Rocky Mountain Man. Jillian Hart

It was pleasant on Duncan’s face as he walked through the steel gate in the twelve-foot-high stone walls and listened to it clatter closed behind him.

      Locking him out. Not in.

      I’m free. Duncan found that he could not take a step. The sky stretched out in a brilliant celebration of the coming twilight before him. Such beauty, his eyes had not seen, for the prisoners were marched east at the workday’s end, to the food hall and cells beyond.

      Whispers of his identity began to stir within him. Places he’d kept hidden and protected behind walls of steel. He took pleasure in watching an eager owl, spotted white on soft down of brown, glide through the shadows to roost on the top branches of a lodgepole pine. No wind stirred the drying grasses that fringed wagon ruts in the road.

      The land seemed to be waiting, holding itself still, and like the owl, he waited. For what, he did not know. An eternity had passed since he’d been able to do as he pleased and go where he chose. For the first time in a decade he did not have to move, not until he wanted to. He could follow the road through the upslope of the rolling hill or take off through the fields or climb into the tree. Whatever he wanted, if he had a mind to.

      He was free. Truly free. Gratitude stung his eyes. His throat thickened so he could not swallow. He looked behind him to make sure it was still real. Sure enough, the locked gate reflected the bold fire left from the setting sun. A guard in the tower overhead was watching with a rifle leaning against his shoulder. There was no mistaking the message in the man’s gaze—move along.

      Duncan did. He followed the road, for it would lead through mountains and valleys and towns. It would lead him home.

      As the last light bled from the sky and stained the faces of the great mountains so it looked as if they were crying tears, Duncan ambled past the owl in the tree. He lifted his tired feet and walked until the prison was nothing more than a small glint of light in the distance. He did not stop until there was no sign of it at all. Until that hellish place was good and truly behind him.

      Only then did he kneel and untie the cheap shoes the prison had presented him with. The stiff new clothes rustled and tugged uncomfortably at his skin, the garments courtesy of the Montana territory. How generous. Bitterness welled up, draining his spirit and darkening the twilight. Stars winked to life as he cupped his hands as he knelt beside a small creek and let the coolness trickle over his skin.

      The gurgling sound of the rushing water made his vision blur and the thickness in his throat grow worse. He’d never noticed before, but the music from a creek was a beautiful sound. He filled his palm with the fresh goodness and sipped.

      He swore he’d never tasted anything more delicious. The clear, clean water wet his tongue, trickled down his throat and refreshed him. It had been too long since he’d tasted such water. While he drank his fill, he considered the grove surrounding him. Pines stretched upward, their sparse limbs and long, fine needles casting just enough cover from view of the road, although he’d encountered no other late-night traveler.

      By the looks of things, he was not the only creature to visit the creek. In the damp yellow-brown clay, he recognized the small clefted tracks of deer and antelope and the larger elk, and the wide pads with claw marks of the great black bear. That told him fishing was good here. Yes, it would be a fine place to spend the night.

      As he had not done since he was twenty-one, he chose a slim pine branch and broke it to use as a spear. He sharpened it well against the useful edge of a granite rock and chose a quiet place to wait, in an eddy where the creek widened before it whispered down an incline.

      His eyes grew accustomed to the night as the last twilight shadows vanished. The pale, luminous darkness was like an old friend. He stirred the quiet water slowly, startling the resting fish. He speared a ten-inch summer trout on the first try.

      Gratitude. It filled him like the slow, sweet scents of the night. It brought him hope as he watched the stars flicker to life between the coming clouds and the reach of the silent pines. Rain scented the night breeze, while Duncan cleaned the fish, built a fire and gathered wild onions and lemon grass greens for seasoning, as his grandfather had taught him.

      While the fish roasted above an open flame, he made a shelter for the night. By the time raindrops stirred the pine needles overhead, Duncan turned the trout on the spit until it was done. Rain sang with the wind’s moaning accompaniment to tap a rhythm against the earth, while, beneath the thickest of the spreading pine boughs, he remained dry as he ate. The moist, tender meat tasted so good, his mouth ached with the flavors of the seasoned trout. Nothing beat wild lemon grass, his ma used to say.

      Ma. I get to see you again. His chest filled with the old grief he’d locked away, for he hadn’t seen her since his sentencing. He allowed himself to remember, to pull out the image of that sad time and look at it. It had been a dark day, for he’d been awaiting transport from Dewey to the territorial prison, and his mother had come to see him.

      A regal, proud woman, she’d worn a calico dress, her long dark braids coiled and hidden beneath the matching sunbonnet. No one could ever mistake her for being just a farmer’s wife. She was a warrior’s daughter. Her dark almond eyes, her delicate bronze face, her voice low and sonorous, spoke of strength.

      She’d come to comfort him. She’d come to vow she would prove his innocence at any cost.

      Through the bars of steel caging him in, he’d seen at once the future. His mother risking all the good that had finally come into her life on the impossible. No jury was going to believe him, for he was a half-breed, and the woman accusing him was the prettiest daughter of the finest family in the county.

      The young lady was lying—he’d never touched her—but the chances of proving that…well, there was no way to prove it absolutely. Folks believed what they wanted to, and it was easier to see him as a rapist and a violent felon than to find a seemingly perfect lady guilty of perjury. A daughter of a judge didn’t lie.

      He’d wanted to save his mother endless heartache. She’d had a happy life and she should not risk it. He’d done the right thing in telling her to leave and to never look back. To return to her house and her husband and tend her garden and raise her horses and live her days in happiness. To forget she had a son. For he’d been all but as good as dead.

      After the first day laboring in the brutal winter cold, he’d realized that he’d told his mother the truth. The young man he’d been, the boy she’d raised, was dead. Only a man as hard and fierce as a Montana blizzard could survive. Only a man without heart or soul would last long in endless labor and brutal conditions. He was no longer Duncan Hennessey, Standing Tall, son of Summer Rose, grandson of Gray Wolf.

      He stepped out from under the shelter. But as he lifted his face to the rain and let the soothing coolness wash the day’s grime from his skin, Duncan felt alive. He shucked off the government-issue trousers and button-up shirt, scratchy and rough with cheap starch, and the creek water rushed over his toes. The rain washed over him. And he dared to hope that maybe a part of that young man he used to be had survived.

      Lightning burned through the angry clouds. He let thunder crash through him. The years of despair and defeat sluiced away and he lifted his arms to the sky, welcoming the deluge as it pounded over him. Hope winged up within him.

      He was Duncan Hennessey, a free man, and he was going home. After what was behind him, what lay ahead could only be better. He had family waiting for him. A life to return to. A future to build. Joy lifted him up like the steam from the warm and wet earth.

      Joy, he marveled at the emotion. From this moment on, what despair could there be for a man who had his life, his family and his hope returned to him?

      He could not know that what lay ahead would be worse than the cruel years in prison.

      Far worse.

      Chapter One

       Bluebonnet County, 1884

      The ancient evergreens grew tall and thick, their wide limbs stretching overhead to block out the deep beautiful blue of the Montana sky.

      Betsy