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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PATRICIA POTTER

  “Patricia Potter is a master storyteller, a powerful weaver of romantic tales.” —Mary Jo Putney, New York Times–bestselling author

  “One of the romance genre’s finest talents.” —Romantic Times

  “Patricia Potter will thrill lovers of the suspense genre as well as those who enjoy a good romance.” —Booklist

  “Potter proves herself a gifted writer as artisan, creating a rich fabric of strong characters whose wit and intellect will enthrall even as their adventures entertain.” —BookPage

  “When a historical romance [gets] the Potter treatment, the story line is pure action and excitement, and the characters are wonderful.” —BookBrowse

  “Potter has an expert ability to invest in fully realized characters and a strong sense of place without losing momentum in the details, making this novel a pure pleasure.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review of Beloved Warrior

  “[Potter] proves that she’s adept at penning both enthralling historicals and captivating contemporary novels.” —Booklist, starred review of Dancing with a Rogue

  Defiant

  Patricia Potter

  Prologue

  El Paso, 1876

  There was no uglier or sadder sound than the thud of dirt hitting a casket.

  Mary Jo Williams had heard it before. She’d buried a husband two years ago, and now she was burying a friend, Tyler Smith. No, more than a friend. Ty had proposed to her several times, but she had always insisted she would never again marry a Texas Ranger.

  Like her dead husband.

  The tears in her eyes threatened to spill, and she blinked them back defiantly. She wouldn’t cry, not in front of men who despised any sign of weakness. They were all here, Ty’s fellow Rangers, except for Morgan Davis, who had been in the gunfight with Ty in a cowtown called Harmony. Morgan’s girl had been wounded and he had stayed behind with her. Ty had been shot to death.

  At least one man was getting out of rangering alive, Mary Jo thought with bitter envy. Why hadn’t Ty?

  Feeling Jeffry’s hand tighten in hers, she looked down at her son. Only eleven years old and already he had seen too much death. He had campaigned for Ty to become his father, campaigned with the strategy and dedication of an army general. He had almost worn her down.

  Ira Langford, the captain of Ty’s Ranger company, spoke a few words at the graveside. Moving words, if you cared about honor and duty. Mary Jo used to care about those things, but now they were hollow words. What good was honor when you were so lonely you wanted to die, when grief nearly suffocated you every night and you awoke to emptiness? What good was duty when your son cried for a father who had always been gone? What about duty to the son?

  Ira moved to her side. “I’m so sorry, Mary Jo,” he said.

  She stared at him blankly.

  He looked oddly discomfited. “Can you come to my office?”

  Mary Jo looked at Jeffry, who was bravely trying to hold back his tears. Rangers didn’t cry. Mary Jo knew he was telling himself that. Over and over again.

  “In a little while,” she said stiffly. She hated Ira at the moment. She hated him for what he was, for sending men away to die.

  He nodded. “Whenever you can.” He hesitated. “God, Mary Jo, I’m sorry.”

  She bit her lip. “I’ll be leaving here, you know. As soon as possible.” She didn’t know when that would be. She had so little money. Since her husband, Jeff, died, she had stayed on at the Ranger post earning a few dollars as cook and laundress and even tailor at times.

  “I don’t want to go,” Jeffry said, and Mary Jo’s heart nearly broke. He wanted to be a Ranger too, just like his father. Just like Ty and Morgan and so many others.

  She would die first! She hadn’t given birth to him to see him killed in a dusty street someplace. She had to get him away from here.

  Ira’s mouth worked. It was as much emotion as she’d ever seen from him. But he only nodded again, as taciturn as the men he led.

  She stood at the grave as the others left, respectfully giving her a moment with the man they all knew had wanted to marry her.

  She had brought a flower. It was not much of one. There had been a drought, and her gently nurtured flowers were almost all gone. The yellow burned stems seemed to symbolize her own life.

  With Jeffry’s hand still in hers, she stepped up. “Goodbye and Godspeed,” she whispered. She tossed down the flower.

