The Ranger's Mail Order Bride

Wives of the Wild West

Helen’s arms shot out instinctively as the horse lurched beneath her, her fingers finding the rough fabric of Norris’s coat before sliding around his waist. She felt rather than heard the low noise he made, not quite approval, but acknowledgment at least, as her body was forced flush against his back by the horse’s movement. The heat radiating through his clothes was startling, as was the solidity of him, no give, no mercy, just relentless forward motion.

Without conscious thought, Helen found herself pressing her cheek against the stiff leather between his shoulder blades, her face coming to rest where the duster’s seam made a shallow valley. The steady pulse of his heart beat against her temple, slow, rhythmic, utterly unfazed by how the canyon walls were tightening around them like the rifled barrel of a Sharps rifle. That unhurried cadence worked on her nerves like whiskey, lulling her into a state that bordered perilously close to feeling safe. His scent, gunpowder embedded deep in the leather, the musky tang of horse sweat, tethered her to the present moment, to the undeniable vitality of this man who smelled of violence and hard living.

Her lips moved against the sweat-stiffened collar of his shirt before she realized she’d spoken: “I could ride with you.” The admission startled her more than it seemed to affect him. Norris didn’t tense beneath her touch, didn’t twist in the saddle to stare. He simply kept his gaze fixed on the treacherous trail ahead as his surefooted mare negotiated the loose scree sliding beneath them, each careful step sending small avalanches of pebbles clattering down the slope. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the same clipped efficiency as a cocked hammer: “Not my line.” The horse’s ears twitched at the curtness in his tone, swiveling backward momentarily before focusing forward again. “Rangers don’t take passengers.”

Helen’s grip tightened in the damp wool of his duster, her fingers finding purchase in the waterlogged fabric. “You took me,” she countered, the words coming out more accusation than statement.

His reply, when it came, carried the weight of a man who’d buried too many companions: “Takin’ ain’t keepin’.” The words hung between them like the canyon’s morning mist, ephemeral, inevitable, already dissolving in the rising heat.

Her voice came out hoarse from disuse when she finally broke the silence: “Then why’d you pull me out of that creek?”

Norris’s hands tightened momentarily on the worn leather reins before relaxing again. His reply struck the air between them like flint on steel, sparks without warmth. “Couldn’t leave a white woman to them.”

Helen felt her own fingers curl inward until the nails pressed white crescents into her palms through the scratchy wool fabric. “So you’ll dump me in some dirt-street town instead?”

The horse’s misstep came suddenly as its hoof caught on a half-buried root; the impact drove her kneecaps hard into Norris’s ribcage. He didn’t so much as grunt. “Find yourself a husband there,” he said flatly. The canyon’s acoustics flung his words back at her, stripped of inflection like words carved into a tombstone. “Preacher’s got a board full of bounties for Comanche scalps. Men will be thirsty enough to marry anything in a skirt.”

The mental picture formed instantly and violently, some red-faced cattleman with liquor on his breath grabbing at her bodice with the same single-minded hunger Silas had shown that last terrible night. “I’m not livestock,” she spat through clenched teeth.

“You’re worse,” he corrected tonelessly. “You’re a woman alone with a price on your hair and a story that don’t add up.” His calloused thumb stroked the Colt’s hammer once, almost absently. “Town’s survival. Fort Worth’s suicide.”