“You sure you don’t want me to store them here for you until Christmas?” Manning said. “It’s no trouble at all.”

“That won’t be necessary. I have the perfect place to hide them. Besides,” she said, closing the case and tucking it under her arm, “I want the guns to be a surprise. Good day, Mr. Manning.”

Chapter 38

Chapter 38

150 miles west of Fort Worth, Texas,
March 1873

Pritchard waved to Ditch from horseback as he led the single file of mounted Texas Rangers toward the ranch house he himself had helped to build.

More than three years had passed since that fateful summer when Caroline found him. Three years since he kissed her, held her, made love to her, betrothed himself to her, and watched her die.

In that time Samuel Pritchard, who’d once only pretended to be Ranger, gunfighter, and man-killer Smokin’ Joe Atherton, had become him.

Pritchard hadn’t cut his hair since Caroline’s death, and his blond locks fell well below his shoulders. His mane was long enough, even without his ten-gallon Stetson, to easily conceal the bullet scar on the crown of his forehead. He also sported a full beard, which made him look older than his twenty-seven years.

These additions, in concert with his six-and-a-half-foot-tall, muscular, frame, ever-present brace of pistols, hat, boots, and spurs, lent him an appearance that matched his increasingly fearsome reputation. The legend of Texas Ranger Smokin’ Joe Atherton, already formidable, had only grown since Caroline’s murder. And like most legends, there were more than a few grains of truth contained within its verses.

In the wake of his fiancée’s death, Pritchard reassumed his duties as a Texas Ranger with singular vengeance and ruthless efficiency. Now, when encountering outlaws, renegades, rustlers, and gunfighters in the line of duty, he gave only a brief warning, if any at all. More often than not, his notice to an armed lawbreaker was communicated merely through the look in his eyes and the portent of the shadow that hung over him. If the warning wasn’t heeded, his pistols did any further speaking for him.

Some claimed Smokin’ Joe had accumulated twenty notches; others said it was closer to fifty. Still others pointed out that since no one could say exactly how many men he’d killed during the war, before he became a Texas Ranger, there was no way to know his tally for certain.

The only thing anyone knew for sure about Ranger Smokin’ Joe Atherton was that he seldom spoke, rarely drank, and anyone who crossed him did it only once.