One

Red River Station, the Chisholm Trail, north Texas April 4, 1870

Angel Devlin never even got a chance to mourn her mother’s passing before she found herself being strung up, the torn and bruised guest of honor at a necktie party. Threatening voices and brutal hands reached out of the mob that surrounded her, hoisting her aloft and holding her suspended for a dust-choked second over the enraged men’s heads. In the next instant, she was slammed down on the lathered back of a sidestepping white-eyed cow pony. The men’s heartless handling of her pitched Angel forward, had her gasping in spine-jarring pain, with barely the presence of mind to sit the animal and clutch its tangled mane.

Scared, panicked, as mistreated as the innocent roan under her, her heart pounding, her long hair hanging in her eyes and tangled all about her face, Angel relied on her gut instinct to save her hide. She knew, from lifelong experience, that no one standing back by the assorted log cabins and shacks that comprised Red River Station, or over by the Silver Star Saloon, would lift a hand to help her.

Because, to them, she was of no consequence. They knew what her mother’d been. And they knew what Angel had done today. So now, as always, it was up to her. She had only one chance to escape the lynching that awaited her. But that was all she asked for—a chance. It was all she’d ever asked for. And unlike every other moment in her abrupt eighteen years of life, maybe this time she’d win that chance.

So, sensing the loosening of the hands that gripped her, and judging this to be her moment, she grasped the pommel tightly and dug her boot heels into the horse’s ribs, gouging him and yelling, “Yee-haw. Git up!” The roan under her—held in place by the men but urged by his rider to take flight—froze into a stiff-legged posture, as Angel expected he would. She braced herself, held her breath. All hell was getting ready to bust loose. And she’d see that it did. Again she dug her heels into the horse’s ribs, again she yelled for it to git up.

This time, the roan complied. Over the men’s yells of “Hang on!” and “Watch out!”, the horse fought to lower his head, fought the hands that gripped his bridle, that secured his unwilling participation in his rider’s last moments on earth. Angel’s grunts of effort matched her mount’s bellows of outrage as he twisted and jerked, fighting as much, she knew, to unseat her as he did to free himself.

In his bucking efforts, he nearly succeeded in both. Angel’s grip on the pommel broke. Teeth gritted, she clutched spasmodically at it, couldn’t get her fingers to lock around it. Instinctively, she gripped tightly with her knees, turning in her toes, the better to circle the roan’s ribs. Just when she thought she’d be thrown, her grasping fingers captured the coarse and reddish mane. She held on, despite the flailing, whiplike punishment the thick hair delivered to her exposed arms.

Just then, the horse pranced sideways, bumping against the nearest of the determined men and scattering them. Then, in its panic, it tried to rear, tried to bolt from under the heavy, low-hanging branch of the gnarled scrub oak that had proven, time and again, to be sturdy enough not to break under a body’s weight. Something rough slapped against Angel’s cheek. She jerked, cried out, snapping her head up … only to see her destiny.

A knotted rope. A noose. The cowhands had tied a thick rope around the tree’s trunk, had snaked its taut length up the bark, finally slinging it over a branch. At the rope’s other end, the dangling noose now swung in the rain-dampened wind.

No. Angel’s breath came in tight gasps. No. She relinquished her hold on the horse’s mane, clutched the pommel and kicked out again. But this time, in her fear and rage, she aimed her kicks at the pitiless men imprisoning her. Finally, she connected. The howl of pain and the crunching of cartilage in some unknown cowpoke’s nose brought a snarling smirk to her face.

But with that act, her chance died, just as did the early-spring breeze. One second it was there … and in the next, it wasn’t. The vengeful trail crew prevailed, maintaining their hold on the horse. They stopped its bucking and clutched at the muddied length of Angel’s coarse-spun skirt, effectively keeping her atop her winded mount. The ruckus further settled as two men, now straddling the branch above Angel and facing each other, shoved the noose over her head and began pulling it tight around her neck, tangling her hair in the rope’s grip.

