The Texas Ranger's Secret. DeWanna Pace

curtain meant to keep out the dust stirred up beneath the churning hooves of the horses pulling the overland stage. Lightning bolts blinked in and out as the curtain flapped back and forth, offering popping whips of relief from the oppressive heat to the only passenger who had not yet reached her destination.

      With glimpses of the passing prairie, she watched uprooted vegetation tumble toward the coach searching for a barrier to the wind’s fury. But the team’s pounding hooves and the coach’s wheels crushed the wind-driven fodder or ricocheted it hither and yonder across the countryside.

      “High Plains ahead!” yelled the driver, heralding the blessed fact that the long journey was near its end.

      At least for now.

      She would finally be inside somewhere, out of biting range of bugs and flies trying to hitch a ride.

      “One-hour stop, coming up!”

      The sense of stifling solitude gripped Willow even more profoundly, threatening to spill the unshed tears she’d held back when she’d said goodbye to the other passengers many miles ago. How she hated to be alone, and wanted so desperately to be among friends—a tribe of her own. A tribe made not just of family members, who were expected to include her, but friends who chose and enjoyed being in her company.

      Willow called upon the light of hope living within her that this place so loved by her sisters might also prove the haven that would welcome her, rescue her from herself and become a home to her if she could not resolve her problem back in Georgia.

      How much she wanted to be an asset to a community rather than an object of scorn. A blessing to someone, not a hindrance.

      She took a lace kerchief from her reticule, then dabbed the perspiration dotting her face and neck, hoping to make herself look more presentable for when she arrived. Willow pinched her cheeks a little to add color, then brushed her fingers through wisps of hair that had gone astray from her upswept curls.

      She put away her kerchief and lifted the emerald hat from her lap and did her best to nest it back in place at a jaunty angle. But her height in such a confined space gave little room to set it fashionably atop her head. The seat kept rocking and swaying to the point she finally just had to jab the hat pin in and hope for the best.

      The plumed ostrich feather adorning the hat hung too far over her left eye, bent out of shape by the last woman who’d left the coach in Fort Worth. She’d accidentally stumbled over Willow’s long legs and ended up plopping down on one edge of the hat. Her apology had sounded so sincere that Willow hadn’t had the heart to complain. After all, she wasn’t exactly graceful herself most of the time and hoped others would forgive her lack of coordination.

      Sighing in frustration, she decided it certainly wouldn’t be the first time she arrived somewhere looking disheveled. Daisy and Snow wouldn’t be surprised at all, but Willow had wanted to make a good impression on her future brother-in-law and anyone else who came with her sisters to fetch her.

      She did her utmost to adjust the hat but only ended up making the feather look more like quilt padding dangling from a fishing line and her head feel like a pincushion. Maybe she’d have time to dig into her baggage and take a brush to her mop of hair and just go hatless, but the mighty winds that swept the Texas prairie almost required a soul to wear some kind of bonnet or head covering. Unless she chose to braid her hair, as Daisy always did.

      She couldn’t wait to see her sisters. Daisy’s impending wedding had come as a surprise and provided a most convenient excuse for quick departure from Atlanta.

      When Willow told her boss that Daisy needed her to help take care of the children while the couple honeymooned, he had eagerly agreed that her absence just might prove the perfect solution to the trouble she’d caused.

      Willow had left, unsure if she would ever return to her job at the paper but knowing this leave might be the only way to improve her chances of being asked back.

      Not only that, she felt that she really had to be there for Daisy and Snow. Willow only hoped she hadn’t arrived too late to attend the wedding and be of some help. Daisy would never say a word, of course, but her middle sister rarely held anything back from Willow. Now she and Snow would be spending two months together without the buffer of their older sister.

      The thought made Willow pray once more that she somehow arrived on time.

      “Whoa, you beastly beauties! Hold up there, now,” shouted the driver as his last pull on the reins brought the team to a halt.

      Willow pitched forward into the seat across from hers. She dug in the heels of her kid boots and grabbed the side of the coach in an effort to reseat herself, only to slide bottom-first to the floor. Her hat shifted. The feather dipped low to tickle her nose, which set off a round of sneezing made worse by the billowing dust as the stagecoach settled.

      She stretched out her arms to see if she could leverage herself enough to climb the walls and regain her seat, but to no avail. She’d just have to sit there like a folded accordion and scoot out the door once the driver opened it.

      “Safe and delivered,” yelled the coachman. “Only half past noon.”

      Half past noon? They’d been due in more than two and a half hours ago. One of the wheels had hit a rut and taken quite a while to be repaired. Her sisters would be madder than two snakes with no rattles thinking she’d missed the stage that would get her here in time for the ceremony.

      Willow knew Daisy had been meeting several stages the past two months. Her sister had a right to be angry with her for not showing up. When Daisy invited her and Snow for a visit in March, Snow had gone on alone. Willow had promised to come later, wanting to arrive with a wonderful announcement of her own—a job at the respected newspaper in Atlanta.

      Why hadn’t she just gone to High Plains when she first promised?

      Because I wanted to prove to everybody how capable I am, she berated herself as she struggled again to dislodge her body. Now look at me. I can’t even untangle my legs.

      At twenty-two, she was beginning to believe she’d never find a place where she could be proud of herself and find what she could do well.

      She should have never risked taking the position as printer’s helper at the Weekly Chronicle, knowing she’d promised Daisy the visit.

      If only her boss hadn’t mentioned his love of anything Texas that first day of work, she might have kept her mouth shut.

      But no, she couldn’t wait to share some of her late grandfather’s tales of his legendary days riding with Captain Jack Hays, one of the bravest captains in the Texas Corps of Rangers.

      That was just the start of her troubles. If only she’d been aware of what she’d stirred up at the time. Then again, she never recognized the exact moment she set herself up for failure. Did anyone?

      What was taking the driver so long? She didn’t have that much baggage. Surely he would let her out first before changing the team.

      Her legs cramped but she didn’t want to seem impatient with the man. After all, he wasn’t aware that she’d jammed herself between the seats. She’d just have to sit here and keep her mind on something until he opened the coach door and rescued her.

      Willow’s thoughts returned to the days that followed her boss’s unusual interest in learning more of Texas. She’d told him of how her grandfather had read to her and her siblings the eight-page newspaper serials called story papers and that she’d preferred the frontier tales of derring-do about adventurous heroes.

      She spouted a wealth of the jargon, giving him lots of details regarding the lifestyle and ways of the men who worked the ranging companies, feeling proud she recalled so much after all these years.

      Biven Wittenburg Harrington III decided to take a risk and develop a limited series of story papers based on a fictional Texas Ranger and see how well the readers responded. Literacy was up and her boss-editor-publisher said he believed readers yearned for something to take their minds off the hard news of Reconstruction.

      When