Prologue

Prison

Near Jericho, Texas

Late May, 1886

Benjamin Coulson stood waiting behind the locked door of his cell. He heard the creaking of the floorboards as the prison warden’s ponderous weight approached, the keys jingling in his hand. Benjamin had waited two years to hear the sound of those keys. Finally, his sentence was served, and he was due to be released.

The warden stood in front of the door. It seemed to Benjamin that he stood there for an interminably long time, but it could have easily been minutes. A jail sentence took away a man’s sense of hours the same way it took away his freedom; when the only mechanism for keeping time was when the tin plate for breakfast, lunch, and supper was passed beneath the cell door, minutes and seconds counted for nothing.

The door opened. The warden’s unsmiling attention made Benjamin wonder if he had reconsidered releasing him.

Then the metal door opened wider. “Coulson,” the warden began, “if I see you here again, you won’t be enjoying the same kind of hospitality you’ve had for the past two years.”

Hospitality was a dubious description of a jail sentence, but Benjamin merely nodded as he followed the warden to his desk. The man opened a drawer. “This came in the mail for you yesterday,” he said. “Carson musta forgot to give it to you.”

Carson McCoy worked in the prison, a job he’d gotten, the rumor said, because his father was a sheriff in neighboring Jericho. The prisoners despise him as a man who relished the opportunity to flaunt his authority. There was only one person who sent letters to Benjamin, and with the malevolent instinct of a snake who walked upright, Carson McCoy perceived how much his grandmother’s letters meant to Benjamin.

Benjamin tucked the envelope into his shirt pocket. “Thank you, Warden.”

“Don’t thank me. This is my job.” The warden reached into another desk drawer and took out a pouch of money. From it, he extracted a few coins.

“When you leave here and get to Jericho, ‘bout five miles due east, take yourself over to Gilmore’s and get yourself a shave and haircut,” he said. “I’d not advise you to go home looking like you do now. With that wild red hair and beard, you look like a matchstick wearing boots.”

Grandma was the only one who seemed to understand that auburn hair wasn’t red hair. It didn’t matter anyway. Benjamin was sure the warden’s description was apt by this time. Prisons didn’t run to barbering services.

“My saddle?” he asked without much hope.

“Your horse and saddle were sold to pay your fines. Now git out of here and stay out of trouble.”

Benjamin nodded. He wondered how far away he was from Gorge, Texas, where Grandma was surely waiting for him after these lost years. She’d found him when he was an orphaned thief in Clearwater, Florida, living on the streets and surviving by his wits and a talent for theft. She’d brought him home to Gorge once. Now he would find his way there again. The only difference this time was that he was thirty years old and a former convict.

It would take a spell to walk to Jericho, but once he got there, he’d ask for directions to Gorge. The barber would know. Maybe the barber would be disposed to let him use an ink pen and two pieces of paper. First thing to do once he’d spent the warden’s money and gotten himself sheared was to write the leader of the Boot Hill Gang, Alexander Montgomery, and let him know he’d need to find himself a new second-in-command.

Benjamin didn’t know what the future held for him, but he knew he wasn’t going back to the gang. If he had to eat dirt to live and drink his own spit, he wasn’t getting his hide back in jail.

***

Jericho, Texas

Late May, 1886

The barber was amenable to Benjamin’s request. “You write that letter now,” he advised, “whilst I take care of Amos here. It’ll take me a while to shear some of that fur off your face, and Amos ain’t got all day to wait.”

“That’s right,” the portly cowboy nodded as he sat in the chair. “I’m courting Miss Lily Fairbanks, and I aim to look my best. Gilly, make sure you put on some of that bay rum men’s perfume.”

“St. John’s Bay Rum Cologne,” the barber corrected him with a faint touch of hauteur. “The ladies love the smell of it on a man.”

As the barber and his courting client discussed the advantages of bay rum cologne, the sound of their voices in the background didn’t distract Benjamin from his letter writing. In fact, the conversation was soothing. He hadn’t heard much in the way of edifying conversation over the past two years. Lawmen’s favorite topics tended to run to judges, juries, and hangings.

He read his grandmother’s letter quickly. He’d linger over it later, but for now, he needed to get his reply written and mailed so she’d know to expect him.

Dear Grandma,

I’m fixing to come home.

He wouldn’t tell her that, with no horse and no saddle, he’d be walking his way back to Gorge. He wasn’t sure of the miles between Gorge and Jericho, but he knew that miles on foot were a sight longer than miles on horseback. Maybe he’d get himself some work to earn enough money for either a stagecoach ride or a horse. Stage would be cheaper and wouldn’t take as long to save up for.

