Serena aimed the rifle and fired into the dark shadows of the barn in reply to the Mexican’s threats. She laid the firearm aside and snatched up a loaded pistol. Glancing at the one left by Chet, she shuddered. For Ma and me. She refused to let it happen.
Within moments, her ma had carefully measured the gun powder and slipped a bullet into the rifle. Laying it on the floor beside Serena, she stared at Pa, still unconscious.
“How is he?” she asked, studying what she believed to be the figure of a man lingering close to the barn door.
“He’s doing fine for right now. When this is done, you and Chet can help me get him into bed.” She sounded more optimistic than Serena knew Ma truly felt.
“Good. Soon Chet will have them sprawled out there in the dirt.”
“Serena, I’ve never heard you talk this way,” her ma said, shock edging her words, “but…in all the nineteen years your pa and I’ve been married, we’ve never had danger at our door, either.”
Serena refused to let her emotions overrule good judgment. “All I know is we have to stop those men out there.” She stole a glance at her ma. Nothing else needed to be said, for reality cut deep.
Ma nodded and paled again. “Praise God, your pa taught you how to shoot. I wish I’d taken the time to learn. Then I could do my share now.”
Serena steadied the pistol. “Simply keeping these guns loaded is help. And please pray I won’t lose my nerve when the time comes, ’cause I’m scared.”
Ma brushed an errant strand of hair from Serena’s face and tucked it behind her ear. “I will…I am, but you’ll do just fine. I’m sure of it.”
“Thank you.” Serena waited for a wave of emotion to pass. “I love you, Ma. We’ve had lots of good times together, haven’t we?”
Ma nodded, sorrow etching her smooth features, and her hand touched Serena’s arm. “And we’ll have years more. Someday your babies will crawl on my lap, and I will tell them what a beautiful, brave mother they have.”
“And how I spent my eighteenth birthday? This isn’t how I pictured today.” She nodded toward the cook fire. “And would you look at breakfast? The eggs and bacon have burned.” She wanted to make light of their precarious situation, but instead tears stung her eyes, and she hastily wiped them away.
“I’m proud of you,” Ma said, ever so gently. “We’ll make it through this thing…and work out your and Chet’s problem, too.”
Before Serena could reply, movement from the side of the nearest corner of the barn caught her attention. At first she thought the figure to be Chet, but the man wore a sombrero.
She stared at the far corner, where a second man, dressed like a Mexican but more closely resembling an Apache, studied the cabin. Chet had said three men followed Pa. Then she saw a third lurking inside the barn, near the entrance.
Dear Lord, I’m so scared, but I can’t let them get to the cabin.
She realized then what they planned. She figured while the two men rushed and covered the man in the barn, he would head for the cook fire and a burning log. In the dry heat, he’d toss the log through a window. A simple plan for three ruthless men who thought they dealt with one badly injured ranger and another single man. A lot they knew about the women inside. If only she knew what Chet wanted her to do. But what God wanted of her ranked even higher. The Indian raised his rifle.
“They’re coming,” she said, wanting to shout. Her heart pounded more fiercely than before, and she clenched her fists in an effort to dispel her shaking hands. Every breath became a prayer.
“We have God on our side,” Ma said, “and He does not forsake His own.”
Serena refused to think of Goliad and the Alamo. The brave men who died at the hands of the Mexicans believed God had been on their side, too.
“Yes, of course we do,” she replied.
Raising the rifle, she took careful aim at the man wearing the sombrero, hoping Chet had his sights on the other. The Mexican stepped into the sunlight. He made a dreadful mistake.
He raised his pistol. She held her breath and squeezed the trigger. The two shots fired simultaneously, but the Mexican fell. Still holding her breath, she wrapped her fingers around the pistol and moved to the other window, where Chet had leaned his rifle to look like another stood guard. It occurred to her then. Chet only had one rifle.
Another shot fired, and the Indian fell. The third man stole around the barn entrance in the direction of the fallen Apache. Serena didn’t see Chet, and a new set of tremors raced up her spine.
The third man stood in the clearing for a mere second before chasing around the side of the barn. Serena could wait no longer. Unlatching the door, she hurried outside. The man must have sensed her, for he whirled around, pistol aimed.
With a loud groan, the man fell face down with a knife in his back. Chet raced toward her.
“You crazy girl,” he said, his voice hoarse. “He would have killed you.” He caught her and pulled her into his arms.
Serena could not hold back the sobs. “I was afraid he’d shoot you. And you lied to me; you only had the rifle. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing.”
For several long minutes, he held her and stroked her hair. “It’s all over now, sweetheart.”
Finally he released her and they looked behind them. The men were dead; no doubt entered her mind. Reality sickened her at what she’d done…they’d done. Chet stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the fallen men.
“Let’s go see about your pa,” he said, slipping his hand around her waist and urging her to the cabin. “You’re still shaking.”
She nodded, unable to speak until she garnered enough breath to calm herself. “I feel horrible, dirty, and yet relieved,” she said.
He brushed a kiss in her hair. “I know. I feel the same way each time I finish a job. You did real well, Serena, but you have to put it past you. Think about what they’d done if you and me had not stopped them.”
“Oh, Chet, I know, and I’m grateful God spared us.” She took another glance behind them. “Would you pray with me?”
He turned her to face him and grasped both of her hands into his. They bowed their heads; even so, tears still trickled down her cheeks.
