Prologue

December 11, 1878

Ruby Rise, Arizona

In Ruby Rise, Arizona, no one was a stranger to death and dying. It didn’t much matter the amount of gold you had buried in the yard or how well you hid your head in the sand. Everything returned to the dirt. That’s just the way life was in the West.

Though death was no stranger to Christina Fairfax, even at the tender age of eighteen, as she sat by her mother’s death bed, she still prayed for the reaper to pass over. She prayed for God to be merciful, even if it were only this once. Even if this was the only mercy he ever showed her.

If Jane Fairfax died today, there was no telling what would become of her daughter by tomorrow.

The room was lit only by the dusty ray of sunlight that streamed in through the shutters of the window. Christina kept glancing over at where the light trickled in; she knew beyond those closed wooden slats the world bustled by below their apartment. Women walked arm in arm with their men, horses pawed impatiently at the ground where they’d been tied outside the shops, and children ran by after their parents, laughing and shrieking until they received a stern word from their fathers and fell in line.

But here in this room there was no one but Christina, her mother, and the angel of death that hung between them. There was nothing but the chest of her mother’s belongings, a mirror framed in polished silver, and the bare wooden walls that seemed to press in on the two women with every shuddering breath her mother took.

Christina drew the cold compress out of the bucket of water by the bedside, wrung it out, and placed it again against her mother’s brow. Jane didn’t flinch under the sudden temperature change; she didn’t even seem to know her only daughter was beside her at all.

Christina’s throat tightened, and she swallowed back the lump. It would do no good to get emotional now, not when the fever could still break. Not when there was still hope of recovery.

Still, she’d never seen her mother look so frail. The two women shared the same deep auburn hair, her mother’s now peppered with strands of white and gray. Christina ran a hand across the disheveled locks around her mother’s head. If Jane knew the state she was in, she’d have some well-chosen words for her daughter. Christina smiled softly at the thought and brushed some of the tangled auburn and white hair behind her mother’s ears.

“Silas, Silas where are you?” The sudden mumbled words from Jane’s lips shocked Christina. She hadn’t heard her father’s name from her mother’s lips in so many years, and he was the last person Christina had thought her mother would call out for now. She had worked so hard to bury the pain of his memory, all of the beautiful loving moments they’d shared together—why would they come back to the surface now?

“It’s me, Silas,” Jane muttered, her lower jaw quivering as if she’d break into sobs any moment. “It’s your own Jane. Don’t you know me?”

Christina couldn’t take the pain she heard in her mother’s typically stern and fearless voice. She took her mother’s hand in her own and squeezed. “It’s all right, Ma. I’m right here with you.”

Jane’s eyelids fluttered open, and for a moment the mirror of their green eyes found each other. “Oh, Christina…”

The lump she’d been holding back settled fully in Christina’s stomach at the recognition on her mother’s face. She tried to smile, but there were tears pressing against the corners of her eyes now, and she couldn’t stop them from falling.

“That’s right, I’m here,” Christina said through the painful tightness in her throat.

“Why’re you crying, Chrissy?” Her mother placed a shaking hand against Christina’s cheek, and Christina covered it with her own.

“Oh, Ma. I’m just happy to see you is all.”

Jane smiled and patted Christina’s cheek lightly before laying her hand back on the bed, her eyelids already heavy from the stress of keeping them open so long.

“You always were too sentimental for your own good, girl. You watch that. Someday a man’s gonna come along to use it against you.”

Christina couldn’t help but sputter a small laugh at that. Her mother had been speaking these words to her since she was a little girl, ever since Christina’s father had done to Jane what she’d started warning Christina about. She put a hand over her mouth to cover her laugh, just as the doctor came back into the room.

He looked at Christina with disdain, clearly thinking it uncouth for a daughter to be laughing at her mother’s sick bed. But she didn’t pay him much mind. He and every other righteous citizen had made their minds up about Christina and her mother a long time ago. And they both had given up on trying to change those opinions.

“Miss Fairfax,” he said curtly by way of greeting. Christina simply inclined her head to him, thinking she’d rather save her breath for when her mother came to once again, and not waste it on a proper greeting.

The doctor set his bag on the bed and began the work of taking Jane’s vitals. Christina tried to give him a bit of space. She stepped away from the bed and opened the shuttered window. The sounds that grew louder were just as she had thought they would be. The two Fairfax women had lived together in the tiny apartment above Jane Fairfax’s tailoring shop since Christina was just a baby. It had once been the three of them in this tiny apartment, her father, her mother, and herself. It wasn’t much, but it certainly gave a good view of the town.