I promise that this time, I’m coming home for good, and I’m not going to do anything that lands me back in the hoosegow.

He didn’t want to dwell on his incarceration. It would only distress his grandmother, and he didn’t know what kind of health she was in. She never said in her letters, but she hadn’t been strong or spry when he was hauled off to prison two years ago. At least her letter proved that she was alive and that she had a welcome for him.

By the time the barber had finished applying ample amounts of bay rum cologne to his newly shaved and shorn customer Amos, Benjamin had finished writing both letters.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said as the swain examined his appearance in the mirror that the barber held up to his face. “Would you mail these letters for me?

Amos, satisfied with his reflection, reached out his hand. “Sure will,” he said. “Where they goin’?”

Benjamin reminded himself that it was likely a friendly question, not meant to rouse suspicion. “One is for my grandmother. The other…is to a former associate of mine.”

Amos ostentatiously put the envelopes in his pocket without reading the addresses on the envelopes.

“Your grandma, you say?”

“Yes, sir. I’m heading that way after I earn some money for the stagecoach.”

Both the barber and his customer nodded approvingly. “You ain’t the first fella who took a wrong turn somewhere between the saloon and the church,” Gillmore offered. “We’ve seen plenty come here on their way outta prison. Most learned their lesson; I expect you’ve learned yours.”

“Yes, sir,” Benjamin agreed. He fished in his pocket for a coin and held it to Amos. “For the mailing.”

“Nah,” Amos decided. “I’d be downright churlish to take money when a lad is sending a letter to his granny. And—you say to a former associate? Business associate?”

If robbery was a business, then yes. “In a manner of speaking,” Benjamin affirmed.

“You’d best get those letters sent off and then go off to see Miss Lily while that bay rum is still smelling good,” Gillmore advised.

“Miss Lily might even let me give her a peck on the cheek,” Amos predicted optimistically.

Gillmore chided Amos. “Don’t you go a-courtin’ with kissing on your mind. That holds for you too, young man,” he said, peering down the rims of his spectacles at Benjamin.

“Courting is the last thing on my mind,” Benjamin assured the barber as he sat in the chair vacated by Amos.

He heard the sound of the scissors swiping the air. The barber laughed. “That won’t last,” he said as he tugged the teeth of a comb through the overgrown mane of Benjamin’s auburn hair. “The good Lord made man to fall in love and procreate, and the only way to do that the Lord’s way is by courting and marrying.”

Benjamin didn’t answer. God hadn’t shown him any favors so far, and Benjamin didn’t expect any. Grandma was just about the only person likely to gaze upon him with favor, and what woman would think that an ex-prisoner was the sort of man she wanted to hitch her wagon to and raise a family with? His prison sentence was for two years, but in truth, it was for a lifetime.

***

The late spring sun was high in the sky when Benjamin left the barber. He paused for a moment to put on his hat while he considered his options. He studied the street in front of him. Jericho was much like any other Texas town. A laundry next door to the barber’s shop made sense; a bank made of brick stood square and sturdy across the dry packed dirt of the Main Street, and a newspaper office was nestled in between a saloon on one side and a café on the other. On the other end of the street, Benjamin spotted a livery stable and a blacksmith’s forge. Those were the most likely options for work, he decided.

As he walked along the wooden sidewalks that bordered the street, Benjamin wondered why there were so few townspeople out. Maybe the industrious people of Jericho were tending to their homes and their ranches. Still, it seemed peculiar for no horses to be tethered to the hitching post in front of the businesses. A couple of men were loitering outside the saloon, but Benjamin paid them no mind. He had little enough money on him, even after Amos had kindly offered to pay to post Benjamin’s letters. What money he did have wouldn’t be wasted on drink.

He’d need some grub, and a bed, and the only way to get that was to find out if anyone needed a man who knew his way around a ranch. He walked briskly, his legs relishing the distance to his destination after two years of traveling no farther than the outdoor privy, and that wearing leg shackles.

He heard footsteps running up behind him. Close behind him.

“Where you think you’re going?”

Benjamin spun around. He didn’t know a soul in Jericho, Texas. But the man before him was no stranger. Levi Pratt stood there, big-shouldered, with arms that filled out his shirt like his biceps were about to split the seams. Levi, his former comrade in the Boot Hill Gang.

Levi’s eyes were dark slits in his sunburned face, and his thin lips weren’t smiling. He wasn’t a comrade now.

“Outta town, Levi,” Benjamin said wearily. “As soon as I can raise the money. My grandma is expecting me.”

