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  Mary

  The Merry Widows, Book 1

  Raine Cantrell

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1997 by Theresa DiBenedetto

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition January 2017

  ISBN: 978-1-68230-947-6

  Also by Raine Cantrell

  A Corner of Heaven

  Calico

  Darling Annie

  Desert Sunrise

  Gifts of Love

  Silver Mist

  Tarnished Hearts

  The Homecoming

  Western Winds

  Whisper My Name

  The Kincaids

  Once a Maverick

  Once an Outlaw

  Once a Lawman

  Once a Hero

  Clan Gunn

  Fire and Sword

  Silk and Steel

  Magic and Mist

  The Merry Widows

  Mary

  Catherine

  Sarah

  Novellas

  A Time for Giving

  Apache Fire

  Miss Delwin’s Delights

  More than a Miracle

  The Bride’s Gift

  The Secret Ingredient

  For all my readers

  Chapter One

  Rafe McCade chafed at the plodding pace set by the army captain leading the detail. Overcast sky and air too heavy to breathe were not unusual for a late-September morning in 1881 on this barren stretch of New Mexico Territory. His hide vest and woven linen shirt were damp against his skin.

  “Papa, will I like your home?”

  Six-year-old Elizabeth Mary—Beth to him from the moment she was born—squirmed in her place on the saddle in front of him. He didn’t blame her for feeling restless. He felt the same.

  “When will we get there? Soon, Papa?”

  “Soon enough.” Her questions had been asked often these past few months. Rafe had not seen his daughter in five years.

  Rafe shifted the reins to one hand, wiping his damp palm on a denim-clad thigh. What did he know about raising a little girl? A child who had been pampered by wealth and nursemaids? Damn little, he answered himself.

  The sudden change in the air forced his head up. An undefined stillness fraught with tension came with his indrawn breath. Without thought, Rafe curved his arm around his daughter.

  The attack was abrupt. Hitting the small group, and the two civilians riding with it, like lightning.

  Arrows and bullets rained down from the Apache warriors hidden on the steep-sided rock slopes that had forced the detail to ride single file into the narrow canyon.

  Rafe cursed the upstart captain who had overridden his objection to their planned route this morning. The officer swore that it was safe, that they had had no trouble with renegade bands. For that reason, Rafe had chosen to travel home with an army escort. Small bands of Apache, enraged by their treatment on ever-shrinking reservation lands, were prone to escape and attack lone travelers.

  Now his little girl might die.

  Soldiers forged ahead, only to be met by a thundering avalanche of boulders. Death swiftly took its toll on men, pack mules and horses.

  Rafe wasted no time. There was no room to turn and escape back the way they had entered the canyon. He bent low, his only thought to protect his child by pressing her small body forward, against his horse’s neck.

  He couldn’t fire his gun with accuracy from his hunched position, not even with the .44 Russian, a Smith & Wesson gun manufactured on order for the Russian army and among the most accurate shooting pistols on the market. His Winchester rifle was useless in its saddle scabbard. To fire the rifle, he would need to sit back and leave Beth’s body exposed to fire.

  Dust clouds rose from the churning hooves of the horses and made his vision poor. Hearing the screams of dying men fractured any hope that his weapons would help them win free.

  A few of the Apache left the protection of the upper slopes. Their war cries rang loud as they fell on the milling soldiers.

  Rafe couldn’t see the captain or hear his voice issuing orders. He no longer cursed the man. He prayed for all of them to survive.

  At a touch of his spurs, his mountain-bred horse scrambled up the rocky slope. Rafe had his eye on a nest of boulders that offered cover.

  He was no stranger to this land. He had done his share of riding its mountains and flats, engaged in fighting the Apaches as an army officer.

  He knew the land’s yield of treasures, and knew too well its terrors, but he had never made a decision with his daughter’s life at stake.

  As he fired his gun, his rapid assessment offered the possibility of making a break for the canyon’s mouth on foot. The din was unbearable. Every soldier still standing was fighting hand to hand with an Apache.

  He was truly between a rock and a hard place, and not for the first time. Time ticked by at an alarming rate.

  Traveling on foot carried the risk of being trapped.

  He risked his child’s capture and his own death if he stayed.

  “Beth, we’re going to play hide-an’-seek. Just obey me. I swear I’ll see you safely away from here.”

  With no more warning, Rafe kicked free of the stirrups. He grabbed Beth’s trembling body with one arm around her waist, plucked the Winchester free, slid from the saddle and yanked her small body tight against his.

  “Hold Rebel’s reins. Hold them tight, Beth.”

  The close whine of a bullet smashing into the ground sent him into a crouching run. He murmured assurances to his daughter, uncertain if she heard him above the cries of battle as he picked his way around the fighting by keeping to slightly higher rocky ground.

  “Close your eyes, baby,” Rafe whispered. The wetness on his hands came from her tears. Rafe didn’t want her to see the bodies of soldiers and warriors in the throes of death. He didn’t want to view it himself.

  “That’s my brave girl. Keep your eyes closed. We’ve just a little farther to go.”

