November 30, 1860
Ellwood, Kansas
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot ya right through the ticker.”
Josiah English froze as the hard metal of a rifle barrel pressed into his back. His horse danced beneath him, complaining against his stranglehold on the reins. He didn’t dare release the pressure, though. Not until he had a better grasp on the situation. He tilted his chin ever so slowly, scanning the perimeter to get a look at his captor.
The click of a rifle’s set trigger rang loud in his ears, and the air stilled around him.
“I said freeze.”
The sharp bark drew him up. His blood galloped, pounding in his ears as anger started to build. He wasn’t a coward to be so easily taken by this highway bandit. But was there more than one? He forced air in through his nose and out through his mouth as he strained to decipher the noises behind him.
A whizzing sound flew by his ears, and within the same heartbeat, a rope settled around his shoulders. He jerked to pull it off, but the line yanked tight, strapping his arms to his sides. With a violent lurch, he was snatched sideways from his horse. For a second, his right foot caught in the stirrup, stretching him between opposite forces like a deer hide ready for tanning. Pain shot through his midsection. Would they rip his leg off?
His foot finally slipped from the stirrup, and for a moment he was airborne. Then he landed hard on the ground, the thud ricocheting through his back as the rope clenched tight around his midsection. The air exploded from his lungs. His chest seized, fighting a weight that threatened to smother him as he struggled to breathe.
At last, a precious breath seeped in, and awareness filtered into Josiah’s oxygen-starved brain. He lay on the grass, staring into the blue November sky. A shadow moved across his vision—the dark outline of a man.
Josiah squinted to make out features. A dirty face loomed over him, with bushy black brows and a cigar protruding from thin lips.
He fought against the binding around his arms and chest, but the press of cold, round steel in his right temple froze his struggle.
“Take off his boots,” Bushy Brows growled around his cigar.
Another man moved to Josiah’s feet, this one tall and skinny with a blond, handle-bar moustache and droopy eyes. He grasped the heel of Josiah’s left boot and pulled, setting off alarm bells in Josiah’s head. Not the boots.
He jerked his foot hard, then kicked out toward the man, but the robber’s long fingers clung to the heel like a barnacle on a ship’s hull. The gun barrel pressed harder against his temple, pushing his head sideways into the grass.
“Get his boot off.”
Josiah paused his fighting, sucking in breaths to steady himself so he could put together a plan. He may not be stronger than the force of that rifle, but maybe he could catch them in a blunder and overpower them.
The skinny man gripped Josiah’s shoe and pulled. He couldn’t stop himself from flexing his foot to make it harder for the brute to remove the leather.
The man struggled for a moment, then grunted and landed a hard kick in Josiah’s shin. Pain ripped through his leg, loosening the muscles in his foot. The scrawny man jerked again, pulling the black leather free.
Papers slipped out as he turned the boot upside down—an image of a rider on a running horse flashing across the top. Josiah released a breath. Only his dispatch papers for the Pony Express, not the more precious documents.
Then Mustache reached for his other boot. The muscles in Josiah’s shoulders tightened again. But he was in no position to win a fight yet. He could push through the pain in his left shin, but the rope around his chest bound his arms to his sides, and the cold steel pressed against his head kept him immobile.
The other boot slid off and a stack of money fluttered to the ground. He could picture the bills without looking—tens and fifties issued by the Southern Bank of Georgia. Black and red print forming letters, numbers, and pictures.
Half of his life savings. Maybe they’d be happy with their loot and stop searching.
Mustache jumped on the bills as they landed in the grass, clutching them in his grubby paws. Then he turned the boot upside down and dumped the remaining papers.
“Woo-wee, Charlie. We got us a good’n this time.” The man’s mustache lifted to reveal teeth of varying shades of brown.
“Keep lookin’,” Charlie barked.
The gun barrel dug harder into Josiah’s skull. He hoped in spades the man’s trigger finger wasn’t eager for exercise.
