Gena Dalton - Stranger At The Crossroads

He met her straight look with one of his own.

“Thank you, Darcy.”

“We’ll have to pray as hard as we work,” she said, “but, God willing, we’ll have them on their feet and on the mend in a week or so.”

Jackson shook his head. He looked down at the soda can in his hands.

“I’ll do the work. You’ll have to say the prayers.”

Then suddenly, almost as if against his will, he blurted, “Mine wouldn’t rise above the treetops.”

“Why do you think that?” she said.

“I know it,” he said, in a tone of complete finality. “I lost my faith a long time ago.”

has wanted to be a professional writer ever since she learned to read at the age of four. However, she became a secondary teacher and then a college professor/dean of women instead, and only began to write after she was married and a stay-at-home mother. She entered an essay contest, which resulted in a newspaper publication that gave her confidence she could achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a “real writer.”

Gena lives in Oklahoma with her husband of twenty-four years. Now that their son is grown, their only companions are two dogs, two house cats, one barn cat and one cat who belongs to the neighbors but won’t go home.

She loves to hear from readers. She can be reached c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10017.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion when he saw him. He went up and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. He then lifted him on to his own mount, carried him to the inn and looked after him.

—Luke 10:33-34

This story is dedicated to God, Who, as always,

gave me the book, and to my friends Karen and

Paula, who helped me listen for the words.

I would also like to thank my friend Jill Peale,

DVM, who advised me on all matters veterinary.

Any mistakes are mine alone.

Dear Reader,

This story of veterinarian Darcy Hart and reclusive rancher Jackson McMahan may be my very favorite of all my books. Any of us can find ourselves called by God to help a stranger who is more wounded by life than we are, and in giving that help receive love in return.

That kind of giving and receiving began on the side of a narrow Texas road the day Darcy ran away from Oklahoma, fleeing from her grief. That same early morning Jackson was compelled to rescue a neglected, pregnant mare he used to own. Once Darcy stopped to help him, their journeys would never be separate again.

While you hold Stranger at the Crossroads in your hands, I’m back in the Texas Hill country on the McMahan Ranch, the Rocking M, following the love stories of Jackson’s brothers, Clint and Monte, to their own happy endings. I hope you will look for them, too.

Please let me know how you like this book. I would love to hear from you. You can reach me c/o Steeple Hill Books, 300 East 42nd St., New York, NY 10017.

Warm wishes,

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Stealing a horse wasn’t easy. At least not this one.

Jackson McMahan put the halter and lead rope behind his back and tried to soothe the mare with his voice while he slowly moved closer to her.

“Settle down, now, girl,” he crooned, “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Finally, ten or fifteen minutes after he’d driven onto Blake Collier’s ranch by the back road so he wouldn’t have to pass the house, he maneuvered the nervous animal into a corner. He shifted off his good leg onto his lame one and, ignoring the sudden pain in his knee that made his gait even more awkward, stepped up to her head without spooking her.

Her big belly slowed her down, and too little food had made her weak, so he managed to get his arm around her neck, and then the rope, just before she tried to break away again. He let out a sigh of relief that he hadn’t known he was holding.

“Come on home with me, Mama, and get a square meal,” he said, while he slipped the halter onto her head and buckled it with his clumsy gloved hands. “You want your baby to have all its parts, don’t you?”

It was way too late to affect that, though, he decided, glancing over his shoulder as he led her out of the pen and toward the trailer’s open door. From the looks of her distended sides with the ribs standing out under her skin, this foal would be on the ground, alive or dead, before it had a chance to absorb very many days’ worth of nutrients.

He had brought the three-horse trailer with the ramp so she wouldn’t have to make the short leap up into it, but that didn’t help much. She refused to have anything to do with the trailer. She balked and pawed the ground and swung side to side every time he tried to lead her forward.

Jackson glanced over his shoulder toward the house. No sign of life.

That was good, because Blake Collier would be much more likely to shoot a horse thief than to call the sheriff.

He smooched to the mare again, waited, and smooched again. When she took a tiny step forward, he started up the ramp as if he thought that was what she’d intended to do. Suddenly docile, she walked beside him. He led her into a slot, ran the rope through the ring and, willing his fingers not to fumble too much, tied her off. His heart lifted as he fastened the divider and hurried to close the door and raise the ramp.

Shooting danger aside, any fight with Blake would be a toss-up now that Jackson’s body was so unreliable—and an unnecessary delay, to boot. It was past time to get out of here.

