark head bobbing along the creek bank. The ritual of it was almost like prayer, as close as she came to peace these days.

A killdeer skittered along the opposite bank, its piercing call echoing across the water. The bird dragged one wing, feigning injury to draw predators away from its nest. Ruby watched its desperate performance with grudging admiration. Mothers would do anything to protect their young.

The sun climbed higher overhead, burning away the last wisps of morning fog. A soft breeze rippled the creek’s surface, carrying the scent of sun-warmed grass and distant wildflowers. Ruby had worked her way through half the pile when a shout tore through the quiet morning.

Her head snapped toward the camp. Men scrambled for weapons, their movements sharp and sudden against the peaceful landscape. Hayes knocked over a crate in his rush, while Simmons already had his rifle at his shoulder, aiming west.

Ruby’s heart lodged in her throat as she followed their frantic gazes to the western horizon. Riders.

At least a dozen of them, silhouetted against the sky, moving fast toward the camp in a cloud of prairie dust. Their horses’ hooves tore up the earth, sending birds scattering from the grass. They rode in a tight formation, with a purpose that sent ice down Ruby’s spine.

She dropped the wet shirt and stood, heart hammering against her ribs. Even at this distance, she could make out the glint of sunlight on rifle barrels. Could see the determined set of the lead rider, leaning forward in his saddle like a predator scenting blood.

Their movements were too disciplined for a posse. Pinkertons, maybe, or soldiers. Either way, they meant death.

“Lily!” Her voice cracked like a whip. “Come here now!”

Lily looked up from her play, confusion etched across her small features as she registered the fear in her mother’s voice. Behind them, the first rifle shot cracked across the prairie like summer lightning, shattering the morning as cleanly as a stone through glass.

Chapter Two

The bullet struck the ground, the hot lead kicking up dirt ten feet from where Ruby stood. The second shot followed before the echo of the first had died, this one punching through canvas somewhere in the camp behind her.

She crouched low by the creek’s edge, the cold water still numbing her hands, Lily’s half-washed dress forgotten in the mud. The sun’s glare off the water nearly blinded her as she assessed their situation with the sharp clarity of fear.

Every sense sharpened, the acrid tang of gunpowder carried on the spring breeze, the rapid drumbeat of hooves against hard prairie soil, the startled cry of birds taking wing.

The creek bank offered no protection. A bullet struck the water three feet to her left, sending up a spray that sparkled like diamonds in the sunlight before falling back in crimson-tinged droplets.

To her left, the gently sloping hill they’d crossed, too open to provide cover. Behind her, the camp where Roman and his men scrambled for weapons, upending cook pots and kicking over crates in their haste. And ahead, nothing but miles of open prairie stretching toward the horizon, the grass rippling like a wheat-colored sea.

Lily stood frozen in the shallows, water lapping at her ankles, her small face a mask of confusion and fear. The child’s dark hair whipped around her face in the rising wind, and her knuckles had gone white where she clutched a smooth river stone she’d been playing with moments before.

“Ma?” Her voice was thin and reedy with fear. “Mama?”

The riders were closing in from the west, sunlight glinting off brass buttons and rifle barrels. If they were lawmen, they might leave a woman and child be. The thought flickered across her mind like heat lightning.

But the precision of that first shot, the way the riders moved in formation without calling out warnings or demands for surrender… that wasn’t the law. That was something else.

Bounty hunters, maybe, who knew the price on Roman’s head included any who rode with him. Or a rival gang settling scores. Either way, she and Lily would be cut down in the open, easy as shooting rabbits.

The horses. The thought struck her like a physical blow, sudden and clarifying. Roman’s gang had hobbled their mounts at the edge of camp, away from the tents where the morning sun wouldn’t bake the ground beneath them. Seven horses for seven men, plus the old pack mule that carried their supplies. All she needed was one. Just one horse between her, Lily, and whatever came next.

“God help us,” she whispered, a prayer learned at her Comanche mother’s knee before the missionaries came and taught her to call Him by different names. She wasn’t sure God listened to women like her anymore, regardless of what name she used.

With decision came clarity. Ruby splashed across the shallow creek to Lily, scooping her daughter into her arms in one fluid motion. The girl was solid against her chest, all tangled limbs and fear, smelling of creek water and sweat.

