Chapter 1

The sun sat mean and low over the New Mexico plains the morning Coulter Vane rode into Sierra Vista with his daughters and his list of supplies and his absolute intention to be back on the ranch before supper. He had not planned on anything else happening. He rarely did anymore. Planning for things beyond the necessary had stopped feeling worth the effort eighteen months ago, when they’d put Sarah in the ground on the hill above the cottonwoods and the world had quietly rearranged itself into before and after.

Emmie rode behind him, eight years old and her mother’s daughter in the dark hair and the set of her jaw. Marie was behind her, six, small enough that her arms barely reached around her sister’s waist. Neither of them talked much on the ride in. They hadn’t talked much in general since Sarah died, though lately Coulter had noticed small signs of life returning — Emmie arguing about chores, Marie laughing at something the barn cats did. Small things. He held onto them.

Sierra Vista wasn’t much to look at. A scatter of buildings along a wide dirt street, a church with a steeple that had been leaning slightly west since the big wind three years back, and Holman’s trading post anchoring the south end like it was the only thing keeping the town from blowing away entirely. Which it more or less was. Holman’s served as general store, post office, and the nearest thing the territory had to a community center within twenty miles. Coulter didn’t come in often. Too many eyes, too many people who remembered Sarah and felt obligated to say so, their faces arranged in expressions of sympathy he didn’t know what to do with.

But they were low on flour. Marie needed boots before winter. A man didn’t get to avoid things just because they made him uncomfortable.

He swung down from the saddle and lifted Marie first, then Emmie. They straightened their skirts and stood close while he tied the mare, neither of them needing to be told to stay near. They’d learned that without being taught, which was one of the things that kept him up at night.

Inside the trading post it smelled like leather and tobacco and the faint sweetness of dried apples. A few men stood near the counter talking low — ranchers mostly, a couple of miners passing through. Coulter gave a general nod and moved toward the dry goods at the back.

Holman himself appeared from behind a shelf, barrel-chested and bearded and genuinely pleased to see a paying customer. “Coulter Vane. Didn’t expect you today.”

“Need supplies.”