Free Early Dawn by Catherine Anderson

no . But the hand shoved her knees slightly apart, despite her prayers.
    In that moment, Eden came face-to-face with the horror of her situation. All her life, Ace had drummed into her head the phrase mind over matter , his theory being that a person could live through anything if he had enough strength of will and a plan for survival. “When life kicks you in the teeth, you hunker down and keep going, no matter what,” he’d often told her and his younger brothers. Eden had once seen David walk home from a riding accident with a broken leg. He’d found a tree limb to use as a crutch, and he’d inched his way back for help, every step so painful that he’d almost lost consciousness. Mind over matter . Another time, Ace had taken a bullet in the thigh, and her mother had dug it out of his flesh with the tip of a butcher knife. With no coin for whiskey to dull the pain, Ace had clenched his fists around the headboard of the bed and asked Eden to talk to him about pretty things while Dory fished for the slug. In a quavering voice, Eden had described a meadow in springtime, how the wildflowers nodded in the soft breeze, how sweet the air smelled from their blossoms. Though her other brothers had been ready to hold Ace down, it had never become necessary, because Ace had lain there, perfectly still of his own accord, sweat streaming from his twisted face, his glazed eyes focused on nothing while he withstood the agony.
    Mind over matter . Eden had grown up seeing others in her family set the example, and now it was her turn. She fixed her gaze on the flames and forced her thoughts to faraway places, picturing her mother, brothers, and that meadow she’d once described for Ace when he’d needed something pretty to think about. Let these men do their worst , she thought fiercely. I’m Eden Paxton. I come from good stock. No one is going to make me whimper and beg, least of all miserable worms like these.
    While they groped and fondled her body, Eden remembered her early days and happy moments on her family’s sorry excuse for a ranch on the outskirts of San Francisco—like the time she’d gotten sick as a very small child, and Ace had hired himself out to empty spittoons, his most despised way of earning money, to buy her a doll. And the time David had bargained at the dry-goods store, swapping his only belt to buy her pretty silk hair ribbons as a birthday gift. For months afterward, he’d used one of their mother’s sashes to hold his britches up. There’d been sad times, too, of course, like the time her little dog, Sam, had been run over by a farmer’s wagon and died in the road. Afterward, her brothers had dug a grave, and then they’d held a regular funeral complete with handpicked flowers—mostly dandelions—and hymns, sung in a pubescent blend of breaking voices and deep baritones that Eden would never forget. Dory had culminated the ceremony by reading from the good book. David had followed the readings by assuring Eden that it wasn’t only people who could lie down in still pastures. He had claimed Sam was welcome there, too, and that, after a good rest, he’d be hale and hearty again, racing across the meadows after sticks thrown for him by the angels. As Eden looked back, even the saddest moments in her life now seemed bittersweet because she’d always had her family to love her, hold her, and ease her pain.
    The memories calmed her, creating a buffer between her and reality. She thought of Ace’s wife, Caitlin, whom Eden so closely resembled, and the couple’s boy, Little Ace, who’d been a plump darling with dancing brown eyes and a mischievous grin when Eden had visited No Name seven months ago. Soon, she would get to see her niece, Dory, Ace and Caitlin’s baby girl, and she’d also be able to visit at length with Joseph’s new wife, Rachel, a lovely blonde with beautiful blue eyes. When Eden’s thoughts turned to her younger brothers, David and Esa, who still weren’t married, she had