Prologue

Elko, Nevada

1874

Crashing into agonizing consciousness, Ashton was sure that it was the pain that had woke him, and not the men’s shouts in the distance. His shoulder screamed, the torn flesh searing a path of fire down his right side, spreading like poison.

Ashton groaned under his breath, shifting around in the straw pile where he lay hidden. A breeze whipped through the cracks in the barn boards, but it felt as though he was boiling in his own skin. He’d sweated through the rough wool blanket beneath him, and his dark hair was also soaked, matted down with moisture. His mouth was bone dry, but though there was a canteen of water to his left, he didn’t dare reach for it. Not with the sounds of horses’ hooves thundering into the yard and the raised voice of what could only be the sheriff, back for a second time.

He recalled, in agonizing snippets, Martin’s wife, Leila, cutting his blood-soaked shirt off of him four days ago, right before she’d boiled and heated a slim blade and dug the bullet out of his shoulder. Martin’s huge, calloused hands had held him flat to the sturdy kitchen table to keep him from bucking right off of it. The pain was unbearable, a living, thrashing, wild beast under his skin, but he hadn’t cried out. They’d given him a leather strap to bite down on. When he licked his lips, he could almost still taste the gaminess of it, like dust and horseflesh, with the bitter tang of salty sweat.

While Martin and Leila were giving him that rudimentary surgery, two-year-old Charlie had lain sleeping in Martin and Leila’s tiny bedroom. At the height of the pain, Ashton had tried to conjure up images of the toddler’s dark fringed lashes, his sweet little face, and the wooden crib that Martin had painstakingly carved.

He’d thought of the blessed and fearful day that Charles Martin Sanders made his way into the world. A stormy, raging day, blowing wildly, the clouds shifting ominously above their heads, threatening more than rain. He’d thought of how, ever since the first time Martin had set eyes on Leila, he’d vowed he’d marry her. The land, the house, the sheep, it was all a product of that vow. To Martin, it was the start of his life. To Ashton, it was something he’d never had before.

A home.

It should have been enough. It would have been. Until her.

Charlene Walters.

As the voices grew louder, likely near the house, Ashton crouched further down in the straw. He swept great armfuls over himself. His legs were already covered, but he made sure the rest of him didn’t show. He ignored the throbbing pain bursting through him like a sunbeam over the horizon of their curling, rolling land.

Instead of hiding out up here, he should have been out there, herding sheep with Martin, repairing paddocks, working the garden, throwing back his head in laughter at little Charlie’s antics. Instead, he was here, concealing himself like a fugitive, because that’s exactly what he was.

It was all so foolish. It was the kind of bad foolishness that led to a bank clerk being beaten until he died.

In Ashton, hope withered and died.

“Search the house again!” The command, given in the sheriff’s booming voice, tore through the barn.

Ashton could hear all the commotion at the house, clear across the yard. Leila’s frantic tones, Charlie’s sharp cries, Martin’s loud protests. Every single one of them tore his heart in two.

The sheriff and his men had already searched the entire place the day after the robbery. Ashton had wisely hidden out in an abandoned shack a few miles distant. He’d tied off the wound to stop the bleeding, but by the time he’d made his way back home, he’d been nearly delirious.

Martin, in his fashion, had said nothing. He’d warned Ashton against the gang, but it was clear in the face of his suffering and pain that he didn’t need a sermon on right and wrong. He’d set about removing that bullet and fixing Ashton up before he’d brought him straight out to the barn. There was never any question that he would help. Never a single doubt in Ashton’s mind that Martin would die for him like a brother.

The yelling increased in tempo, followed by another loud wail. Ashton imagined he was already pale, but he felt bloodless, his skin sodden and waxy, wet like a sponge. He wanted to stop up his ears as the plaintive cry shredded him.

Martin and Leila didn’t deserve this. And the baby? He was innocent.

He tried to take himself out of the scene, wishing he could just disappear, but wishes did little. They couldn’t undo time. They couldn’t stop his parents from dying. Wishes couldn’t wash the blood from his hands or the stains from his soul.

The voices gradually grew louder. Ashton held his breath. Below, the main door banged open. John Norris’ voice was loudest, instructing his lackeys to search the place. Norris was in his mid-forties and as tired a man as ever existed, but he wasn’t ready to give up that tin star. He straddled the line between good and evil. Everyone knew he wouldn’t take a bribe, but if it meant keeping the peace and avoiding greater bloodshed, he’d look the other way.