“Hold tight to me,” Ruby commanded, pressing Lily’s face against her shoulder where the faded calico was still damp from washing. “Don’t look up, no matter what. Don’t look until I say.”

The camp had erupted into chaos. Two more shots cracked across the distance, and Ruby heard a man’s scream punctuated by foul curses—Hayes’ voice rising in pain as a bullet found his leg.

Tucker was shouting something about being surrounded, his young voice cracking with fear, while Simmons methodically loaded both pistols, his movements steady despite the mayhem around him.

The riders were closing in, their horses’ hooves churning up the earth in thunderous percussion. Ruby caught glimpses through the dust cloud they raised, dull blue uniforms without insignia on grim-faced men with the hard eyes of those who killed for money.

Her suspicions were confirmed. Not lawmen.

Ruby ran, her wet skirts slapping against her legs, her lungs already burning with each gasping breath. She angled away from the creek, cutting diagonally across the open ground toward the picketed horses.

Each stride jarred her body, the impact traveling up her legs to her spine, to her shoulders where Lily’s weight grew heavier with every step. The distance seemed to stretch impossibly, the horses still a hundred yards away, then eighty, then sixty.

Roman bellowed orders from somewhere behind her, his voice slicing through the din with the ease of long command. “Hayes, on your left! Tucker, stop wasting lead and aim, damn you! Simmons, circle around behind that rock!”

A volley of gunfire answered him—the hollow boom of revolvers meeting the sharper crack of rifles. One of the canvas tents collapsed and caught fire, flames licking up with hungry yellow tongues.

She risked a glance back and immediately wished she hadn’t. A man in a long duster rode at the front of the formation, a Winchester rifle braced against his shoulder, picking his shots with terrible precision. Brass shell casings caught the light as they spun from the ejection port.

As she watched, one of his bullets caught Simmons square in the chest, lifting him off his feet before he crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap. A red stain bloomed across his shirt.

“Don’t look, baby,” she murmured into Lily’s hair when she felt her daughter begin to squirm, the child’s heartbeat fluttering against her own like a trapped bird. “Just hold on. I’ve got you.”

Who could this be? Lawmen announced themselves, called for surrender. These men had come for blood, silent as Comanches on a raid but with the discipline of soldiers. Pinkertons, maybe—the hired guns of the railroads and banks that Roman had robbed too often and too well.

Fifty yards to the horses now. Ruby’s lungs burned, each breath a knife between her ribs. Roman’s buckskin gelding stamped nervously at the commotion, eyes rolling white to show bloodshot crescents.

The other horses had begun pulling at their picket lines, spooked by the gunfire and the scent of blood on the wind. Tucker was running for them too, a few yards ahead of Ruby, his lanky form bent low as bullets kicked up dirt at his heels.

“Almost there,” she gasped to Lily, though whether to reassure her daughter or herself, she couldn’t have said.

Tucker reached the buckskin first, yanking frantically at the knot securing its lead rope to the picket line.

He wasn’t much more than a boy, seventeen at most with patchy whiskers and a voice that still cracked when he was scared. As Ruby closed the distance, she saw his hands shaking so badly he could barely work the leather free.

His head snapped up at her approach, his young face twisted with a desperate hope that made him look suddenly, heartbreakingly young. Sweat or tears tracked clean lines through the dust coating his face.

“Mrs. Blackwood!” he gasped, fingers still scrabbling at the stubborn knot. “They’re—”

The rest of his sentence disappeared in a wet gurgle as a rifle shot took him through the throat. Blood sprayed in a crimson arc, spattering across Ruby’s cheek and neck like warm rain.

Tucker staggered backward a step, surprise rather than pain registering in his wide eyes. His hand rose to his throat, fingers spread as if to stem the impossible flow. Then his knees buckled and he toppled sideways, one hand still clutching the horse’s lead rope, his eyes already empty.

The buckskin reared, a terrified scream tearing from its throat. Its iron-shod hoof caught the shoulder of a paint mare tethered beside it, and she squealed—a sound so human it raised the hair on Ruby’s arms.

The gelding’s hooves churned the air, its powerful body twisting against the restraint of the rope. Before Ruby could reach for its dangling reins, another shot rang out and the beautiful golden horse collapsed with a shuddering groan, blood foaming from its nostrils. It thrashed once, massive legs scrabbling at the dirt, then went horribly still.

