Page 1 of The Heart’s Charge

CHAPTER

ONE

LLANO COUNTY, TEXAS

SPRING 1894

When Mark Wallace left Gringolet two days ago to deliver a prize gelding to a wealthy rancher west of Llano, he never dreamed he’d be called upon to deliver a baby too. Or that the mother of said baby would be waving a pistol back and forth between him and Jonah as if trying to decide which fellow to shoot first.

“Get outta here! I don’t want your help.” Her face contorted, and a muffled groan escaped as she wrapped her left arm around her swollen belly.

She might not want their help, but she sure as shootin’ needed it. She looked as wrung out as yesterday’s washrag.

Mark, palms out in front of him, took a step forward. “Easy, now, ma’am. I’m not going to hurt y—”

The pistol exploded. Mark flinched. He took note of the barrel pointing toward the sky but tossed a look over his shoulder anyway, to make sure his friend wasn’t sporting any new holes. Jonah gave him a nod, his hand curling around the handle of his own revolver, ready to defend them if necessary.

Mark prayed it wouldn’t be necessary. The lady in front of him might be a few cards short of a full deck at the moment, but she was still a woman. And a gentleman never abandoned a woman in need. Even if she shot at him.

The sound of the gunshot seemed to startle her as much as it had him. Her eyes widened, and her gun arm quivered. Seizing the opportunity, Mark rushed forward, grabbed her wrist, and knocked the pistol from her hand. She shouted, kicked, and pounded his chest and chin with her fists, but Mark ignored the pummeling. Well, until she nearly gouged his left eye from its socket. He couldn’t ignore that. A man needed to be able to see, after all. Especially when dealing with a woman in a delicate condition who seemed to have taken leave of her senses.

Doing his best not to hurt her, he trapped her arms behind her back and gently but firmly pushed her inside the rickety cabin.

“No! I don’t want you here. Only the angels are allowed.” She struggled against him.

Angels? Mark believed such heavenly beings existed, but the way this woman referred to them sounded far from sane.

Then again, nothing about this woman had seemed sane since she emerged through the old cabin’s doorway in her nightdress, hair falling down around her ears, gun in hand. They’d heard her pain-filled cries from the nearby creek where they’d stopped to water their horses and had approached the cabin to investigate, calling out to whomever might be inside.

Thankfully, the gelding they’d been tasked with delivering was no longer under their care. The buyer had taken possession of the horse an hour ago back in Llano, so they didn’t have to worry about keeping track of an animal worth more than half a year’s wages while wrestling a pregnant woman.

And wrestling was precisely what Mark was doing. The tiny, dark-haired woman was drenched in sweat and bent nearly in half, yet she continued to resist him.

“Sorry for the rough treatment, ma’am,” Mark apologized as he inched her over the threshold. She nearly tripped trying to stomp his boot with her bare heel and would’ve fallen had Mark not supported her weight and kept her steady. “But you need to be in bed.”

That was where a woman in labor ought to be, right? In bed? He remembered his mother closeting herself away in her room when his little sister was born. Not that he had an inkling of what actually occurred in the room besides a great deal of groaning, whimpering, and the occasional scream.

He heard Jonah scramble onto the porch behind him and secure the fallen weapon.

“I wish Dr. Jo was here,” Mark murmured under his breath, thinking how much easier things would be if Matthew Hanger’s wife, Josephine, were on hand. Not only was she a woman, but she was the best doctor in Texas, as far as he was concerned. She’d saved his life and most likely his arm after a rustler’s bullet nearly took him out of commission.

The captain had married her last year, right after taking on a partnership with her father at Gringolet Farms, the US Cavalry’s preferred horse breeder. Captain Hanger’s new position gave the rest of the Horsemen a sense of permanence they’d lacked during the years following Wounded Knee, when they’d wandered from job to job, hiring themselves out to good people the law couldn’t or wouldn’t help. Mark didn’t mind the ranch work—he loved horses, after all—but the permanence was a different story. He’d been itching for a while now. Itching to move on. To explore new territory.

Not that he didn’t like the life he had at the moment. Good work. Good friends. The occasional job for Hanger’s Horsemen to keep his thirst for adventure satiated. But the itch was growing harder to ignore. He had nothing against putting down roots. He just hadn’t found the right soil yet. At twenty-eight, he wondered if he ever would.

“Maybe you should have taken stock of your lack of midwifery skills before you stuck your nose in this lady’s business,” Jonah groused as he sidled around Mark and the squirming woman trying to elbow him in the belly.

She castigated Mark with the name of every foul creature she could recall, from skunk to toad to snake. Some she even used twice. Slimy slug sucker seemed to be a favorite. That one came up at least three times. He had to give her credit—the lady knew how to throw a good insult. Not that her verbal bullets would slow him down any. His mission was to get her to the bed that stood ten feet away, and a cavalryman never allowed anything to stand between him and accomplishing his mission.

“Just because you ride a white horse,” Jonah muttered as he straightened the crumpled bed covers, “it don’t mean you always got to charge in like some kind of knight-errant. Not all women are innocent damsels, you know. Jezebel. Delilah. Belle Starr.”

“Cooper’s gray, not white,” Mark corrected as he gave up trying to inch the struggling woman across the floor and just picked her up. His right shoulder protested the extra weight, the site of last year’s injury making its presence known with agonizing clarity. He grimaced but managed to ignore the jabbing ache. That wasn’t so hard to do when kicking heels and flailing elbows jabbed him in multiple other locations. “And I’m no knight in shining armor.” Far from it. Not when he’d failed to rescue the one woman who mattered most. “I’m just a man who feels duty bound to help the weaker sex whenever the opportunity presents itself.”

“I am not weak!” A small fist collided with the underside of Mark’s jaw.

The unexpected impact caused him to bite his tongue. “That, ma’am, is abundantly evident,” Mark said, his mouth throbbing. Thankfully, they’d reached the bed, and he was able to unload his ungrateful cargo.

Despite her claims of strength, the fight seeped out of her the moment she came into contact with the mattress. She curled up on herself and started rocking. “It hurts.”