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of church for a long time.” He tore his gaze from the landscape back to hers, hoping to make his next point understood. “About a year ago, after making peace with God, I finally realized those people who knew Liza weren’t being cruel or unkind on purpose. The real reason I’d quit going to church back then had nothing to with them, and everything to do with me.”
    With a shake of her head, Jennie scrambled to her feet. “You make it sound so easy, but it’s not. You don’t know what they said about my mother, the horrible rumors that they spread. Not that the truth was much better. Do you know she only wrote me once in those five years before we got the telegram about her death? Once.”
    Caleb couldn’t fault her entirely for her reaction; he’d been stubborn about giving up his past hurts, too. “What’d your mother say in her letter?”
    “I don’t know.” Her cheeks flushed red. “I never read it.” She stalked away from him, calling over her shoulder, “I’m going to see what’s keeping Will.”
    Breaking off a chunk of bread from the loaf at his side, Caleb opted to appease his growling stomach while he waited for Jennie and Will to return. He ripped off a smaller piece of bread and popped it into his mouth. He didn’t regret telling Jennie about Liza, despite the sadness it still stirred inside him. Rather than pitying him, she’d shown sympathy. At least before she’d gotten mad and left.
    Caleb ate another bite of bread as he thought over what Jennie had told him. He was honored she would share as much as she had about her own past, but it concerned him, too. He’d grown comfortable with only having to be responsible for himself, and he didn’t like the idea of having people dependent on him again. It left too much potential for disappointment, and loss. Life was a whole lot simpler on his own.

Chapter Six
    C aleb crept through the grayish mist of the nightmare, the voices of the two stage robbers arguing somewhere unseen ahead of him. He felt none of the anticipation he had that fateful day a year and a half ago when he’d discovered the final two members of the gang who’d robbed Liza’s stage were together again. In the dream he felt only dread at what he knew was coming.
    He moved toward the cabin and peered through the dirty window. The two men hunkered around the small fire, their weapons neglected on the nearby table. Brandishing his revolvers Caleb slipped silently to the door. He paused, the hatred he felt for these men thrumming as hard as his heartbeat. Lifting his boot, he kicked in the door and rushed inside.
    “You’re both under arrest!”
    One of the men scrambled up and tossed his chair at Caleb. Caleb leaped out of the way but the split-second distraction allowed the man to lunge through the back window with a horrific crash of glass. Caleb fired a shot, hitting the man in the foot, but he still escaped.
    “Get down on the floor,” Caleb barked at the other bandit.
    “Blaine,” he screamed as he lowered himself to his knees and put his hands in the air. “You gutless coward, get back here!”
    Keeping one gun trained on the man, Caleb stuck the other in his holster and reached for his rope. He approached the bandit. “Don’t worry about your partner. I’ll find him, too.”
    The man scowled, then hung his head.
    Caleb tossed the loop in his rope over the man’s head and waist, but just as he prepared to tighten it, the bandit leaped up, slashing at the air with a knife. The rope fell to the floor.
    “Put the knife down,” Caleb shouted as he jumped back to avoid the blade. “I don’t want to take you in to the sheriff dead.”
    “I ain’t going no other way.”
    The man rushed him, his arm cocked. Caleb backed up and felt the wall hit his shoulders. He was cornered. He dropped to his knees as the man came at him, hoping to throw the bandit off balance, but Caleb found himself wrestled to the floor.
    Caleb tried to work his gun free from the man’s