The remaining horses panicked, pulling desperately at their ropes, eyes rolling white with terror. One by one, they broke free. The paint mare first, then the bay, then the others, scattering in all directions. The pack mule alone remained tethered, too stubborn or too stupid to flee, its long ears laid flat against its skull.

Ruby stumbled to a halt, clutching Lily tighter as their last hope galloped away in a cloud of dust. For one terrible moment, she stood frozen, caught between the advancing riders and the chaos of the camp behind her.

“Ruby!” Roman’s voice cut through her panic, hoarse from shouting commands. He stood atop an overturned wagon, revolver in each hand, firing methodically at the oncoming horsemen.

His silver hair had come loose from its tie and whipped around his face in the rising wind. Blood streaked his features from a gash above his right eye, turning half his hair crimson. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, revealing a second wound, but he moved as if he felt nothing.

“Run! Get her out of here!”

Ruby turned and ran—away from Roman, away from the riders, away from the horses, into the empty prairie. Her heart slamming in her chest, each beat a desperate prayer. Lily’s bulk pulled at her arms, but fear lent her strength she didn’t know she possessed.

The muscles in her legs screamed, but she pushed through the pain, focusing on getting away as fast as she could. This was a moment she had often dreamed of since having her daughter, a reason to get away from Roman and the outlaw life for good.

Behind her, the battle raged on, the staccato rhythm of gunfire punctuated by men’s shouts and screams.

She heard Roman curse, a string of obscenities that would have made her blush in calmer moments. She heard him call for Hayes, heard the answering silence that meant Hayes wouldn’t be answering anyone again. Heard one of the attackers cry out as Roman’s bullet found its mark.

She kept running until the gunfire became distant pops like corn in a hot skillet. She ran until the grassy slope of a hill separated her from the violence. She ran until her vision blurred and her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. Only when her body betrayed her did she finally slow.

Barely managing to set Lily down, she collapsed onto the sun-warmed grass atop a low rise. Her chest heaved as she dragged in ragged gasps of air. Every muscle trembled with exhaustion, and the edges of her vision darkened alarmingly.

Lily knelt beside her in the grass, small hands patting Ruby’s face with anxious tenderness. “Ma?” The girl’s voice seemed to come from far away, muffled by the rushing of blood in Ruby’s ears. “Ma, you’re breathing funny.”

Ruby forced herself to focus on her daughter’s face. Lily’s cheeks were flushed with exertion, her dark hair tangled with bits of grass and creek mud. She looked frightened but not panicked.

To her, this was just another hasty departure, another camp left behind in a life of constant movement. She was too young to understand what had happened, too innocent to recognize the sound of death when it rode toward them.

“I’m all right,” Ruby managed between gasps, reaching up to smooth Lily’s hair back from her face, leaving streaks of mud and—God help her—Tucker’s blood across the child’s brow. “Just need… to catch my breath.”

The sun beat down on them, the morning’s coolness burned away by the climbing heat of midday. No clouds offered relief from the glare, not even the thin wisps that sometimes streaked the prairie sky like mare’s tails.

Ruby’s mouth felt dry as sand, her lips already cracking. They needed water, needed shelter from the sun, needed a horse. Without those things, the prairie would kill them as surely as any bullet.

A meadowlark called from somewhere nearby, its sweet liquid notes incongruously cheerful. The grass around them stood tall enough to brush Lily’s shoulders, rippling in waves with each gust of wind. Prairie dog mounds dotted the landscape, the small creatures standing beside their burrows, chittering warnings to each other at the strange intruders.

Ruby turned, steeling herself for the sight of riders on their trail, of Roman’s body sprawled in the grass, of smoke rising from burning tents. But the horizon was empty.

The rise they’d climbed gave them a clear view back the way they’d come, and there was nothing. No riders, no smoke, not even the shapes of men engaged in battle. Just empty grassland rippling in the breeze like a vast green sea.

Relief washed over Ruby, swiftly followed by confusion. Where had they gone? The camp was too far to see clearly, hidden by distance and the fold of land, but surely she should be able to make out the riders if they were pursuing her. Unless…

Unless they hadn’t survived. Unless Roman and his gang had somehow managed to kill them all, despite being caught unprepared. Or unless the attackers had simply taken what they came for—Roman’s head, probably, and the bounty it would bring—and left, uninterested in a fleeing woman and child.

