Prologue

Fifteen Miles South of Washita River—1875

The sun was setting, casting a pinkish glow over the flat expanse of the prairie. Grayson Reid wasn’t admiring the beauty of the waning daylight, though.

Instead, he listened to the chatter of his two top hands, Benji and Otis, as they argued with each other on the other side of the campfire. Otis was twenty-four with red hair culminating in a sharp widow’s peak at his forehead, and Benji was twenty-five with short, coiled hair and eyes that shone bright with humor and good nature.

“I swear to you, if we’d have been on that ranch for just a few more days, I’d have gotten that kiss from Meredith Baker,” Otis said between bites of the beef jerky in his hand.

Benji cackled and drank from his flask, which had his name meticulously engraved on the surface. “The sun and dust musta fried your brain! She’d sooner have kissed a rattler than you!” he replied with a smirk.

Otis smiled as well. “We don’t know that! After all…”

The conversation faded away into background noise as Grayson’s thoughts drifted away from him.

People often jokingly referred to Grayson as a “mountain man,” and as much as he didn’t like the moniker, it was easy to see why he brought the association to mind. At six foot two, he stood taller than any other man on the drive, and his rusty, bushy beard and prominent mustache covered the lower half of his face.

He kept his hair short and cropped, though, a habit he kept from serving in the Civil War, and his broad shoulders and tightly muscled arms made him someone few men would willingly pick a fight with. Even so, people often noticed his eyes first and foremost. They were a bright blue that pierced the soul of anyone who met them, and more than one person had told him that they carried a certain sadness and wisdom.

Grayson was seated on his rolled-up bedroll with a leather sheet unrolled on the ground in front of him. He was wearing a blue cotton shirt with a buckskin vest covering his chest, and his gun belt was unbuckled and lying beside him. His gray Colt Single-Action Army revolver was in his hands, but he’d removed the cylinder so that it sat beside his small cleaning brush, which had been used moments before to clean the barrel and the cylinder itself.

Presently, he was meticulously cleaning the walnut grip with a rag dabbed in mineral oil as a memory of long, flowing auburn hair and striking green eyes appeared in his thoughts, like glimpsing someone in a sandstorm.

No!

He grunted and intensified his cleaning, driving the thoughts away.

“Whadda ya reckon, boss?” Otis asked.

“Huh?” Grayson replied. “What’s that, now?”

“We was discussin’ which of the greenhorns will quit first,” Benji said.

“My money’s on that Lyle character,” Otis said. “The boy can’t stop complainin’ about the dust on the drag! I keep tellin’ him we all had to start there!”

“He thinks he’s too high and mighty to be doin’ such jobs because his uncle is the big boss,” Benji replied ruefully.

“Oh, well, my hope is that none of them will quit,” Grayson said in a flat tone. “If we do our jobs right, they won’t have to.”

Benji and Otis shared a look, shrugged, and went back to their stories. Grayson looked up at them on the other side of the campfire as he put the cylinder back into its place and inserted the pin to secure it.

The two of them were the best of friends, and Grayson recalled times when he had similar bonds with people on the trail or on the many ranches he’d worked on in his thirty-five years on earth. A part of him missed it, but life was simpler when you kept your distance from others. The less you cared, the less could be taken away from you.

Once his revolver was assembled, he pulled the hammer to half-cock and spun the empty cylinder with his thumb. He pulled the hammer back fully and pulled the trigger to feel the satisfying click of a dry fire.

Satisfied, he pulled the hammer back to half-cock and lined up the cylinder so that he could insert the metal cartridges laid out on the leather flap one by one.

Behind him, there was a thicket of cottonwood trees standing vigil, while before him was the expanse of the prairie stretching out behind Otis and Benji. The dark cloud of the herd of fifteen hundred cattle loomed in the distance, and he could see the hands on their horses watching over the herd.

Not far from them, the chuck wagon stood bereft of its horses, and Carlos, the cook, stood nearby with his large, cast-iron Dutch oven bubbling over a small fire. He paused his task of skinning a rabbit he’d shot to scratch at his patchy beard and then continued.

