The gun didn't waver in Bo Callahan's hand as he stared down the woman who'd just thrown herself between him and the outlaws ransacking her home. Blood streaked her temple, her dress was torn, and five terrified children huddled behind her skirts. But her eyes blazed with a fury that made hardened men step back. "You want this land?" Kelly May Bishop spat. "You'll have to bury me in it first."
Bo had come to collect a debt. He hadn't expected to find something worth dying for. The August sun beat down on Dry Creek Valley like a blacksmith's hammer on an anvil, turning the Wyoming prairie into a shimmering sea of gold and dust. The year was 1887, and mercy was as scarce as water in a drought year.
Bo Callahan knew this better than most. He'd learned it the hard way, through betrayal, through loss, through watching good men die over a handshake that meant nothing when times got hard. That's why Bo didn't believe in second chances anymore. He sat tall in his saddle, a man carved from the same unforgiving stone as the Wind River Mountains behind him.
At 34, Bo Callahan was the wealthiest rancher in three counties, with 10,000 head of cattle bearing his brand and more land than some Eastern states. His shadow fell long across Wyoming Territory, and when Bo Callahan came calling, even sheriffs made themselves scarce. Today, he rode with two purposes: collect the $800 debt owed by the late Samuel Bishop and foreclose on the 160 acres that would complete his control of the valley's water rights. Business. Cold, clean, necessary business.
Behind him rode his foreman, Jack Devereux, a leathery Texan who'd been with Bo since the trail-driving days, and two ranch hands, Miller and Crane. Young men hardened by frontier life. They were armed, not for violence, but because a man who traveled unarmed in Wyoming Territory was a fool, and Bo Callahan was nobody's fool. "Boss," Jack said, pulling his horse alongside Bo's big roan gelding, "you sure about this?"
"Word in town is the Bishop woman's got five young'uns and not a penny to her name. Been two months since Sam died." Bo's jaw tightened, but his eyes never left the horizon, where a thin column of smoke rose from a weathered homestead. "A debt's a debt, Jack. Sam Bishop borrowed that money knowing full well what he was signing. I didn't write those terms in invisible ink."
"I know that. Just saying—" "You're saying I should let $800 walk away because a man was fool enough to die before he paid me back? That's $800 of seed money I loaned him in good faith, faith he repaid by drinking half of it and planting the other half too late in the season." Bo's voice was flat, emotionless. "Every rancher in this valley is watching what I do here, Jack. I let one debt slide, I'll have a line of sob stories from here to Cheyenne."
Jack nodded slowly, but his eyes held doubt. He'd known Bo Callahan for 12 years, and the man he'd met back in '75 had been different. Harder, yes, but with a streak of optimism that frontier life hadn't yet beaten out of him. That man had believed in fresh starts and the basic goodness of people.
Then Catherine happened. Catherine Morehouse, the banker's daughter from Laramie. Beautiful as a painted sunset and twice as fleeting. Bo had courted her for two years, built a ranch house fit for a queen, filled it with furniture shipped from St. Louis and carpets from San Francisco. He'd even bought a piano she'd never learned to play.
Three weeks before their wedding, Bo had ridden home early from a cattle drive to surprise her. The surprise had been on him. He'd found Catherine in his own parlor in the arms of a traveling whiskey salesman named Thomas Garrett, a man with smooth hands, smooth words, and not a callus or honest dollar to his name. Catherine hadn't apologized. She'd laughed.
"Did you really think I'd spend my life on this godforsaken prairie, Bo? Playing house in the wilderness? Thomas is taking me to San Francisco. We leave tomorrow." They'd left with $15,000 from Bo's safe, money Catherine had learned the combination to during one of those long evenings when Bo had foolishly trusted her with his business.
He'd tracked them as far as Denver before the trail went cold. The money was gone. Catherine was gone. And something in Bo Callahan had died that day, turned to ash and blown away across the prairie.