Ruby let herself collapse back onto the grass, closing her eyes against the glare of the sun. She could feel her skin burning already under the merciless sky. Just a moment’s rest, that was all she needed. Then they would have to move again, find water, find shelter. Find a way to survive in a land that had never shown her mercy.

Lily’s voice broke through her exhaustion. “Ma, look.”

Ruby ignored her at first, too spent to respond. Her entire body felt like one massive bruise, muscles screaming from the desperate run. Behind her closed eyelids, the image of Tucker’s death played in endless repetition: the surprise in his eyes, the spray of blood, the way he’d crumpled like a puppet with cut strings.

“Mama!” Lily’s small hand tugged insistently at her blouse, still damp with creek water and worse things. “Look!”

Ruby cracked an eye open, ready to quiet her daughter with soft words. But Lily wasn’t looking at her. The girl had risen to her feet and was pointing northward, her thin arm extended and quivering with excitement.

Ruby followed her gaze and felt her heart leap painfully in her chest. There, not a hundred yards distant, stood a horse. It was the paint mare from their camp, its dappled coat gleaming in the sunlight.

It was Roman’s second-favorite mount, a five-year-old with more spirit than sense, according to him. The broken lead rope still dangled from its halter as it grazed peacefully on the sweet spring grass, seemingly unconcerned by the violence it had fled.

“Oh my god,” Ruby breathed, pushing herself to a sitting position despite the protest of abused muscles. “Lily, you clever, clever girl.”

New energy surged through her limbs, fueled by desperate hope. A horse meant water, meant a fighting chance for both of them. But the mare was wild-eyed and nervous, its hide twitching at the touch of flies, head coming up at every rustle in the grass. One wrong move and it would bolt again.

Ruby forced herself to think past the pounding in her head, past the fear that still coursed through her veins. She’d grown up half-Comanche, had learned to ride before she could walk. Her mother’s people counted wealth in horses, stole them and traded them and sometimes died for them. She’d watched the men of her mother’s band gentle mustangs with nothing but patience and a soft voice, until the wildest bronco would accept a rider.

“Listen to me, Lily,” she said, taking her daughter’s face between her palms. The child’s skin was warm under her touch, flushed with sun and excitement. “That horse is scared, just like us. We need to be very quiet, very slow. Can you do that?”

Lily nodded, her blue eyes—so much like Roman’s it almost hurt to look at them—wide with understanding.

She smoothed Lily’s hair back from her forehead, tried not to think of the blood that still stained her own hands. “Stay right here. Don’t move until I call you.”

Rising carefully to her feet, Ruby took stock of herself. Her dress was torn at the hem and her shoes squelched with each step, mud sucking at the cracked leather. Her hair had come loose from its braid and hung in wild tangles around her face, tacky with blood that wasn’t hers.

She probably looked like a madwoman.

Moving slowly, she reached up and tore a strip from the bottom of her petticoat. It came away with a soft ripping sound, leaving her ankles bare. The fabric was worn thin from washing, but still strong enough to serve her purpose. She wound the cloth around her right hand, something that might help her grab the lead rope if she got close enough.

Taking a deep breath, Ruby began to approach the mare. She kept her movements fluid and unhurried, her body angled slightly away, her gaze never meeting the horse’s directly.

“Easy, girl,” she murmured, pitching her voice low and soothing. “Easy now.”

The mare’s head came up at the sound, ears pricked forward in alert curiosity. It snorted once, pawing at the ground with a front hoof. A cloud of insects rose from the disturbed grass, catching the sunlight like tiny sparks.

Ruby froze, waiting. After a moment, the horse returned to grazing, though one ear remained trained in her direction. She was close enough now to see the whites of the mare’s eyes, to smell the sweet-sour scent of horse sweat, to notice the small scar on its muzzle.

Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

The mare’s head snapped up again, nostrils flaring as it caught her scent properly. For one heart-stopping moment, Ruby thought it would bolt. Its muscles bunched beneath the dappled hide, ready for flight. But instead, it nickered softly, perhaps recognizing her as part of its herd.

Five feet now. Ruby extended her hand, the cloth-wrapped palm open and empty. “That’s right, girl.”

The mare stretched its neck, curious despite its fear. Hot breath gusted against Ruby’s skin as the animal sniffed her cautiously. Its whiskers tickled her palm, soft as a feather’s touch.