  Jeffry took his hand from hers to wipe away his tears angrily. She put her arm around his shoulder and side by side they walked back to their small, bare, and ever so lonely house.

  Two hours later, Mary Jo sat in Ira’s office. Jeffry was at home, taking care of a new puppy one of the Rangers had brought him. Mary Jo had silently blessed the gift. Jeffry had been wanting a dog for a long time, and when the pup, which looked like a half-wolf, had greeted Jeffry with enthusiasm and a wet tongue, Mary Jo had taken one look at the boy’s eager face and given her consent.

  Jeffry had been so silent since learning of Ty’s death, of Morgan Davis’s decision to leave the Rangers and head north to Wyoming. He had worshiped both men. Now he had something special to love, and that was important. Mary Jo had had Jeff, and then Ty, and she swore to herself that was enough. She would never love a man again. She couldn’t take another loss, not and survive.

  “Mary Jo,” Ira began slowly as he fingered an envelope. “Ty left this for you, in case—” He stopped, then just handed it to her.

  Mary Jo looked at the envelope as if it were a rattlesnake. He’d known he would die.

  Ira cleared his throat. “He’d already given me his resignation,” he said, then commanded, “Open it.”

  Mary Jo finally managed to open the envelope. A legal-looking paper and a wad of bills fell into her lap. Woodenly, she picked up the paper and looked at it.

  A deed. For a ranch. Five hundred acres in a place called Cimarron Valley in Colorado. And two thousand dollars.

  She looked up at Ira. His blue eyes, usually so cold and watchful, were sympathetic. “An inheritance he received several months ago,” he said. “He purchased the ranch just last week. That’s where he had gone on his leave.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mary Jo finally managed to say.

  “He was fighting his own battle with himself,” Ira said. “He wasn’t sure whether he could leave the Rangers or not. He had to be sure in his own mind. I think he made that decision the night before we left for Harmony. He was going to tell you when he returned. He knew how you felt about marrying another Ranger.”

  Mary Jo closed her eyes. She knew how much the decision had cost Ty.

  “He loved you, Mary Jo,” Ira said. “Very much. He left this to you.”

  “To me?”

  He nodded. “You can sell it, move East.”

  “I don’t want it. I can’t accept—” She felt terribly unworthy. She had turned down Ty’s proposals repeatedly because he had been a Ranger. How could she accept this now?

  “It’s what he wanted,” Ira said. “Don’t fail him now. He wanted you and Jeffry to have some security.”

  Mary Jo rose and went to the door, opening it. She looked at the empty, burned plains, at the desolate, barren buildings. Two men were at the corral, saddling horses, their six-shooters strapped tightly against their thighs and rifles leaning against the fence. Dangerous men. Even cold-blooded men. God knew where they were going, who they were going after.

  She thought of Jeffry, so young and so in awe of the Rangers. “I want to be a Ranger like my pa,” he to
ld her constantly. And she knew she would take Ty’s gift. She couldn’t let what happened to him happen to her son.

  She turned back to Ira. “We’ll leave Friday.”

  1

  Cimarron Valley, Colorado, 1877

  Wade Foster wanted to die, but the devil was being damned unaccommodating.

  Wade decided a lifetime ago that living was a worse hell than any Old Scratch could devise. He should have died several times over if there had been any justice in the world. He’d courted death often enough, but then some demon always jerked him back from the final descent.

  He stifled a groan now as he looked up at the sun. He might actually achieve his wish this day.

  If only dying weren’t so painful!

  He had two bullet holes in him, one in his leg, one in his gun arm. The leg wound was no problem, except it bled whenever he moved, but his arm was a damnable mess. The bullet had ripped nerves and at least part of the bone. The arm was pure agony and hung uselessly at his side.

  Not that it mattered. He was done for. He had no place to go, his leg wouldn’t hold him, and he seemed to be in the middle of nowhere with his horse dead.

