Prologue

El Paso, 1876

There was no uglier or sadder sound than the thud of dirt hitting a casket.

Mary Jo Williams had heard it before. She’d buried a husband two years ago, and now she was burying a friend, Tyler Smith. No, more than a friend. Ty had proposed to her several times, but she had always insisted she would never again marry a Texas Ranger.

Like her dead husband.

The tears in her eyes threatened to spill, and she blinked them back defiantly. She wouldn’t cry, not in front of men who despised any sign of weakness. They were all here, Ty’s fellow Rangers, except for Morgan Davis, who had been in the gunfight with Ty in a cowtown called Harmony. Morgan’s girl had been wounded and he had stayed behind with her. Ty had been shot to death.

At least one man was getting out of rangering alive, Mary Jo thought with bitter envy. Why hadn’t Ty?

Feeling Jeffry’s hand tighten in hers, she looked down at her son. Only eleven years old and already he had seen too much death. He had campaigned for Ty to become his father, campaigned with the strategy and dedication of an army general. He had almost worn her down.

Ira Langford, the captain of Ty’s Ranger company, spoke a few words at the graveside. Moving words, if you cared about honor and duty. Mary Jo used to care about those things, but now they were hollow words. What good was honor when you were so lonely you wanted to die, when grief nearly suffocated you every night and you awoke to emptiness? What good was duty when your son cried for a father who had always been gone? What about duty to the son?

Ira moved to her side. “I’m so sorry, Mary Jo,” he said.

She stared at him blankly.

He looked oddly discomfited. “Can you come to my office?”

Mary Jo looked at Jeffry, who was bravely trying to hold back his tears. Rangers didn’t cry. Mary Jo knew he was telling himself that. Over and over again.

“In a little while,” she said stiffly. She hated Ira at the moment. She hated him for what he was, for sending men away to die.

He nodded. “Whenever you can.” He hesitated. “God, Mary Jo, I’m sorry.”

She bit her lip. “I’ll be leaving here, you know. As soon as possible.” She didn’t know when that would be. She had so little money. Since her husband, Jeff, died, she had stayed on at the Ranger post earning a few dollars as cook and laundress and even tailor at times.

“I don’t want to go,” Jeffry said, and Mary Jo’s heart nearly broke. He wanted to be a Ranger too, just like his father. Just like Ty and Morgan and so many others.

She would die first! She hadn’t given birth to him to see him killed in a dusty street someplace. She had to get him away from here.

Ira’s mouth worked. It was as much emotion as she’d ever seen from him. But he only nodded again, as taciturn as the men he led.

She stood at the grave as the others left, respectfully giving her a moment with the man they all knew had wanted to marry her.

She had brought a flower. It was not much of one. There had been a drought, and her gently nurtured flowers were almost all gone. The yellow burned stems seemed to symbolize her own life.

With Jeffry’s hand still in hers, she stepped up. “Goodbye and Godspeed,” she whispered. She tossed down the flower.

Jeffry took his hand from hers to wipe away his tears angrily. She put her arm around his shoulder and side by side they walked back to their small, bare, and ever so lonely house.

Two hours later, Mary Jo sat in Ira’s office. Jeffry was at home, taking care of a new puppy one of the Rangers had brought him. Mary Jo had silently blessed the gift. Jeffry had been wanting a dog for a long time, and when the pup, which looked like a half-wolf, had greeted Jeffry with enthusiasm and a wet tongue, Mary Jo had taken one look at the boy’s eager face and given her consent.

Jeffry had been so silent since learning of Ty’s death, of Morgan Davis’s decision to leave the Rangers and head north to Wyoming. He had worshiped both men. Now he had something special to love, and that was important. Mary Jo had had Jeff, and then Ty, and she swore to herself that was enough. She would never love a man again. She couldn’t take another loss, not and survive.

“Mary Jo,” Ira began slowly as he fingered an envelope. “Ty left this for you, in case—” He stopped, then just handed it to her.

Mary Jo looked at the envelope as if it were a rattlesnake. He’d known he would die.

Ira cleared his throat. “He’d already given me his resignation,” he said, then commanded, “Open it.”

Mary Jo finally managed to open the envelope. A legal-looking paper and a wad of bills fell into her lap. Woodenly, she picked up the paper and looked at it.

A deed. For a ranch. Five hundred acres in a place called Cimarron Valley in Colorado. And two thousand dollars.

She looked up at Ira. His blue eyes, usually so cold and watchful, were sympathetic. “An inheritance he received several months ago,” he said. “He purchased the ranch just last week. That’s where he had gone on his leave.”

“I don’t understand,” Mary Jo finally managed to say.

“He was fighting his own battle with himself,” Ira said. “He wasn’t sure whether he could leave the Rangers or not. He had to be sure in his own mind. I think he made that decision the night before we left for Harmony. He was going to tell you when he returned. He knew how you felt about marrying another Ranger.”

Mary Jo closed her eyes. She knew how much the decision had cost Ty.

“He loved you, Mary Jo,” Ira said. “Very much. He left this to you.”

“To me?”

He nodded. “You can sell it, move East.”

“I don’t want it. I can’t accept—” She felt terribly unworthy. She had turned down Ty’s proposals repeatedly because he had been a Ranger. How could she accept this now?

“It’s what he wanted,” Ira said. “Don’t fail him now. He wanted you and Jeffry to have some security.”

Mary Jo rose and went to the door, opening it. She looked at the empty, burned plains, at the desolate, barren buildings. Two men were at the corral, saddling horses, their six-shooters strapped tightly against their thighs and rifles leaning against the fence. Dangerous men. Even cold-blooded men. God knew where they were going, who they were going after.

She thought of Jeffry, so young and so in awe of the Rangers. “I want to be a Ranger like my pa,” he told her constantly. And she knew she would take Ty’s gift. She couldn’t let what happened to him happen to her son.

She turned back to Ira. “We’ll leave Friday.”