Mustache moved his search upward to Josiah’s belly, a sneer taking over his face when he felt the money pouch Josiah had tucked under his shirt. When the man jerked the tail out of his trousers, cold air blasted Josiah’s abdomen, raising goose flesh across his skin. The wiry man pounced on the pockets sewn into the cloth band.
Right pocket first. A handful of one dollar bills and a paper listing the Express stops he was to follow. The man kept the cash and tossed the document aside.
Left pocket. Another thick roll of bills. Josiah’s stomach roiled, bile churning with his breakfast. They were taking everything he had. Everything he’d worked day and night to save for the last twelve years. The money to start his own ranch. His future.
The man's ugly face wobbled in Josiah's vision. The edges of his sight grew blurry as anger pulsed through him.
Josiah strained to focus on their actions. They rolled him onto his stomach and sweat pasted his shirt to his skin. The rifle barrel moved to his back.
After finding nothing when they patted him down a final time, Mustache seemed to be done with the search. The men exchanged words, their voices coming through Josiah’s foggy brain like the buzzing of a bee. He struggled to make his mind focus again.
The gun came away from his back, and the ground thudded with the sound of boots tromping away from him. He twisted around—pulling against the rope biting into his arms—just in time to see the two men tearing down the road on horseback. They were headed west, the same direction he’d been traveling. Were those the kind of men he could expect to encounter in this new territory? He’d have to strengthen his defenses. The pistol tucked in his saddle pack had done little to help him with this fiasco.
He struggled to sit, then exhaled a long breath. With his hands, he loosened the lasso enough to slip it off over his head. At least they hadn’t tied his hands and feet. Speaking of his feet, he glanced down at them, his wool socks left exposed without his boots. He reached into his left sock and pulled the small wad of ten dollar bills out from under the arch of his foot.
Fifty dollars. All that was left of his hard work and scrimping. It would get him to his destination at the Rocky Ridge Pony Express station, but wouldn’t be enough to buy land, build a house and barn, and purchase good Arabian breeding stock. He wrapped his arms around his knees, dropped his head to his wrists, and took deep breaths.
Inhale. Exhale.
At least he had a job. A good one at that. He’d earn a hundred dollars a month riding for the Express—and improve his horse skills in the process. Now he’d have to stay on longer than the six months he’d planned. But he would still get his ranch, even if he had to scrape and save another few years. He wouldn’t be stopped this easily.
Josiah raised his head and looked around. They hadn’t even left his boots. The only things still lying in the grass were his papers from the Express.
He took another long breath, then exhaled. His horse had disappeared, and he was shoeless. At least he was alive with nothing broken. He pushed up to his feet, then strode to the road and considered both ways. If he went left, it was about two miles back to Ellwood. In the other direction, roughly seven miles on to Troy. It’d be quicker to go back the way he came and get a fresh horse. Start over.
Josiah sighed, then headed left. One painful step in front of the other on the rocky lane.
Around the first bend in the road, his bay gelding munched a patch of clover. The lean, muscled animal ate as if it hadn’t seen green grass in a month of Tuesdays. At least someone was pleased with this situation.
Josiah eased forward, and the horse’s ears flicked, but it never stopped ripping at the clover stems. He released a sigh as his hand closed around one of the reins. Stroking the gelding, he checked his saddle bags. Good. His Colt revolver and the few personal possessions were still secure. He lifted a stockinged foot into the stirrup and swung up.
The sun arced a couple hours short of high noon, and he’d been ordered to report at the Rocky Ridge stop on the Sweetwater River by December sixth, just six days from now. He didn’t have time to stop for lunch, much less go back to Ellwood to report the bandits. He’d do it at the next town.
Lord, please let them have boots for sale there.
Sweetwater River Valley, Wyoming Territory
Only a few more miles.
Josiah pushed his horse to a canter. This animal’s rocking-horse rhythm was much smoother than the last two mounts he’d had. Changing horses every day had been interesting. Even though he wasn’t on an official mail ride, the man at the Pony Express office in St. Joseph said he should ride Express-owned horses and stay at the regular stations—anything to get him to Rocky Ridge faster. He’d be taking over the mail line from a man who’d been injured, so the riders on the neighboring lines were pulling double duty until he could get there.
