Wyoming Territory, 1884

Her feet hurt, her arms and shoulders ached, and there was a tremendous rip in the hem of her traveling outfit. Maddalyn grasped the edge of the rock and found a toehold, pushing herself higher still. The stone beneath her fingers was surprisingly cold, the air that brushed her face much chillier than she would have liked.

She was surrounded on all sides by extraordinarily tall, very green trees that blocked the sun, stealing the little bit of spring warmth one would normally expect in the middle of the day. The soft light that filtered through the treetops gave the rugged mountain, with its jutting rocks and towering pine trees, an enchanted look. As though none of it could possibly be real. Maddalyn lifted her head It was time to move ahead, and ahead was up. She managed to climb onto the flat rock, stopped to take a deep breath, and listened.

Nothing. Not a whisper of a breeze, or a twittering bird. No faraway sounds of voices or horses or creaking wheels. How many times in her life had she been surrounded by such complete and deed quiet? This Wyoming Territory mountain was another world, far away from Aunt Ethel's proper Georgia home. There, even at night, she'd not been alone. Cousin Doreen, in the room next door, snored loudly and constantly. Of course, the one time Maddalyn had been impertinent enough to mention it, Aunt Ethel had attempted to lay blame on poor Uncle Henry. Never mind that on several occasions Uncle Henry had been forced to spend the night out of town, and the snoring had continued.

Maddalyn lifted her face to the sloping hill above. It was, she was certain, not quite as steep as the one she'd just mastered. The ground she would have to cover was identical to what she'd seen so far, cold stone, hard ground, and dried pine needles that alternately slipped her up or stabbed her hands. She could always go back down the mountain, but there was no way to be sure that those horrible men wouldn't be waiting for her there.

She closed her eyes and gathered her strength, taking in the cold air as she inhaled deeply. In her twenty-two years, she'd seen a lot. She'd been orphaned, left in the care of a hateful aunt who harangued her every day, attended school and done quite well, watched as her uncle drove away the only man who'd ever been bold enough to express an interest in her ... but she'd never seen anyone die.

And she'd never expected to see anyone die violently. That poor stagecoach driver, shot not once, but three times. He'd been an odd little man, with very few teeth and horribly dirty clothes. But he'd seemed a nice enough fellow, and smiled frequently even though he was missing so many teeth. The sight of that dusty shirt stained with blood would not leave her mind. And poor Mr. Harrison, the only other passenger on the stage, conked over the head with the wrong end of a gun. He hadn't put up a fight, hadn't even had a weapon. But when he'd had the nerve to stir, the bandits had unceremoniously shot him in the back.

Maddalyn had no doubt that she would have been killed, too. Eventually. The outlaws had seen no threat from her, and had stopped to rifle through the boxes that had been strapped to the roof. She'd taken a couple of steps back and toward the forest, wrung her hands, and begged them not to hurt her.

They'd laughed. Ugly, hateful guffaws.

While they'd been bent over a strongbox that seemed to be of particular interest to them, Maddalyn had turned and run. Into the forest, up that first rise, into the trees. She didn't think they would follow her. One of the outlaws had been almost as fat as Cousin Doreen, and the other had walked with a pronounced limp. They wore masks, dust-covered bandannas that covered most of their faces, but she could tell by the tufts of gray hair that poked out from their dusty hats, and by the wrinkled skin on their necks, that they were not young men.

They wouldn't follow her. They wouldn't. It became a litany she repeated, in her head and aloud, for hours after she'd escaped.

But she was afraid to go back down the mountain.