The New Man — A Ranger's Badge Excerpt

Three weeks into his partnership with Kendall Bowden, Shane Harper is still deciding how much of himself to hand over to a man he's only just started trusting. Here's a look at one of their earliest jobs together, tracking rustlers along a frozen wash south of the Whetstones.

The tracks ran along the wash for the better part of a mile before they cut south toward the Whetstones, and I'd followed them since first light without a word from the man riding behind me. Frost still silvered the greasewood in the low spots where the sun hadn't reached, and the ground gave up its story in the bitter cold, every print sharp-edged, the dew not yet burned off to blur them. Three head moving at a walk, evenly spaced. A gait cattle held when nobody behind them was pushing hard. I read all of it without slowing my horse.

Bowden swung down and crouched over the print, turning his hat brim back so the shadow wouldn't fall across it. He ran two fingers along the edge of the track, pressing the dirt to feel the give as much as see it.

"Could be Tovrea's missing stock," he said. "Foreman mentioned losing some near here last month."

I hadn't heard that. Three weeks we'd been riding together, and already I'd stopped checking his work like I had the first few days. Grady had earned that over the better part of a year, mostly by forcing me to unlearn the fourteen-year-old habit of doing everything myself. Bowden was earning it faster because he just stepped in and anticipated the work, taking the back of a shack, reading the ground, making camp, without needing me to manage him.

"We'll lose the light before we catch them," I said. "Camp soon. Pick it up at first light."

Bowden mounted again without argument, and didn't look back to check if I'd changed my mind.

We made camp in the lee of a rock outcrop that broke most of the wind. Bowden unsaddled both horses without being asked, rubbed them down, checked his cinch and mine for wear.

"You got people, Harper?" he asked, settling onto his saddle blanket across the fire. "Family, I mean."

"Five of them. Scattered around the territory now." I didn't offer more than that. Habit.

"I've got my mother back in Missouri. A sister, too, with three young ones." He turned his cup in his hands. "Her husband passed away two winters back. I send what I can."

"That's a load for one man."

"Somebody's got to carry it," he said, no complaint in his voice. "Mossman pays decent enough. Most of it goes home."

I'd carried five of them at thirteen with less sense than this man had at twenty-five, twenty-six.

"Good of you," I said.

"Same could be said of you, I'd wager. Heard some talk you raised your brothers and sisters yourself."

"Long time ago."

"Don't sound like something a man forgets."

I grunted, offering nothing more. He went back to his coffee, and neither of us tried to fill the quiet.

We picked up their trail again at first light, the ground still hard with frost, our breath hanging white in front of us until the sun cleared the rocks. Found them holed up at a line shack a half mile shy of the border, smoke still curling thin from a cold-banked fire. I reined up well short and studied the place before either of us moved another foot.

"I'll take the back," Bowden said.

About The Ranger's Badge

Two lawmen. Eleven missions. A bond forged in gunsmoke.

Shane Harper didn’t want a partner—until Kendall Bowden saved his life. Set against the real history of the Arizona Rangers, The Ranger's Badge follows their rides across a gritty territory of rustlers, border standoffs, and siege.