The Rocking R Ranch

Book 1: Rocking R Ranch Western

by Tim Washburn

Genres: Historical Fiction; Westerns

Synopsis

From acclaimed storyteller Tim Washburn comes a thrilling new saga of the Old West, the sprawling story of one frontier family—and the Texas home they fought for, lived for, and died for.

AN AMERICAN DREAM IN THE MAKING

When the Ridgeway family staked their claim on more than forty thousand acres of land in northwest Texas, they knew they had their work cut out for them. Located on a sharp bend of the treacherous Red River, their new home—the Rocking R Ranch—was just a stone’s throw away from Indian territory. It was as lawless and wild as the West itself, crawling with unsavory characters, cattle rustlers, horse thieves, outlaws, robbers, and worse. But still, the Ridgeways were determined to make the Rocking R a success—and a home—for their four remarkable children: Percy, Eli, Abigail, and Rachel.

Together, the Ridgeways could endure anything. Floods, tornadoes, Commanche raids in the dead of night. But when one of their own is kidnapped … that’s when all hell breaks loose.

This is their story. The story of the American West.

Release date: June 30, 2020

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 432

Sample

There was no hint of the approaching dawn when Cyrus Ridgeway pulled his rifle down from where it hung over the door and made his way outside, dropping wearily into one of the half-dozen rocking chairs that dotted the long front porch of their two-story home. He leaned the rifle against the house and sat back. Now at sixty-four, Cyrus had spent a majority of those years outside and on a horse and he didn’t sleep well anymore. Too many aches and pains and something else—an ever-present worry that gnawed at Cyrus like a lingering toothache. And more than once he had cursed his ancestors for staking a claim to this land that, over the years, had absorbed a river of Ridgeway blood.

It’s not that the ground under their feet wasn’t fertile, because it was, the grass growing knee-high during the summer months and fattening the Ridgeways’ ten thousand head of cattle. And it wasn’t the climate, either. The area received adequate rainfall and most days were sunny and warm. No, what irked Cyrus was the location. Set hard against the Red River in northwest Texas, the Rocking R Ranch spanned for as far as the eye could see across more than forty-five thousand acres of relatively flat terrain. If it had been any other river it would have been acceptable. But not this river. And his contempt didn’t have anything to do with the quality or quantity of water that flowed through her banks. In fact, it didn’t have much to do with the river at all. No, his annoyance, disgust, and loathing stemmed from what was on the other side of the river—Indian Territory.

The Territory was home to a conglomeration of Indians, many of whom would rather slit your throat than look at you. And Cyrus thought he probably could have tolerated that if it was just the Indians he had to worry about. But it wasn’t. There was more, much more, that kept him up at night. A lawless place, Indian Territory was also home to a large assortment of cattle rustlers, horse thieves, murderers, robbers, and would-be robbers, con men, swindlers, scoundrels, crooks, and many other nefarious no-gooders with evil on their minds. If Cyrus had a dollar for every stolen cow or horse, he would be rich—or rather—richer than he already was. His children and their families who lived on the ranch insisted the occasional losses should be chalked up to the cost of doing business. But that didn’t sit well with Cyrus, who was a firm believer in protecting what was theirs, no matter the cost. And he’d gotten most of the stolen stock back over the years, with the thieves often paying a steep price for their transgressions when they found themselves at the end of a short rope that was tied to a tall tree.

Cyrus heard someone stirring around inside and listened to the footfalls, trying to decipher who was about to horn in on his quiet time. With a big family and four other homes on the place, it was difficult to know who was sleeping where on any given night. Most nights, a grandchild or two would slink up to his house after dark, well after Cyrus had already turned in. He didn’t have to listen long to identify the footsteps as belonging to his wife, Frances. The door squealed when she opened it and stepped outside.

“What are you doing sitting out here in the dark, Cy?” she asked as she took a seat next to him.

“Can’t sleep.”

Frances reached out and put her hand on his back. “What’s worrying that noggin of yours so early this morning?”

“Nothin’ but the usual worries.” Cyrus glanced in her direction. The moon glow was bright enough to see her profile and hints of her gray hair but not her individual features. And that was okay because Cyrus had them memorized by now, especially her blue eyes.

“That shoulder bothering you again?”