  The pinto lay not far from him. It had been hit in the ambush, and Wade had used his last bullet to give it a merciful death. He’d loved that horse.

  But everything else he loved was gone, too. He was used to loss. At least he’d thought he was. He thought he’d become immune to the terrible grief that threatened to swallow him whole.

  This last act of his, this final vengeance, should have dulled that piercing, lacerating pain inside that never ceased, not even in his sleep—but it hadn’t. Instead victory, if it could be called that, had made the pain sharper because now he had nothing to replace it: no one to hate, no one left alive to focus his rage upon. Only himself.

  He closed his eyes, wishing numbness would take over, would wash away the hurt from his body and from his soul. Why did it take so long to die, for the blood to seep from his body, for the dehydration to drain what life lingered? If he had the guts, he’d use the knife to speed the process, but he would probably just mess that up, too.

  He’d managed to ruin everything good in his life, from the time he’d stayed too long in town, sneaking a glass of whiskey at fifteen while his family was being slaughtered, to ten months ago when once more he’d indulged a whim while his Ute wife and son were killed. He’d avenged both acts. The last murderer of his wife lay dead just over a knoll.

  Wade should feel some measure of satisfaction. But he felt so empty. He had nothing to look forward to, not here on earth, and certainly not where he was headed.

  He moved slightly, and the pain in his arm was blinding. It crawled up his shoulder, the way fire consumed dry tinder. Finally, he was swallowed in its fury and the bright scarlet of pain faded into the blackness of oblivion.

  “Jake!” Jeff heard the panic in his own voice and tried to control it.

  But the wind was blowing hard now, clouds were frothing above, and he’d learned enough about the lightning-quick changes of weather to worry.

  “Jake,” Jeff called again. The dog had bounded after a rabbit and had been gone an hour. He swallowed hard. There had been reports of a big cat in the area, lured down from the mountain by livestock, and fear tugged at him. He couldn’t lose Jake.

  “Jake,” he called again, and this time was rewarded by a series of barks. They were different from the excited, joyful sounds that usually poured from Jake. More urgent.

  Jeff knew he shouldn’t be this far from the ranch, not alone, not without his rifle. But then his ma too often treated him like a baby. He was twelve. Old enough to take care of himself, old enough to be called Jeff, like his dad.

  The barking became more frantic, and Jeff’s fast stride became a lope as he headed toward the sound. That inner voice kept warning him, but he disregarded it. Jake might be in trouble. A trap, maybe. There were still old traps around here, left behind by mountain men who had moved on long ago.

  He reached the top of a hill and looked down. Jake was circling something on the ground, pausing now and then to bark again. Jeff wished he had his rifle, but he wasn’t going to retreat now. His pa wouldn’t have been afraid. His pa hadn’t been afraid of anything.

  Jeff approached cautiously. Jake looked at him expectantly, ran over to him and then back to his prize.

  A body! Jeff hesitated, then took several steps forward. A man was lying on the ground, his clothes covered with dried and congealing blood. Jake sat down, put a paw on the man’s shirt as if to declare ownership.

  Jeff took another step forward. The man looked dead, but then Jeff saw a slight rise of the chest. He stooped down, touched the stranger’s shoulder.

  “Mister?”

  No response came, not even a groan.

  Jeff touched the skin. It was clammy. He looked toward the darkening sky and saw buzzards gathering above. His gaze searched the landscape, then he saw the still body of a horse not far away. He had to get help.

  “You stay here, Jake,” he ordered, not knowing whether the animal would obey. Though the dog tried hard to please, he, like Jeff, often ignored rules and instructions.

  Jake seemed content to stay next to his precious find. Jeff hoped he would stay that way, keep the buzzards away from the stranger.

  Jeff started running. Ma would know what to do. She always did.

  Mary Jo looked up at the threatening sky and wondered whether she should saddle her mare and go looking for Jeff. She hated to do it. He had reached that age when he still needed mothering but resented it.

  She didn’t want to be too protective, but she had lost too much during the past few years to surrender her fears.