Angel stiffened, sucked in a breath through flared nostrils, and sought, in her final desperation, a sympathetic face among the twelve cowhands surrounding her and so intent on ending her life. But there was none to be seen. Only hard, angry eyes greeted her, leaching from her any fight she had left. Sudden defeat, a constant companion to her bravado, had her bowing her neck, had her lowering her gaze until she stared at her white-knuckled hands, still fisted around the pommel.

Her vision blurred. Angel sniffed, hating the fear in her heart and the tears in her eyes. She wasn’t a sniveling coward who’d go to her death begging for her life. That conviction made her clench her jaw in a resurgence of defiance as she willed herself to do this one thing … this dying … right. And that meant going out with squared shoulders and a curse for her killers. Her spine stiffened with intention. She straightened up, ready to deliver her last words.

But it was a whimper that escaped her, that betrayed her. A whimper and a plea. “No. Please … no.”

At that moment, a large callused hand seemed to come out of nowhere to cover hers. Angel stiffened, ready for yet another fight. But the man tightened his grip and said, in a low, gruff voice, “It’s all right, sweetheart. I won’t let them hurt you.”

She should have sought his face, should have looked upon her would-be savior. But all Angel could do was stare at the hand sheltering hers. And try to believe him. Time seemed to stretch into thin, gauzy moments, marked by a rippling tide of sudden quiet that flowed outward from the man nearest her, out to the fringes of the gang … perhaps all the way to the men observing from a distance, as if they too had heard the man’s words and also waited.

The growing silence, the men’s waiting, all suited Angel. Because while they did so, she was alive and drawing her next breath. But finally, she angled her head, peering through the dark and tangled waterfall of her hair, trying to make out the man’s face. Most likely the last face she’d see in this life. And thus, she studied him. And saw him watching her do so.

Under his wide-brimmed hat, which revealed graying side-burns, the stranger’s face was broad and weathered, lined by life and by wind, a face that had seen too much of the outdoors and too much of human nature. Dominating his craggy features were blue eyes with the saddest glint in them that Angel’d ever seen. She didn’t know why he’d involved himself, why he would risk his own life to save hers. Nor did she care. Because right now she’d bargain with the devil himself, if need be. Then the man spoke again. “Did you hear me? I said I won’t let them hurt you.”

Angel stretched her neck against the rope’s cloying grip and rasped out, “From where I’m sitting, mister, it appears that they’re more likely to kill me than they are just to hurt me.”

The barest of nods from him, and perhaps a ghost of a grin, accompanied his words. “I always figured you for one with some grit inside you, Angel.”

With that, the big man turned his attention to the lynch mob, drawing his gun with one hand and relinquishing his grip on her to hold the skittish horse’s reins with his other. He called out to the men for calm, began trying to get to the bottom of the lynching. And that was when Angel realized that he’d called her by name.

Frowning, her eyes narrowed, she riveted her gaze on the man. Forcing a calm born of hopefulness onto her thoughts, she tried to reason. He’d called her Angel. But he’d also called her sweetheart. So maybe his saying angel was just a coincidence, no more than another pet name to him. It had to be. Because she’d never seen this man before in her life. But then she recalled his exact words. I always figured you for one with some grit inside you. Always figured? He’d have to know her to figure anything about her.

But he could’ve just seen her around the station. He didn’t have to know her to watch her from afar, to make conclusions about her nature. That was true enough. But whoever he was, she felt certain in that moment that she would never forget him.

The two cowboys perched on the limb above her quickly abandoned it when the stranger poked a hole in the air with his raised pistol and fired off a round to silence the men’s renewed protests. “All right, you listen to me and you listen good,” he was bellowing to the men surrounding them both. “I don’t know what she’s done. But—”

“Stay out of this, Daltry. She killed Jeb Kennedy. Our trail boss. And in cold blood. Stabbed him right through the heart with his own knife, she did,” a skinny, scraggly cowboy called out. “That ain’t mud all over her. That’s his drying blood.”