Otis and Benji were going on about their many exploits on the ranches they had drifted between throughout Texas, and Grayson caught the tail end of one of their anecdotes.

“I reckon it’d be real fine to settle down on a ranch one day,” Otis said before ripping another strip of jerky.

“Easy for you to say,” Benji said. “You ain’t gotta worry about some dirty cowboys givin’ you a side-eye on account of your skin bein’ too dark for their likin’. Out on the trail is the only place I can be free.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see no reason why we couldn’t own a ranch together and… Say! Who’s that over yonder?”

Grayson turned to see a thin, gangly man stumbling out from between the cottonwood trees, and his muscles tensed. He stood with his revolver clasped in his hands as the man came closer.

Otis and Benji also stood, readying their own pistols. The man came close enough for Grayson to see his scraggly beard and bloodshot eyes, and he lifted his palm out to the man.

“Whoa, friend. That’s close enough,” Grayson said calmly.

The man looked at him, and his bony chest heaved as he caught his breath. His right hand was behind his back, and his left was clutching a leather satchel slung over his shoulder.

“Oh, mister,” he said in a thin, cracked voice. “I’ve been wanderin’ the plains for days now, and I’m as hungry as can be. Could ya maybe spare some bread? I ain’t askin’ much. The name’s Cletus, by the way.”

In years gone by, Grayson would have helped the man without a second thought, but he’d experienced men using sympathy to gain the upper hand too many times to take anyone at their word.

Cletus’s eyes kept darting to the camp, lingering on anything that might hold money or other treasures.

He gave a yellow, toothy smile, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

“Sorry, friend, but I think you’d best be on your way,” Grayson said.

“Aw, heck!” Benji said from behind him. “He seems harmless enough. I’m sure we can spare somethin’.”

“You’re just bein’ gullible. Look at him,” Otis hissed. “He’s clearly crazy as a polecat.”

“I just want some food, is all,” Cletus said.

Something in his voice had changed, like he’d dropped the act a bit and something darker was painting his tone. His eyes darted around even more frantically, and Grayson noted that his hand kept darting behind his back.

“There’s a town not far from here,” Grayson said calmly. “Walk in that direction, and you’ll get there in a few hours. Someone will help you there.”

It pained him to be so harsh, but the world they lived in was full of people who would use kindness as a weakness.

A dark look came across the man’s face. He scowled and put his hand behind his back once more.

“I tried askin’ nicely. Now I’ll try this!” the man yelled as his hand came out from behind his back to reveal an old revolver that was almost completely brown from rust.

He aimed it at Grayson’s chest and pulled the trigger.

Click.

“Got-damn it!” he yelled.

Meanwhile, Grayson had swung his revolver up, pulled back the hammer with the side of his left hand, aimed just left of Cletus’s head, and pulled the trigger. The revolver rocked back, and an explosion of sound ruptured the calm evening air as the bullet whirred past his head.

Cletus yelled, dropped the gun to the ground, and turned on his heels to run as fast as he could back into the trees. It had all happened so quickly that Grayson hadn’t even had time to experience the pang of fear that only the gaping maw of a gun barrel could provide.

Grayson grimaced and lowered his gun as the gun smoke cleared around him.

“Guess you were right,” Benji said.

“You’re too trustin’,” Otis said as he holstered his gun. “Ain’t always a bad thing, but still.”

Grayson walked over to where the man had stood and saw that he’d dropped his satchel. He bent down to retrieve it and opened it to see some old, broken digging tools and a torn, water-damaged claim notice on browned paper.

He scowled and walked back to the camp to sit on his bedroll again.

“You shoulda just put a bullet in him, boss. It was clear as day that he meant no good,” Otis said as he sat too. “Any judge in the country would have seen it as self-defense!”

“If his gun had fired properly, you’d have been a dead duck!” Benji said with his eyes open wide.

“Where’d your compassion go all of a sudden?” Otis asked with a smirk as he playfully punched Benji’s shoulder.

Benji shoved him off and then shrugged. “It disappeared when he pulled out that rod.”

“What if he comes back to finish the job?” Otis asked.

“He won’t be back,” said Grayson as he stoked the fire with a stick, sending some sparks flying into the air.