“Nah. Just can’t sleep.” Cyrus was a bear of a man at six-three with strong, powerful shoulders from a lifetime of hard work. He’d packed on a few extra pounds over the years and his once-dark hair was now mostly gray. With a full beard and mustache, he had started trimming it shorter after Frances teased him about looking like Santa Claus.

Frances removed her hand from his back and leaned back in her chair. “It’s about time you let the boys carry some of the load.”

“What about the girls, Franny? They not get a say in it?”

Cyrus and Frances had produced seven offspring, four of whom made it to adulthood—two sons, Percy and Elias, along with two daughters, Abigail and Rachel, the youngest. All now had families of their own and lived on the ranch.

“That’d probably be up to Percy. Shouldn’t he get more say in who does what since he’s the oldest?” Frances asked.

“Maybe,” Cyrus said. “But I don’t reckon any of it’s writ in stone. And you’re liable to stir up a passel of trouble if you ain’t careful.”

Frances clucked her tongue. “Decisions need to be made, Cy. We’re not getting any younger.” Tall at five-eight, her once-red hair was now gray and, lithe and lean as a teenager, her body was a bit stiffer but, remarkably, she still wore the same size dress as back then and still filled it out in all the right places.

“I ain’t dead, yet,” Cyrus said, a surly tone in his voice. “Besides, might be best to let the kids figure all that out when we’re gone.”

“Talk about stirring up trouble,” Frances said. “I won’t have my family ripped to pieces over this cattle ranch. We need a plan.”

“What do you care? You’ll likely be dead, too, fore it comes to that.”

Frances sighed and pushed to her feet. “I’m going to put on some coffee.”

Cyrus watched his wife’s silhouette disappear into the house. His preference was to keep the ranch intact for the future generations, but Frances had mentioned a couple of times through the years that they should divvy it up and give it to the kids. “Over my dead body,” Cyrus grumbled as he thought about it. Every time he pondered the situation, he ended up with a stomachache. The original Spanish land grant the ranch was founded upon had been in his family since Texas was still called Mexico, and Cyrus had added to their holdings over the years, buying up the farms and ranches of those who grew tired of fighting the Indians and the outlaws that drifted across the river. He’d worked too hard to make the ranch what it was and if the children wanted the land divided, they were going to have to wait until he was dead.

Cyrus wiped the sweat from his brow. August in this part of the country was hot, muggy, and miserable and those were the nighttime weather conditions. The same conditions existed during the day but were intensified about tenfold. The sun wasn’t even up yet, and Cyrus was already damp with sweat. Thinking about the heat, a weariness crept into his bones. It didn’t matter if it was scorching hot or finger-freezing cold, there was always work to be done—horses to be broken, cattle to be branded, corrals to be fixed, and on and on, all while keeping a watchful eye for marauding Indians, cattle rustlers, or others who might want what wasn’t legally theirs. Sometimes Cyrus wished he had listened to Frances and moved to San Antonio when they were younger. And they might have if his two older brothers who were set to take over the ranch hadn’t been slaughtered by a roving pack of Comanche savages while Cyrus and his new bride had been on a horse-buying trip to Saint Louis. Their deaths sealed Cyrus’s fate because he was the last of the Ridgeway boys. But all that was years ago—time that had slipped away, year after year, and, once Frances started having kids, leaving the ranch hadn’t made any sense at all. Now here it was, 1873, and Cyrus knew his dead carcass would be buried up on the little knoll where they buried his brothers and all the children who had died way too early.

Frances returned a while later, handed her a husband a cup of coffee, and retook her seat just as the first rays of the sun stretched across the landscape. They sat in silence for a few moments as the orange orb peeked over the horizon. They had positioned the house so that they could watch the sunrise on the front porch and the sunset on the back porch. Hearing the clop of horses, Cyrus sat up and reached for the rifle he’d brought outside and then relaxed when the night riders rode past on their way to the bunkhouse.

“Good thing they weren’t renegades,” Frances said, “or they would have been on us before you could lever a shell into that rifle of yours.”

“Hearin’ ain’t what it once was,” Cyrus mumbled. “Maybe you ought to be the lookout since you still got all your faculties.”

Frances chuckled. “Oh, Cy, you’re doing just fine. Don’t you think I’d have told you if trouble was headed our way?”

“Don’t need my wife to tell me when there’s trouble a-comin’. My damn eyes still work just fine.” Cyrus turned to look at his wife. “We eatin’ breakfast sometime today?”