The man called Daltry jerked his disbelieving gaze back to Angel, sweeping her torso with one glance before looking directly into her eyes. She knew the damning blood was there for him to see. Yet she refused to look away. She returned his stare, but with the assessing solemnity and cool detachment that she reserved for those foolhardy enough to stand with her and try to defend her. She raised an eyebrow, as much as asking Are you still so all-fired ready to help me? As if this were a test he had to pass.

“See there? She don’t even deny it. And now she’s got to pay for it,” another of the trail crew said. Daltry turned to face the speaker, who continued his tirade. “We all know you, Mr. Daltry, and our quarrel ain’t with you. But it will be, if you don’t step aside right now.”

Thus incited, the men surged forward, calling for her blood and raising their fists in open threat. Angel tensed, as did the roan under her.

But her protector, this stranger named Daltry, leveled his pistol until it pointed right between the eyes of the man who’d spoken last, startling them all into stopping short. Then he cocked it—a loud, metallic sound in the sudden stillness—and drawled, “One more step, and you’ll be the first one to die, Evans. Like you said—you know me. So you know I ain’t bluffing. Tell ’em to back off.”

But Evans didn’t. He didn’t say anything, nor did he budge. Angel didn’t even dare breathe. Then, “All right. Have it your way,” Daltry said. “And tell your friends what you want ’em to say about you on your headstone.”

The air crackled, burned with an acrid scent, as if the gray-haired man’s words were bullets he’d fired from his weapon. Finally, into the tense silence, Evans blurted, “Okay, I give.” He pivoted to face the other men and raised a cautioning hand. “Hold up right there. She ain’t worth dying over, no-how.”

Angel raised her chin a notch at the man’s words. She wasn’t worth dying over. She’d heard that said about her before. Maybe a thousand times. But in this particular instance, her lack of worth just might save her life. A grim irony tugged at her lips, had her shaking her head, even as the men melted back some. Could it be that they really were going to give up, maybe let her live?

She glanced over at Daltry in time to see him relaxing his gun hand. Maybe so. Maybe she would make it through this day, would see the sun set. As she watched, Daltry lowered his pistol to his side, but didn’t holster it as he told Evans, “Smart man.”

Swallowing as best she could around the noose’s scratchy thickness against her windpipe, and feeling hollow inside, Angel remained silent and kept her gaze on the stranger. She couldn’t figure him out. At risk of his own life, he’d challenged the mob with no more than a cold stare and a steady gun hand. All for her. But why? She had no answers, only questions, as he continued to speak.

“This girl’s no more a cold-blooded murderer than any of you are. So, what the hell happened here?”

“I’ll tell ya—if’n you’ll first tell us how come you’re so all-fired concerned with what happens to a dead whore’s daughter.” This from the skinny cowboy who’d first challenged Daltry.

A dead whore’s daughter. The man’s words bounced off Angel … because she willed them to. But a muscle jumped in her jaw, her gut tightened. She refused even to blink, as Daltry holstered his gun and bowed out his chest, warning, “Watch your mouth, Sully, or I’ll watch it for you.”

“All I did was speak the truth,” the man whined.

“Truth or no, keep it to your sorry self.” Daltry’s warning came framed in a grimace of disgust.

But was his distaste really for Sully? Or was it for her? Angel wondered. Shame had her lowering her head, had her staring at her white-knuckled hands. This particular slur—whore’s daughter—had been flung at her all her life. Surely it should’ve lost its sting by now. And perhaps, on any other day, it wouldn’t hurt. But not today. Because only this morning, in the driving rain, alone except for the grumbling grave-digger, she’d buried her mother next to her long-dead father.

Just then, breaking into Angel’s thoughts, Daltry’s hand once again covered hers, once again startled her. She met his gaze, but allowed nothing of the inner turmoil that roiled her guts to show on her face. The man’s grip tightened with his question. “Is it true, Angel? She’s dead? Mrs. Devlin—your mother’s dead?”

