Free Texas Lucky by Maggie James

he’d be out here.
    “But it won’t happen,” she said, the glow of her fantasy fading beneath the shroud of misery that hung over them. “The judge will come. We’ll both hang. So what’s the point in talking about what can never be?”
    At that, Curt blazed, “The point is having hope, damn it, which is another reason you’d never make it out here. You give up too blasted easy. You’re used to living in a world where it’s the same thing, day after day, with no real challenges. Out here you’ve got to be able to take a kick in the teeth and then pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep on going.”
    He stood and handed her the torch. “Here. Take this and go back to the front of the shaft. I’m not giving up.”
    He walked away, disappearing into the shadows, and for an instant she was tempted to call after him, but resisted.
    He was right.
    She was not used to having to struggle to survive.
    She was used to taking life’s blows and not fighting back.
    But no more, by God.
    No more.

Chapter Seven
    Curt was surprised when Tess had told him she wanted to help search for a way out of the mine shaft. So in the days that followed, they explored every nook and cranny possible, which left them exhausted at night, and they parted early.
    Curt stared into the glowing embers and wondered if Tess was warm enough where she slept near the entrance. Stubborn filly that she was, she had been quick to turn down his offer to share his alcove. So he had offered to build a fire for her, but she said if she felt the need she could do it herself.
    Actually, she was surprising him more and more by showing grit he never knew she had. But still, if any woman ever needed looking after, it was Tess Partridge. Saul Beckwith had been spared, all right, because he never would’ve had a real wife—just a child to look after.
    Curt shook his head at the ludicrous image in his mind of her walking into the assay office with a gun in her hand. It was a miracle she hadn’t shot herself in the foot. She needed someone to look after her, all right; but, he reminded himself grimly, unless he could find a way out of the shaft, it wouldn’t matter. She was as good as dead.
    And so was he.
    Damn it, he wished now he hadn’t trailed Abe Pugh, but it was not his nature to run from a fight. If he had lost the money fair and square, it would have been different. He had known before he ever sat down at that poker table there was a chance he might lose. Still, he was willing to gamble, willing to wager everything he had in hopes of winning enough to stake a ranch of his own. It had been his dream for as long as he could remember. It was what had kept him going, after he ran away from home in Tennessee when he was only ten years old to escape a drunken father who used him for a punching bag when his mother was too beaten down to hit anymore.
    The first few years had been rough, a continuing cycle of sleeping in alleys or old barns, stealing food, getting caught, being sent to an orphan home, only to escape and start all over again.
    About the time he turned sixteen, curiosity had driven him back to see his mother and younger brothers and sisters, only to learn his father had finally beaten his mother to death and been hanged for doing it. No one knew what had happened to the kids.
    Eventually he had made his way west and took to the ranching life. He learned to ride and rope and shoot and felt like he’d found his place in life.
    And then two things happened to blow his world apart.
    The war.
    And a woman.
    He had just turned twenty-three when Texas joined the fight between the North and the South and going off to war was the last thing he wanted to do. He was satisfied working as foreman on Jordan Comstock’s big ranch, and even more so with Comstock’s daughter, Mary Lou. With her flame-red hair, sparkling green eyes, and sassy little turned-up nose, she had a lasso around his heart for sure.
    He had asked her to marry him too many times to