“That’s it,” she whispered, hardly daring to breathe. “That’s my girl. You remember me, don’t you? You remember who fed you apples when Roman wasn’t looking.”

With aching slowness, she reached for the dangling lead rope. The mare tossed its head nervously but didn’t pull away. Ruby’s grip closed around the rough hemp, and a sob of relief caught in her throat.

“Good girl,” she said, running her free hand along the paint’s sleek neck, feeling the strong pulse of life beneath her fingertips.

Keeping a gentle but firm grip on the rope, Ruby led the mare back toward Lily. The girl sat perfectly still where Ruby had left her, her small body tense with excitement.

“Can I pet her?” Lily whispered as they drew close, already reaching up with eager hands.

“In a minute,” Ruby said, glancing back once more toward the camp they’d fled. “First we need to get you up.”

With a wince of pain, Ruby boosted Lily onto the mare’s bare back. The horse sidestepped nervously but didn’t buck. Ruby gathered the lead rope in one hand and pulled herself up behind her daughter with a grimace.

She settled Lily securely in front of her, one arm wrapped around the girl’s waist, the other hand holding the makeshift reins.

“Where are we going?” Lily asked, her small body warm against Ruby’s chest. Her voice held more curiosity than fear now, the resilience of childhood already asserting itself.

Ruby looked back one last time at the distant fold of land that hid their abandoned camp. Then she turned the mare northward, toward the distant hazy blue of mountains on the horizon, where forests might offer shelter and streams would provide water.

“Somewhere safe,” she answered, nudging the horse into a walk.

She didn’t look back again.

THREE YEARS LATER

Chapter Three

The Mad Maddux Roost stood at the crossroads of two seldom-used trails, a day’s hard ride northeast of Copper Creek.

The trading post had sprung up ten years back when Maddux Walsh staked his claim on this patch of Wyoming territory, convinced the railroad would come through and make him rich. The railroad had gone another way, but the Roost survived on the thin trade of prospectors, trappers, and the occasional drifter who’d taken a wrong turn at the fork twenty miles south.

The afternoon sun beat down on the weathered boards of the trading post, baking the resin until the air smelled of hot pine. A haze of dust hung in the still air, kicked up by the morning’s visitors and left to settle in the breathless heat.

From his chair on the porch, Maddux Walsh watched the horizon with the squinted eyes of a man who’d spent forty years under western skies.

Maddux was a bull of a man despite his sixty-some years, with shoulders broad as an axe handle and hands gnarled from decades of hard use. A scar carved a white track through his salt-and-pepper beard, souvenir of a disagreement with a Sioux brave back when Wyoming was still raw country.

He shifted in his chair, the worn wood creaking beneath his weight, and took a long pull from the earthenware jug beside him. The whiskey burned pleasantly, cutting through the dust that coated his throat.

The trading post was a modest affair—Maddux’s two-room cabin with its attached store, a stable that leaned slightly to the east as if perpetually bracing against the wind, and a barn that held whatever overflow the store couldn’t accommodate.

A hundred yards from the main buildings, a large canvas tent served as Maddux’s butchery. Three doe deer hung from the central pole, strung up by their hind legs, hides already stripped away to reveal the dark red meat beneath. Flies buzzed thick around them despite the smoking fire Maddux had built that morning to keep the worst of the insects at bay.

He shifted again, the Winchester rifle across his lap a familiar weight. The Roost might look peaceful, but Maddux hadn’t survived this long by taking chances. The country had been quieter lately—fewer Sioux raiding parties since the treaty, fewer outlaws since the Cavalry established a permanent post at Fort Laramie—but a wise man kept his powder dry all the same.

Especially when a stranger may appear over the horizon at any moment.

Maddux spotted the dust cloud first, a smudge against the distant line where earth met sky. He watched it grow, resolving slowly into two riders moving at an unhurried pace toward the Roost.

He narrowed his eyes against the glare, trying to make out details. Two men, he decided after a moment. Both on horseback, one riding slightly ahead of the other. The lead rider sat straight-backed in the saddle, hat pulled low against the sun. The second hunched forward, something long cradled across his lap—a rifle, most likely.

Maddux slid his thumb over the hammer of his Winchester, not cocking it yet, just reassuring himself of its presence. Then he let out a piercing whistle, two notes that cut through the afternoon stillness like a knife.

