The first thing Mara Bell did in Mercy Hollow was step off the train with blood on her sleeve and ask the biggest man in town whether he was afraid of women.
Every conversation on the platform died at once.
The noon train had come screaming out of the Colorado dust, coughing steam beneath a sky so clear and pale it seemed carved from winter glass. Men in canvas coats shaded their eyes. Women pulled children closer. The stationmaster, Mr. Pike, had been halfway through shouting instructions about freight when Mara appeared in the passenger-car doorway.
She was not the woman anyone expected.
For two months, Mercy Hollow had been whispering that Abel Stone, the giant of Wolfjaw Mountain, had finally sent away for a bride.
They said Abel stood six feet ten inches, though some claimed seven feet if a man counted his hat. They said his hands were the size of flour sacks and his voice could knock frost from pine branches. They said he lived forty miles above town where winter could bury a cabin to the windows and wolves sometimes followed a man all the way to his front door.
Most agreed no sensible woman would volunteer for such a life.
So Mercy Hollow expected someone thin, frightened, and desperate.
Someone grateful enough to accept anything.
Mara Bell came down the iron steps carrying a carpetbag in one hand and a cracked leather satchel in the other.
Her brown traveling dress was dusty and wrinkled. Three days of train travel had left dirt along the hem. Her cheeks were round, her hips generous, and her body fuller than the fashion plates women back East were expected to imitate.
Mara had spent twenty-eight years being told she was too much.
Too loud.
Too stubborn.
Too broad.
Too hungry.
Too opinionated.
Too heavy.
Too unwilling to lower her eyes when men spoke.
She had stopped apologizing somewhere west of Kansas City.
Abel Stone stood beside the freight office.
Mara spotted him immediately.
There was simply no mistaking him.
He looked less like a man than a piece of Wolfjaw Mountain that had grown a beard and walked into town. His dark hair touched the collar of his weathered coat. His shoulders were enormous. His beard was thick enough to hide most expressions, though his dark eyes revealed more than he probably intended.
Mara walked directly toward him.
“You Abel Stone?”
Several townspeople actually leaned forward.
His gaze moved from her face to the blood drying across her sleeve.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.” Mara stopped before him. “I’m your wife, unless you plan on fainting.”
Someone behind her gasped.
Another person laughed, then immediately pretended to cough when Abel glanced toward the sound.
Instead of answering Mara’s challenge, Abel pointed to her arm.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Whose blood is that?”
“A man on the train thought my seat belonged to him because I was a woman traveling alone.”
Abel became completely still.
“What happened?”
“His nose disagreed.”
The corner of Abel’s mouth moved.
“Where is he?”
“Still on the train, reconsidering his theology.”
A laugh escaped him.
It was deep and unexpected, like thunder discovering humor.
For one brief instant Mara saw something behind the intimidating exterior—a lonely man who had not laughed often enough.
Then the expression vanished.
Mara lowered her bags.
“Before we go anywhere, Mr. Stone, there’s something we need to settle.”
“All right.”
“Your advertisement said you wanted a quiet wife.”
A few people began edging closer.
Abel frowned.
“I wrote that I wanted a steady wife.”
Mara blinked.
“The Denver paper printed quiet.”
“That wasn’t my word.”
Her shoulders relaxed.
“Well, that’s fortunate.”
“Why?”
“Because I possess several virtues. Quiet has never been one of them.”
Abel looked at her for several long seconds.
Then he nodded toward a wagon.
“My wagon’s over there.”
“How far is your place?”
“Six hours if the weather holds.”
Mara retrieved her bags.
“Then we’d better start.”
Behind them, Mr. Pike muttered loudly enough to be heard, “She’ll last a week.”
Mara stopped.
Abel sighed as though already learning something about her.
She turned.
Mr. Pike suddenly became interested in a stack of mail sacks.
Mara smiled pleasantly.
“Mr. Pike?”
The stationmaster looked at her.
“I have outlasted hunger, flood, bad men, worse women, and a corset maker from Nashville who informed me that my waist was evidence of moral weakness.”
A few women covered smiles.
Mara continued.
“I expect I can survive your opinion.”
She climbed into Abel’s wagon.
For the first mile out of Mercy Hollow, Abel said nothing.
Mara waited.
Finally she asked, “You regret this already?”
“No.”
“You look like a man regretting something.”
“I’m wondering whether every conversation with you is going to end with somebody losing.”
“Only conversations where the other person deserves it.”
Again, that almost-smile.
They traveled higher.
The road narrowed beneath towering pines. Patches of old snow lay in shadows. The air sharpened as the sun drifted lower.
Mara studied Abel.
“You don’t talk much.”
“I talk when there’s something worth saying.”
“That explains why you ordered a wife through the newspaper.”
He looked at her.
She grinned.
“You couldn’t ask a woman in person?”
“No.”
“Too shy?”
“No.”
“Too ugly?”
His eyebrow rose.
Mara looked him over deliberately.
“No. Clearly not that.”
For the first time, Abel looked almost uncomfortable.
Mara smiled toward the mountains.
Interesting.
By dusk, the wagon trail had become little more than two narrow tracks cut into frozen earth.
A ravine opened beside them.
“Rock left,” Mara warned.
“I see it.”
A minute later she pointed.
“Washout.”
“I see that too.”
“Low branch.”
Abel ducked just before a pine limb swept over the wagon.
He glanced sideways.
“Do you intend to drive from the passenger seat the whole way?”
“Only until you prove you don’t need me to.”
Then the first wolf howled.
Close.
Far too close.
The mules threw their heads violently.
The wagon lurched.
One wheel slipped toward the ravine.
