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with a friendly game?”
    Lewt grinned. No matter what he put on the table, he knew he’d be playing to help the women of Whispering Mountain out and it felt good. They might never know, but he was saving them from a horrible fate.
    Six hours later, a very different Lewton Paterson stepped on the northbound train. He was dressed in conservative black from head to toe with thin wire-rim glasses on his nose. Nothing remained from his former life except the double eagle gold piece in his pocket he always carried for luck and a knife slipped between the stitching of his belt. Everything else, from his fine leather suitcases to his watch, spoke of old money and breeding.
    By the time Duncan McMurray got finished fighting at the Mexican border, Lewt would be on Whispering Mountain. If he did nothing else, he’d prove to Duncan that he could be a gentleman . . . someone worth introducing to the family.
    Lewt could play the gentleman. He’d learned early that men like to play cards with a man they consider an equal. He’d spent months polishing his speech and learning which fork to use on a fancy table. Now, there’d be no bets on the table. This time, he was gambling with his future.
    A hope began to form in his mind. If he could pass at Whispering Mountain, maybe he could take all the money he’d saved and buy a business. Maybe he could even marry and live a life in the daylight for a change.
    Lewt pushed his dreaming down. Hope was a terrible thing. It would keep you warm now and then, but when it died the cold always came back more bitter than before.

CHAPTER 3

    D UNCAN MCMURRAY RODE THROUGH THE NIGHT surrounded by a dozen other Texas Rangers. He couldn’t help but feel like he was running away from his duty to the family, but this time, more then any other as a ranger, he was needed. Finding husbands for his three cousins would have to wait.
    Every man traveling with Captain Leander McNelly knew they didn’t have the numbers to do what had to be done. They all knew they were riding into hell and might not be coming back. Duncan laughed to himself, thinking the rangers had always been long on courage and short on brains. When they died in the line of duty, few commented, but when they won, despite the odds, they became legends.
    Since the War Between the States, bandits from across the border had been raiding cattle off ranches in Texas. At least a hundred fifty thousand head had vanished, not counting the hundreds stolen by small-time outlaws hiding out in canyons within the state. Someone had to stop them, and Captain McNelly seemed in a hurry to take on the job.
    After the war, Texas fell into chaos on many fronts. Most men who came home were heartsick as well as broken in body. They’d fought for Texas thinking of it as sovereign and free to step away from the Union. The issue of slavery hadn’t made them raise their guns, but it had made them put them down. Most were lucky if they came home with a horse and a weapon.
    Duncan had been a kid when the war ended. He and the girls had stayed at Whispering Mountain. Teagen, the oldest and the head of the McMurray clan, was too old to enlist. He ran the ranch and supplied as many horses as he could, while Travis, Duncan’s adopted father, stayed in Austin. His wounds as a ranger kept him from enlisting, and his battles were in the courts.
    Tobin, the youngest of the three McMurray brothers, was torn. In the end, he couldn’t fight against his wife’s people. He served as sheriff in town until the war was over He tried to keep peace in their part of Texas. He also bought a piece of land near Anderson Glen and plowed it every spring, then planted enough vegetables to feed the town through winter. Duncan and every kid at the ranch big enough to ride spent every Saturday all summer delivering food to those who couldn’t come out and harvest their own.
    Sage, the McMurray brothers’ baby sister, had married not long before the war. Her husband, Drummond Roak, joined