Dawn Comes Early
Advance Acclaim for
Dawn Comes Early
“Margaret Brownley's
Dawn Comes Early
was an absolute delight. I spent the whole book reading with a grin on my face. She found wonderful characters and made them real to me and made a bleak desert landscape alive and beautiful. It's been a long time since I had this much pure fun reading a book.”
âM
ARY
C
ONNEALY, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF
O
UT OF
C
ONTROL
AND
P
ETTICOAT
R
ANCH
“Margaret Brownley draws vivid characters that are sparkling and endearing. They drew me into their lives and I didn't want to let them go. Thank goodness
Dawn Comes Early
is the first of her Last Chance Ranch stories. Like me, you'll be glad this isn't our last chance to visit!”
âD
EBRA
C
LOPTON, AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLING
M
ULE
H
OLLOW
M
ATCHMAKERS SERIES
Other Novels by
MARGARET BROWNLEY
Include
The Rocky Creek Romance series
A Lady Like Sarah
A Suitor for Jenny
A Vision of Lucy
Dawn
C
OMES
E
ARLY
A B
RIDES OF
L
AST
C
HANCE
R
ANCH
N
OVEL
M
ARGARET
B
ROWNLEY
© 2012 by Margaret Brownley
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherâexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations marked
NIV
are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.
TM
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
Publisher's note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brownley, Margaret.
  Dawn comes early : a Brides of Last Chance Ranch novel / Margaret Brownley.
      p. cm. -- (Brides of Last Chance Ranch ; 1)
  ISBN 978-1-59554-968-6 (trade paper)
  I. Title.
  PS3602.R745D39 2012
  813'.6âdc23
2011053486
Printed in the United States of America
12 13 14 15 16 QGF 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my daughter-in-law Natsuko, whose
name means “summer.”
Your loving heart and gentle spirit have
brought our family so much joy.
H
EIRESS
W
ANTED
Looking for hardworking, professional woman of good character and pleasant disposition willing to learn the ranching business in Arizona Territory. Must be single and prepared to remain so now and forevermore.
Contents
A
RIZONA
T
ERRITORY
1895
C
actus Paaaaaaaaaatch!”
Whistle piercing the air, the wheels of the Southern Pacific ground against the metal rails, jerking passengers back and forth before coming to a screeching stop.
Kate Tenney was the only traveler to rise from her seat. Ignoring the curious gazes of the mostly male passengers, she walked along the narrow aisle and down the steps to the deserted open-air station. Steam puffed across the wooden platform like a hissing dragon. She clutched at her skirt with one damp hand and shaded her brow against the bright noon sun with the other.
The steamer trunk filled with her precious belongings landed with a thud by her side. It had been delivered by the dark-skinned, uniformed porter who then grabbed hold of the handrail and swung his bulky frame back onto the train. He leaned out just far enough to signal the engineer with a wave of his hand and to afford Kate one last pitying look before vanishing inside. He wasn't the first to take pity on her, but if things worked out as she hoped, he would most certainly be the last.
The train slithered away, picking up speed until all that remained of the Tucson-bound express was the sound of a distant whistle and a line of black curling smoke.
Hands on her waist, Kate glanced around with a growing sense of dismay. This couldn't be Cactus Patch.
Please don't let it be so.
Never in all her twenty-nine years had she imagined such a desolate place.
Finding the nearby baggage room, ticket counter, and telegraph office empty, she turned a complete circle, squinting against the sun's white glare. Other than the cluster of sand-colored buildings in the distance, the flat, arid land stretched all the way to the purple-hued mountains on the horizon with only an occasional cactus to break the monotony in between. Heat waves shimmered from the desert floor and sweat trickled down her temples.
She removed her feathered hat and wiped away the dampness on her forehead with the back of her hand. The hat was more fashionable than practical and had to be tilted in an unappealing way before it offered any real protection from the sun, but the last thing she needed was freckles or a red nose. She was determined to look presentable, if not altogether professional. Her future depended on it.
She pulled a tattered telegram from the pocket of her blue traveling suit. It had taken six days to travel to Arizona Territory from Boston, and she longed for a bath and cool drink.
The telegram clearly stated that a ranch hand would pick her up. It was signed by Miss Eleanor Walker, owner of the Last Chance Ranch. The advertisement for a professional woman to be “heiress” to a cattle ranch had stoked Kate's imagination. She responded partly out of curiosity, but also out of desperation. She needed work, but more than that she wanted the respectability that came with owning land.
She sighed and tucked the telegram back into her pocket. So where was her driver? Where, for that matter, was anyone? The townâif indeed it was a townâshowed no sign of life. She couldn't even make out a horse or carriage. Had someone played a trick on her? Was this, in actuality, a ghost town?
Shuddering, she shook away the thought, but riding herd on her imagination was not so easy. What if she had to spend the night stranded in this deserted place? Or was attacked by Indians, bandits, or a pack of hungry, snarling wolves?
She groaned. Her vivid imagination never failed to make a bad situation worse. It was a writer's curse, and the only solution was a course of action that would keep her mind from going off on one of its flights of fancy.
Spotting a rope coiled on the platform, she gathered it in hand and tied it to a handle of her trunk. She wasn't about to leave her clothes and precious books unattended, though she couldn't imagine who would steal them.
She yanked the trunk off the wooden platform, stirring up a cloud of dust, and started toward town. Dragging the trunk was like dragging a dead mule. She moistened her cracked lips, but grit filled her nose and mouth. Her eyes burned and her throat was parched.
The going was slow. At that rate she would be lucky to reach town before dusk.
She stopped from time to time to catch her breath, but the closer she got to Cactus Patch, the harder it was to control her overactive mind.
It wasn't much of a town. Indeed, by Boston's standard it was little more than a whistle-stop. Adobe false-front buildings lined the narrow dirt road, with only a narrow wooden boardwalk separating the two. The sun directly overhead failed to cast so much as a shadow, let alone a spot of shade.
She passed several buildings, the scraping sound of her trunk breaking the silence. According to the handwritten signs in the windows, all businesses were closed, even the barbershop, gunsmith, and Cactus Patch Gazette. A breeze had picked up and a tumbleweed rolled down the middle of the street. The wind felt like the gush of a hot furnace bringing no relief. A loose shutter on a two-story building banged like a slow-beating drum. A saloon's batwing doors moved and squeaked.