Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Prologue

Twin Rivers, Texas

September 13, 1869

“Don’t be a cheater!” Cain scolded.

“No one’s cheatin’, Cain,” Garrett said calmly, moving the cards in his hand to where he wanted them, “He’s just thinkin’ is all.”

Dean Walker, a tall beanpole of a boy with sandy blonde hair, freckles across his nose, and blue eyes, sat to Garrett’s left and fought not to grimace as he looked down at his cards. He’d not quite gotten the gist of the game yet, unlike his three friends.

“We got to play this?” He grumbled, staring at the Queen of Hearts, the Two of Spades, the Six of Diamonds, the Four of Spades, and the Ace of Clubs.

“Why? You fittin’ to lose already? We just started,” His friend Logan Hayes asked. He lifted his head up and smirked, showing the gap in his two front teeth. His green eyes sparkled with triumph despite not yet winning the game, and his ears moved as he waggled his auburn brows. He was a little huskier than Dean, but still had yet to grow out of his baby face.

Dean tsked his tongue as he shot Logan a narrowed look, then he turned his face to Garrett. Garrett was by far the smallest of the boys, not just in height but in weight. Dean’s Daddy had told him it was because he’d been an orphan for so long that even after Mr. Dawson, the owner of The Diamond W Ranch, took him under his wing a year ago, he still had a lot of catching up to do when it came to growing. Even so, Dean had the opinion that Garrett knew more about life than he, Logan, or their other friend Cain put together.

“Need help?” Garrett murmured.

Garrett Mercer, the latest addition to the group of friends, kept his dark brown eyes on his cards, but even so, he tracked every movement around them. Like most of the cowboys, ropers, and ranch hands in Twin Rivers, Texas, the four twelve-year-old boys had ridden their horses out to the moonlight-filled canyon. There was a small stretch of peace that blanketed the cowboys, both young and old, that came to the quiet, comforting beauty of the natural stone basin to relax after a hard day’s work. No yelling or rebel-rousing was allowed. That was left at the ranches they labored in.

Sprinkled through the cavernous wonder were several small fires; each group partaking in their means of relaxation. Some whittled. Some talked. Some stewed beans or a pot of late-night coffee over the fire. Some even strummed a guitar softly in the warm wind, and some even blew a pretty note across their harmonica.

Near one particular fire, placed farther away from the rest, sat a rickety old table and four wooden chairs where Garrett and his friends sat. In each of their hands they held five cards.

Even after a year of living with Mr. Dawson, he wasn’t quite used to keeping his focus on one thing at a time. The stressful habit of needing to observe everything and anything all at once had started just after his mama had passed away and he was sent to live in an orphanage.

Sometimes he still had nightmares about the place. The harsh matrons. The angry children. The beds filled with bugs. There was never much, and what there was, was fought over and often taken away by the bigger boys. Which was why Garrett had run away. Even alone in the wilderness, he’d felt the wide open space was safer. Still, there were other predators to look out for, and thus he’d continued his habit of keeping an eye on his surroundings at all times.

When Mr. Dawson found him and took him in, it was the first time he’d experienced safety in a really long time. Now, though, after years of being on edge, Garrett still couldn’t quite feel settled. Even after he’d been introduced to Logan, Dean, and Cain, who’d quickly befriended him, he still felt like one moment of distraction would bring pain.

From the corner of his eye, Garrett watched Dean jolt, as if surprised that he was seen struggling. Garrett was good at stuff like that; looking beyond his main point of sight and seeing the broader picture. On The Diamond W Ranch where they all worked, Garrett was always the first to spot a straying cow or horse, or sense the wolf or bear that got too close. He could spot a hole in the fence fifty yards off, and he always seemed to know when someone was eyeing him up.

“Yeah,” Dean replied, and leaned toward Garrett to show him his cards.

“Hey now, come on, no helpin’! That’s cheatin’!” Their other friend Cain complained.

