"As Dylan talked to Gwen, he told her how he felt that some of the more important stories of the first two generations needed to be passed on to the younger Evans.
She suggested that he should write them down so they wouldn't be forgotten, and he agreed. He knew that he would have to invent some of those stories because he wasn't there, but he knew the character of the men and women who had created much of the Evans family legend, and he was sure that they wouldn't mind his use of a bit of literary license. He only hoped that the youngsters would be able to read his hen scratching. Even when he was young, his penmanship was horrible, and now that he was an old man with arthritic fingers, it was close to an illegible scrawl. But it was important to him because they were. They were the Evans family.
Includes bonus story, They Call Me Peanut."
"After he and Garth had built the A-G Connected, Al thought that he'd fulfilled his dream by owning a horse ranch.
But when Garth announced that he was going to get married, Al knew that he would only be in the way, so he decided to find his own place. It was after he found his new ranch almost a hundred miles south of the A-G that things changed dramatically, and he realized that just starting a ranch and raising horses wasn't a dream at all, and it would take a nightmare to discover what that dream truly was."
"Bethan listened as her father explained to her mother the mission that he was giving to her brother, Lynn, and her Uncle Bryn. After she's heard all of the details, she left the big house and returned to her small house where she began to pack.
She was frustrated at being unable to apply the skills that she'd been learning from her father since she was just a young girl, knowing that if she'd been born male, she would have been sworn in as a deputy marshal within a year. All that everyone seemed to expect her to do with her life was to marry and have children, and she was determined to prove that she could match any of the deputy marshals that worked for her father. Her uncles and brother wouldn't leave until tomorrow, and by the time they arrived in Canon City, she'd be waiting for them and follow them to the counterfeiters' location.
Bethan may have been expecting just to watch the takedown of a small counterfeiting operation, but within a day, her entire future would make a dramatic and deadly shift that would take her across Colorado where she would face dangers she could never have anticipated."
"Private Jake Elliott was apprehensive as he walked to the commander's office. He couldn't think of a single transgression that would have attracted the major's attention.
When he left the command building 10 minutes later, he was still numbed by the short visit. Tomorrow, he would no longer be a cavalryman, but would be returning to the family ranch outside of Fort Benton in Montana Territory.
But it was the reason he was being discharged before his enlistment expired that had been the biggest shock. His mother had been brutally murdered. If that hadn't stunned him enough, it was when he learned that his father had committed the crime.
When Jake boarded the riverboat that would take him home, he wasn't planning to stay on the ranch for more than a few days. He'd soon be leaving to hunt down his father and find justice for his mother."
"Lynn glared at Ryan Mitchell and wanted to smack his smug face.
Even though Ryan meant to insult him, Lynn knew that there was a very good chance that what he said was right. He'd suspected for years now that Dylan Evans wasn't his real father. It didn't take a math wizard to figure out that he'd been born nine months after his mother had been rescued from Fort Benton.
But what pushed Ryan to finally ask his parents if it was true was when Ryan had laughed and said that Lynn was probably more like his real father, the monstrous Burke Riddell, than his hero, the man who raised him. He left the small house to ask that painful question, and if he was told that it was true, he knew that he'd have to leave the Double EE ranch and the only family he'd ever known."
"Doctor Turnbull had estimated that Kyle's mother had six months to live - that was three months ago.
He felt guilty for playing a game as she suffered back at their small excuse for a house. She had insisted and knew that it was important to her that he spend time outside of the mechanized hell where he spent 60 hours a week earning his meager pay that kept food on the table and paid the rent. She had lost so much weight and was only able to tolerate a weak broth now, so he didn't believe it would be that long.
His mother had been the center of his life for as long as he remembered, and when she left him, he'd have no family at all. The bastard that had called himself his father had deserted them 10 years ago when he was six, and Kyle blamed him for his mother's illness. He had no one else to accuse. He'd been her nurse and minister over the past week as she was unable to leave her sickbed without assistance, and he knew that caring for her had added discomfort to her pain.
Even as he played, he kept thinking of his future after she succumbed to the cancer but saw nothing but years of toil on the oven of the ironworks floor and an empty life with no possibilities."
"The Ogden station manager couldn't believe what he was being told.
The scheduled train from Granger was overdue by three hours. He'd suspected a mechanical breakdown or maybe even a derailment. But the engineer of the next train to use that track had just reported that he hadn't found any signs of the train.
He had no idea how an entire train could simply vanish, but as he pondered the mystery, the head telegrapher came to his office and showed him a telegram that had been sent to Union Pacific headquarters. It was a ransom demand for $100,000. If it wasn't paid within a week, the train and its 34 passengers would be blown up. He hurried out of his office and rushed through the early morning streets to tell the resident Union Pacific special agent of the kidnapped train. It was Nelson Cook's problem now...."
"Bryn felt sickened as he felt the ground shake, knowing that one of the two shafts had collapsed.
Now, he stood in the pump room and watched the two thrumming pumps as they pulled water out of the deep mines. He knew that one of them would strain when the water became fouled with coal dust and debris from the collapse, and if it was pump number two, it would mean that his father and older brothers were probably dead.
It seemed like hours went by as he watched the pump work, but it had only been minutes since the first intense vibrations had struck. He knew that if pump number two began to labor, his plans to leave Carbondale would be one more of the coal mine's victims. Just when he planned to check on pump number one, he saw the pipe to the second pump begin to pulse before the belt on the drive wheel squealed in protest and his worst nightmare had come to pass."
"Dylan knew that the boiler was about to blow apart, and if he didn't act fast, he and the others in the pump room at the number three mine would all die.
In his haste to escape a scalding death, the engine operator panicked and fell. Dylan lifted his heavy shovel as high as his 12-year-old arms could manage and swung at the thundering machine. It could've killed him, but he had to try. As the shovel's steel head slammed into the machine, it set in motion a series of events that would shape his entire life."
