The Rustler Hunter - Chapter 1

Hayley

“Hayley! You’re insane!”

Ike snatched the matches from my hand before I had time to light one. Drat.

“It’s not like I didn’t tell you my plan before we came here,” I said, tapping my foot on the dusty ground.

“Lilian would not approve,” he countered.

Flynn let out a low, humorless laugh, the kind that carried more bite than amusement. “I don’t think Hay cares.” His voice had an edge, the kind that made lesser men hesitate.

I snorted. I didn’t care. Lilian was my sister, not my mother, a fact Ike often forgot. Not that I blamed him. He was the youngest of our six siblings. He had no memory of our mother. At three years older, I barely did.

“Are we gonna do this or not?” Shane growled.

Ike held the matches out of my reach, and my frustration flared. Being shorter than my brothers annoyed me. I crossed my arms and glared at him, then shifted my gaze to Flynn, hoping he’d intervene.

Flynn didn’t just move, he struck. Snatching the matchbox from Ike, he tossed it to me without a word. No hesitation, no concern. Just action. His movements were sharp, decisive, as if anything slower was a waste of time. Even here, even now, his hand never strayed far from his gun.

“Just don’t burn down the entire valley,” he said, his wild blue eyes daring me to prove him wrong.

I struck the first match. Dropped it onto the kerosene line.

Flames hissed and surged forward, hungrily devouring the south wall of the dreadful house. My heartbeat quickened as the fire spread. Let it burn, let it consume the horrors of our childhood, the years of starvation, neglect, and cruelty. The bloodstains on the kitchen floor that never came clean. The broken dishes from when Galen threw plates at Lilian’s head. The nights we went to bed with empty stomachs while his gang ate our winter stores. Nothing good had ever come from this place.

The four of us stood silent, watching the blaze climb higher. The flickering light illuminated Shane’s face, and for the first time in years, he looked lighter. Freer. He needed this more than any of us.

After a few minutes, Ike let out a breath, tension leaking from his shoulders. He shifted uneasily, fingers tightening at his sides, his gaze flicking between us and the flames. “I still don’t know if this was the right thing to do.” His voice lacked the certainty of Flynn or Shane, too careful, too weighed down by the law he swore to uphold, too afraid that one day he’d have to prosecute men like our father.

Flynn scoffed, sharper this time, cutting through Ike’s hesitation like a blade. His fingers flexed as if itching to wrap around his revolver, to carve justice into something tangible.

“You think Justine or Lilian would’ve let us burn it down?” His tone had turned cold, final. This wasn’t a question. It was a declaration of how far removed they were from what we endured.

Ike hesitated. Of course they wouldn’t. Justine and Lilian had seen justice through good men, stability, redemption. Ike had lived in that world, at least for a few years, under Lilian and Deacon’s roof, pushing through the gaps in his education, learning how to build a life beyond this name.

But Flynn and Shane? They never escaped.

“No,” Ike admitted. “Deacon and Grady would’ve had a whole speech prepared on why we needed to just let it be.”

Shane stood slightly apart from us, watching the flames rise, his expression unreadable. For years, he had carried the weight of fatherhood without asking for it, without being given a choice. But tonight, something cracked. His stance loosened just slightly. A breath deeper than any I’d ever seen from him. His jaw twitched. Maybe a flicker of release, maybe unease that it was finally over.

His whole life had been spent carrying us, protecting, providing, surviving. And now, for the first time, that weight wasn’t his to bear anymore. Even in this moment, his eyes swept the perimeter like he was still protecting us.

He flicked his toothpick toward the fire, watching it catch in the blaze. “They didn’t grow up like we did. They wouldn’t understand.”

I let the heat of the fire sear into my skin before speaking. “They had fathers worth remembering. Ours taught us how to survive or die trying.”

Shane exhaled, his jaw tightening ever so slightly. He didn’t argue. He never did. Because he knew I was right.

The truth sat between us, heavy, suffocating, thick as the smoke curling into the night sky. Our father hadn’t just abandoned us, he had bled us dry. He would sweep through like a dust storm, bringing his gang of cutthroats, stripping the house bare of food, leaving us with nothing but gnawing hunger and fear. Shane fought to keep us fed. Flynn fought to keep us safe. But no one, not the law, not mercy, fought for us.

Justine and Lilian had escaped. They married good men, built lives untouched by our father’s poison. But for us, Harper blood was a brand we carried like shackles, a stain we could never fully scrub away.

“I pray I never see Galen Harper again,” I murmured. “If I do...”

Flynn’s fingers gripped the handle of his Colt, his whole body coiled like a loaded spring. He wasn’t one to waste breath on words. His actions did the talking.

“I know what I’d do.”

We all did.

Ike clasped my hand and Shane’s. We held Flynn’s. The circle was complete, binding us not just as siblings but as something more. Something forged in fire and tempered by justice.

“When justice is executed,” Ike recited, voice steady and firm, “it is a joy to the righteous but a terror to evildoers.”

The words of Proverbs 21:15 hung in the smoky air between us, sacred as any wedding vow or funeral promise. We weren’t just siblings anymore, we were soldiers in a war against everything Galen Harper represented.

The four of us swore an oath, dedicating our lives to justice against men like our father.

Flynn leaned back, watching the fire with a calculating expression, his jaw tight, unreadable. “Burning this place down is only step one, Hay.” His voice dropped lower, steel-hard. “Step two is making sure men like Galen Harper never get the chance to create a place like this again.”

Shane nodded, flicking his toothpick into the embers. “Mossman needs help to track down rustlers at the Aztec Land & Cattle Company. A job like this will put our name on the right side of the law.”

I exhaled, feeling the weight of our pledge settle into something far heavier than family vengeance. Tomorrow, we’d board the train to Holbrook. By Monday, we’d be undercover, chasing justice in a land nearly as lawless as our father.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, I stared into the smoldering wreckage. It felt better than it should have. And for the first time, I wondered what our low-life, outlawing daddy Galen Harper might think about that.

_____

Ready to ride deeper into the fire?
Hayley’s just getting started—and justice doesn’t wait.

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