Frances chuckled again. “Don’t get all riled up, Cy. We all have our shortcomings.” She stood and leaned over to kiss her husband on the cheek. “You’ll always be my protector. What are you planning for the day?”

“Me and Percy and a few others are gonna track down them rustlers who stole them two steers yesterday afternoon.”

“Aren’t you getting a little old to be traipsing off after outlaws?”

“Like I said, I ain’t dead yet. ’Sides, can’t let them rustlers go unpunished or word would get out and we’d be robbed blind.”

“And if you find them?”

Cyrus took a sip of his coffee then said, “Hang ’em, I reckon.”

A short distance down the road from the main house, Abigail Turner walked through her dark house and into the kitchen, trying to recall the dream she’d just had. She struck a match and lit the coal oil lamp and stoked the fire, adding more wood from a small stack beside the stove. The dream involved a carriage, a man, and a large city, possibly Saint Louis. But try as she might, she couldn’t recall any of the details of who was involved or what she might have been doing. And the last time she had been in Saint Louis was years ago, before she’d met her husband, Isaac, and settled down.

As the last fragment of the dream frustratingly faded from memory, Abby stepped out the back door and walked to the outhouse to relieve herself, then filled a pan with water from the well and returned to the kitchen, the sweat already running down her back. Wetting a dish towel, she wiped her face and under her arms and then gathered up her long, red hair and used a strip of fabric to fashion a ponytail. Abby was tall like her mother and had also gotten her mother’s red hair and blue eyes, but that’s where the similarities ended. She had her father’s larger frame with wide shoulders, larger hands, and she wore a size nine shoe. Abby wasn’t chubby or fat although she looked larger than an average woman. She called it being big-boned. With her hair off her neck, she already felt cooler. After putting on a pot of coffee, she grabbed her sourdough starter from an overhead shelf and began making biscuits.

Over the years a succession of cooks had paraded through the Turner home, yet none ever quite lived up to Abigail’s expectations. So now, much like her mother, Abigail was responsible for a majority of the cooking duties and usually begged for help only for special occasions or holidays. Her sister, Rachel, however, had run through a long line of cooks before she got tired of that and settled on the last person she’d hired and she rarely, if ever, ventured into the kitchen of her house next door. Abigail couldn’t decide if her sister had a less discerning palate or if it was just plain laziness. Knowing Rachel as well as she did, Abby suspected it was the latter.

In addition to the main house where her parents lived, she and her three siblings had constructed four other three-room homes that formed a horseshoe-shape with the main house at the center. Although they all shared a huge backyard, there was a good deal of distance between the houses and that allowed for a modicum of privacy while also creating a fairly strong defensive position. If marauding Indians rode up to the rear of the homes, they’d face the cold steel of a dozen rifle barrels. And around front, the semicircle arrangement allowed a single shooter at the main house an almost unlimited field of fire to keep any intruders at bay.

Her husband, Isaac Turner, walked into the kitchen, pulling his suspenders over his shirt. “Biscuits ready?”

Her hands covered in flour as she mixed the dough in a bowl, Abigail said, “Do they look ready?”

“You don’t gotta bite my head off.”

“Why’re you asking if you can plainly see they aren’t ready?”

Isaac poured himself a cup of coffee. “I got work to do.”

“Work your butt up the ladder and roust the kids.”

“You wake up mad?” Isaac asked before taking a sip from his cup.

“Yes, and I’m likely to stay that way.”

“One more reason to get out of the house,” Isaac mumbled as he stepped out of the kitchen. Rather than crawling up the ladder to the sleeping loft, he shouted upstairs for the kids to get up.

Abigail pursed her lips and blew a stray strand of hair off her face “You tryin’ to wake up everybody on the ranch?”

“I expect they’s already up. What’s got you so riled up? Cookin’? I tole you to hire another cook.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you none to learn how to make biscuits.”

“Okay, I’ll make biscuits and you go traipsing after your pa all day.” Isaac had sandy blond hair and he and Abby were the same height. Wiry and lanky, he might weigh 140 pounds if he put on his coat and stood in the rain for an hour. Being about the same size as Abby, they had often argued about who would win if they ever got into a real fight.

A clatter arose from overhead as the three children climbed out of bed.

“Where are you going?” Abigail asked.

“Hunt down them rustlers that stole them two steers.”

“Does two less steers really matter?”

“It surely does to your pa.”