Like Garrett, Cain had dark hair and eyes. No freckles, unlike Dean and Logan, but that was where the similarities started and ended. Where Garrett was small, Cain was anything but. In fact he had trouble with his suspenders snapping and his trousers ripping when he wasn’t careful enough with his movements. Also, unlike Garrett, Cain had an edge to his personality that always seemed to border on mean; whereas Garrett, though quiet, had a way about him that some likened to angelic.

“It ain’t cheatin’, it’s learnin’,” Garrett said quietly, then leaned over to help Dean with his cards.

Dean gave him a small smile of thanks.

“Isn’t,” Dean corrected quietly so Cain could not hear. Garrett looked up at him with a quiet question.

“It isn’t cheatin’,” Dean whispered, “Mrs. Harley at the school says there’s no such word as ‘ain’t’.”

“Right, right, thanks,” Garrett replied, nodding his head. “Anyway, I would discard your six. Ain’t, I mean, you don’t have much use for it.”

Dean nodded and discarded the card so the game could continue.

Just as Garrett helped Dean with learning cards and keeping his eye out for mischief on the ranch, Dean helped Garrett with lessons. Garrett was the only one of them that worked the ranch full time, while in the fall and winter, the other three were sent to school by their parents.

Logan took his turn in the game next, then Cain; each of them discarding a card and picking up one from the deck. When it came to Garrett’s turn though, in a rare show of being lost in thought, he was watching a young couple that was strolling hand in hand through the cluster of small fires.

“Garrett?” Logan asked, nudging him.

Garrett’s eyes did not move from the couple, and one by one his friends turned to see what he was looking at.

“Is that Preacher Thompson?” Cain asked.

“Sure is,” Dean remarked.

“Pretty girl he’s got on his arm,” Logan noted.

Garrett’s dark brows furrowed just below his brown cowboy hat.

“I thought preachers weren’t allowed to court?” He asked.

“Nah, that’s just priests,” Cain chuffed, looking back at his cards. “Preachers are allowed to marry and have children.”

Garrett silently nodded, but his mind churned. It was only in the last couple of years that he’d been introduced to the Bible and God. He liked the stories. Liked the idea of someone watching over the broken and discarded, ready to guide them in case they went down the wrong path. Still, there was quite a bit he had yet to understand. He wanted to try, though. It gave him something to think about other than his Mama, who had passed nearly six years ago. He still missed her every day, but his sorrow had at least faded a little once Mr. Dawson took him under his wing and gave him a permanent place to stay.

“You think they’re gonna get married?” Dean asked.

Garrett turned to his friend as he heard the subtle pain in his friend’s voice. Like himself, Dean had lost his mother. It had only been a year ago for him, though, and it seemed every time he spotted a woman, he was reminded of her. Not that Garrett blamed him. There weren’t many womenfolk in the hot, dusty town that bordered on the Chihuahuan Desert.

“Sure they are,” Logan said confidently. “Preacher Thompson is a man of God. He wouldn’t be holding her hand if he wasn’t serious about her.”

“Foolish thing, gettin’ married,” Cain said with a scowl. “Come on, let’s get back to the game.”

Garrett’s eyes slid to Cain, took in the hurt he was trying to hide behind his mean scowl.

“Why do you say that?” Garrett asked.

Cain shook his head.

“Mind your business. Not like you’ll have to worry about such a thing anyway. Look at ya. As plain as you are dumb,” Cain spat out.

Garrett rolled his eyes, but took no offense. He was just being mean as he normally was, and Garrett had come across a lot of boys like that in the orphanage.

“Well, I think you’ll marry, good buddy,” Dean piped up, patting Garrett on his back. “Me too. We’ll find us some pretty, good women, just you watch.”

Cain chortled.

“Yeah, and how’s that?” He asked with a bitter edge to his tone, “Near all the girls in the darn desert are related to ya. If not you then Logan or me. Only one not at risk of marrying family is Garrett here, and that’s because he don’t got no family.”

Logan and Dean glared at Cain, but Garrett just let the insult slide past him.

