Brandon comes home from a trail drive to find his wife on her way to Mexico to help the mission folk that took her in. Putting herself in danger. Crossing perilous terrain, where not only the weather kills, but Comancheros and bandoleros as well. He climbs back into the saddle and heads out after her. Both of them now embarked on separate journeys that involves killers, flooded arroyos and narrow divides where one misstep means a plunge to certain death. And, if that’s not enough to challenge them, at journey’s end they’ll face the most dangerous situation of all.“This book contains plenty of grit and gunfire, but no graphic violence or explicit scenes.”
Excerpt
July, 1874
The sun hit a blood-red horizon and shot upward in a crown of tangerine brilliance, hurting the eyes, lighting the trail from the top of the canyon to the ranch house like a beacon thrown across the sea.
The early July morning a warm one.
Dust rose as a horse trotted up. Jonas, a young cowhand, reined in his sorrel gelding beside the woman who stood on the veranda. “Rider coming.”
“Is it Brandon?” Hand over her eyes, Alexandria O’Malley Wade strained to make out the narrow trail at the top of the foothill that her husband and their men would come galloping over when they returned from the trail drive. Her tan split-skirt rustled as she leaned against the smooth white-painted railing, trying to get a better view.
Jonas pushed up in his stirrups. Worn leather boots peeping from canvas chaps. “Can’t tell.”
The speck at the top of the canyon grew as it came tumbling down the trail. Her heart thumped and her breath lodged in her throat. Her fingers tingled, her excitement rose.
The speck shifted into a rider.
Anticipation heightened.
Then shriveled. It wasn’t her husband.
The horse was a pinto not the big roan Brandon rode. And even from this distance, she’d know her husband with every fiber of her being.
She heaved a deep breath and waited.
As the rider trotted closer, she slid her hand to the worn wooden handle of her 4.75-inch barrel, single-action, six-cylinder Peacemaker.
Jonas did the same.
She frowned. The pinto looked familiar, but it wasn’t one of theirs. And instead of a cowboy hat and chaps, the rider wore a sombrero along with a brightly-colored poncho.
Spying her, he yanked the sombrero off his head and waved it.
She recognized the rider and the horse at the same time. Her breath caught then whished out on a mile-wide smile.
“It’s okay, Jonas. I know him.”
Now sure there was no trouble brewing, he nodded, raised his hand to the approaching rider, and putting heels to his horse’s ribs, galloped off.
“Manuel.” She jumped off the porch and ran toward the boy who’d went in search of Brandon when she’d holed up at the mission awaiting the birth of the twins.
He leaped off his horse and grabbed her in a bearhug.
The term boy no longer applied. He was muscled and lean. A man. A young man, but still a man.
“What are you doing here? Is your family well? Sisters Sarah and Marie? Father Jon?” The questions tumbled over each other.
The smile on his face fell away.
Something was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. Stomach knotting, she took a step back and waited, dread seeping through her pores.