As a child Christina had often been sick; in fact, many days she’d spent bundled up under the quilts in this same room with her mother in the role of caretaker, which she’d now taken on. Her mother would sit beside her, feeding her medicine and combing her hair, making sure she ate enough of the cold stew she’d prepared for her.

But it was always Christina’s father who truly made her feel better on those sick days. Not with stew or medicine or a comb, but with a story.

“There once was an outlaw in these parts,” Silas said, sitting on the bed and forcing her to scooch to the very end of it with a squeal. “No one ever knew his name, for no one ever dared get close enough to ask. Everyone just called him The Rock, for that’s what he was. His face and his heart had been chiseled from stone.”

Christina stared wide-eyed at her father’s hard face, looking for all the world as if this were a true story to be taken quite seriously. He cleared his throat and went on.

“The Rock was known far and wide for his terrible deeds, and for the treasure he’d piled up from robbing trains.”

“That’s terribly dishonest work!” she peeped from under her father’s arm.

“Ah, you’re a golden-hearted girl. And that’s exactly what it took for The Rock to be broken: a golden-hearted girl with eyes like emeralds and hair set on fire by the setting sun. He met her one day in a dusty saloon, and from the moment their eyes met, The Rock knew his life of crime and misdeeds was over. And when she brushed her hand against his sun-weathered face, that heart of stone within his breast turned to liquid gold.”

“Then what happened, Pa?” Christina asked, enthralled. But before her father could finish the tale, her mother cleared her throat from where she stood in the doorway. The two on the bed looked up to find her standing in her nightgown, her arms crossed about her chest and an unamused smile on her face.

“Let the girl get some rest, Silas,” she said sharply. “You’ll only get her sicker with those love stories of yours.”

Christina’s father stood with a kiss to her head and swept across the room, his dark hair falling over his eyes as he took her mother into his arms and spun her in a circle.

“Aye, I’ll let the girl get some rest,” he said as he kissed his way across Jane’s cheeks, earning a breathless shout of indignation from her as he carried her from the room.

“Goodnight, Pa! Goodnight, Ma!” Christina called after them, grinning at the display of affection from her otherwise well-mannered parents. They called their love to their child as the door closed, and she settled back into the bed, turning to look out over the dark streets of town where a lantern still flickered by the road.

Who would take care of Christina now, once her mother passed on to the next world and her father was just the whisper of an old love story in the wind? The two women barely made ends meet as it was with the seamstress shop, and with only one of them now to work, Christina feared she wouldn’t be able to keep up with the burden. Her hands were never as fast or as sure as her mother’s, no matter how many lessons she’d been given.

“Miss Fairfax!” The voice of the doctor tore Christina from her ponderings and brought her back to the dreary, hopeless present. She blinked and looked over to him, and her heart sank even deeper in her chest. His face was as stoney as the outlaw in her father’s story.

“She’ll like not make it through the night, I fear. Best to begin your preparations for the funeral,” he said in a flat monotone, and there were no words of comfort given. No soft hand placed on a shoulder, no cloth offered for the tears that fell from Christina’s eyes. He simply stood, packed his things, and left the room with some murmured words about the coroner being by tomorrow.

Christina stood by the window looking down at her mother, the last person she had in this wretched world, the only friend she’d ever really known. She watched as her mother’s breath came in quick, unnatural waves, like the rushing of the Salt River when the summer floods came.

Outside the window, the doctor was pulling his carriage away. Christina could see him giving cheery greetings to the people passing him by on the street. A deep feeling of contempt for this town settled into her heart—contempt for all the people who had once been her mother’s friends and neighbors, and who now would never even mourn the woman who laid breathing her last here in this room. All because her husband had been revealed as an outlaw.

He abandoned us. Why can’t they understand that we were victims of his crimes just as much as they were? Christina thought as she turned back towards the window, towards the people living their lives in blissful ignorance of her pain below. They would never understand. And now, the only other person who had ever understood, who had ever shown Christina love and kindness, was soon to be no more.

“Christina!” her mother suddenly cried, making her jump and reach out to take her frantically grasping hand. She sat heavily on the bed beside her mother, her heart thundering in her chest, terrified of what was coming next.

Jane turned to her daughter and suddenly stilled, a faint smile on her cracked lips. “Christina, I love you,” she muttered, and it was clear the words took a great effort to speak. Christina knew they had, not just because her mother’s sickness had dried her throat and her voice, but because she’d never spoken those words aloud. Not since the day Christina’s father left them.

