She’ll stop at nothing for revenge. He wants to save her from the gallows. When their past collides, will painful secrets end any chance for love?”

Nowhere Wyoming, Late July 1876

“I saw Skinner Robelard’s rig over to the stable,” said one of the yahoos at the bar, as Boyd Alvarez paused inside the front door of the saloon. He spotted his quarry at the far end of the bar then headed for an empty table near the man. He motioned to the barkeep, ordered one shot of Redeye neat, and settled with his back to the wall to watch Zachariah Jackson—the meanest, dirtiest, claim jumper, this side of the Snake River—whoop it up with some friends. Given some luck, Jackson would drink himself into a stupor, and Boyd could haul the man over to the sheriff’s office with little or no problem.

“Ain’t never see’d Robelard m’self,” Jackson said.

“Well y’ can see ‘im now,” one of the friends remarked and tilted his head toward the door Boyd had passed through. “Just came in.”

Jackson stood on his toes and craned his neck to see over the crowd. “Where? Man with as big a legend as Robelard’ oughta be big enough to see easy.”

The friend grinned. “He’s standing smack in the middle of the doorway. Ain’t Skinner’s size what got ‘im ‘is reputation; it’s his luck. Why I hear’d tell that he’s half rattler and half eagle. He’s faster’n lightning and never misses.”

“Afternoon, fellas.” The voice was rusty as barbed wire but surprisingly deep and musical, like church bells, but with the rhythm of a mama rocking a baby, the combination was oddly soothing.

Boyd supposed a man who coaxed critters to haul heavy loads over long distances would need such a voice.

Booted tread followed the greeting, and the crowd of men around the bar made room. Boyd watched a scruffy figure stride through. Something besides the skinner’s voice struck Boyd as odd. He couldn’t decide exactly what. As he considered, Robelard stepped into a spot at the bar bedside Jackson, right between Boyd and the claim jumper.

“Whisky, neat,” said the barbed wire croon.

Boyd was still mentally cursing the luck that put an innocent between him and a one hundred dollar bounty when he finally figured out what bothered him. How in Hades have all these men failed to notice that Skinner isn’t a man.