The note of regret, of caring, in the man’s voice pierced Angel’s armor. Her throat worked. The barest of nods had to suffice as her answer. Daltry’s grip tensed, loosened … his hand finally slipped away from hers. He took a deep breath, let it out, turned a hard stare on the men, and stepped away from Angel’s side to go talk with them in quiet tones.

Although she felt better with him closer to her—since she still had the noose around her neck, and no one held the skittish roan in place—Angel couldn’t have been more grateful for Daltry’s turning away. She hated that he’d broken through to her. Hated it. And hated him for doing it. She’d fought too hard not to feel anything for her mother’s passing. Fought too hard to deny she did or could feel anything for the woman.

And she’d be damned if she would allow grief a place in her heart now. She would be damned—would take it to her grave first—before she would let the pain of it show on her face. Especially in front of these men.

And so, lost and alone, she sat there, bereft of words, willing instead that the hardness in her heart would firm her features, would settle itself on her face. Another thing she hated was having no say in her own fate. She could do nothing to free herself, even given the men’s present inattention to her. Surely, if she were to raise her hands to work the noose free, she’d spook the danged horse and end up killing herself. And she had no intention of doing that. She was too ornery to die by her own hand, to give up like that.

And so, with no choice, no course of action—only patience—open to her, she fumed and waited for the men to decide her fate. Would they allow a peaceable end to this scene? Or would they hang her? Right now, she didn’t care which because she was getting mighty tired of being a public spectacle atop this roan. Tiring now even of her own thoughts, Angel focused on the men, settling her gaze on Mr. Daltry’s back, on his oilskin slicker.

And found that, quite unbidden, her mind wandered again to the note of caring that had saturated his voice and his words only a moment ago. Then it hit her. Her spine stiffened. Devlin. Her surname. He’d used it. Her mind leaped to further conclusions. His calling her Angel a moment ago hadn’t been a coincidence.

Her heart pounding, she frowned, narrowed her eyes at the man’s back. Who was he that he would care what happened to her? Because now she knew—he did care. That much was obvious. His actions were not those of a mere stranger possessed of compassion for her plight. Because he didn’t just know of her … he knew her. Knew her mother, too. Angel cocked her head, carefully brushed her hair out of her eyes, and wondered about him, about a man who would call the town whore Mrs. Devlin.

Then it came to her. That was it—the town whore. The saloon. That’s how he knew her. Maybe he was just one of the more polite customers her mother’d … entertained. A stab of soul-deep disappointment made Angel slump in the saddle. But instantly, the noose around her neck tautened, cut off her air, reminded her to sit up straight. Angel did, taking the rope’s reminder as good advice.

Stiffening her spine again until she sat erect, she watched Daltry come back to her side. Watched him stare blankly at her skirt-covered leg. Watched his mouth work in a way that spoke of pain, of an aching hurt in the middle of the soul, one that Angel knew all too well … even if she did refuse to acknowledge it.

Just as she did her own grief, Angel discounted his, too, calling it a show for these men, a play on their sympathy to help him win her life. Because surely the death of a sick whore couldn’t be upsetting him this much. Angel exhaled, suddenly deciding she didn’t care who he was or why he hurt. Because the truth had to be that he’d been her mother’s customer. Missing his comings and goings from the back room at the Silver Star would’ve been easy for her, she knew. Because it’d been years since she’d passed her time at the dingy saloon, watching the sideshow that was her mother’s life.

Just then, cutting into Angel’s thoughts, Daltry shifted his stance, looked up at her, and again met her gaze. “What happened to your ma?”

Angel felt the weight of the surrounding men’s stares. Daltry’s question had her jaw working around the truth, which she spat out. “You did. You happened to her.” With her gaze, Angel swept the crowd of twelve gathered around her. “All of you. You and your kind. Every one of you who laid his money down and crawled into her bed and gave her his diseases. You happened to her. You killed her.”

