March 15, 1871
Heart of Montana Territory

“Beware the Ides of March,” Sallie Beauregard muttered as she donned the disguise within her room, tucking her long braid up inside her cowboy hat. In Shakespeare’s day, young men played female roles in his plays. