The noon train had barely stopped in Mercy Hollow when the entire station fell so quiet that the woman in the pale-pink dress could hear the heels of her own boots striking the wooden platform.
Steam rolled across the tracks in thick white clouds.
The black locomotive groaned behind her, metal ticking beneath the Colorado sun, while passengers leaned from windows and townspeople crowded near the freight office to see the bride everyone had spent six months discussing.
She had known there would be staring.
She had not expected this much of it.
Men stopped chewing tobacco.
Two women near the station wall lowered their parasols.
A mother pulled her little boy closer to her skirt.
The stationmaster froze with a canvas mail sack still hanging from one hand.
It took the woman only a moment to understand why.
The dried blood on her left sleeve looked almost black against the pale pink fabric.
It began near her wrist and climbed toward her elbow in irregular stains.
Her dress was dusty from three days of travel. Her brown boots were worn nearly smooth at the heel. A cracked leather satchel hung from one shoulder, and her battered carpetbag seemed to grow heavier with every pair of eyes that followed it.
She ignored them.
She had crossed half the country alone.
She had spent the previous night sitting upright in a railway compartment with one hand around the handle of that satchel because she had been too frightened to sleep.
A crowd of strangers was not going to turn her around now.
Her gaze moved across the platform.
Then stopped.
She knew instantly which man was the rancher who had written the letters.
Nobody had needed to describe him.
He stood beside the freight office like a dark wall someone had accidentally placed among ordinary men.
Nearly seven feet tall.
Broad enough through the shoulders that the other ranch hands beside him looked narrow.
Thick dark hair touched the collar of his black work shirt. His beard was full and rough, his forearms sun-browned beneath rolled sleeves, and a battered leather vest stretched across his chest.
He did not smile.
But the expression on his face was not the one she had feared.
It was concern.
His eyes had gone directly to her sleeve.
The woman walked toward him.
The crowd opened without anyone being asked.
She stopped close enough to see a faint scar beneath his beard.
“You the rancher who wrote to me?”
His gaze lifted from the blood to her face.
“Yes, ma’am.”
His voice was lower than she expected.
Quiet.
Almost careful.
She dropped her carpetbag beside his enormous boots.
“Good.”
Someone behind her leaned closer.
The woman folded her hands over her stomach.
“I’m the woman who answered.”
The rancher nodded once.
“I know.”