The Republic of Texas
1840


At seventeen Creighton Stewart didn’t need anyone, and she liked it that way. That was why she’d been particularly disturbed by father’s heated rejoinder during their argument that morning: “Perhaps a husband can curb your tongue!”

Cricket hadn’t meant to holler at Rip, or to call him a noodleheaded lumpkin. But if he thought a husband was going to do any better at controlling her than her own father, well, he was a worse wag-wit than she’d accused him of being. Besides, it was his fault she was the way she was. What man in his right mind would willingly choose to raise his daughters as sons?

Thanks to her father, Cricket possessed all the skills necessary to survive on the Texas frontier without the aid of another living soul. That sort of self-reliance was a real advantage in a wilderness where she might meet Comanches or Mexican bandidos or outlaw drifters over the next rise. Actually, Cricket and her nineteen-year-old sister, Sloan, had taken to Rip’s survival lessons like a newborn calf to a cow’s teat. However, their eighteen-year-old sister, Bayleigh, had never managed to meet Rip’s high standards of excellence. The truth was, Cricket admitted, Bay didn’t even come close.

Still, she should have known better than to try to convince Rip that it was a waste of time to send Bay out hunting. He didn’t want to hear it. Rip Stewart hadn’t become the richest gentleman planter in Texas by giving up. His last words as she’d stormed out of the house had been “Take Bay with you. Make sure she does the tracking. And don’t come home empty-handed!”

Cricket s...