“She is?” Levi held up an envelope in his hand. “Is this the letter she’s expectin’, tellin’ her that her grandson has learnt the error of his ways and she can kill the fatted calf to welcome him?”

Benjamin felt that through some strange metamorphosis of the body, he had lost the power of movement. Even his lungs seemed as if they no longer knew how to breathe. “What are you doing with that letter?” he demanded, his voice dry as the words left his throat.

Levi held up a second envelope. “This letter ain’t to Granny,” he observed. “Lemme see, now, why this one’s goin’ to Mr. Alexander Montgomery. Now why would you, first thing outta jail, be writin’ to Mr. Alexander Montgomery?”

There was malice in Levi’s tone, like the jealousy he’d shown at the bond between the Boot Hill Gang leader and Benjamin hadn’t faded even though Benjamin had been away for the past two years. Levi liked fighting, and the gleam in his eyes showed that he had fighting in mind now. Benjamin knew that two years of incarceration had left his fighting reflexes weakened. Fighting took discipline and practice. Two things he hadn’t had in jail.

“To tell him,” he said, forcing his voice to reveal no emotion, “that I’m leaving the Boot Hill Gang behind me. I’m going home to Gorge to ranch—”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere, Coulson. We got along just fine without you while you were in prison, and I reckon you need to be shown that you ain’t welcome anymore,” Levi said, stepping closer to Benjamin.

A blow to the back from an unseen assailant doubled Benjamin over. From his position in front of Benjamin, Levi Pratt sent a hard fist into Benjamin’s stomach. Someone else kicked Benjamin behind his knee, knocking him to the dirt. He didn’t know how many men were attacking him. All he knew was that the blows came from different directions, each one opening a new source of pain like someone digging in the ground for oil.

“How did you—get those letters?” Benjamin gasped with the little air that his lungs could provide for speech.

“I been paying close attention to the days goin’ by, Coulson. You’d be surprised how much attention the Boot Hill Gang pays to the goings-on in Jericho. We knew you was coming out today,” Levi answered. “And we knew something was gonna have to be done about it. Those letters were never gonna be mailed. They ain’t goin’ anywhere except to the grave. Same place you’re goin’.”

Chapter One

“Annie, can you fetch me some supplies from the general store?” Dr. Perth straightened up from rummaging through the bottom cupboard. As he stood, he rubbed his back. “The rate we’re going through bandages, I need to move them to one of the top cupboards.” He sighed as he adjusted his suspenders. “I don’t know how much longer this can go on,” he added, almost to himself. “Between me and Jock Hasselbinder, we’re just about the busiest men in town.”

Jock Hasselbinder was the town undertaker. Annie knew that Dr. Perth’s words were an exaggeration, but not without truth.

“I expect the saloons are pretty busy, too,” she said, trying to inject levity into the grim subject.

“They always are. This gang business…it’s no good for Jericho. They ride through town, guns blazing, they carouse and drink and fight, and we patch the luckless souls back up. Sheriff McCoy says he can’t catch them, they’re through town so fast. If you ask me,” Dr. Perth declared, pounding his examining table with his fist, “they’ve got him spooked.”

The gang that rode through town often enough to create fear, but not so frequently that their raids could be predicted, made Annie Waters think about leaving Jericho with Daniel, her five-year-old son. But she couldn’t leave her mother. Abby Winters wasn’t helpless by any means; she ran a ranch capably with the assistance of her three hired hands. But she was the only kin Daniel could claim, and she’d made sure that her daughter and grandson weren’t without support after—

“Mama, can I go with you?” Daniel looked up from the window seat where he’d been perched behind the curtain, looking out upon the street.

It was dull for a boy, his mother knew, to be cooped up in the doctor’s office for the day, although Daniel never complained. Most days, Annie left him at the ranch with his grandmother, but when Abigail had a busy day ahead of her, then Daniel came to work with Annie, who was the nurse at Dr. Perth’s office.

She smiled. “Certainly,” she agreed. “Perhaps we’ll bring Dr. Perth back some licorice, shall we?”

“Say toffee and I’ll share it with Daniel here.” Dr. Perth grinned as he took Daniel’s cap and put it on his head backwards. To T, he simply said, “Have a care.”

Judging from the view through the window, the street was quiet. Annie donned her shawl and tied the sash to her bonnet. Bonnets were a good thing to wear, she thought as she pushed loose wisps of sandy-blonde hair away from her face. They hid the dishevelment of her hair, which had begun to come loose from its pins shortly after eleven-year-old Toby Carlisle decided that he’d rather have his tooth remain in place, despite the ache, than have it pulled. She considered changing her apron, which bore the evidence of the day’s patients in the form of stains. She’d applied soap and water to the blood left from Toby’s tooth pulling and the dried puddle of milk that the Houlihan baby had spat up, but the proof of her profession was not that easy to eradicate.