“You can be meaner than a rattlesnake sometimes, you know that?” Logan asked. “You don’t know the future. You don’t know what God has planned.”

Cain chuffed.

“Oh, and He has a plan for you?” He asked.

“He has a plan for all of us,” Logan replied quickly.

“Oh, yeah? Well, tell me then, why does He let some marriages get so nasty, huh? Why do some husbands and wives hate each other and the children they bear? Why do they—”

Cain’s ranting suddenly ceased, as if the words were caught in his throat. Garrett watched as the bigger boy’s face grew red and his mouth twisted into an ugly frown before he threw his cards down and stood up. Cain didn’t talk much about his parents, and suddenly Garrett understood why.

“It’ll never be me,” Cain grit out, shaking his head as he stomped away, “I won’t ever get married.”

“Hey, come on!” Dean called after Cain as he walked toward the horses.

“Leave him be,” Logan muttered, watching Cain walk away. “He needs to cool down anyway.” He shook his head, as if disappointed in his friend, and turned to Garrett. “What about you, Garrett? You want to get married someday?”

Garrett leaned back in his chair, giving the question a moment of quiet thought. After living as an orphan for five long years, the idea of having a person who loved him and he loved back; a person that would stay by his side no matter what sure sounded like a dream come true.

“You think… you think God helps us?” He asked, “Pick the right woman to marry, I mean?”

“Of course He does,” Logan quickly replied, and Dean readily nodded. “Just look at my Mama and Daddy. You got to be able to hear Him when He talks to you is all.”

Garrett nibbled on the inside of his cheek.

“What if I don’t know how? To hear Him, I mean,” Garrett asked.

Logan and Dean seemed to ponder a moment on that.

“Can’t say as I know how to do that yet myself,” Logan confessed.

“Me either,” Dean piped up.

“That don’t mean we can’t learn,” Logan went on, “We just got to keep going to Church. Keep studying the Bible. We’ll figure it out. Then when we do, we’ll start lookin’ for our wives.”

Garrett grinned, relieved and thankful for the friends he’d found on The Diamond W Ranch after years of being a lone orphan. They made the future sound so bright and easy.

“Yeah. Yeah, we’ll figure it out,” he agreed.

“Together,” Dean added, reaching out to clap both Garrett and Logan on the back.

“We can make an oath right here,” Logan said, the card game now long forgotten, “To God and ourselves that we will find our rightful wives by thirty.”

Garrett gave it a thought. Thirty seemed like ages away. Surely he could learn to listen to God and find the woman He meant for him by then. He was a quick study. Resourceful too. Besides, he hoped secretly that he’d find his wife way before that.

“I’ll do it,” he volunteered, slapping his hand down on top of Logan’s.

“Dean?” Garrett asked, glancing at him.

Dean hesitated.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I want a wife, sure, but what happens if we break the oath?” He asked. “Daddy says oaths are serious things.”

“I don’t know,” Logan said with a shrug, “Whoever breaks the oath has to shave their head, how about that?”

“You can’t be serious!” Garrett chuckled.

“You got anything better?” Logan asked, and Garrett’s chuckle grew into a belly laugh, something that was still new to him after years of being lonely and quiet. He had friends to laugh with now.

Dean laughed too, and slapped his hand down atop Garrett’s.

“Alright fine, I’ll take the oath, as strange as it is,” Dean agreed.

To their surprise, a fourth hand slapped down on top of Dean’s. They all looked up, and found Cain had come back to them. He had a strange grin that Garrett wasn’t so sure he liked, but he waited for Cain’s response. They all did.

“You three swear to marry. I swear not to,” he explained, pressing down a bit too hard on their stack of hands. “Whoever breaks the oath not only has to shave their head, but has to run through a cactus field in nothin’ but their boots.”

Garrett’s eyebrows flew up, Dean howled with laughter, and Logan scowled.

“You can do that on your own time, buddy,” Logan remarked, and Cain rolled his eyes as he murmured something under his breath.

“To not shaving our heads,” Garrett clarified.

