The Horseman. Jillian Hart

      The night breeze was blessedly cold and as welcome as a wish come true. Katelyn sucked in the cool scent of winter and held it deep in her lungs before she tugged her quilted housecoat from the closet and pulled it on over her nightgown.

      It was the darkness and not the starlight that drew her as she climbed through the window. The bitterness of her parent’s voices dulled to a mumble, their words becoming indistinguishable and then nothing at all as her feet hit the ground beneath her bedroom window.

      She hated the weakness that shivered like water through her limbs. The weakness that made her feet heavy as she shuffled through the dormant rose garden. The shrubs were bundled in cloth with straw tucked around their shadowed bases. Hibernating. Envious, she kept on going.

      The last of the fallen leaves crunched beneath her slippers as she ambled toward the open prairie. Pain sliced from her stomach down to her knee with each step. The doctor had said it would take a long while to heal. She’d lost a dangerous amount of blood during the birth and after.

      She limped across the yard, the grass crisp and dead beneath her slippers. She could feel the night around her, somehow alive and magical, as if the moonlight laid down a path of silver for her feet and the white ice of the stars glittered like hope in the velvet sky.

      The last time she’d felt hopeful was for the one moment in her bleak marriage when she’d first felt her baby quicken in her womb, that faint, incredible flutter of new life. Gone.

      Her hands covered her stomach, empty and hollow. She should have died with the child, she thought, turning her back on the moon and stars, closing her eyes so hard the tears of sorrow could not escape. She was dead in all the ways that counted.

      It did not matter what her mother and stepfather decided to do with her. Whatever situation they would find could not be worse than this pain she was in. A pain so deep it was a perfect darkness, like a night without moon or stars or end.

      She heard him before she felt the change in the air, like the whisper of an archangel, then she heard the booming crack of thunder so loud it shook the despair from the night. The drumming crashed through the silent yard growing closer. It echoed along the eaves of the house and the long row of stables and outbuildings.

      A high, sharp neigh trumpeted a warning an instant before the black shadow galloped into sight, front hooves pawing the air as he reared into the sky, nostrils flaring, ears pinned back, fury in his cry. The sight of him lured Katelyn closer, despite the pain of each step.

      She could feel the wild rage of the stallion, the untamed power of him as he called out again, a warning neigh that pierced her ears like a bugle’s call to battle. She hugged the flat board rail of the paddock fence and watched, spellbound, as the magnificent creature leaped a six-foot-high fence in a single bound.

      He’s magnificent. She held her breath as he landed, skimming the ground. He flew with effortless grace toward the far stables. The night slowly disguised him until there was only the beat of his hooves on the frozen earth.

      The door to the bunkhouse slammed open and the sharp smack of wood striking wood shot through the yard like a gunshot. Light spilled into the darkness from the open doorway.

      “What in the blazes?” a man’s gruff voice asked in confusion.

      “It’s the devil, he’s back.” Old Pete, one of the longtime ranch hands, answered as he shoved his way through the door. “I know how to handle this one. Stand out of my way.”

      A metallic rasping resounded in the dark. The sound of a rifle being cocked.

      No! Katelyn watched in horror as the shorter, stockier man lifted the gun. Horror washed over her, launching her forward onto the bottom rail of the fence. She had to stop him—

      A shot rang out, piercing the night. She clung to the top rail, helpless to do anything more than watch as the stallion neighed fiercely. He lived.

      Relief left her dizzy. She’d had enough tragedy. She’d seen enough harm.

      “Are you crazy?” a man’s voice boomed like winter thunder, deep and confident and angry. In the lit doorway across the row of paddocks, the strange man held the rifle by the barrel, as if he’d ripped it out of the old ranch hand’s grip. “You could have killed the beast.”

      “That was the notion. He killed my only son last year, and I swore an oath on my boy’s grave that if that bastard dared to come back to these plains, I’d shoot him dead.”

      “Get back to your bottle, old man.” The stranger jerked on the back part of the gun and the rattle of bullets clinked into his palm. “No one harms an animal as long as I’m here. Is that understood?”

      “You wranglers come and go and think you know everything, but you’ll see that I’m right. The only way to handle a beast like that is with a bullet.” The old man shook his fist, as if in warning, or as if casting a curse, and then hobbled through the lit doorway and into the shadows of the bunkhouse.

      The man was alone in the yard, standing with his shoulders broad, feet planted and the rifle in hand.

      A dangerous man. Fear caught in her chest, watery and weak. Tonight, he’d made the choice of protecting the stallion.

      The old man had called him a wrangler. He must be the new horseman her stepfather had hired some time back. Katelyn had overheard him discussing it more than once. He was a drifter by the sound of it, a man said to have been everywhere, done everything and have a rare touch with horses. It was rumored he had Indian blood in his veins.

      The wind shifted. The shadows deepened. Katelyn felt the horseman’s gaze shift to her and focus with the same threat as if he’d loaded the rifle and aimed it straight at her heart. The hair prickled on the back of her neck. Her flesh rose in goose bumps as the night expanded around her.

      The stars seemed to snuff out one by one until there was only the two of them. The powerful, intimidating man with a rifle and her, in her housecoat and slippers. If he was a dangerous man, she was alone with him. Perhaps that wasn’t the wisest course. She could simply turn around and scurry back the way she’d come.

      She took a step back, knees weak. Scurrying wasn’t as simple as she first thought. The pain was worse, knifed down her legs in fine, cold slices. Maybe she’d stand here and rest up before heading in.

      The man was staring at her. He looked like trouble. Although she could not see his face, there was something about him. Something raw and mighty, as if he were made of iron and not flesh and blood.

      He stood in the faint shadows. The light gilded the broad strength of him, but his face remained in darkness.

      She did not doubt his would be a hard face, one weathered by time and sun and violence. But why would such a man save a wild animal?

      The stallion was calling again, pawing at the closest stable. He bugled a sharp protest. What was he doing? Then a gentle nicker answered from inside the stable.

      The stallion lifted his head high and arched his proud neck. As if showing off for the mare, he pranced the length of the paddock. The fading starlight worshiped him, glinting like precious silver dust on the graceful line of his back and shoulders. A dream come true.

      No man was a dream. Disenchanted, Katelyn turned away. Her uneven steps crackled through the frozen grasses loudly enough to pinpoint her location. The night silenced—even the wind fell still—and she felt the horseman’s presence as surely as the icy ground beneath her feet.

      Something touched her cheek. Feather soft. Brief. Abrupt. She jumped, the fight rising up in her like a storm. She was alone. There was no danger as a second snowflake brushed the tip of her nose. A third caught on her left eyelash.

      She felt foolish for being so jumpy. All around her was the whir of a million snowflakes, tumbling from the sky to tap against the ground. They filled the silent night like a symphony and softened the darkness.

      There was the horseman. He was more than shadow now, and close. Too close. He was four fence posts away,