It didn’t matter, Annie assured herself as she put her hand on Daniel’s shoulder to steer him out the door. Everyone in Jericho knew she was a nurse; they could hardly expect her to be immaculate.

At least the street was empty. No one to notice her soiled apron, and no one to give her that pitying glance as she passed by with her fatherless son. Annie saw the glances, although she pretended not to. Her fear was that one day, Daniel would notice them too.

But Daniel had other things to occupy his thoughts. The prospect of toffee from the general store, for one thing. The riding lessons that the ranch hands had promised him when he had his sixth birthday. In fact, he was in the middle of his familiar recital of the pony that Grandma had promised him when he suddenly stopped, right in the street.

“Mama,” he whispered. “There’s a man on the ground up ahead.”

Annie’s eyes followed Daniel’s pointing finger. There was a body sprawled face down in the dirt. His legs were drawn up close to his torso, and his arms framed the sides of his head. Annie had seen her share of passed-out drunks in front of the town’s three saloons, and they weren’t generally huddled up like they’d tried to escape blows. This one wasn’t a drunk.

“Daniel, you’d best go back to Dr. Perth,” she said immediately, her concern for the unknown patient matched by her fears for her son’s safety in the unpredictable tumult that afflicted Jericho.

“I’m going with you, Mama,” Daniel said. In his young face, his father’s dark eyes showed compassion far beyond his years. “You might need help.”

“Daniel—”

“I’m staying with you,” he insisted, looking up at her with a resolute chin and the earnestness of a boy who believed in helping the injured because he was the son of a nurse.

If only your father had done the same.

“Very well,” Annie assented, stepping up her pace, “but if there’s any sign of trouble, promise me that you’ll run back to Dr. Perth as fast as your legs can carry you.”

“To fetch him,” Daniel said, making sure that if he was to be dismissed, it was to perform a greater good.

Annie didn’t answer. They had gotten near enough to the man for her to see spatters of blood on the ground. Not from a gunshot, praise God. She’d seen the amount of blood left by a gun before and was relieved that, whatever the man’s wounds, the doctor wouldn’t have to probe inside for a bullet. The man’s blue shirt was ripped in numerous places. His trousers were covered with the dusty dirt of the street.

His back rose and fell, proving that while he was obviously not well, he was not dead. Annie bent down and gently shifted one of his arms. She saw a bearded face with trim, regular features that were now streaked with dirt and blood and signs of swelling. There was evidence of a brawl here, and she suspected that this man had suffered from more than one attacker.

Violence was not unknown to the streets of Jericho, but when the marauding gang rode through town as they were wont to do, they fired guns to announce their presence. Townspeople stayed inside on those occasions. Annie hadn’t heard any gunshots. These wounds came from fists and boots.

He needed the doctor. Annie looked about, but the street was as barren of occupants as when she had first left the office, even though she sensed that, behind decorously closed curtains, the people of Jericho were watching. Watching and doing nothing, Annie thought bitterly. They had no compunction when it came to passing judgment on a divorced woman raising her son the best that she could, but no one would stir from the safety of their homes to come to the aid of a wounded man.

“’From Jerusalem to Jericho’,” Annie muttered as she pressed her fingers against the pulse in the man’s neck, “not a single Samaritan to be found.”

“Mama? Is he hurt?”

“Yes, he’s been beaten. Badly from the looks of things. Dr. Perth needs to take a look at him.” If she dragged him, there was a risk that a bone or an internal organ, damaged in the brawl, could come to greater harm. “We need a stretcher to carry him.”

“I’ll fetch him, Mama,” Daniel said, and before she could respond, the little boy was running down the middle of the dusty street, his ankles flying behind him as he hurried. His cap fell off, but Daniel never stopped.

There was a Good Samaritan after all, Annie thought. He happened to be a five-year-old boy at whom the well-bred folks of Jericho looked askance because his father had abandoned the family so soon after Daniel’s birth. Why would a man leave his newborn son, the questioning tongues asked. Why would a man leave the wife who’d borne that son? The unspoken verdict was that the woman had done her husband wrong.

Annie’s probing of the swelling around the stranger’s face elicited a groan. The man opened his blue eyes, spotted her leaning over him, murmured, “An angel,” and promptly fell back into unconsciousness.