The response was immediate. Ben Haskell emerged from the stable, wiping his hands on a rag before casually letting them rest near the revolver at his hip. A moment later, Eli Parker stepped around the corner of the cabin, a shotgun held loose but ready in his weathered hands.

Both men were trail-hardened and quick with their weapons, hired as much for their gun hands as for their work around the Roost.

“Riders coming,” Maddux said, nodding toward the approaching dust cloud. “Don’t recognize ’em.”

“Could be lost,” Eli offered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Could be trouble.”

“Could be paying customers,” Maddux countered, “so don’t shoot ’em unless they give you reason.” He didn’t rise from his chair or cock his rifle. A man who showed fear invited trouble quicker than one who showed confidence.

As the riders drew closer, details emerged from the heat-rippled air. The lead rider was an older man with stark white hair that caught the sunlight like polished silver. It hung to his shoulders, framing a face tanned to saddle leather by decades of sun and wind.

A bushy white mustache dominated his features, drooping past the corners of his mouth in the style of an old cavalry officer. He wore no badge or uniform, but something in his bearing suggested a man accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.

The second rider was a surprise. A Black man, younger than his companion by twenty years at least, with a broad chest and arms that strained the seams of his faded blue shirt. True to Maddux’s first impression, a rifle lay across his saddle—a Sharps buffalo gun, the kind that could drop a man at six hundred yards in the right hands.

The riders pulled up to the porch close enough to speak without shouting and far enough to give them room if guns came into play. The white-haired man raised a hand, palm out in the universal sign of peaceful intent.

“Afternoon,” he called, his voice a rumbling bass that matched his solid appearance. The single word carried a hint of somewhere eastern in its vowels—Kentucky, maybe.

Maddux inclined his head but didn’t return the greeting.

“Not looking for trouble,” the white-haired man replied, his pale blue eyes moving deliberately from Maddux to Ben to Eli. “Just information.”

“Information.” Maddux let the word hang in the air between them.

The older man swung down from his saddle with the easy grace of someone who’d spent more of his life on horseback than off it. He dropped the reins, letting them trail on the ground—a sign his mount was well-trained enough to ground-tie.

The Black man remained mounted, the Sharps now held casually across his chest, its barrel aimed at nothing in particular but capable of finding a target in the blink of an eye.

“May I approach?” the white-haired man asked, his tone suggesting it wasn’t really a question. When Maddux nodded, he walked forward with deliberate steps, stopping at the foot of the porch stairs.

Up close, his face revealed more of its history—deep lines carved around eyes that had squinted into too many sunsets, a thin white scar bisecting his right eyebrow, a nose that had been broken at least once and set poorly. He wore a long duster despite the heat, its hem crusted with the dust of the trail.

“Name’s Blackwood,” he said, not offering his hand. “Silas Blackwood.”

Maddux had been in Wyoming long enough to recognize the name, though he gave no sign of it. The Blackwoods were known from the Mississippi to the Rockies—not famous like the James boys, perhaps, but respected and feared in certain circles. Men who lived by their own code and enforced it with cold lead when necessary.

“Maddux Walsh,” he replied. “My post. My rules.”

The corner of Blackwood’s mouth twitched upward beneath his mustache. “Understood.”

“What information you after?” Maddux asked, hand still resting near his rifle.

Blackwood regarded him steadily. “Looking for a woman. Half-breed. Comanche and white. Traveling with a young girl, about six years old or so.”

“What’re they to you?” Maddux asked, buying time as he considered whether he’d seen anyone matching that description.

“Family,” Blackwood replied, his voice softening slightly. “She’s my daughter-in-law. Girl’s my granddaughter.” He reached slowly into his duster and withdrew a small oval frame, offering it up to Maddux. Inside was a daguerreotype of a younger man with the same pale eyes as Blackwood, his hair already going silver despite his youth. “My son, Roman. Their husband and father.”

Maddux studied the image without taking the frame. The resemblance was clear enough—same cold eyes, same set to the jaw. Something wasn’t right here. A man didn’t track his daughter-in-law across half the territory with a mean-eyed gun hand at his back if it was just a family reunion he was after.

“Might’ve seen someone fitting that description,” he said at last, deciding to test the waters. “Might not. Memory ain’t what it used to be.”