And after six days on the road, the boulder-strewn hills and buttes he’d been maneuvering now leveled into a rocky grassland. Should only have a couple miles left to the station he would call home.
Already, he felt like an Express rider. That is, now that every move didn’t make his body scream. Riding horses woke up parts of his insides he hadn’t known existed. But after living in the saddle this last week, his muscles were getting used to the new life.
He’d passed a couple of other Express riders along the way, mostly at the stations. It made his blood pump to see one of them tear out with the mail bag on a fresh horse, as if a pack of Indians was on his tail.
Indians… Josiah scanned the tree line on his left again. No visible movement. At the last few stations where he’d slept, the men shared quite a few stories about Paiute braves attacking Express riders, or burning down stations and stealing the horses. Josiah touched the wooden grip protruding from his waistband. His Colt revolver waited ready, should the need arise.
He turned his attention back to the horizon in front of him where the gray-blue sky merged into pinks and purples. In the fading light, a cluster of buildings stood in the middle of the flat, grassy stretch. A niggle of anxiety tugged in Josiah’s chest. This would be his home station for a while. Would he like the people here? It didn't matter. He'd learned to live with whatever was necessary to accomplish what he'd set out for. Life wasn't an easy walk down a country lane. Not for a single moment.
He pulled his horse back to a jog, then reined her to a walk for the last few minutes. The bay mare was lathered, but her breathing returned to normal by the time they rode into the little courtyard between the four buildings. The structure on his left stood the largest by far, and looked to be the barn.
Josiah kicked his feet from the stirrups and rotated his ankles. Sharp needles pierced all the way up his calves, so he let his feet dangle for a moment until the pain lessened.
The door opened in the cabin to his right. On the threshold, a woman paused, then strode down the step and toward him. Her blue dress swished around her feet as she walked, determination marking her stride. She was a willowy thing, and wore her brown hair tied back in a way that revealed the strong curve of her jaw and the slope of her neck. Pretty, but younger than he’d expect for the stationmaster’s wife. And she didn’t look hardened enough to have lived long in this uncivilized country. Maybe she was passing through on one of the stagecoaches that followed this route.
She neared, close enough to rest a hand on the bay’s neck, then brought up the other to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked at him. Those eyes. Even with the shadow of her hand, their shiny brown was wide enough for him to see clear through to her soul. The other features on her face were strong and balanced, maybe even refined, but those eyes pulled his focus so he had to fight to look away.
Pull yourself together, English. Josiah reined in his thoughts and removed his hat.
“Hello.” Her voice was sweet and soft. “You're the new Express rider?” He strained to catch her words.
He nodded. And several seconds passed before he realized she waited for him to speak. “Yes, ma’am.” He cleared his throat to steady the pitch of his voice. He was ogling like one of the simple-minded wharf-workers where he’d grown up in Savannah.
She didn’t seem to notice his clumsiness—or at least, had the grace to ignore it. Instead, she reached for the mare’s reins and pulled the loop over the horse’s head. “Go on and get settled in the bunkhouse.” She nodded toward the shed-like building next to the barn. “I’ll get this girl taken care of, then finish dinner. When I ring the bell, come to the main house to eat.” She pointed a thumb toward the structure behind her.
He swallowed to work some moisture into his mouth. She must belong to the place. “Is your…uh…husband around?”
Her lips pinched, and one corner quirked up. Her big brown gaze met his, light dancing there. “No husband. But my brothers are in the barn haying the horses.”
The tension in his chest eased, but he tried not to look too deep into the reason. It sounded like she had men here to protect her. But not a husband.
Sliding from the horse, Josiah caught himself so he landed softly on his sore ankles. “I’ll get my saddle bags before you take her.” His fingers fumbled with the leather straps. Finally, he had both the front and back bags off, and she led the horse away without another word.
Even the weariness in his bones didn’t stop him from watching her go, her long skirt feathering across the tops of the grass as she stepped with a self-assured grace.
His mouth pressed in a frown. Why hadn’t he asked her name?