“To not shaving our heads!” The three others said in chorus as their hands flew away from each other’s and up into the air.

“Come on y’all, let’s get the table and chairs back into the cave,” Logan ordered as they all stood up. “It’s getting late and morning will be here fast.”

They all murmured their agreement, and as Garrett carried two of the chairs back to the nearby cave, he wondered what sort of woman God would bless him with, and when He would do it.

Chapter One

Diamond W Ranch

May 4, 1885

Twenty-eight-year-old Garrett Mercer looked anxiously around his newly built adobe house, hoping it was enough. His dark brown eyes scanned the clean, sand-brown walls and pinewood floors he’d constructed himself, his large, deeply tanned muscles still aching from weeks of work it took on top of his cowboy duties.

Logan and Dean had been a great help constructing the small house, teasing him as they did so; stating that old Mr. Dawson’s was no longer good enough for him now that the once great man had gone to God and to everyone’s surprise, left his failing ranch to Garrett. He’d taken their teasing with ease and went along with it, but truth was, he’d built the new house for multiple reasons.

For one, as Mr. Dawson got older, his repairs to his adobe house became more infrequent. Garrett had tried to keep up with them, but with the last rainy season after his passing, the thing had all but come apart. It just wasn’t livable anymore, especially for who Garrett was about to go pick up from the Twin Rivers Boarding House and Stagecoach Station.

That was the second reason. Who he was going to pick up. It had been a mail-order bride ad he’d posted in the papers over a year ago that had started his communication with twenty-one-year-old Hannah Bennett. He’d done so after starting to worry that he’d run out of time finding a wife and break the oath. Not only that, but now that Mr. Dawson was gone, Garrett remembered just how lonely he used to feel when he was on his own. He wanted company. Someone to come home to and talk with. Someone he could care for and in turn, they would care for him. After a year of writing letters to one another, a genuine fondness had grown between him and Hannah, and he’d finally decided two months ago that Hannah could be that person, and had extended the invitation to join him on the ranch in matrimony.

To his relief, Hannah had accepted, but with a caveat: she wouldn’t be alone. Which was another reason why he was fretting about the new house. She was bringing her two younger sisters with her, Rebecca and Maria, and he wanted all three of them to be comfortable. Which was why instead of only building three bedrooms along with the main living area and kitchen space, he’d taken the time, using up the midnight hours to build on a fourth room. They were all small, and plain, but they could each hold a bed, table, and bureau. He’d also made sure to carve out room for a push-out window in each, so that everyone could get fresh air. Texas heat was no joke, and he had no doubt that Hannah and her sisters were going to need time to adjust since they were used to living up North in vastly cooler temperatures.

Logan and Dean’s sisters, Grace and Amanda, had even been kind enough to make curtains for the windows and donate some of their handmade quilts for the beds, even though he had not told anyone yet that he would be receiving such important guests. The curtains were white, with little desert flowers stitched into them in hues of pink, yellow, and orange. The quilts had been designed in similar fashion; only the embroidered flowers were much larger, adding small splashes of color to the otherwise bare rooms.

Still, he had no doubt that the earthen house was vastly different compared to the one Hannah lived in in Eagle Harbor, Michigan, and though she seemed down to earth in her letters, Garrett still worried it wouldn’t be good enough for her or her two siblings. In the room he’d picked out for her, he picked up the potted, flowering cactus he’d transplanted for her from her end table for the dozenth time; still debating if he was to give it to her or not. He wanted to make her room a little extra special, so he’d brought the bright-green plant in. One day, after they’d settled into their marriage, perhaps they would share a room. For now, though, he did not want to put any pressure on her to join him. That was a decision they each had to make, not just him.

However as far as a welcome gift, he worried about making a mistake. What if she did not know what a cactus was, or if she knew that its needles were sharp and a little poisonous? What if she pricked her finger? What if one of her little sisters did? He couldn’t put something so dangerous in her room, could he?