“How can you be so sure?”

“He was clearly down on his luck and desperate. There’s a difference between bein’ desperate and bein’ evil. Besides, he ain’t got his gun no more,” Grayson said as he sat back on the floor.

“I guess you’re right,” Otis said.

As the last of the afternoon sunlight faded into the horizon, some of the cowboys who had ended their shifts ambled over to sit by the fire with their bowls of soup in hand.

One of them was seventeen-year-old Lyle Campbell, a cocky youth who always slicked his blonde hair back with pomade, even when out on the trail. He also loved to mention how his uncle was the great Harlan Cordero.

“I ain’t got any room in my belly on account of all the dust I swallowed,” Lyle whined.

“Quit yer gripin’,” Otis growled.

Lyle sat in the dirt and grumbled. “At any rate, I heard that within a few years, they’ll just use trains to get cattle around instead of makin’ us poor saps kill ourselves doin’ it. Can’t happen soon enough, I tell ya what,” Lyle said.

“Much as I hate to agree with ya, it probably is about time,” Otis said as he stretched his shoulders. “Can’t keep fightin’ progress, I guess.”

Grayson remained silent and watched the flames flickering in front of him.

The drive had some sense of finality to it. The boys were right. Word on the trail was that there would be no need for men like him soon. The kid had guessed it would take a few years, but some reckoned that by the next year, traditional drives would be all but obsolete.

Grayson took a swig of water from his canteen and scratched the bridge of his nose. Once the drive was over, what was left? Go back to Texas with full pockets and empty dreams? Return to a ranch that was crumbling to pieces and live out his days alone?

Grayson shook his head and cleared his mind, something he always did when his thoughts started to drift into unpleasant territory.

Even when life seemed heavy, which was frequent for Grayson these days, all a man could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.

They would reach the Washita River the next day, probably by the late afternoon. The Chisholm Trail was one that Grayson reckoned he could navigate in his sleep by this point, and everything had gone as smoothly as could be so far.

He stood up and stretched. “Alright, boys. Don’t y’all stay up too late, y’hear? We gotta be goin’ at dawn.”

They all grumbled in response, and Grayson made his way to where his small tent was set up, away from everyone else. Finally, there was silence, and he unfurled his bedroll so he could lie down. He could suddenly smell that perfume and see that flowing hair again…

Grayson shook his head sharply, grunted, and occupied his mind with preparing for the challenges the next day could bring as he drifted to sleep.

Chapter One

The Washita River—The Next Day

Vera Langston furrowed her brow as she gazed out on the Washita River. Both banks of the river were covered by grass and bushes that looked surprisingly lush for the area, but the reason for that was also why the river was particularly strong that day.

Heavy rains a few days prior had nourished the plants and animals of the area, but also swelled the river, sending strong currents foaming over jutting rocks at the river’s edge.

“Oh dear. It looks pretty rough. What do ya think, Vern?” Wade Norris’s timid voice said from behind her.

She turned around on her horse and gave him a friendly grin.

Looking at her, you’d assume she was just another lad on the trail at first glance. Her curly brown hair was cut short and styled as a man would have it, and flecks of mud and dirt painted her face.

She wore a wide-brimmed brown hat and a simple, rugged coat that she kept buttoned up no matter how hot it got.

“It ain’t no worry,” she said in a husky voice.

Wade didn’t know her as Vera. In fact, he didn’t even know her as a woman at all. When they had met a week and a half ago, Vera had ridden to his small ranch looking for work, specifically work that would get her far, far away.

The only work that provided that perk was men’s work, and so she’d decided to act as one for as long as necessary. It came somewhat naturally to her anyway. Growing up on her father’s ranch, she’d never been pressured to act more ladylike. She was just Vera to him, and she was allowed to be whatever necessary to be there for her father.

For that reason, she was no stranger to doing what many women would consider man’s work.

She’d expected to see cowboys lining up to the front door offering to help out, but she was the only one who showed up.

Poor Wade had explained that he’d bought twenty-five cattle that he wished to take on the famous Chisholm Trail to Kansas. He’d hoped for an adventure and to learn the way to deal with cattle after his career as a mail rider had become increasingly unneeded with telegrams and railroads eating up so many industries.

