Love's Rescue (42 page)

Jess lifted her gaze. Above them, streaks of pink and violet clouds brightened the sky. “Look, Jake. Sunrise.”

Jake reined in his horse, and together, they watched as pink lightened to peach and yellow hues.

“The Lord is telling us good morning,” Jess said.

“That He is,” Jake agreed. “I want all the rest of our sunrises to be like this, Jess.” He turned in the saddle to look at her. “You and me. Watching them together.” His dark eyes searched her face, speaking silently yet plainly of his love. “You’ve never given me an answer, little lady.”

Jess lifted her hand to his cheek. “Jake Bennett, I would be honored to be your wife.”

A breeze stirred, sounding ever so much like a whisper among the grasses.

November 1863

Doyle and Seth threw down their shovels and wiped the sweat from their brows. Hot in their coats despite the wintry cold in Carson City, they stepped back to study the placement of the new tombstone Jess had requested.

Seth had raised his eyebrows when Doyle had read him the instructions printed on the telegram, and they had looked at each other with growing smiles when Doyle had read her name.

Jessica Bennett.

Seth gathered up the shovels, and Doyle pulled out the telegram again, comparing the specifications with the markings on the new tombstone.

Satisfied that the wording was correct, Doyle put the paper back in his pocket and followed Seth to the wagon, marveling at the faith of the tenacious young woman he had come to respect.

“Hale,” the marker read:

Isaac Donelson

Georgeanne McKinney

Emily Frances

and dear friend

Elsie Scheuer

And beneath the names read the epitaph:

I can’t wait to see you again.

Tammy Barley’s roots run deep and wide across the United States. With Cherokee heritage and such ancestors as James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, she essentially inherited her literary vocation and her preferred setting: the Wild West. An avid equestrian, Tammy has ridden horseback over western mountains and rugged trails in Arizona.

Tammy excelled in her writing studies at a local college, where she explored prose, novel writing, and nonverbal communication. She even enrolled in acting classes to master character development. In 2006, she published two series of devotionals in Beautiful Feet: Meditations for Missionary Women for the Lutheran Women’s Missionary Society. She won second place in the Golden Rose Contest in the category of inspiration romance, and she serves as a judge for various fiction contests.

In addition to writing, Tammy makes a career of editing manuscripts, ghostwriting, and mentoring other writers. She also homeschools three children. Tammy has lived in twenty-eight towns in eight different states, but her family currently makes its home in Crystal Lake, Illinois.

Coming Soon:

Book Two in The Sierra Chronicles

By Tammy Barley

Western Nevada Territory

May 1864

Would you care to rest a while, Jess?”

Withholding a smile, Jess leaned forward in the saddle as her horse clambered up beside Jake’s to the top of the rocky bank. When the ground leveled out, she glanced at the progress of the small herd of Thoroughbred stallions close behind, then tossed a lightly accusing gaze to her husband.

“Rest a while? Are you coddling me, Bennett?”

In the shadow of his hat brim, Jake’s whiskey-brown eyes sparkled at her as he grinned. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t dare.” He nodded sagely to Taggart and Diaz, who were wrangling on the opposite side of the herd. “But the boys haven’t stood on their own feet twice since sunup, and they’re looking piqued.”

“Piqued?” Jess looked to the burly, orange-haired Irishman and the sinewy, born-in-the-saddle Spaniard, and she burst out laughing. “Those two wouldn’t walk to their dinner plates if they could ride!”

The sleek, long-limbed Thoroughbreds continued towards the mountains, heads bobbing. From her position riding flank, Jess took in the beauty of white noses and white socks flashing amid the bays, chestnuts, and blacks, framed by the red earth and green pines of the Sierra Nevadas.

They were going home.

Jess quieted, but her smile remained. “I couldn’t stop now, Jake. We have only ten miles before we reach the ranch.”

Ten out of seventeen hundred, she mused, and eight months since I’ve seen this part of the country. When they had left the ranch, they hadn’t been married, and she hadn’t been certain she’d ever come back. Even so, she hadn’t forgotten the beauty of the mountains, her love of the ranch in Honey Lake Valley, and her dream to raise horses with the good man beside her.

Amid the scattered rocks and fragrant clusters of gray-green sage around them, desert flowers added brilliant splashes of purple, red, and orange. When they had left, the land had been brown, dry from a year of heat and draught. Clearly, the winter snows and spring rains had come, for now, life bloomed everywhere.

Well, almost everywhere. With a twinge of sadness, Jess pressed a gloved hand to the flatness of her stomach.

She and Jake had married in the fall, on one of the most beautiful autumn days God had ever created. As a wedding gift, Jake had given her the herd of Thoroughbreds, which were grazing in the Bennetts’ paddock even as the pastor stood with them beneath an arch of trees and joined them as husband and wife.

All she had wanted was to give Jake a child in return. And now, it seemed, she was barren.

“What do you suppose they’re thinking, your horses?”

Jess dropped her hand and smiled. “Our horses,” she corrected him. “They’re probably wishing they had taken a train instead.”

Jake chuckled, his broad shoulders stretching the seams of his white cotton shirt. “Is that what you wish, Jess? That the transcontinental was nearly finished instead of only beginning?”

“No, I wouldn’t want to be packed into a noisy passenger car anymore than you would. I’d rather see the land—be a part of it.”

“Well, this land looks as though it’s seen some rain this year.”

“I was just thinking the same.”

The Bennett Mountain Ranch—our ranch. Tickled by the thought, Jess laughed out loud. “We’re going home,” she said, a pleasant tightness in her chest. “I feel….” She lifted a hand, uncertain how to describe her feeling. “I feel like a young falcon, about to soar into the wind for the first time.”

He smiled in understanding, then suddenly turned tense, alert. He drew his Remington. An instant later, Taggart and Diaz did the same.

“What—?”

A rock burst on the ground beside Jess. The sharp report of rifle fire echoed across the desert. All at once, shots exploded, pelting the road around them with shattered stones and dust plumes. Drawing her own revolver, Jess whipped her mare around and looked past Jake to an outcropping of rocks, where rifles barked and gun smoke curled away.

The mare abruptly jerked, then reared high, spilling Jess’s hat and causing her long braid of hair to tumble free. The horse teetered on its hind legs, then fell over backward.

Pain exploded through Jess’s back and lungs.

Then, darkness.