  A honed sixth sense made him look over his shoulder.

  In a smooth motion, Rafe half turned and fired at an Apache poised to knife him.

  He scooped Beth up into his arm and started to run.

  “Muffy! Papa, get her. I can’t leave Muffy.” Beth struggled against her father’s hold, screaming for her doll.

  Rafe hugged the earth as close as he could. A heap of brush and rocks was a little bit farther. He heard rifle fire behind him. He pushed up suddenly and went forward in a charging run. He came in behind the shelter of rocks with bullets snapping about his ears.

  And Beth’s cries for her doll.

  Rafe hesitated. The cloth doll was the only toy Beth had taken with her, the only thing that seemed to soothe her when she had the nightmare. He spied the bright cloth skirt of the doll a few feet behind, close to the dead warrior.

  Rafe remained still, gathering his strength. The rocks behind which they were hidden concealed all movement. He quickly slid cartridges from his belt, filling the empty chambers of both hand gun and rifle.

  Sweat and dust streaked his face. The air was too heavy to breathe. There was a lull in the firing, but that was the Apache way—retreat, then sudden attack.

&n
bsp; He slid his rifle forward and searched the brush and rocks for a target. There was no cover beyond the dead Apache near where the doll had fallen.

  It would only take a quick dash…

  A bullet smashed the rock in front of him, and he slid back hurriedly, his face stinging from the granite fragments.

  Beth’s repeated panicked pleas left him no choice.

  He pivoted on his bootheels, taking Beth with him. A flat slab behind them rested on two boulders, creating a shallow cave. It was in there that he tucked his daughter. Rebel stood, ears pricked forward, snorting at the smell of death, a few feet to his left. Rafe grabbed the canteen from his saddle and gave it to his daughter.

  “Hang on to this, honey. Only a tiny sip when you really need it. No matter what happens, stay here, Beth. And keep your head down.”

  Her wide, solemn eyes watched him. Her small head bobbed as she clutched the canteen to her body.

  “That’s my girl.”

  When the detail failed to return to the camp at Ojo Caliente, the soldiers would come searching their back trail. The camp had been an advance picket post for Fort Craig, built two years before the War between the States broke out to help control the Navaho. It had been abandoned during the war, then in the late ’60s became headquarters for the Warm Spring Apache Reservation. Four years ago, after white men ambushed and killed Victorio’s son-in-law in Alma, troops had once more been stationed there.

  Rafe knew they would find Beth if anything happened to him. He knew, too, that they would care for her until his lawyer came. They knew who she was, what she stood to inherit from him.

  But as Rafe studied his chance of running from shelter and returning, he wondered who would hold his daughter in the dark of the night when she cried out.

  To ease her fear, he smiled at her, then plunked his flat-crowned black hat on her head.

  “You take care of that for me until I get back with Muffy.”

  He turned, but Beth caught hold of his vest.

  “You’ll come back? You won’t go away like Mama?”

  “I’ll be back, Beth.”

  “I told her I loved her. That last day. I didn’t want her to go.” She looked into his eyes. “Papa, I…I love you, too.”

  Rafe caught her close, hugging her. He had to fight back the sting of tears. A well of fury rose inside him. He should not have heard these words for the first time with death facing them. If the rough sea off Long Island Sound hadn’t killed his wife, he could at this moment have gone back and done the deed himself for the hell she had put him through. Him and their only child.

  The lull in the firing warned him he had little time to make good his promise to get her doll.

  “I love you, Beth. More than you know.”

  The words left a bittersweet tinge on his dry lips.

  Firing from cover, Rafe ran from shelter. The sudden burning sting of a bullet grazing his arm made him stumble. Cursing the minor wound, Rafe dropped to his belly and crawled forward until his fingertips touched the edge of the doll’s skirt.

  Two shots hit the dirt at his side. He jerked the doll to him. Those shots had not been fired from across the canyon. They had come from behind him. He began snaking his way back.

  Beth was there. His child, alone.

  A thud landing too close to him warned Rafe, as did the kick of sand that nearly blinded him. One of the warriors had lain in wait for him.

  Rafe rolled quickly to his side, bringing his gun up with him. A blow to his left shoulder sent him sprawling. The doll flew from his hand, but he managed to hang on to his gun.

  He squirmed to the side, then rolled over twice to get a look at his attacker.

  Two black eyes burned in a broad face slashed with paint.

  “McCade.”

  The guttural intonation of his name sounded like a death cry. Rafe, with a chill riding his soul, heard the Apache repeat it.

  Rafe stared at the rifle rising to the warrior’s shoulder. He didn’t take his eyes off the barrel aiming at his heart. Twisting, Rafe threw a handful of sand up at the Apache’s face. The shot missed Rafe. He raised his own gun to fire. The chamber clicked on empty.

  The Apache came at him, swinging the rifle like a club. Rafe moved like a rattler, twisting and rolling till he had the room to rise. He charged the warrior, battering him with his fists, using the butt of his gun.