The only problem was that he’d never done a drive before, and no one wanted to take the job. After all, most cattle drives had at least a thousand heads of cattle, so just twenty-five would be hardly worth the trouble.

For Vera, it sounded too good to be true. She’d get to leave Texas far behind and escape to Kansas, and it would be easier to deal with one harmless old fellow than a whole band of cowboys.

Kansas meant safety to her. The darkness of her past couldn’t be far behind, and she needed to have as much distance between her and it as possible.

“Don’t you worry, Mr. Wade! This’ll be easy.”

She looked back upon the river, and her smile faded.

While she’d kept it to herself, this was also her first cattle drive. Her father had told her stories of the many drives he’d been a part of and tried to impart some of his wisdom to her, but the journey so far had taught her that being told something and doing it were two very different matters.

Vera had never dreamed of doing such an ambitious cattle drive before, but it had seemed her best ticket away from everything that had happened. Away from him.

She looked at the situation logically.

The current was strong, sure, but there would be areas that were shallower. She could even see the sand at the bottom of the river in some spots. The cattle and horses shouldn’t lose their footing in those areas. Cattle were strong and would surely be able to withstand even a strong current.

Right?

Her heart raced, and she tried to adopt a done this a thousand times before nonchalance. In reality, she had a mental image of being bucked from her horse and sent into the roiling waters of the river, where she would sink like a stone and die in darkness.

She shook her head and turned her horse so that she was facing Wade.

Poor Wade’s eyes were wide with fear, and his face looked pale despite his tan. He was almost sixty, and while he was lucky enough to have a full head of wavy hair, it was almost as white as his bushy beard.

“You’re gonna lead the cattle in there. See where it’s shallow?” she said as she pointed at the part of the river she’d spotted before.

“Alright…” he said slowly. “And what will you do?”

“I’ll ride further downstream and watch the flank. As long as the cattle ain’t spooked into running downstream, we should be good as gold!” she replied with a smile.

Vera thought back to when they’d used the ferry to cross the Red River days before.

Why couldn’t they have a dang ferry here?

The whole reason there wasn’t a ferry was probably because it would be easy for any seasoned trail boss to navigate this obstacle. In fact, she’d heard there was a much larger cattle drive not far behind, and she’d hoped that they might catch up before they reached the river.

Wade rode his horse to the right and started to lead the cattle into the water. There was a steer at the front of the herd, and he shook his horns at the water.

Vera called out, “Show ‘im who’s boss!”

Wade halfheartedly cracked his bullwhip, and it sounded like a gunshot over the peaceful flowing of the river.

The steer reluctantly waded into the river, and Wade rode his horse a bit ahead of the herd. Luckily, the rest of the cattle followed the steer, and it looked as if it would go rather smoothly.

She rode her horse a bit further downstream at another shallow point, and she rode back and forth between the banks of the river, making sure that none of the cattle strayed into the current. The steer was not far from the opposite bank, but Vera’s blood ran cold as a large snake swam close to it, twirling its body like a ribbon in the breeze. It was hard to tell at a distance, but it looked big enough to be a water moccasin.

“Please don’t notice it,” she whispered under her breath.

The steer looked to the left and let out a long, loud, frantic moan as it lifted its front legs in fright. The current caught it at a bad angle and sent the steer reeling over to the side and down toward Vera. Chaos erupted as the rest of the cows called out and flailed their bodies. The river became a storm of splashes, bodies, and noise as the cattle bolted, lost their footing, and drifted toward Vera.

Panic gripped her, but she stifled it as she cracked her own bullwhip. The sound was barely perceptible over the noise, and she couldn’t even see Wade on the other side of the wall of cattle.

One of them was swept toward her and collided with her horse, making it lose its footing and sending her flying from the saddle and into the cold water.

Can’t swim. Can’t swim. Can’t—

The words repeated in her mind like a mantra, but were silenced by a sharp pain in her head as it hit the riverbed. Her body went limp, and she couldn’t even tell which way was up or down.

The last thing she thought of before surrendering to the water was what her father would think if he could see her.