The men set up a fuss, but Daltry quelled it with no more than his raised hand. He then jerked to her. Under the wide brim of his hat, the man’s blue eyes narrowed. “I never laid down with your ma, Angel. Never. I always—” He cut off his own words to take in a breath and exhale it. Then he said, “I’m sorry for your loss. Truly sorry. I know how it feels to lose someone you love.”

Angel turned a heart-of-stone look on the man and his sympathy. “I never said I lost a loved one. Just my mother.”

Daltry’s eyebrows shot up, he opened his mouth, meant to say something. But no words came out. Then, as if he’d changed his mind, he firmed his lips together and stared up at her. From the horse’s height … with a hangman’s noose around her neck, with Jeb Kennedy’s blood dotting her bodice … Angel leveled a challenging look right back at the man, daring him to tell her she should love a mother who’d made herself and her daughter the outcasts they were in this forlorn and godforsaken trading post called Red River Station.

But all Daltry did was look away and then down, as if concentrating on his muddied boots. After a moment, he raised his head, avoiding Angel’s steady gaze as he again turned to address the waiting men. “I’ve had about all of this I can stand. You men—the same as me—know Jeb Kennedy’s ways with women. He liked to force himself on ’em. Now I’m asking you … is that what he did to get himself killed today? Did he force himself on Angel—and her no more’n a grievin’ girl?”

No one answered. Daltry focused on the tall, rangy cowhand named Evans. “I asked a question. Is that what your good-for-nothin’ trail boss did?”

Sitting as still as death, moving only her eyes, Angel searched the faces of the men. A few of them—catching her gaze directed his way—had the decency … or felt guilty enough … to look away, to look at his boots, or at the man standing next to him. So it was up to her, she realized, to say the words. In a voice no more than a whisper, she said, “That’s what he did.”

Daltry flinched, as if he’d been punched. He pivoted to face her. His blue eyes squinted against the sudden illumination of a lone shaft of sunlight that pierced the bruised rainclouds overhead and bathed them all in its weak yellow glow. For some reason, Angel felt compelled to add, “Or tried to do, anyway. I got him before he got me.”

“Good for you,” was Daltry’s response. Beyond that, he didn’t move or say another word. Instead, he held her gaze, seemed to stare right through her, seemed to be searching for her very soul. Angel wondered if she had one for him to find. Then—as if they were alone in a parlor somewhere, as if she weren’t sitting here with a dead man’s blood coloring her clothing—he said, “Tell me what happened, Angel.”

Angel’s stomach quivered, making her shiver. The remembered fear, the feel of the man’s hands on her, his mouth groping, hurting … No. She didn’t want to talk about it. She opened her mouth to tell Daltry just that, that she didn’t owe him an explanation. But a new voice inside her screamed not to do that. For once in your life, it echoed, let someone help you. Tell him, it said. Tell him and live.

This clamoring inside her that willed her to reach out for help, to accept it, halted Angel’s rebellious thoughts. And focused her attention inward. What was happening to her? She never questioned herself, never doubted the validity of her gut reactions, the one thing that had kept her alive thus far. So, what was this she now felt? Every nerve ending screamed at her to cooperate with Mr. Daltry, just as the men who comprised this mob were doing. The mob was slowly turning into individual men … all of whom appeared relieved that someone was stopping them.

So, given that, why shouldn’t she cooperate? Why shouldn’t she tell these men what their precious trail boss had tried to do? Why, indeed? Angel decided to speak. “I was in the back room of the Silver Star … clearing out my mother’s things … when he—Mr. Kennedy—came in, all liquored up and feeling randy. I told him to go away, that Virginia Devlin was dead.”

