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again. In the otherwise silent room, the rasp of Damascus steel seemed deafeningly loud.
    On wobbly legs, she turned to face the barred door, braced the butt of the shotgun against her hip, and yelled, "State your business!"
    She heard boots shuffling on the porch planks. More than one man? Her blood ran cold. Oh, God. Oh, God. Where was Darby? Had these men harmed him? The old foreman was never this late unless something detained him.
    "This isn't the kind of news I want to shout through the door, " the man replied. "The marshal is with me, if that eases your mind any. "
    The marshal? Rachel's heart skipped a beat.
    "Can you open up for a minute, ma'am?" another
    man asked. "This is David Paxton, the marshal of No Name. I give you my word, we mean you no harm. "
    Rachel curled her forefinger over the triggers of the shotgun, prepared to start blasting if they tried to come in. "State your business through the door. I can hear you just fine. " She swallowed to steady her voice. "My foreman will be along at any moment. If you prefer to speak face-to-face, you can wait a bit and talk to him. "
    Another silence ensued. Then the first man said, "That's why we're here, Miss Hollister, to bring you news about your foreman. Along about three this afternoon, he rode in to my place, looking for help. He's been hurt. "
    "Hurt?" Love of Darby had Rachel taking a hesitant step toward the door. Then she caught herself and drew to a stop. She was a woman alone, miles from the nearest neighbor. It would be sheer madness to trust two strangers. "How was he hurt?"
    Rachel had grown up on the ranch and knew all the dangers. Darby could have been cut by barbed wire, thrown from his horse onto rocky ground, or kicked by a steer, to list only a few possibilities. Unfortunately, he might also have been bushwhacked by two thieving ne'er-do-wells.
    She heard a low rumble of male voices. Then the man who called himself Joseph Paxton finally said, "He was at the north end of your property, tracking a heifer, Miss Hollister. When he left the rocks and headed back toward the creek, someone shot him in the back. "
    Shot? The word resounded inside Rachel's mind,
    and black spots began to dance before her eyes. She knew the place the man described. She saw it in her dreams every night. Not again, God. Please, not again. A strange ringing began in her ears, and she could no longer feel her feet. Images of her family flashed before her eyes—of her little sister, Tansy, chasing butterflies—of her father, sitting on the creek bank and playing his fiddle while her mother danced on the grass—and lastly of her brother, Daniel, golden hair gleaming in the sunshine, his grin mischievous as he wrestled with Rachel for the last drumstick in the picnic basket.
    She made her way to the table and sank onto a chair. Dimly she heard Joseph Paxton speaking to her, but she couldn't make out the words. It was as if she had water in her ears. Darby, shot. She couldn't wrap her mind around it. And to think that it had happened in exactly the same place where her family had been killed. No, no, no.
    A foggy darkness encroached on her vision. Rachel had experienced it before and knotted her hands into tight fists, determined not to let it happen again. Not now, with two strangers on her porch. But the blackness moved inexorably closer, a thick, impenetrable blanket determined to enshroud her.

Chapter Three
    "Well hell. " Joseph kicked a piece of stove kindling that lay near Rachel Hollister's woodpile. "That got us nowhere fast. "
    His breath fogging the frigid air, David hunched his shoulders inside his jacket. "It's worrisome, the way she went quiet all of a sudden. " He gave Joseph an accusing look. "I knew we shouldn't talk to her through the door. You're supposed to break news like that gently. "
    "She wouldn't open the door, " Joseph reminded him. "And tell me a gentler way to say it. I told her that he was hurt before I told her that he was shot. "
    "You're too