He’d done so for most of the gang’s activity, but when a man was killed, his willful blindness had come to an end.

“I already told you that there’s no one here.” Martin’s tone bordered on impatient. “You’ve already searched this entire property. I don’t know what you’re expecting to find.”

Ashton made sure he was utterly still, though the straw itched awfully. His anxiety for Martin and Leila was far worse. Charlie’s cries had drifted off, but to Ashton, they still echoed through the yard like the wails of an unhappy wraith.

The footsteps below scuffled around, crunching over old straw, scraping against packed earth.

“Oliver. Get that ladder up and check in the loft.” The sound of Norris snapping his fingers at the young man, eager to prove himself, was as loud to Ashton as his own heartbeat was in his ears.

Ashton allowed only the thinnest trickle of breath to escape between his parted lips. He waited while the ladder scraped the loft, making contact. Oliver’s boots sounded out every wrung.

A second passed. Another. Maybe a full minute.

Ashton was sure that this was it. He would be discovered, and Martin would be dragged off, arrested for giving him shelter. Perhaps worse would happen. What would Leila and Charlie do without Martin? How would they survive?

Hot tears trickled down the corners of Ashton’s closed eyes.

“Nothing, sir,” Oliver reported after what must have been the basest sweep of his eyes. If it had been any more than that, Ashton would certainly have been discovered.

All was quiet from below, until Norris grumbled something under his breath Ashton couldn’t quite catch, but he certainly heard the sheriff’s next words loud and clear. “We’ll be back, Martin. Every day until he’s found. I know that you know where he is. You don’t have history with a man like you did with Blackburn, only to have no idea where he up and vanished to.”

Ashton could imagine Martin shaking his head. “Do as you wish. Search the place as you will.”

Norris huffed. He was known for walking around with a bottom lip distended well beyond his jawline, packed full of chew. He spat loudly, the liquid splattering as it hit the hard-packed earth floor. It sounded like it came directly from below Ashton’s hiding spot.

His pulse raced, soaking him in sweat all over again. His gut churned, bile lacing his throat—his guilt over involving Martin like this when he’d been nothing but the brother of his heart.

An eternity later, he finally heard Norris and his men mount up. The drumming of their horse’s hooves tore through the still morning.

There was no doubt that they’d be vigilant, even if it appeared that they were leaving. Martin would make sure that what they looked back and saw was only him crossing the yard, back to his waiting family in the house.

He wouldn’t return to the barn until it was time for choring later in the evening.

Ashton sat up, shaking the straw away from his face, picking it from his tousled hair, mouth gaping open to suck in long, noisy breaths.

He leaned forward until he was bent nearly in half, scalding moisture cascading down his cheeks. Any thoughts of running, or any kind of escape, had vanished. He knew what he had to do.

Hours and hours later, Martin finally made his way back to the barn. He fed the horses slowly, and when he was absolutely certain that they were alone, he put the ladder up to the loft and crept up.

Ashton was ready for him.

He didn’t let Martin swing up into the loft before he spoke. “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to turn myself in.”

It wasn’t full dark out yet, the summer sun clinging to the evening like it just didn’t want to surrender. Martin’s broad face was clearly visible, and even if Ashton lived to be an old man—doubtful considering the future he was staring down—he’d never forget the look in those light blue eyes. The horror, the fear, the moisture that gathered in the corners right before his kind face crumbled.

Ashton shook his head violently. He no longer cared about the pain spasming from his shoulder. He was numb to it, just as he had to be numb to the fear and heartache.

“I can’t let you and Leila pay the price for what I’ve done. I know that Norris will be back. He won’t stop coming. They’ll find me, and then they’ll drag you off with me. At the very least, you’ll be punished for hiding me, but more likely, they’ll try and find some evidence that links you to the gang. It’ll be your word against theirs.” He swallowed painfully. He could barely breathe past the lump in his throat. “I can’t let Charlie grow up without a father. I can’t let the stench of what I’ve done coat you.”

Martin’s massive hands landed in the straw, and then the rest of his huge form heaved over the edge. He was six-and-a-half feet and nearly twice as broad as Ashton. That was saying something because he’d never been small, even as a kid. A better man didn’t exist. For all his strength, Martin had a gentle spirit. It was easy to see why Leila had fallen in love with him.

