“I find that hard to believe,” she said. “You are one of the finest-looking specimens of manhood I’ve ever seen. My late husband excepted, of course.”

“I was engaged to be married, once,” Pritchard said, staring at the hat in his large hands. “It was a few years ago. The wedding didn’t go through.”

“How did that fool girl ever let a catch like you get away from her?” Maggie asked with a playful grin.

“She’s dead,” Pritchard said. Maggie’s grin vanished.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s all right,” Pritchard cut her off. “You couldn’t have known.” He shook his head. “Don’t know why I told you, just now. You’re the first woman I’ve ever said anything about it to. I guess you sorta remind me of my ma. I apologize for burdening you. Thank you for the haircut.”

Later that afternoon, while Maggie walked with Franchard around town, as they’d become accustomed to doing each day, she asked about Pritchard. He told her what little he knew of the young Ranger, what happened to Pritchard’s fiancée, and to his surprise, even confessed his guilt at being the indirect cause of her death.

Pritchard, for his part, noticed a change in Captain Franchard since they’d arrived in Magdalena and met Maggie Chase. As he ate his steak at supper and drank his beer, he found himself strangely comforted by his mentor’s clearly growing affection for Magdalena’s unofficial leader. Tom Franchard was rapidly becoming Maggie Chase’s man, and she his woman. He could tell because he’d witnessed such signs before, in his own whirlwind courtship with Caroline Biggs.

Pritchard knew Franchard as the toughest, and finest, man, other than his father and Ditch, he’d ever known. He also knew that of all the countless battles the hardened Ranger captain had fought during his extraordinary career as a Texas Ranger, the impending fight against Major Dalton Stiles and his gang would be his most personal, on account of Maggie Chase.

Pritchard remembered how Franchard had ditched his rank and risked not only his life, but his career and freedom, to help avenge Caroline’s murder in Mexico. He vowed to himself to ensure that Maggie and the rest of the women of Magdalena would suffer no more at the hands of a renegade Confederate guerrilla and outlaw named Dalton Stiles.

The saloon doors opened, and two women entered from the darkness outside. All the other women in the saloon stood up and greeted them warmly.

One of the women was a very old Apache, carrying a bundle. The other was much younger, and carrying a Henry rifle.