  Even knowing the target his back presented to the other Apaches, Rafe drove the warrior away from the rocks where Beth was hidden.

  Drove him with lightning-fast fists, down the rocky slope, forcing him to move with the disadvantage of being unable to see his footing.

  Rafe didn’t even see the knife until the blade slashed across his forearm. He pulled free his own. Sweat spilled into his eyes.

  The Apache closed in for the kill.

  Rafe’s arms spread wide from his body. He grabbed the Apache’s wrist, bearing down and twisting the blade away from his body. With his own knife, he drove the blade home, yanked it free and turned to dodge back to shelter.

  “Over here, McCade,” the young captain called.

  Rafe dropped to his knee and recovered his gun. He fed bullets until the chambers were filled, then looked over at the captain and another soldier behind a man-size boulder.

  Rafe stifled the urge to call out and ask how many men were left from the detail. A quick scan of the area said too few. He didn’t want the Apaches to have their own guess confirmed.

  He started back to his daughter, wiping blood that dropped from his lip. First Beth’s safety, and then he would worry about his own wounds.

  In a crouching run, he went. Suddenly time froze for Rafe. Terror struck in seconds.

  Beth ran out. Ran toward him and her fallen doll.

  Her new boots were dusty. The ankle-length navy blue riding skirt was torn. The front of her gray shirt hung over her waistband. She still wore his hat.

  “No, Beth! Beth, go back!”

  A spray of bullets kicked up rock and dirt in front of Rafe from someone firing down at him. He kept running.

  “Go back!”

  “Papa, it’s Muffy!”

  Rocks shattered from rifle fire. Rafe didn’t care. His eyes were locked on his daughter’s small running figure.

  He suddenly looked up as if he had been jerked by a rawhide.

  The arrow’s flight was too swift to see, far too accurate to stop.

  “Beth! Lord, no!”

  “Papa!” she cried, tumbling to the earth.

  Chapter Two

  Twenty-five miles to the south, in the growing town of Hillsboro, Mary Elizabeth Inlow woke with a cry on her lips.

  Covered in cold sweat, badly shaken, Mary knew the dream had come again.

  A child cried out to her. No matter how she struggled against unseen bonds, she couldn’t reach the child, she could not stop the cries.

  Mary willed the nausea to subside, willed her limbs to stop shaking as she pressed her hands to her lips. She was strong now, strong enough to beat back the feeling of helplessness and the heartache brought by the dream.

  A year of widowhood added to ten years of marriage had taught her the depth of her strength.

  But the dream brought back all the doubts that had plagued her year of supposed mourning.

  She lay alone in the double-size bed, wondering, as she often had this past year, what she would do.

  How would she cope with the days stretching into years before her? Who would she be?

  This was the most consuming question she asked of herself, for she was not the same woman who had married Harry Inlow eleven years ago.

  Sixteen. A woman grown. One with five years of keeping house for her father behind her. What had she believed she knew at sixteen?

  She had thought she knew how to judge a man. Into her father’s blacksmith’s shop they had come, the cowhands, the gamblers, the miners and the gunmen. And Harry, handsome Harry, with his rich claim and laughing eyes, had swept her into his arms at a dance and told
her she would marry him and no other. He had courted her, flirting and buying her foolish presents, and he had gained her father’s approval. Foolish little girl. She had married him and learned she knew nothing of men at all.

  Mary briefly closed her eyes. She did not want to remember. After the dream was the worst time, for she felt a stranger to herself. But she would cope. She only had to remind herself that she was strong.

  She stared up at the ceiling, and listened to the chirping of birds in the giant cottonwoods that shaded the house. The silence within its walls confirmed that her cry had not disturbed the sleep of her cousin Sarah, or their newly widowed friend Catherine.

  Unable to lie still, Mary slipped from the tangled bedding. She smoothed down the wrinkles of the cotton nightgown as she padded barefoot across the wooden floor.

  A look out the second-floor window revealed an overcast sky. Not a breath of air stirred the lace curtains. It was on a morning such as this that she most missed her mountainside home, where the wind blew wild and free.

  It was the only thing she missed.

  Hillsboro lay in a pocket between low hills. From the first cabin, built four years before by the two miners who found gold in the Black Range, the tent camp had grown into a town. This despite its isolated location and the Indian raids. Its name had been chosen from those written on slips of paper and shuffled in a hat.

  It was a good place to live.

  A good place for Mary to begin anew.

  Percha Creek bordered the town, and north were the San Mateo Mountains and the Black Range. There, in hidden pockets were mining camps, outlaw hideouts and places known only to the renegade Chiricahua Apache who had escaped the San Carlos Reservation. A little to the northwest were the Gila wilderness, and the Mogollon Mountains, with its mining camps along Cooper and Mineral creeks. The high mountains made travel between camps difficult, and some said it was a nest of outlaws and claim jumpers.

  In the quiet peace of morning, Mary sometimes wondered if men ever thought they might be wrong. They had come into this area and taken away the lands where the Apache lived and hunted. They told those who had roamed free that they could do so no longer.