“We Want Her, Daddy!” The Mountain Man’s Twins Chose the Widow the Town Called ‘Too Wide to Wed’

Chapter 4

“The best,” Ruth whispered, sinking into the chair across from him. “He was a ledger keeper before we came west. Careful. Meticulous. He never took a risk in his life.” She paused, and a thought struck her like a physical blow. “He kept everything logged. Every sale, every trade, every penny. If Moses Crane had a reason to hurt him, Nathan would have written it down.”

She bolted up from the table, crossed to the stone fireplace, and knelt heavily on the hearth. Her fingers found the loose flagstone she had laid herself — a hiding place Nathan had shown her the week before he died, “for the papers no one should see,” he’d said, and she’d laughed at him for being so careful with so little. She pried the stone up and reached into the dark cavity, pulling out a dusty, leather-bound ledger.

At the table, her hands trembled as she flipped through the yellowed pages. Ezra leaned in, and the smell of pine and leather washed over her. Together they scanned the final entries. There — Ezra’s thick, calloused finger landed on a column of red ink.

Moses Crane.

Her breath hitched. He hadn’t just wanted her land. He had owed Nathan money — a staggering amount. She read the margins, Nathan’s neat, tidy cursive spelling out a lethal truth: Crane had lost his eastern herds to Texas tick fever. He had borrowed heavily from Nathan’s accounts back east to restock, putting up his own ranch as collateral. If he could not pay by the end of the year, the paper said, in Nathan’s careful hand, the ranch was legally Nathan’s.

Tucked between two pages was a slip of paper she had never seen before — a note in Nathan’s hand, dated the morning he died, written in a hurry. *Forgive me for the secret. I was trying to protect you. If anything happens to me, trust the creek before you trust the town. — N.*

Ruth read it three times, the tears coming hot and silent. He had known. The careful, meticulous man who never took a risk had taken the one risk that could cost him everything — and it had.

“So Crane killed him to bury the debt,” Ezra growled, his jaw clenched. “And he’s been trying to buy your land for pennies, to secure the border and make sure you never look too closely at those bank drafts.”

Before Ruth could process the magnitude of the betrayal, a low, guttural growl vibrated through the room. Jasper and Micah stood at the front window, the hair on the backs of their necks standing straight up.

“Smoke!” Micah hissed, his nose twitching.

“Men,” Jasper added, pointing toward the barn.

Ezra was on his feet in an instant, blowing out the oil lamp and plunging the room into darkness. He unslung the heavy Winchester from his shoulder. “Stay here.”

“It’s my farm, Ezra.” Ruth’s voice was forged from iron. She reached above the mantel and pulled down Nathan’s double-barreled shotgun, checking the breach in one fluid, practiced motion. “I protect what’s mine.”

In the moonlight filtering through the glass, Ezra looked at her. A fierce, terrifying surge of admiration went through him. He nodded once.

They slipped out the back door into the biting night air. The sharp scent of kerosene cut through the natural smell of hay and damp earth. Two figures were creeping along the side of the barn, carrying unlit torches and a bucket of fuel — a gray rat of a man named Otis Pike and a stump named Coot Brannigan, cowhands from the Crane spread.

“Hey.” Ruth’s voice rang out like a church bell in the silent valley.

The men spun. Pike fumbled for his revolver, but Ezra was faster — a warning shot from the Winchester shattered the wooden trough inches from Pike’s boots, sending splinters into his shins. “Drop it!” Ezra roared, stepping out of the shadows. In the moonlight he looked like an ancient, vengeful spirit of the mountain, massive and terrifying.

Brannigan, terrified, dropped his torch into the puddle of kerosene he had just poured.

Fire erupted, licking up the side of the barn.

“The horses!” Ruth screamed.

Chaos descended. Ezra lunged forward, his massive fist striking Brannigan with the force of a falling oak, knocking the man out cold. Pike tried to run, but a blur of feral motion intercepted him — Jasper and Micah dropped from the low branches of an oak straight onto his back, biting, scratching, screaming like banshees. The hired gun went down thrashing.

Ruth ignored the men. She ran straight at the flames.

The heat blistered her skin, but her size and strength were her greatest assets. She threw her heavy shoulder against the barn doors; the wood groaned, then gave way, and smoke billowed out around her. She rushed into the suffocating dark, throwing burlap sacks over the heads of her terrified draft horses, soothing them with a booming, steady voice that cut through their panic. “Easy, girls. Easy now. I’ve got you.” She led the great beasts out of the inferno, one by one, just as Ezra rushed up with a horse blanket soaked in water from the trough. Together, shoulder to shoulder, they fought the blaze, beating the flames back from the hayloft until the fire gave up and choked into smoke.

Panting, soot-stained, smelling of burnt wool and cedar, Ruth leaned against the charred side of the barn and looked out over her yard. The two hired guns were bound tightly with rope. Jasper sat on Brannigan’s chest, proudly displaying a stolen pocket watch. Micah had Pike’s hat, three sizes too big, and was trying it on.

Ezra walked over to Ruth. His face was streaked with ash, but his eyes burned with an intensity that had nothing to do with the fire. He reached out, and his rough thumb gently wiped a smudge of soot from her cheek.