Shaking his head, he decided against the plant and placed it back down on the end table. He gently plucked the bright pink flowers away from the stinging barbs surrounding them, and sprinkled them on the crisp, clean white bedding. He cocked his head and looked at his work. He arranged a few of the flowers so they weren’t so clustered, then stood up again to view it from the doorway.

Deciding that was far better than leaving the entire plant in her room, he picked up the potted cactus and walked from her room to his, which was situated directly across the small hallway. Inside, he set the pot down and reached for the worn Bible that Mr. Dawson had also passed down to him, and opened up the worn Book to his desired page. He ran his calloused hand lovingly down the thin paper, recalling the many hours Mr. Dawson had sat by his side, teaching him not just to read, but to understand the Word of God.

Taking a deep breath to steady his erratic heartbeat, Garrett began to read aloud to himself from the Book of Philippians.

“Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Garrett drew in another deep breath as he let the words center him, and slowly his heartbeat fell back into its steady rhythm. He didn’t have to be nervous. He just had to trust that God was leading him properly. He’d prayed on Hannah. On her situation and his own. He’d given his request for God to guide him to the right decision and here he was, just a couple hours away from meeting his new wife. All he had to do was trust.

Setting the Bible carefully back down on the end table, he stood up and walked through the small house, grabbing his worn, brown cowboy hat off of one of the pegs he’d placed by the front door. He paused when he stepped outside onto the front porch, surprised to see Dean there waiting for him.

“Howdy friend,” Dean greeted cordially, tipping his light brown cowboy hat toward Garrett.

Just as Garrett had grown out of his childlike state, so had Dean. Now they were both tall, heavy-muscled, and sharp-jawed from their years of hard work. Logan was the tallest and broadest of them all though, which served him well since he was now the Sheriff and protector of Twin Rivers.

“Howdy back,” Garrett said, moving from his frozen spot and off of the porch; walking past Dean toward the horse and small buggy he’d already had hitched up.

“What’s brought you over so early in the day? Don’t you got enough work over at your own ranch?” Garrett teased, trying to sound nonchalant as he loosened the horse’s rope from the hitching post.

Dean had bought out his father Henry’s ranch a year ago, and though the place hadn’t been suffering at all like Garrett’s ranch, he’d taken what his father had built and amplified it tenfold. Now, he was one of the most sought-after cattle breeders in the entire state.

“Well, I do,” Dean chuckled, coming up beside Garrett. Garrett caught Dean’s bright blue eyes and found them twinkling with excitement. “But I figured I’d take some time and check on my good buddy. And I don’t know, maybe talk him into a deal?”

Garrett raised a single, curious dark brow.

“A deal, huh?”

Dean nodded, his grin growing.

“Listen, bud, I know you’re proud, and you want to get this place back on its feet on your own. And I know this place didn’t start to go downhill because of bad management, just bad luck. I respect that. But the truth is your sellable cattle numbers are dwindling and ya need a hand.”

Garrett sucked his teeth, not comfortable with such charity. Even from a close friend.

“Doesn’t sound like a deal, it sounds like a handout. Whatever it is you’re talking about,” he replied curtly.

“It’s not. It’s a trade off and a payback,” Dean assured him, “When I was trying to buy out my father, you gave me work so I could get there faster. You didn’t have to do that, but you did. You had Mr. Dawson’s failing health to worry about, you were learning how to run things on your own here, and despite all of that you still chose to give me a hand up, even though this place was starting to slow down.”

Garrett’s jaw tensed. The ranch wasn’t in the red. Yet. If he didn’t do something soon, though, it would be.

“Now, my last breeding fee from my prized bull brought me the prettiest penny I ever did see if you know what I mean, and now I’m more than square,” Dean went on, “so now I want to return the favor. You take that said bull and breed him with a few of your heifers free of charge; get your numbers back up. And as for the deal, you join this year’s cattle drive. You know how it is. The more cowboys and cattle we got, the easier it is to get them to all stay in a train. We’re taking them to Kansas where the stock yards will pay us a small fortune. We’d both walk away happy.”