Vera closed her eyes and let her breath out in a torrent of bubbles.

***

The next thing she knew, she was on the back of a horse, clinging to a large man’s back. Water sloshed at her legs as she held on tightly, but soon they were out of the water and on dry land.

She looked behind her, and while her vision was blurry, she could see that more men on horses were in the water getting the situation under control, and a large herd of cattle loomed in the distance on the other side of the river.

The man she clung to helped her down from the horse, and her legs collapsed under her as she sat down hard in the mud.

She looked up at her savior, a tall, very muscular man with short hair and a wild beard. His pale blue eyes looked down on her and narrowed.

“Are you breathin’?” he asked.

She nodded and coughed up some water. “Yeah.”

“Are you well?” he asked as he crossed his arms.

She nodded. “I believe so.”

“Good. Then perhaps you can tell me what you were thinkin’ crossing here?” he asked in a voice that was colder than before.

All she could do was shrug.

“I don’t know.”

The man nodded. “You don’t know. If I didn’t show up when I did, you and prob’ly half your herd would be drowned by now. They told me at the tradin’ post that there were a couple of greenhorns running a small herd, but I didn’t think they’d be this green.”

As Vera’s head cleared, her panic and subsequent relief faded into annoyance. She stood to her feet, even though her legs were still weak beneath her.

“Listen, mister. I’m real glad you and your friends were here to help, honest. But you act like you never made no mistake before in your life!”

The first word of her sentence was in her normal voice, and then she remembered to lower it. She also squared her hips and crossed her arms while straightening her legs to make herself as tall as possible. Even though she was hardly short at five foot six, the man was still quite a bit taller than her.

“Yeah, I made mistakes before. But surely you could see there were no signs of previous crossings where you were going through? Everybody crosses further upstream, where it’s rockier and shallower. You’d have seen that if you looked for more than two minutes.”

Vera showed her hands in surrender. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I made a mistake, and I almost died because of it. Yet you’re standin’ there chewin’ me out like I’m a schoolgi— uh, boy.”

The man’s face softened slightly, and he looked out over the river to see that the situation was well under control. His men were working with Wade to retrieve the lost cattle, and the small herd was slowly making its way through the river again.

“How many cattle you got there?” he asked.

She coughed, feeling embarrassed suddenly. “Twenty-five,” she muttered.

The man chuckled and shook his head. “You went to all this trouble for twenty-five?”

She scowled at him and grunted. “You’re an awfully judgmental sort, ain’t you. Mr….”

“Reid. Call me Grayson. Well, Mr….”

“Vern, uh, Miller,” she said, quickly remembering her alias.

“Even so, ain’t you a bit young to be runnin’ a cattle drive? Even a small one?

Vera put her hands on her hips and scowled. “I’m twenty-six, thank you very much. And I’ve had more experience with livestock than most people here combined!” She looked down sheepishly and kicked at the ground. “Though I admit I was a bit out of my depth runnin’ a drive. But I know animals, and if I’m told how to do somethin’, I do it and well.”

Grayson considered her for a moment.

“Okay, Vern. I recommend you join our herd. We’re headin’ to Fort Reno to meet with the owner of my herd. Maybe I can convince him to take you on and add your cattle to his. He’s a bit of a skinflint, but… Well, I reckon it’s better than continuin’ on your own.”

Vera weighed up her options. It would be Wade’s call in the end, but he would defer to her decision if past events were anything to go by.

Her pride compelled her to decline the offer, but Reid was right. They’d survived on dumb luck and close calls on the trail so far. She also didn’t really care about the cattle, but she did care about getting out of Texas.

She nodded and extended a hand. After a moment, Grayson reached out and grasped it in a strong grip.

“This ain’t no charity, though. You and your old timer gotta help out with the drive. You can help the cook out until you can prove you’ve got more skills and sense than you showed today. Got it?” he said with a stern look.

She nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”

“Good.” He walked back toward the river but stopped to look back at her. “I hope you’ll do better in the future than you did here today.”

He walked back toward his men, and Vera had to summon every ounce of self-discipline within her not to blow a raspberry in his direction.