  She looked toward the mountains. She loved this valley. Cimarron Creek flowed clear and fast several hundred yards from the ranch house, and nearby the Black Mountains rose in jagged splendor. She had been so beguiled by this place, she abandoned her plans to sell the ranch and take Jeff East.

  It had also been a compromise with her son. He had fought bitterly against leaving the Ranger station, even more bitterly at the thought of going East. He still wanted to be a Ranger, and though he’d had to leave El Paso, at least he remained in the West and still had his horse and dog.

  Mary Jo prayed every day she hadn’t made a mistake, that she wasn’t risking something more important than this piece of heaven. But it was such a good place to rear a son, open and free. She hoped Jeff would so love this land that he would forget his oft-stated desire to be a Texas Ranger.

  Ranching was hard work. But she was used to hard work. She had worked from sunup to sundown at the Ranger station, but that had been for someone else. Now she worked just as hard, but this was for herself and Jeff, and she saw results daily. The garden was flourishing, and so was the little livestock they had.

  The one problem had been hired help. The wealth of this land lay in cattle, and she needed hands to develop and run a herd. There were no fences, only open range, and a woman and boy couldn’t handle the branding alone. She’d found few men willing to work for a woman who were worth their salt.

  She looked toward the hill where she’d last seen Jeff and Jake playing. He had helped her finish mending fences around the chicken yard, and then she’d given him leave to explore with Jake while she cooked dinner.

  But he had been out of sight now for a long while, and the sky overhead looked ominous. She was just about to saddle her mare, Fancy, when she saw Jeff running toward her, stumbling as he came.

  She knew instantly something was wrong. Jake wasn’t with him, and the two were constant companions.

  She ran out to meet him, catching him as he started to fall. Winded, he couldn’t speak for a moment, then stuttered, “A stranger … hurt real bad … about a mile … north of the old road.”

  “How bad?”

  “He’s unconscious.” Jeff was regaining his breath. “His shirt and trousers are real bloody, Ma. He needs help bad. There’s a dead horse nearby, and buzzar
ds are circling.”

  Mary Jo didn’t hesitate any longer. She couldn’t leave someone to die, and she had a rudimentary knowledge of medicine. She’d doctored her share of Rangers over the twelve years she’d been married to one and the two years after her husband’s death. She’d worry later about who the stranger was.

  “I’ll get the buckboard,” she said. “You get our rifles, and that box of bandages and medicines. And some water.”

  Jeff nodded and dashed inside as Mary Jo went to the barn. She led two of their four horses outside and hitched them to the buckboard. Jeff joined her, placing the medicine box inside the wagon bed along with a canteen and one of the rifles. He held the other rifle in his hands.

  “Where’s Jake?” she asked.

  “He’s with the stranger,” Jeff said proudly. “He found him.”

  “This man? You’ve never seen him before?”

  Jeff shook his head.

  A shiver snaked down Mary Jo’s back. She wished there was a man around, that she had not let the last one go when she’d found him drinking in the barn. The fact was, no one else was around to help. The next ranch was hours away, and the only decent doctor was over a hundred miles away.

  Her lips pressed together. Maybe Jeff was exaggerating the extent of the man’s wounds. She felt a chill, a blast of suddenly cold wind, and she looked up. The sky was almost black. The storm wasn’t far away. She urged the horses to a faster pace, looking frequently at Jeff for guidance. He gestured at a turnoff, and the wagon creaked and jostled in protest as she drove away from the road.

  Mary Jo saw the buzzards wheeling in the sky, and she snapped the reins. She heard Jake’s anxious bark, then Jeff’s cry, “Over there.”

  She saw the horse, then the man several hundred feet away. The animal was obviously dead, and she gave it scant notice. She pulled up the wagon next to the still form on the ground and jumped down, followed by Jeff. Jake was running back and forth excitedly.

  “Stay near the buckboard,” she told Jeff as she leaned toward the back and retrieved the canteen.