“But—” A ragged breath escaped Angel, surprising her and cutting off her words. She swallowed, tamped down her emotions, and hurried on. “But Mr. Kennedy said … one whore’s the same as another. I told him I wasn’t like my mother. But he kept coming at me. I told him to stop. And he said he’d kill me if I … didn’t let him. Then he jumped me.” Angel closed her eyes against the memory, realized what she was doing and opened them again, and caught sight of Mr. Daltry, and finished. “When he did, we fell to the bed. And in the struggle, I got his knife. And I killed him. As for the rest … well, it’s sitting here looking at you.”

In the ensuing silence, Angel willed herself not to look away first. Finally, Mr. Daltry blinked, nodding as if acknowledging her words as he turned again to the men. “It seems to me that if Kennedy did what she says, and she killed him for it, then he had it coming. Anyone care to see it differently?”

He stopped … waited. Angel’s heart thumped leadenly. When no one offered an opinion either way, Mr. Daltry broke the silence. “I’ll give you two minutes to think about it and speak your mind. Then I’m cutting her loose. So if you got something to say to me, or to her, say it now.”

Again, Angel held her breath, certain she could hear the seconds ticking by, like the hollow booming cadence of an Indian war drum. But no one in the mob said a word or made an abrupt move. They just shifted their weight … eyed a neighbor … shrugged a shoulder. Angel sat up straighter in the saddle, sought Daltry’s profile, and kept her attention focused on him. If she walked away from this ruckus, it’d be because of him.

As if he felt the weight of her stare, Mr. Daltry flicked a glance her way. The glint in his eyes clearly counseled caution, told her it wasn’t over yet, said she need look no further than the rope knotted around her neck for the truth of that. Renewed apprehension caught at Angel’s breathing. With only the briefest of nods she let him know she understood. But tell that to her mind, which raced with thoughts of the immediate future, ranging from what she needed to collect before she got out of Red River Station forever … to where she would go … and to what she would do when she got there.

“Time’s up,” Mr. Daltry said, his words shattering the leaden silence that had fallen on them. “Seeing as how you don’t appear to have any objections, I’m guessin’ you all agree that Miss Devlin is free to go.” He pointed to Evans. “Get that rope off her. Now.”

Evans immediately stepped around him and began climbing the hangman’s tree. Daltry pivoted, watched him a moment, as if making sure the drover was carrying out his orders, and then turned to the eleven remaining men. “Whose cayuse is she sitting on?”

Angel’s legs tightened reflexively around the roan under her, the horse in question. After a moment’s hesitance, a young wrangler whom Angel’d heard brag more than once about having been with her mother, called out, “It’d be mine, Mr. Daltry.”

Daltry swung his gaze to the kid. “How much you want for it?”

The boy’s face clouded. “I don’t want nothing for it, ’cause it ain’t mine to sell. That’s a top cow pony and belongs to the Henton brand. I’m just the horse wrangler. An’ if I sold that horse, Mr. Henton would have my hide.”

“Is that so?” Daltry drawled, drawing his pistol from its holster, ignoring the cowhand while he fiddled with the weapon’s chambers … all to make a point, a loaded one not lost on Angel. Or on the trail crew facing her, she could see.

Done with his gun play, Daltry again leveled his blue-eyed gaze on the hapless wrangler. “I know your Mr. Henton. A fine, upstanding cattleman. He won’t be none too pleased with the news you men’ve got to bring him. That your trail boss got himself killed and then you and your crew involved yourselves in the near lynching of a young girl who’d done nothing but defend herself. But since you’re letting her go—and you are—the way I see it is, all you’ve got to report is you need a new trail boss … and you’re short one horse.”

He paused, cutting his gaze from one man to the next, until he’d looked each of them in the eye. “Is that the way you see it? Or do I need to go talk to John Henton myself?”

Angel was so enthralled with the conversation between Mr. Daltry and the trail crew that she only belatedly realized that Evans had lifted the noose from around her neck. Now all she needed to do was reach forward, grab the dangling reins, dig her boot heels into the horse’s ribs, and send him in a tear through the loose knot of men surrounding her. If she did, they’d both be free, her and the roan. Her muscles twitched, aching with the desire to do just that. But she didn’t, couldn’t. And had to wonder why.

