The Stranger. Elizabeth Lane

to kill them both, you’ll have to shoot me first!”

      Noah swore and spat in the dirt. “Damnfool boy! All right, come on, then. We’ll lock her in the springhouse and make tracks. By the time she gets out we’ll be long gone.”

      “No. I’m staying here.”

      “In a mule’s ass you are!”

      “She’s hurt and needs help. I can keep her quiet long enough for you to get a head start and—”

      Caleb gasped as he glimpsed Noah’s raised arm. Then the butt of the pistol cracked against his skull and the world crashed into blackness.

      It was the last thing he would remember about that day.

       Chapter One

       July 1881

      On the crest of a long ridge, where the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains fell to high desert, Caleb McCurdy paused to rest his horse. Below him a sea of summer-gold grama grass, dotted with clumps of sage and juniper, rippled over the foothills. Willow and cottonwood formed a winding ribbon of green along the creek that meandered into the valley. If he followed that ribbon, Caleb knew it would lead him to an adobe ranch house with sheds and a corral out front and a springhouse just beyond the back door.

      He had never wanted to come here again. But the memory of the place had haunted him for the five years he’d spent in Yuma Territorial Prison. Now that he was free, Caleb knew he had to return and face what had happened here. He had to find out what had become of Laura.

      His being arrested had nothing to do with the crime against the Shaftons. It was later that same spring that his brothers had gone into a Tombstone bank and left him outside to watch the horses. By the time Caleb had realized there was a robbery in progress the deputy was already snapping the handcuffs around his wrists. Zeke and Noah had made their getaway out the back of the bank. That was the last he’d seen of them.

      Caleb had been tried as an accessory and sentenced to six years behind bars. The torrid Arizona nights had given him plenty of time to ponder his mistakes. Staying with Noah and Zeke had been his worst choice. They were family, he’d rationalized at the time. Besides, it wasn’t as if Noah had killed Mark Shafton in cold blood. Noah had fired to save his brothers. As for Zeke, he couldn’t help being the creature he was. For all his flaws, he, too, was blood kin.

      Caleb’s fist tightened around the saddle horn. Lord, what a fool he’d been, tagging along with his brothers like a puppy trotting after a pair of wolves. He should have known his trust would lead him straight down the road to hell.

      If the tragedy at the Shafton Ranch had cracked the shell of Caleb’s innocence, the weeks that followed had shattered it. Liquor, gambling, women—he’d sampled them all. He would have done anything to blot out the sight of Laura’s bloodied face and the sound of her screams.

      His brothers had roared their approval and declared him a man. Then they’d staked him out like bait in front of that Tombstone bank to draw the lawmen while they got away with the loot.

      Good behavior had gotten him out of prison a year early. But the hot hell of Yuma had toughened, aged and embittered him. He was twenty-two years old. He felt fifty.

      Nudging the sturdy bay to a walk, he wound his way down the brushy slope. The day he’d walked out of prison, he’d taken work with a road-building crew that hired ex-convicts. Two months of backbreaking labor had earned him enough to buy a horse, a beat-up saddle, a gun and knife, a blanket and a change of clothes. With twenty dollars in his pocket, he’d headed east, toward New Mexico and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Now, on this day of blinding beauty, the long ride was coming to an end.

      The afternoon sky was a searing turquoise blue. Where the horse walked, clouds of white butterflies floated out of the grass. A red-tailed hawk circled against the sun.

      Caleb’s throat tightened as he watched it. How many days like this had he missed, locked away in that sweltering heap of rock and adobe where the cells were ovens and the earth was hot enough to blister bare skin? How many days without fresh air, clean water and decent human companionship?

      Annoyed with himself, he shoved the question aside. Self-pity was a waste. Rotten luck was a fact of life, and he’d long since learned not to whine when he got whipped. Besides, Caleb reminded himself, his time in prison hadn’t all been wasted. He’d made one friend there, a dying man who’d helped him turn his life around. If his beaten soul held a glimmer of hope and truth, he owed it to Ebenezer Stokes.

      Maybe that was why he’d come back here. For Ebenezer—and for Laura.

      Without willing it, he began to whistle a soulful melody—a song whose words had long since burned themselves into his brain.

       Eyes like the morning star, cheeks like the rose.

       Laura was a pretty girl, everybody knows.

       Weep, oh, you little rains, wail, winds, wail…

      Those cursed lyrics hadn’t left him alone in five long years. They had tormented his days and nights, conjuring up the image of Laura as he’d last seen her, slumped over her husband’s body with blood streaming down the side of her face. Maybe after today that image would finally begin to fade.

      Stopping at the creek, he watered his horse, splashed his face and slicked back his sweaty hair. The place he’d known as the Shafton Ranch couldn’t be more than a couple of miles downstream, he calculated. What would he find there? Strangers, most likely. Noah had sworn that he’d left Laura alive. But even if that were true, Caleb couldn’t imagine her remaining alone on the ranch. The best he could hope for was that she’d sold out and moved on, and that someone would know where she’d gone.

      If the worst had happened, maybe he could at least beg forgiveness at her grave.

      The creek was overgrown with brush and willows. Moving back into the open, he followed the tangled border out of the foothills and onto the grassy flatland. His gut clenched as he spotted the ranch in the distance. The memories that swept over him were so black and bitter that he was tempted to turn the horse and gallop off in a different direction. Setting his teeth, he forced himself to keep moving ahead.

      He could see the gate now, and the corral where he and his brothers had tied their mounts while they ate the meal Laura had prepared. Mark Shafton’s dam was still intact, as was the springhouse, spared over the years from the danger of flooding. But the whole place had a forlorn look to it. The windmill was missing two slats and the corral gate hung crooked on one broken hinge. Two dun horses and a milk cow drowsed in the corral.

      The small adobe house was closed and quiet. The only sign of human life about the place was the batch of washing that fluttered from the clothesline in the side yard. Caleb rode in through the gate, dismounted and looped the bay’s reins over the corral fence. He could see now that the clothes on the line consisted of little shirts and overalls, stockings, underwear and nightgowns. He could see the swing hanging from the limb of the big cottonwood that shaded the springhouse. Caleb didn’t want to think about the springhouse and what had happened there. But the idea of children living here, running and playing in the bright sunlight gave a small lift to his spirits.

      Taking a deep breath, he strode up the path, crossed the shaded porch and rapped lightly on the door.

      “Go into your bedroom, Robbie,” Laura whispered to her son. “Latch the door. Don’t open it until I knock three times and say the password.”

      Robbie, who’d been headed outside to play, obeyed without question. He knew better than to argue with his mother when a stranger came to the house.

      Laura waited until she heard the metallic click of the latch. Only then did she take the double-barreled shotgun from its rack above the bookshelf and thumb back both hammers.

      The rap on the door came again, more insistently this time. Laura’s heart, already racing, broke into a gallop. “Who’s there?” she