Her mother was looking at her, those emerald green eyes intent as she waited for the reply. But it was stuck somewhere deep in Christina’s chest, buried beneath the years and the heartache that had made those words a weakness, a curse. She knew there would never be another moment; she knew she must speak them aloud now or never be able to pry them again from the hardened stone of her heart.

Christina opened her mouth to speak, but as she did, her mother’s hand grasped hers so tightly she could hear the bones cracking.

Jane Fairfax gasped a final breath, and then she was no more. She stared up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes, never to hear the words that remained encased in the stone of her only daughter’s heart.

Chapter One

June 15, 1879

Ruby Rise, Arizona

Christina thumbed the hem of the dress laid out on the bed. It was pale blue and green, and it had been one of her mother’s favorites, before she’d passed six months ago. She looked down at the dreary black gown she now wore, the same gown she’d worn for months. She had thought it would be a relief to be able to change out of these awful mourning clothes, but it seemed that over the months they’d become a comfort, a memory she wore with her daily.

And perhaps, a cloak of darkness which she could hide behind.

Once she put on that blue dress, who would remember her mother? And what would the next chapter of life hold for Christina Fairfax, a talentless, unmarried woman of twenty years?

She sighed and squared her shoulders. If her hardest task today was putting on a dress, then she was blessed indeed. She shrugged out of her dressing gown and began the time-consuming work of dressing in the required layers, lacing up the bodice and slipping on the overcoat. These familiar steps calmed her restless mind, and as she looked back at herself in the mirrored looking glass, she thought maybe blue was her color. It at least brought out the deep auburn shades of her hair.

Today would be the day Christina made something of herself in this wretched town. Today was the day she would set up the seamstress shop in her own name. Once that bit of bureaucracy was finished, she could start making a bit of coin and maybe in enough time, pay off the seemingly endless debts her parents owed, which had passed on to their daughter.

Christina thought it quite unfair that her father’s debt should pass to her. After all he was out there, somewhere. Why should she owe the banks for the money her no good father had borrowed from them? But of course, the bank would have its due. They cared little from whose labor and struggle the money came, if they were paid.

Christina tied back her hair with a bit of ribbon and smoothed her skirts. Yes, today was the end of her period of mourning, but it would also be the beginning of her new life. She could feel it like a budding flower about to burst into bloom. Something was about to start.

With a last quick check in the mirror, she headed down the stairs of the apartment and towards the small shop below. Mr. Anderson, representative from the bank of Smith and Anderson, was already at the door as Christina turned the key, briefcase in hand and a judgmental scowl on his wrinkled face.

“Good morning, Miss Fairfax,” he said as he stepped into the sunlit front room of the shop. He was running his eyes along Christina’s choice of dress, and she made sure to keep her posture tight and her chin high. Jane Fairfax had never let the moneylenders look down upon her, and Christina didn’t intend to either.

“Good morning, Mr. Anderson. Please, have a seat.” She motioned toward the small table and chairs neatly arranged in front of the big bay window. The rest of the shop was just as neat, though it did look a bit sparse. Her mother hadn’t had many customers, and after her passing Christina had even fewer. She bit her lip as her eye caught on the empty dress form by the counter.

Mr. Anderson made no move to take a seat, only standing and looking around the shop. Fear tightened in Christina’s chest.

“No need, this should only take a moment. Your loan has been denied by the bank,” he said curtly, and the hint of a smile curled under his long white mustache. “You will be given until the end of the month to clear out. This property is now owned by Smith and Anderson, and we have other paying tenants waiting to occupy this space.”

With those words, and with that awful twitch of a smile, he handed Christina a piece of paper from the briefcase on his arm. On it were written in legalese the words he’d just spoken, and his signature scrawled across the bottom.

She looked up at him, horror in her heart and written across her face. “There must be some mistake. I have been repaying the debt… I’ve done everything you said I needed to do!”

“Please don’t shout, Miss Fairfax. It’s simply a matter of business, you see. No one would be foolish enough to invest in the child of an outlaw. There’s just too high of a risk that the criminality runs in your blood.”

His words stung like she’d kicked over a wasp’s hive, but she held her chin ever higher. “Get out,” she growled, now struggling to hold back the temper that flared behind her green eyes.

“You have until the end of—”

“The month, yes, you’ve said. This is still my home until the end of the month, and if you don’t want to see the criminality in my blood then I suggest you make haste, sir.” Christina smiled sweetly to take some of the sharpness from her words, but by the color that drained from Mr. Anderson’s face, she knew her eyes were burning with the hate she felt.