Mara grabbed the bench.
Abel pulled the reins hard.
Another howl answered from higher on the ridge.
The mules panicked.
“Easy!” Abel shouted.
The right wheel skidded off the trail.
Mara’s stomach dropped.
Abel went very still.
“Mara.”
His voice had changed.
No humor.
No embarrassment.
Something colder.
“I need you to hold on and not ask why.”
Naturally, Mara immediately asked, “Why?”
Abel reached beneath the wagon seat and pulled out a rifle.
Three shadows appeared between the trees.
Mara expected wolves.
Instead, horses emerged.
Three riders.
Scarves covered their faces.
Abel’s jaw tightened.
“Those aren’t wolves.”
One rider howled again.
Mara understood.
“Men.”
“Yeah.”
“Friends?”
“No.”
“Family?”
“Worse.”
The riders spread across the trail behind them.
Abel handed Mara the reins.
“Can you drive?”
“I grew up hauling produce in Missouri.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Mara wrapped the leather lines around her fists.
“I can drive.”
“Good.”
Abel climbed into the rear of the wagon.
The first gunshot cracked through the mountains.
Wood exploded from the sideboard.
Mara did not scream.
She slapped the reins.
“MOVE!”
The mules lunged.
The wagon shot forward.
Behind her, Abel fired once.
A pursuing horse veered.
Mara leaned into the turns, every muscle tight.
Another bullet struck a barrel.
“You failed to mention bandits!” she yelled.
“They aren’t bandits!”
“That information isn’t helping!”
A second rider came alongside.
Mara saw a masked man reaching toward the wagon.
She waited.
Closer.
Closer.
Then she grabbed a wooden tool handle from beneath the seat and swung with everything she had.
The wood connected with his shoulder.
The rider toppled backward.
Abel stared.
“What?”
Mara shouted.
“Nothing!”
“You’re staring!”
“I’ve never seen anyone knock a man off a horse with a shovel handle!”
“Then your life has been sheltered!”
Ahead, the trail split.
Abel pointed.
“Left!”
“That road looks worse!”
“It is!”
“Wonderful!”
They plunged down it.
The pursuers hesitated.
The narrow path twisted between two boulders too close for riders to pass safely at speed.
Mara drove straight through.
The wagon scraped rock.
One pursuer tried following and nearly lost his horse.
Minutes later, the artificial wolf howls faded behind them.
Only then did Abel lower his rifle.
Mara slowed the mules.
Her hands were trembling.
She hated that.
Abel noticed.
“You all right?”
“No.”
It seemed to surprise him.
Mara looked at him.
“I’m brave, Abel. I’m not stupid. Somebody just tried to shoot us off a mountain.”
He sat beside her again.
“You’re right.”
“Who were they?”
Silence.
“Abel.”
He looked toward the fading light.
“Men who believe something on my mountain belongs to them.”
“What?”
“A silver claim.”
Mara stared.
“You own a silver mine?”
“No. I own land that may contain one.”
“And those men?”
“Work for Silas Rourke.”
The name meant nothing to her.
Apparently her expression said so.
“Rourke owns half the businesses around Mercy Hollow,” Abel explained. “Or wants to.”
“Mr. Pike?”
“Rourke owns the station warehouse.”
Mara remembered Pike’s smug face.
“Interesting.”
Abel studied her.
“This is where I’m supposed to tell you that you can return to town tomorrow.”
“And this is where I tell you not to waste your breath.”
“Mara—”
“You advertised for a steady wife.”
“Yes.”
She handed him the reins.
“You found one.”
For the rest of the journey, neither spoke much.
Darkness had fallen completely when they finally reached Wolfjaw.
Abel’s cabin stood inside a clearing surrounded by towering pines, a barn on one side and a frozen creek below.
The house was bigger than Mara expected.
Two stories.
Stone chimney.
Wide porch.
Several acres fenced for horses.
Beautiful.
Lonely.
Abel carried her bags inside.
The cabin smelled of pine smoke and cedar.
Everything was sturdy.
Clean.
Almost painfully orderly.
Only one thing seemed wrong.
There was no evidence that anyone truly lived there.
No pictures.
No flowers.
No extra chair by the fire.
No clutter.
No laughter.
Mara slowly removed her gloves.
“So.”
Abel stood near the door.
“So.”
“Which room is mine?”
He looked surprised.
“The one upstairs, second door.”
“And yours?”
“Downstairs.”
That surprised her.
“Aren’t we supposed to marry?”
“Tomorrow.”
Mara studied him.
“You brought a strange woman forty miles into the mountains, survived an ambush with her, watched her hit a man with farm equipment, and you’re worried sharing a roof before the wedding might damage my reputation?”
Abel’s ears turned red beneath his hair.
Mara began laughing.
“I’m glad this is amusing.”
“It’s extremely amusing.”
He picked up her carpetbag.
She caught his sleeve.
“Abel.”
He looked down.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not assuming the advertisement bought you ownership of me.”
His expression changed.
“No one owns you, Mara.”
Something in her chest tightened unexpectedly.
She released his sleeve.
“Good answer.”
An hour later, Mara lay beneath a thick quilt listening to wind move across Wolfjaw Mountain.
She should have been terrified.
Instead, for the first time since leaving Missouri, she felt strangely awake.
Then she heard footsteps outside.
Not Abel’s.
Light footsteps.
Near her window.
Mara sat upright.
A shadow crossed the moonlit glass.
And a man’s voice whispered from the darkness.
“Tell Stone to sell the mountain.”
Then came the smell of smoke.
Mara threw back the quilt.
The porch was on fire.
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