“Not according to the good people of Jericho, sir,” Annie whispered as she tenderly moved a lock of reddish-brown hair away from the wet blood oozing from a cut on his temple.

***

She saw them coming, Daniel running ten steps ahead, then doubling back to match the doctor’s slower gait. Dr. Perth had the stretcher, a simple conveyance of a stretch of canvas fastened with rope to two parallel poles, one on each side, in hand. He had taken the time to put on his hat and his frock coat, always a stickler for decorum.

“Annie, I’m not at all confident about this,” Dr. Perth said as soon as he came upon them. “This man, whoever he might be, isn’t one of us. If this is something that’s between the gang and this fellow, we don’t want any part of it.”

Annie tilted her head up to confront Dr. Perth, a posture made difficult by the position of the sun that forced her to squint. “‘And Jesus answering said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves,’” she said. “You recollect the story?” Without waiting for him to respond, she went on. “They stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. When a certain priest that way and saw him, he passed by on the other side. A Levite did the same thing, you remember?”

“I remember,” Dr. Perth said, resignation in his voice.

“Daniel, what happened next?”

“The Samaritan fellow came by,” Daniel answered, pleased to know the correct response. “He took care of him and then took him to an inn and promised to pay the innkeeper to take care of him.”

“If I could leave him at an inn,” Dr. Perth replied, his tone dry, “I might not mind so much. But the clinic is also my home. This troubles me, Annie. No one has come out to look after him. To my mind, that’s a sign the Boot Hill Gang has been and gone.”

“Everything can’t be blamed on the gang,” Annie argued, standing up. She brushed the dirt from her skirt. “We don’t know what happened, and we can’t leave him to bleed in the street while we try to find out. You and I can carry him,” she said, motioning to the stretcher. “Let’s get him inside and out of the sun.”

“And away from prying eyes peering out from behind curtains,” Dr. Perth grumbled as he looked around with a fierce expression on his face.

Dr. Perth had carried many a wounded soldier when he was a doctor in the War Between the States. Annie, although slender, had grown up on a ranch where her upbringing had been anything but pampered. Together, the pair, with Daniel beside the stretcher, his little hand resting on the wounded man’s arm, walked back to the office, their procession uninterrupted by any of the townspeople.

Working in tandem, Annie and Dr. Perth lifted the sheet that had covered the stretcher, using it to transfer their patient to the table in Dr. Perth’s surgical office. Daniel was in the outer office, aware from previous experience that when his mother and the doctor were attending to a patient, he was not permitted to be present.

“There’s no point in trying to save this shirt,” Annie said as, scissors in hand, she began to cut the cloth from his chest.

Dr. Perth gripped the heel of the man’s boots and pulled each one off his foot, followed by stockings. Then he adjusted the cover sheet so that it successfully concealed the wounded man’s midsection before removing the trousers. Annie said nothing, knowing that Dr. Perth, although modern in many ways, maintained certain opinions regarding what was appropriate for even a once-married, now-divorced woman to be exposed to, even in a medical setting.

“The trousers are more durable,” he explained as he worked to remove the garment from the patient’s legs. “If need be, he can manage without a shirt.”

“I’m sure I have one to spare at home,” Annie said. She didn’t need to explain that when Giles had left her, he had not taken all of his clothes with him.

Revealed from mid-thigh to foot, and waist to head, the patient’s body was already a palette of dawning bruises, and where the bruising had not yet commenced to show, his skin was an angry shade of red.

“There’s significant bruising around his ribcage; possibly broken bones. But he looks to be in reasonably good physical condition; no rashes or sores.” Annie reported these details dispassionately as the doctor pressed his fingers over the areas where the swelling was pronounced. Except for a soft groan, the wounded man did not respond and did not open his eyes.

He was lean, but not thin. Muscled, but not bulky. Tall. Clean, even his nails, which was not always the case with patients who worked in the fields or on ranches. His beard was no more than a whiskered covering over his lower cheeks, chin, and jawline, not the thick forest of facial foliage that was in vogue for men. There was even a faint fragrance of bay rum cologne upon him. He had a thick head of hair with as much brown as red in its color, a shade that would blaze in the sun and darken when dusk began to fall.

Annie did not list these observations to the doctor. There was no reason to inform the medical man that their patient, although injured and weakened by a severe beating apparently meant to kill him, was a handsome specimen of manhood. Annie realized that she had noticed this not as a nurse, but as a woman, a revelation which made her uneasy. She had not paid any attention to any man since Giles had left her. And now she was noticing that a beaten-up stranger was handsome?