Blackwood tucked the daguerreotype back into his coat. His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes hardened, like ice forming over deep water.

“I’d be obliged if you could try to remember,” he said. The politeness of his words did nothing to soften the underlying seriousness of their intent.

Maddux leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “Nothing in this world comes free,” he said.

Blackwood regarded him for a long moment, his pale eyes gleaming like a knife’s edge in the midday heat. Then he nodded once, as if coming to a decision. “That’s fair enough.”

The movement was so smooth, so unhurried, that Maddux almost missed it. One moment Blackwood’s hands hung empty at his sides; the next, a Colt Peacemaker gleamed in his right hand.

Two shots rang out in such quick succession they might have been one, the sound slapping back from the cabin walls in rolling echoes. Ben crumpled first, a neat hole appearing between his eyes, surprise still etched on his features. Before his body hit the ground, Eli was falling too, the shotgun tumbling from nerveless fingers as blood spread across his chest.

Maddux fumbled for his Winchester but froze as he felt the cold press of steel against his temple. The Black man had moved silently and quickly. The Sharps rifle now rested against Maddux’s head, its bore looking wide as a well.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft for a man his size. It was the first word he’d spoken, and it carried the unmistakable cadence of the Deep South. A tiny scar in the shape of the letter R was scratched into his face under his left eye.

Blackwood holstered his revolver with the same deliberate calm with which he’d drawn it. He mounted the porch steps, boots thudding against the weathered boards, and settled himself in the chair opposite Maddux. Only then did he meet the trader’s eyes again.

“You’re right,” he said, as if they’d been discussing the weather rather than the blood now seeping into the porch boards. “Everything has a price.” He gestured toward the cooling bodies of Ben and Eli. “That’s the price of stalling. The price of your life is the truth.”

Maddux’s mouth went dry. The whiskey jug sat within arm’s reach, but he dared not move toward it. He’d seen violence before—had dealt it himself in younger days—but there was something uniquely terrifying in Blackwood’s calm.

The barrel of the Sharps pressed harder against his temple. “Do we need to repeat the question?”

Maddux swallowed hard. His eyes darted to Ben’s body, to the blood pooling beneath it, soaking into the sun-bleached boards of the porch.

Ben had been with him three years. Had a woman waiting for him in Laramie. Eli had been saving to buy his own spread down Colorado way. Both dead in the space between heartbeats, because Silas Blackwood decided they were.

“No. I seen a lot of folks pass through,” Maddux said at last, each word careful as if walking on cracking ice. “Traders, trappers. Folks heading to the mountains. All types.”

Blackwood nodded, encouraging. “A woman,” he prompted. “Half-Comanche. With a little girl.”

Maddux met the cold blue eyes and saw nothing there but certainty—certainty that he would talk, or certainty that he would die. It wasn’t much of a choice.

A flicker of amusement crossed Blackwood’s weathered face. “Family business is complicated, Mr. Walsh. I’m sure you understand.”

“Whatever’s between you and that woman—if I’ve seen her—ain’t my concern. But I don’t sell out folks who haven’t done me wrong.”

“Admirable,” Blackwood said, the word flat and cold as a stone. “Foolish, but admirable.” He leaned forward, close enough that Maddux could smell tobacco and trail dust on him. “Let me make this simple in case you missed it the first time. You tell me what you know about the woman and the girl, and you get to keep breathing.”

His gaze flickered to the trade store behind him. A woman matching his description had come through a few times. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with high cheekbones that spoke of Native blood. A quiet girl had clung to her skirts.

They’d bought supplies—flour, coffee, salt, ammunition for a Winchester rifle. Paid in gold dust and a silver locket with a broken clasp. Headed south, toward Copper Creek. The woman hadn’t given her name, but Maddux had heard the girl call her “Ma” in a voice sweet as summer honey.

“Well?” Blackwood’s voice cut through his thoughts.

Maddux looked from Blackwood to the barrel of the Sharps, then back. Two killers against one old man. The math wasn’t complicated.

He took a deep breath, a bead of sweat falling from his nose and splattering on the dusty wood beneath him. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, painting the world in blood-red and gold. In an hour it would be dark, and if he was still alive to see it, he’d count himself lucky.

The hard metallic clunk of a hammer being pulled back on a rifle echoed in his ear.

“Well, shit,” Maddux said, his voice shaky with nerves. “When you put it that way…”