“We took an oath,” Martin reminded him sharply. He held up his palm where the faint white scar remained, a remnant from the time when they were just children, and it was them against everyone else. A lot had changed in the more than ten years since, with Martin falling in love with Leila and starting his family. But one thing still remained true.

“Yes. We made an oath to be brothers. We shared blood. But brothers don’t let brothers hurt when they’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve risked everything to help me.” Ashton rubbed his shoulder, thinking that pressing right on the wound would hurt less than this. “It’s because of you and Leila that I’ll survive this. I need to turn myself in. It’s the only way.”

Martin clasped his hands together, a poor attempt to disguise their trembling. “We could ride out. Head to a different state.”

“No.” Aston shook his head so hard that his shoulder thundered out another round of white-hot pain. “A man died. I tried to get them to stop, but I…I was still part of it. Because of me, that man isn’t going home to his family. I don’t even know if he had a wife and children, but he was someone’s son, probably a brother, maybe an uncle. He’s gone. I can’t just…I can’t walk away.”

“They’ll hang you, you fool,” Martin hissed.

“They won’t.”

“If you talk, you know that the gang will come for you. Being locked up is the easiest way for them to get you.”

“I can’t ride out of here alone. I won’t make it far. You can’t come with me.” Ashton grasped at the floor, filling his hands with straw, inhaling the sweet smell of their hard labors for the last time. It was a long while before he was brave enough to tilt his face back up and look Martin in the eye. “I’m cursed. You know that.”

Rage crashed over Martin’s usually gentle features. “But that’s not why,” Ashton quickly continued. “It’s because I can’t live the rest of my life knowing I was a part of someone dying. If I do my time, I can come back. If I run now, I’ll always be running. What kind of life is that?”

Martin opened his mouth to protest, but Ashton surged forward, grasping his friend’s shoulder, silencing him.

His hand slid down, reaching for Martin’s right palm. He pressed their hands together as he’d done that night years ago, when they’d promised each other they’d always be brothers.

“It won’t be forever. I’ll come back as soon as I’m able.”

Martin let out a long sigh, but his face said that he didn’t believe it. He knew Ashton too well.

“You promise me here and now,” Martin ordered gruffly, curling his fingers into the back of Ashton’s palm, nearly crushing his bones with his mammoth grip. “You promise me that you’ll come back. If not for me and Leila, then for Charlie. For the land that we both sweated and bled for. This is your life, Ashton. This is your heart. Don’t you forget that. The curse is nonsense, but even if it’s not, there’s nothing stronger than the oath we made. Nothing stronger than family, friends, and brotherhood. You hear me?”

Ashton ground his molars until his jaw ached. “I promise,” he groaned, knowing that he’d keep his word, but one day didn’t have to mean soon.

He could stay away long enough that Martin’s friendship might grow into apathy. He might come to hate him and wish that he’d never return.

“I’m going to sign the land and everything I own over to you. Go into my room when I leave. Everything I have there, all the money I’ve saved, it’s in a can under the fifth floorboard from the door. It’s yours.”

“I’m not taking your money. You’ll need it when—”

“Take it,” Ashton growled. He bared his teeth at Martin, but the man never drew back.

Martin bowed his head in acceptance despite the pain of their new reality clearly gnawing at him. Unlike Ashton, Martin let life come at him. He’d always proved that he was strong enough to take the good with the bad and bear up under it all.

“I promise I’ll be back,” Ashton reiterated.

He did mean it as much as he fervently hoped that if he stayed away long enough, Martin and everyone else could forget that he’d ever existed.

Chapter One

Elko, Nevada

1880

There was no adequate descriptor for the darkness that Ashton felt had plagued him all his life. Doggedly, it bit at him wherever he went, sinking sharp teeth into his flesh.

Legend had it that Midas turned everything he touched to gold. Everything that Ashton touched crumbled to dust and ash. The people he loved passed into shadow and were gone forever.

As the stagecoach rolled down what had once been just a fledgling main street, Ashton took in the new details. Nevada wasn’t the land of his birth, but Elko was a home of sorts.

Even before everything here had turned to dust, his was a life of hardship and struggle. He remembered the first time he’d ever set eyes on Elko. It felt like something. It felt different. It enchanted him.

Newly sprung from the earth in 1868, it was born the same way so many other towns were—as a camp of closely clustered white tents along the rail line. This one just happened to hug the banks of the Humboldt River and never let loose its embrace.

