The Outlaw's Vow

The axle is cracked clean through, the iron split near the hub, and the stage leaves in three hours. Clara Whitfield is halfway across the yard to saddle the mare and ride for the telegraph office when she sees the dust. A rider comes up the canyon road on a black horse with a white blaze. Lean, dark-haired, a jagged scar cutting across his left cheekbone like somebody had drawn a line and meant it. He wants water and pays a silver dollar for it. *Stage station's for paying customers.* Inside, Clara finds her son under the bed with his slate clutched to his chest. Thomas is deaf, and his hands move fast: *Man. Outside. Bad man. He has a star. Like Papa's.* The star on the stranger's vest is the tin kind. The kind a child would draw. Ruth Padilla, who cooks for the passengers and does not waste words, has a theory about it. Men who wear fake stars and have real scars are either running from something or running toward something. So Clara takes the shotgun off the wall, walks out, and warns him that if he touches anything he shouldn't she will put a hole in him to match the one already in his saddlebag. Jace stays and fixes the axle instead. He works without wasted motion and will not say where he learned it beyond *Army*. Then Thomas comes out into the yard, and Jace signs thank you to him, and the boy's eyes go round, because nobody out here signs. Jace rides off. Clara finds a small round hole low in the side of the water barrel, splintered inward, the wood still warm. He took a badge under Marshal Thorn, the man who runs this county, to find his own brother's killer, and he has spent four winters running since. What he is chasing is a gold shipment out of the Comstock lode, a carpetbag he was told held paperwork, and a tracker who was shot in the back beside it. When Thorn's riders come through the station carrying a photograph, Clara recognizes the face. It is her husband. This is a western historical romance: a widow holding a stage road, a deaf boy who sees everything and draws it, and a fugitive who tells the truth several days too late. The romance is closed-door.