“If he says jump do you ask how high, too?”

“Don’t start, Abby.” Isaac pulled out a chair at the table and sat.

“Have the law take care of it.”

“What law? You know there ain’t no law round here except your pa.”

Raised voices interrupted their conversation when an argument erupted upstairs. She raised her eyes to the ceiling and shouted, “Hush up and get down here.” She turned back to her husband to say something else but was interrupted by footsteps pounding down the ladder. Their oldest daughter, thirteen-year-old Emma, appeared first. “Emma, you and your sister go gather the eggs,” Abigail said.

“Ugh,” Emma moaned. “Can I go to the outhouse first?”

“You can. But if you want to eat, I need the eggs.”

Emma grabbed the hand of her sister, seven-year-old Amelia, and dragged her outside as Abigail, using a spoon, dolloped the biscuit dough into an iron skillet and slid it into the oven. She pulled a large pan from the shelf overhead and started slicing bacon into it. She glanced over at Isaac. “What about the ranger that was through here a few days ago?”

“Charlie Simmons? Hell, he’s too lazy to wipe his own ass. Claims he’s lookin’ for rustlers but he ain’t.”

“Momma, Pa said a bad word,” ten-year-old Wesley said as he entered the kitchen, his hair looking like a bird’s nest.

Abigail wiped her hands on a towel and smoothed Wesley’s hair down. “Hush up. We’re having grown-up talk. Now go do your milkin’.”

Wesley groaned, grabbed the bucket, and headed outside.

“Why’re you all the sudden so concerned about us trailing after a couple of cattle rustlers?”

Abigail stirred the bacon around the pan. “Did I say I was concerned?”

“Why ask all them questions, then?”

“Because you’ll be gone who knows how long leaving me here to wrangle the kids.”

“Send ’em up to your mama’s for the day.”

“What makes you think she wants to wrestle our rascals? She’ll be swamped with Percy and Mary’s bunch once Percy rides off with you.”

“What’s wrong with Mary? She feelin’ poorly again?”

The bacon done, Abigail carried the pan over to the table and set it down. “What do you mean, ‘again’? She’s been feeling bad for months. Might not hurt for you to take a good look around once in a while.”

“Hell, I can’t keep up with my own family.”

“Thank you for makin’ my point. Anyway, Mary has something bad wrong with her. Says her eyes get blurry and she hurts all the time. Claims she’s so stiff sometimes she can hardly move.”

“Shoot, I’m stiff as a board after bein’ in the saddle all day, too,” Isaac said.

Abigail, on her way back to the kitchen, stopped midstride and glared at her husband. “Sometimes I wonder why I married you.”

The kids eventually returned with the requested items and Abby scrambled the eggs and carried the pan to the table and sat.

Eating was an act of warfare in their home, and as her family mowed through breakfast like it was the last meal they ever expected to see again, Abby nibbled the corner of a biscuit, waiting for them to finish so she could get on with her day.

Once her family had eaten everything in sight, Abigail added a fresh batch of biscuits to a basket, along with more bacon and scrambled eggs she’d hidden in the oven, and asked Emma to take the food over to Percy’s house. Then Abby dived into the cleanup and was in the middle of wiping out the cast-iron skillets when Isaac returned to the kitchen carrying his bedroll. Tossing it on the table, he grabbed his gun belt from the coatrack by the door, and strapped it on, eager to try out his newly purchased pistol. He pulled it from his holster and looked at it—again. The Colt Single Action Army revolver—the Peacemaker—was a new type of weapon and had just been released from the manufacturer earlier in the year. There was no more packing powder and ball into each of the pistol’s cylinders—with the Colt all Isaac had to do was drop in six .45 caliber metallic cartridges and he was ready to shoot.

“Why do you even bother with a pistol?” Abigail asked from the kitchen. “You can’t hit anything with it.”

Isaac frowned. “Can, too. Amos give me some pointers.”

“Blind leading the blind,” Abigail said. “If you want to learn how to shoot, you’d be better off talkin’ to Percy.”

“Why? ’Cause he rode with the Rangers for a spell? That don’t make him a crack shot.”

Abigail shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Angered by his wife’s pessimism, Isaac shoved a couple of boxes of ammunition into his saddlebag, slung it over his shoulder, grabbed his rifle and his bedroll, and walked to the front door. With his hand on the latch, he paused for moment, hoping his wife would at least offer parting words or give him a hug before he left. But after a few moments of silence and no movement on Abigail’s part, he pushed the door open and stepped out into the dawn. “Damn that woman,” he muttered as he walked toward the barn.