Darcy Hart didn’t recognize herself when she glanced in the rearview mirror. Wild green eyes stared back at her, unseeing, and her auburn curls whipped and tangled madly in the wind. She looked like an Orphan Annie doll scared half to death.

She didn’t care. She had to have the fresh air. With the window rolled up, she couldn’t even breathe.

It was almost cool this morning, with a nice October breeze blowing, but her cheeks felt burning hot. Well, then, they’d really feel hot in Mexico.

If she wound up in Mexico.

The sound and the rhythm of the tires against the pavement soothed her a little. She wouldn’t have to stop again for awhile, since she’d filled the truck with gasoline before she stopped at last night’s motel. She had no desire to eat, either.

Being on the move helped. It helped a lot. The dreams that had wakened her at 3:00 a.m. were fading again. Every mile seemed to put them farther away.

Not the sorrow, though. It was part of her now, as much as her stomach and her veins and her fingers and toes, since it filled them all with its cold cement.

She prayed her constant and only prayer.

Dear God, please give me the strength to bear it.

Then she added a postscript.

You can see by where I am this morning that I don’t have enough. More strength, Lord. More strength.

Never did she dare to pray for the sorrow to be taken away—then she would truly be alone.

The truck swerved on a narrow curve, and she set her gaze on the road again. She’d better be trying to hold it between the ditches if she didn’t want to end up in one.

Actually, she didn’t much care. Her life still wasn’t worth living. It had been a year. A year that had been a hundred times longer without her dear, dear Todd to hold her in his arms every night and her precious baby boy, Daniel, with his huge dark eyes to gaze into with her own.

Grief rushed into her heart, fresh as ever.

Time heals, they’d all told her. You’ll start looking to the future one of these days. Well, at this rate, since she’d made precious little progress in a year, she’d have to be the oldest woman on the planet before she lost even a little of her longing for the past. To get to that point, God would have to give her all His own strength.

At that instant, a cross appeared in the heavens. Up ahead, on the right. A white cross shining in the sun against the blue morning sky.

Darcy stared, not caring that the truck swerved into the opposite lane. Her eyes were glued to that cross. Could it be a visible answer to her prayer?

She blinked and looked again as she straightened her steering. No, the cross wasn’t floating in the sky. It rested atop an adobe building that vaguely reminded her of the Alamo. Ancient and small and run-down, it must be a church, or maybe even a private chapel, judging by the size. No miracles today.

Something flashed in the corner of her eye, something closer. A glint of silver, then she saw the shape of the horse trailer, and her focus came back to earth.

No one with a grain of sense would pull onto the side of a two-lane road with no shoulder like this one unless there was trouble. That spot was steep enough to tilt the trailer sideways.

The ramp was down, and the trailer door hung open, swaying a little over the deep ditch.

Maybe the driver was just checking on a horse that had been kicking the side or putting hay in the hay bag that he’d forgotten. It probably wasn’t an emergency at all. At least, not a medical one.

She prepared to pull over to give a wider berth as she drew closer to the rig.

It was a blowout on a trailer tire. The trailer sat tilted sideways not just because of the terrain. One wheel rested on the ground because the tire had disintegrated. Darcy glimpsed pieces of rubber scattered over the road, but she couldn’t look at anything but that open door. Was the horse hurt?

It surged into view at that moment, backing up fast and in a zigzag line. A man appeared, holding the lead rope, struggling to keep it from being jerked out of his hands, fighting to stay with the terrified animal as it plunged down the ramp.

A pregnant mare. Very pregnant. As she hit the ground with her hind feet, she lost purchase on the blacktop pavement and, scrabbling, half rearing, she slipped off the edge of the ditch and kept on sliding down the incline, reaching with her front legs for balance in the air.

The man held onto her, but it couldn’t have been easy. He had something badly wrong with one leg and could barely keep on his feet and stay with the desperate mare. She reared mightily as the fear rushed through her, hauling the rope through his gloved hands so fast that he came within a heartbeat of losing it. He had all he could do to stay out from under her raised forefeet, but he did it. Darcy pulled even with them.

The mare was huge with the foal that had obviously sapped every bit of her resources. It was a miracle she even had the strength to rush out of the trailer and try to get away, much less fight to stay out of the ditch. The red dun mare had spirit, that was for sure.

She wasn’t hurt, though. She didn’t appear to be hurt.

“Don’t stop,” Darcy said to herself out loud. “Do. Not. Stop.”

She stopped.

The trembling, sweating mare, her eyes rolling into the whites, stretched impossibly higher against the early morning sky, then threw herself backward into the bottom of the ditch.

“Hang on,” Darcy called, through the open passenger window. “I’ll help you.”