“Thank you, Lord, for delivering us from those men,” Chet began. “They won’t be hurting any more folks. Lord, I still don’t understand the ways of war, but I know You protected us today just as You have done for me many times before. The cap’n is in bad shape, and we ask Your healing powers to mend his body. Amen.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, gazing into his treasured face. “I think we need to give them a proper burial.”
“I will,” he said firmly, “right after we check on your pa.”
Hand in hand they walked into the cabin where Pa had gained consciousness. His head lay in Ma’s lap, and she held his face in her hands. His side had been bandaged, but his leg still needed doctoring. The agony of pain layered lines upon his face, causing him to look years older.
“Go ahead and tend to my leg, Rachel. It won’t get any better like it is,” he said through a labored breath.
She bent and kissed his brow, then glanced up at Serena and Chet. “Would you bind it? I don’t want to let him go.” Ma picked up his hand and wrapped her fingers around it, her lips braving a tender smile.
Together Chet and Serena cleaned the wound and bandaged it. Pa said nothing but gripped Ma’s hand all the harder.
“There, it’s done,” Chet announced. “What do you say we get you into bed?”
“Not yet,” Pa said, wetting his lips. Perspiration dotted his brow. “Let me rest just a minute. Besides, there’s a thing or two I need to say.”
Serena suddenly grew numb. Surely Pa would not run Chet off after he’d saved their lives.
“Chet, you saved my family today,” Pa said, struggling with each word. “And I owe you.”
“I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done for me.”
“I know, but you and I haven’t been on the best of terms lately.”
Chet kneeled on the floor beside him. “Just some misunderstandings, Cap’n. We can put it behind us.”
“Guess we can.”
“You’d be proud of Serena. She got one of them,” Chet replied, placing an arm around her waist. “I couldn’t have licked them without her.”
Pa attempted a smile. “She’s a ranger’s daughter…and I reckon…” His face distorted in pain, and he paused before speaking again. “She’ll make a fine ranger’s wife.”
Serena gasped as the words graced her ears. “Oh, Pa, do you mean it?”
“Don’t think I have much choice. You already know how hard this life is; I won’t be disguising it.” He grimaced and sucked in his breath. “Both of you got the best, so I’m giving you my blessing.”
Chet squeezed her lightly, and she laid her head against him. “Thank you. I’ll love her good and proper.”
Pa raised a brow. “I know you will ’cause you won’t want to tangle with me.”
Chet chuckled, sparking a lopsided grin from Pa.
Pa peered into Serena’s face. “Happy birthday, Little One. Guess you got a little more than what you bargained for.”
“A husband, a blessing, and a palomino,” Serena said, bending to touch his whiskered cheek. “Best birthday I ever had.”
The Niall family joined them in the afternoon, with Dugan returning home for an Irish cure to soothe Pa’s pain. By then, the three men were buried, but the tale only needed telling once. None of them felt boastful over the morning’s happenings.
“I have an announcement to make,” Pa said, long toward evening with the effects of Dugan’s elixir easing the burning in his body. “Chet and Serena are fixin’ to be married.”
“When?” roared Dugan.
“I reckon as soon as we can get a preacher here to do the ceremony,” Pa said. He cast an approving glance toward Serena and Chet. “Guess I’ll have me a son and a lieutenant. Seems to me, I’m one lucky man.”
Later on, after the celebration ceased and Pa slept, Serena and Chet sat on the porch and watched the stars break through a night sky.
“I need to ask you in a fitting way to marry me,” Chet said, his hand clasped firmly into hers.
She said nothing—but waited.
“You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you?” he asked with a nervous chuckle.
“No, I plan to savor every word, so speak nice and slow.” She drew her knees up under her dress and rested her chin on them. She had long anticipated his endearing words and a promise of a life together. Now, at this moment, she wanted it all to last forever.
He cleared his throat. “Serena…what’s your middle name?”
She straightened up and gazed into his face, wishing she could see his eyes. “Hope.”
“Hmm. I like that; it’s right pretty.”
Another long minute passed as they were serenaded by a family of locusts and purple martins.
“Serena Hope Talbot, I love you—imagine I have for a long time, just didn’t have sense enough to recognize it. I used to have this peculiar idea of what I needed in a woman. Strength, I called it, and I thought it meant physical strength. But I made a terrible mistake, for in many ways you are a stronger person than me. I need you, Serena, for now and always. I know God planned for us to be together as man and wife. So I’m asking if you will marry me—be a Texas Ranger’s wife.”
She sighed and formed a smile she could not conceal. “I’ve loved you since the first day Pa brought you home and introduced you as a new ranger recruit over two years ago. I knew I wanted to marry you then, and I’ve not changed my mind since. Yes, I’ll marry you and be a ranger’s wife.”
He pulled her closer and lightly brushed a kiss across her lips. “Our lives won’t be easy. Trouble is always springing up somewhere, and this feud between the Republic and Mexico over Texas’s boundaries isn’t going to be settled without fighting.”
“I know. You’re a ranger.”
“And you’ll still marry me, knowing I’ll be gone for days at a time?”
“Yes, Chet. I agree to it all. I love you, but…”
“What?”
“Please don’t call me skinny.”
He kissed her again. “I will never call you skinny, just my precious Serena.”
“You’ve got me, Lieutenant Chet Wilkinson, and I’m never letting you go.”