While saddling his horse, Isaac’s mind drifted repeatedly to his wife. Things hadn’t been good between them for a while now. They were cordial to each other—mostly—but a man had his needs and Abigail had been less than cooperative. Yes, the birth of Amelia had been hard for Abby, but that had been seven years ago. Since then, their bedroom encounters had been few and far between and Isaac didn’t know if Abby was afraid of getting pregnant again or if it was something more. He had even thought about broaching the subject with Abby’s sister, Rachel, yet for one reason or another hadn’t. Probably because he knew what his sister-in-law’s answer would be—Tie it in a knot and quit pestering your wife. Besides, he thought, the chances of the story getting back to Abby were high and if she found out Isaac was talking about their private business, he’d catch eternal hell. With no easy answers available, Isaac climbed aboard the now-saddled horse and shoved his rifle into the scabbard. With a cluck of his tongue and a touch of his spurs, he steered the six-year-old bay gelding out of the barn.

Emma had named the horse Blaze because of the slash of white on his forehead and not because of his speed. However, Blaze had a comfortable gait and was Isaac’s preferred choice for long rides. And with his stubborn father-in-law, a long ride was almost assured.

Percy, the oldest of the four Ridgeway siblings, felt conflicted as they worked to cut a few extra horses out of the ranch’s herd for the trip. Feeling guilty about leaving his wife, Mary, in such a terrible state, a part of him was looking forward to a day or two away from the house to clear his mind. The last few weeks had been extremely difficult, and the doctor was doing all he could, but it was clear to Percy that his wife’s condition was worsening. Physically, Mary no longer resembled the woman he had married and, the hardest part to accept, her once-active mind was dulled by an unending supply of laudanum that barely eased her pain.

Percy returned to the task at hand and spurred his gray mare into the horse herd to cut out a paint horse he enjoyed riding. Riding along beside the paint, he strung out a lasso with his rope and tossed it over the mare’s head, pulling her to a stop. Nudging the gray closer, he rubbed the paint’s neck and talked to her in a low, soothing voice. Most of those on the ranch thought Percy was crazy for choosing to ride mares, often citing their tendencies to be bad tempered and meaner than hell. But Percy found them companionable and gentle as long as they weren’t in heat. He led the paint mare over to the horse wrangler for the trip, Luis Garcia.

Luis was a short, compact Mexican man who had been born south of the border and had eventually migrated north. Percy thought he was one hell of a hand and Luis could ride anything on four legs. He shook his head as he grabbed the rope and said, “Wouldn’t hurt to pick out a gelding, Percy.”

Percy grinned and he suddenly realized that was the first time he’d felt a spark of happiness in a long while. “Always been a lady’s man, Luis.” He nodded at the paint. “That mare is as gentle as a kitten.”

“Might be, but kittens turn into cats and most are meaner than hell,” Luis said. “Some’d scratch your eyes out just for spite.”

Percy widened his eyes and pointed at his face. “Still got two good ones.” Percy laughed as he turned his horse. Tall at six-three, Percy had his father’s dark hair and his mother’s lean frame. Rangy and strong, his smooth and graceful movements often appeared effortless to others and he was smarter than most, allowing him to quickly adapt to any situation. With wide-set shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist, Percy disliked shaving and only accomplished the task every couple of weeks when he got tired of the stubble.

Deciding the two horses would be enough, he rode toward his father, who was sitting his big white gelding, Snowball, watching the men pick out their mounts. A big man needed a big horse, and Snowball was one of the largest saddle horses on the ranch, measuring over seventeen hands tall. Percy reined to a stop and said, “What happens if these rustlers turn out to be a couple of Comanches?”

Without turning, Cyrus said, “Don’t matter. A thief’s a thief.”

Percy, continually frustrated by his father’s unbending will, said, “You willing to start an Indian war over a couple of steers?”

Cyrus turned to look at his son. “What would you do? Just let ’em ride off with them cattle with no punishment? We do that and we won’t have any cattle left fore long.”

“I’m not sayin’ we do nothing. But hangin’ a couple of Comanches might not be too smart on our part. Might spark a shootin’ war.”

