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Marrying Miss Marshal

By Lacy Williams

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Wyoming Territory, September 1889

The report of a rifle echoed through the red-walled canyon, ringing in Marshal Danna Carpenter's chest. A second report sounded close after the first.
She reined in her mount and pushed back her Stetson, instantly alert and scanning the area for trouble.
The shots could've been someone hunting game—although there wasn't much of it to be found in these washed-out ravines southwest of town—or it could've been someone discharging their weapon for a more nefarious purpose. As town marshal, she had to be prepared for both possibilities.
Danna's horse shifted beneath her, its movements telling her it sensed something wrong as well. But what?
Then she saw him, in the last rays of sunlight slipping over the canyon's edge. A man staggering along the canyon floor, booted feet dragging in the sandy soil. He carried some kind of luggage over his shoulder. From this distance, she couldn't see a rifle….
Too far away to determine his identity, Danna guessed she didn't know him. His clothes were too fine for these parts—dark pants, vest, jacket, and a bright white shirt. Most folks around here wore woolen trousers or denims, and plain cotton shirts.
What was he doing so far from town? And on foot? Any halfway intelligent person knew you didn't traipse around the unforgiving Wyoming landscape without a horse, or a mule at the very least.
Before she could decide whether to waste the last of the sunlight to check on the stranger, or to head out of the canyon toward home, her horse's ears flicked back and his shoulder quivered beneath her gloved hand. The ground trembled.
From around a natural bend in the canyon, a cloud of dust rose like steam from a kettle and sent fear skittering down Danna's spine.
And the terrible sound she was hearing began to make sense: hundreds of pounding hooves, getting closer every second.
Stampede.
She couldn't leave an injured man to be trampled to death. Danna kicked King's flank and gave a shouted "hiyah!" The horse rocketed toward the figure still too far away.
Peripherally aware of the canyon walls racing by, Danna watched the greenhorn pause and looked up toward the sky. What was he doing?
A few hundred yards behind him, cattle began to round a bend in the canyon. The beasts bellowed, and that must've jarred the tenderfoot from his stupor, for he turned and faced the approaching wall of horns and hooves.
He froze, the item he carried sliding to the ground.
Words rose in Danna's throat but she had no breath to call out, not when all her concentration centered on reaching him in time. He wouldn't be able to hear anyway.
As the cattle closed in, the man's sense of self-preservation seemed to kick in, for he turned to flee, caught sight of Danna, and began to run in her direction.
Danna fisted her mount's mane with both hands, leaning forward until her torso rested against his foam-flecked neck as she pushed the animal even faster.
The man looked up and, for a moment, time seemed to suspend itself.
His eyes—a bright, clear blue—met Danna's, and she saw his fear and surprise.
A solid wall of cattle closed in behind the man. Too close.
Clinging to the saddle horn with her right hand, gripping with her knees, she caught hold of the tenderfoot under one arm, and used her horse's forward momentum to sweep him up behind her.
"Hold on!" she cried.
The man's arm slung tight around her waist, Danna pulled the horse into a tight turn and fought to keep the stallion from unseating them both. She knew the fear of death in that moment, her twenty-four years playing out before her eyes, so many mistakes made…mistakes she desperately wanted a chance to rectify.
They weren't going to make it.

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