Two of a Kind — A Ranger's Badge Excerpt

By the third hour of a stakeout on a frozen ridge, Shane Harper has run out of patience for silence, and Kendall Bowden has something to say. This is the conversation that changes how Shane sees the man riding beside him.

By the third hour of watching a dark ranch house from a cold ridge, my patience for solitude had worn down to nothing.

We'd had word that the Hartley place was being used to stage stolen horses before they moved south, and Rynning wanted eyes on it before we moved. So Bowden and I lay above the corral in a biting wind, waiting for lamplight that wasn't coming, breathing into our gloves to keep the feeling in our fingers.

"You ever think on quitting this line of work?" Bowden asked. A question with nothing behind it but an empty mouth and a cold ridge.

"Some days." I flexed the cold out of my fingers before I answered. "Most days I think on what'd happen if men like us did quit."

"Same thought keeps me out here." He shifted, drew his collar tighter. "Folks back in town, they don't know the half of what we see. Wouldn't want to know it if they did. They sleep easy because somebody else carries what they can't stomach carrying."

"That's the job."

"It is." He was quiet a moment, watching the dark shape of the barn like it might move on its own. "I had a sergeant once, before the Rangers, told me there's two kinds of men in this work. Ones who do it because nobody else will, and ones who do it because they like knowing they could."

"Which kind are you?"

"First kind, I'd hope. Some days I'm not so sure." He looked over, and even in the low light I could tell he meant the next part. "You're the first kind, Harper. I've watched you long enough to know it. Man who raised five brothers and sisters on nothing and never once mentions it. That's not a man chasing glory."

I reached for the toothpick, more out of habit than need.

"Most men I've worked alongside," Bowden went on, "want the badge for what it gets them. Respect, mostly. Some want it for worse reasons than that. You and me, we're not chasing anything. We're here because the work's got to be done and we're suited to doing it."

"Plenty of good men in this outfit."

"Sure. Good men who go home at night and don't think on it again till morning." He shrugged. "We're not built that way. I expect that's why we ride together so easy. Most fellows, three hours up a frozen ridge with nothing to show for it, they'd be at each other's throats by now."

The truth of it settled into me, something in my chest easing that I hadn't known was tight. Being understood without having to explain yourself first was rare enough on its own.

"Can't argue with that," I said. "Reckon if I wanted easy company, I'd have stayed in Prescott."

"There it is." He grinned, the first genuine warmth I'd seen on his face since we'd settled in. "Knew there was a sense of humor under all that granite somewhere."

"Don't go telling Rynning. Man already thinks I'm too serious for my own good."

"Rynning's got the right of it."

I grunted, and he laughed low enough not to carry down the slope.

We sat a while longer without talking, watching the dark house for lamplight that finally came near midnight.

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.