Cyrus turned and looked off to the west, toward the heart of what was still Comanche territory, a scant few miles away. “Injun war’s already a-brewin’ and it ain’t got nothin’ to do with cattle.” He turned back to Percy. “Besides, it ain’t Comanches. Wilcox claims the rustlers headed north, across the river. Might be Injuns, but it ain’t Comanche. Far as I know, ain’t many of ’em on the reservation.”

Percy sagged in the saddle a little. Moses Wilcox could track a gnat across a desert. And if he said the rustlers went north then they went north. And just about every time they’d ridden into Indian Territory bad things had happened. “So, we’re headed north?”

“Looks like,” Cyrus said. He pulled out his pouch of Bull Durham and began rolling a cigarette. As if reading Percy’s mind, he said, “Ain’t my favorite direction of travel, neither. But ain’t much we can do about it.” Cyrus licked the edge of the paper and ran his finger along the seam before putting the cigarette in his mouth. He pulled a match from his pocket, flicked the head with his thumbnail, and lit up. As the smoke curled out of his nostrils, he watched as the last of the hands rode in with their preferred mounts.

“Eli staying back?” Percy asked.

“Yep, as usual,” Cyrus said. “Boy ain’t got a lick of fight in ’im.” He took another drag from his cigarette and the smoke danced around his bearded mouth when he said, “I don’t know where I went wrong with that boy.” He shrugged and said, “Anyways, I hope you brought plenty of ammunition.” He spurred the big gelding forward without waiting for Percy’s reply.

Percy paused, mentally calculating how much ammo he had packed in his saddlebags. He had two boxes of. 44-40 cartridges for the new Winchester rifle and two boxes of .45s for the new Colt Peacemaker he bought recently to replace his older Colt Model 1861 Navy. Percy decided if they were going to need more ammunition than that they might ought to stay home.

Rachel Ferguson, the youngest of the Ridgeway siblings, sat at the table, sipping a cup of coffee as the cook cleaned up in the kitchen. This cook, an older Mexican woman named Consuelo Ruiz, had lasted longer than any of her predecessors and by a far margin, now coming up on her sixth year of cooking and cleaning for the five members of the Ferguson family. Consuelo was a mournful woman, and, in the beginning, Rachel had a small measure of sympathy for her situation—all five of Consuelo’s children had died before reaching adulthood—but time and the constant hardships had eroded even that.

That’s what life on the frontier was like, Rachel thought as she stared at the oily surface of the coffee in her cup. The day-after-day drudgery dashed the smallest of dreams, leaving Rachel feeling hollowed out. This was not the life she’d yearned to have. There were no grand galas or crowded society dinners where she and her husband, Amos, could rub elbows with those in the upper echelons of society. No, the closest thing the Fergusons got to a party were the Sunday potluck dinners her mother occasionally organized for the ranch hands and their families with a rare neighbor or two thrown into the mix. The same faces—the same stories that were told and retold until Rachel could recite most from memory.

There had been occasional moments of joy over the years, but Rachel’s enjoyment dimmed nearly to extinction with the death of their youngest daughter, Elizabeth, four years ago. Some kind of fever, the doctor had told them. Then the doctor had the gall to tell them they were lucky the disease hadn’t spread to other members of the family. Rachel hadn’t felt particularly lucky when they buried Liza in that deep, dark hole on that cloudy, cold day.

Rachel’s thoughts were interrupted when Amos stepped back inside the house. He grabbed his gun belt from a peg by the door and strapped it on. “I guess we’re heading out,” he said.

Rachel’s gaze drifted from the coffee cup to the scrapes and gouges on the table’s surface. “Okay.”

“Don’t know when we’ll be back,” Amos said as he stood by the door.

Rachel traced a deep scar on the tabletop with her finger. “Guess I’ll see you when I see you, then.” Out of the corner of her eye, she watched her husband as he shook his head and exited. Over the years, cracks had developed in their relationship, but Elizabeth’s death had irrevocably shattered the last remaining remnants of their marriage. Now they coexisted out of convenience and Rachel often wondered if she’d sold herself short by settling for Amos Ferguson just because he happened to pass through at a time when she was being urged to wed.

It’s not that her husband wasn’t handsome because he was—tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair and deep-set blue eyes—and he was a good father to their children. But their marriage had never come close to the type of relationship her parents enjoyed. Her mother and father often touched each other—a hand on an arm, an arm aro. . .