Let Me Stay, I’ll Raise Your Kids,”””” She Begged—No One Expected Her to Save His Ranch in a Blizzard…

by

Chapter 2

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The front door banged shut against the screaming white fury outside, the iron latch dropping into place with a hollow clank.

Hollis lay shivering on the timber floor, gasping like a landed fish. His coat was crusted with rime, his lips a frightening shade of blue, and bright scarlet seeped through the slashed fabric of his left arm, dripping steadily onto the scrubbed pine boards.

Elias didn’t lower his rifle. The barrel remained steady, leveled somewhere between Hollis’s trembling shoulders and the woman standing stone-still beside the kitchen partition.

Cold air hissed through the cracks of the collapsed kitchen ceiling, stopped only by the heavy wool quilts Serena had rigged across the inner doorway weeks ago. Behind that quilted barrier, in the reinforced room, little Elsie gave a soft, fretful cough, soothed by Beatrice’s urgent, rhythmic rocking.

“Riders,” Elias said, his voice dropping below the howl of the gale. “In a blizzard that’s snapping lodgepole pines in half? Who rides in this, Hollis?”

Hollis raised his frost-bitten face, his teeth clattering violently. “Men who don’t aim to let four thousand dollars in gold walk out of the county. Men who burnt my hay barn to the ground just to warm their horses before they crossed the wash.” He looked up at Serena, his eyes wild with terror. “Caleb Vance. He found the stage driver who dropped her near the lower crossing back in August. He’s got five men with him, Elias. They know she’s here.”

The name fell into the room like a chunk of river ice.

Caleb Vance was not a rancher. He owned half the timber claims and three gambling halls in the upper valley, backed by hired guns who enforced his contracts with lead and kerosene.

Elias slowly turned his head to look at Serena.

She hadn’t moved. Her hands, rough from months of splitting kindling, tending cattle, and boiling lye soap, were clenched tightly in the folds of her apron. The warm firelight from the hearth caught the sharp line of her jaw. There was fear in her eyes, yes, but beneath it lay a profound, unyielding sorrow that reached deeper than any winter frost.

“Serena,” Elias said softly. “You told me you were traveling west to find work in the Oregon territory.”

“I was,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper, yet completely steady against the storm. “Until my sister died in Caleb Vance’s house.”

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Table of Contents
Let Me Stay, I’ll Raise Your Kids,”””” She Begged—No One Expected Her to Save His Ranch in a Blizzard…
TABLE OF CONTENTS 10
01 Chapter 1 02 Chapter 2 03 Chapter 3 04 Chapter 4 05 Chapter 5 06 Chapter 6 07 Chapter 7 08 Chapter 8 09 Chapter 9 10 Chapter 10

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