Then, it hit her. Some insane sense of loyalty that she hadn’t known she possessed. Could it be that she figured she owed Mr. Daltry her life and should stick around to make sure the guilt-wracked, and therefore still dangerous, trail crew didn’t turn on him? If they did turn, she told herself, she could use the horse as a weapon, maybe even the odds out a bit by wedging it between him and them, or urge it into a charge that would scatter them. Is that what she was thinking … that Mr. Daltry might need her?

Angel examined that notion for a moment and realized that … yes, she was thinking that. No one had ever needed her before. But Mr. Daltry did. And she intended to stick by him. So there it was. She could stick by someone, even if her mother couldn’t. Virginia Devlin’d pushed her child away, telling her it was the only way she could keep her safe. Well, Angel hadn’t accepted that then, and she wasn’t about to accept it now in herself. She, for one, would stay with this man—until she knew he was away safely.

And after that, she had her freedom and would disappear into the Western wilds and begin a new life for herself. A good life, free of the stench of cattle and saloons and liquored-up cowhands. Free of the scorn heaped on her by decent folks because of who her mother was. And free of want, of never enough clothes to wear or food to eat. Or her own roof over her head. Yes, she’d have all that. She’d see that she did. But for now, she sat her horse, a free woman, one with a debt of gratitude keeping her in place.

In the space of time it took for all this to occur to her, Mr. Daltry had continued to address the men. Angel listened in, knowing that whatever passed between them … affected her directly. “I believe you men have made the right decision here today. I know if I heard the same tale about my men—men I was prepared to trust with thousands of dollars’ worth of steers—that they’d kept their heads, buried my trail boss, and got back to work, I’d be most likely to think highly of them. And not worry one bit about one lost cow pony.”

With that, Mr. Daltry reached into an inside pocket of his oilskin slicker and pulled out some silver coins, which he threw at the wrangler’s feet. “That’s more’n that roan’s worth. So do yourself a favor, kid—pick the money up and count the horse gone.”

For a moment, the young wrangler didn’t move, except to stare at the money in the mud and then to exchange glances with his fellow drovers. Angel’s throat constricted. The air seemed to thicken. She inched forward over the roan’s neck, meaning to grab for the reins, the better to control him, should she need to assist Mr. Daltry. But in the next second, urged on by his friends’ gestures, the kid picked up the silver coins, scooping the pieces up with more mud than bravado.

Angel exhaled her relief. It was over.

The now peaceable cowhands turned and wandered off in the general direction of the Silver Star Saloon. Angel couldn’t believe it. She was alive. Only moments ago, she’d been as close to dead as she’d ever been. But now, she could go. Even though she’d never thanked anybody for anything before in her life, she thought to thank Mr. Daltry.

But her words no more than tipped against her tongue before they were cut off by Daltry’s called-out question to the departing men. “Hey, kid?” The horse wrangler, along with the other men, turned as one and waited for him to continue. “Buy a round at the Silver Star and have everyone drink to Virginia Devlin’s memory. You owe her that much.”

A heavier quiet seemed to settle over the men. They stared back in silence. A few of them sought Angel’s gaze. She raised her chin a notch, willed her solemn, unforgiving expression to speak for her. Then, the young wrangler tipped his wide-brimmed hat in acknowledgment to Mr. Daltry … and then to Angel.

Her guts tightened, her jaw firmed. If her mouth weren’t so dry, she told herself, she’d spit on the ground to show her opinion of his gesture. Did he mean it as an apology? She doubted it. Mocking disrespect? Most likely. Or could it be he sought her forgiveness? Is that what he and his friends wanted? Forgiveness?

Well, they’d not have it from her. They’d all die first before they’d see that day. And probably would. Because she had no intention of returning to Red River Station. Ever.