The stagecoach came to a jerking halt, jostling the man seated next to him and the two smartly-dressed women on the seat opposite. Ashton disembarked first. He didn’t spare a glance for the passengers disembarking behind him. He’d traveled the final leg of his journey all the way with them, but they hadn’t exchanged so much as a word. He had never been one for conversation, but it was as though in the past six years, what little words he’d been born with were a finite resource, water that slowly evaporated, leaving a bone-dry, cracked creek bed behind.

His first steps back in Elko felt like they were taken by a stranger. He was half torn by the present and the nimble, grasping fingers of the past.

Ashton collected his small bag. He’d brought next to nothing with him. He’d made no arrangements to cover the seven miles to Martin’s ranch. It wasn’t an oversight. He knew that he’d need the time to sort out his thoughts and had packed only what he could easily carry.

“You plan to walk all the way wherever it is that you’re going?”

Ashton cranked his head around, grinding his teeth when he noticed the man from the coach. Tall and thin, dressed in clothes that had once been worth something but were now rather threadbare, the man offered him a crooked smile. When he bowed his head, his worn hat slipped forward over his brow.

“I believe that’s my business,” Ashton all but growled.

“Mind if I walk with you? At least as far as the edge of town? I could use a stretch, after being cramped in that coach for all those hours.”

“You’re free to walk where you please, as you will.” Ashton fingered the silver cross around his neck, the only material thing he had left that tied him to his family.

He blinked hard against the glaring sun and the burning in his eyes, casting his gaze up and down the main street, so different than he remembered.

“This place was just a little nest of buildings. Now look at it.” The man shook his head, grinning broadly, though it showed his bad teeth; he seemed completely oblivious of it and entirely unselfconscious.

His companion fell into step beside him. Ashton couldn’t remember ever seeing the man before, though he spoke of Elko’s infancy, which meant he had to have been there. He wasn’t going to ask. It would only engender more conversation.

The man wasn’t wrong. Elko now sprawled and spread, a river of humanity overflowing its banks.

“You know how this town got its name?” the man went on cheerfully.

Ashton made a sound in his throat that was half grunt, half acknowledgment.

Though he meant it to be yes, he did know, he was informed anyway. “It was named for the abundance of wildlife in the area. Ahhh, this land. All sweetness and hope.”

Ashton tilted his face down, blocking his view of the courthouse as he passed. Despite how he tried to forget, the cold stares of the townspeople burning through him and condemning him pricked his brain until he felt like he was bleeding out inside.

He hadn’t faulted people for judging. They weren’t small-minded. In a new land where survival was carved out of the earth with bare hands, a person had to know who was friend and who was foe. Vagrants, rustlers, and outlaws held the stigma of fear and shame in equal measure. No man wanted to look someone in the face, thinking on how perilously close he was to living the same downtrodden, transient life.

Elko had grown exponentially in the six years he’d been away.

“Where you from, friend?”

Ashton quickened his stride, but the other’s long legs easily kept pace. “New York.”

“That right?” The man meant to whistle, but it was more like air puffing through his teeth.

After the trial, Ashton had been transported to Carson City to serve his time. On the day of his release, despite being penniless and an ex-convict, he’d made his way to New York. He was hardened and strong, in the prime of his life, stringy with muscle from his time in prison and used to deprivation. In truth, he’d been so well-versed in hard work and living with the bare minimum all his life that prison really felt no different. The only thing that changed was the raw, roaring ache inside of him.

He’d taken a job at a textile factory, working long, brutal hours for little pay. The conditions were horrible, but it paid enough that he could afford a small, dingy flat that smelled constantly of mold and urine. Day and night, the building resounded with the wracking coughs of other tenants, the shrill voices of harried women, and the cries of young children.

“What brings you to Elko, then?”

They were well past the courthouse, nearing the edge of town, thankfully. He’d be rid of this man soon. “Come to take care of some matters that need my attention.” He was being cagey and ungracious, but he hadn’t asked for this conversation. He’d been left alone for the better part of six years, and he’d come to prefer it that way.

“Ahh. I see. Well….” The man stopped abruptly and swept his hat off his balding head. He didn’t look old enough to have so little hair, but maybe he’d lost it early. It was nearly impossible to tell his age, now that Ashton actually focused on it. “This is about as far as I’m going. I wish you well.”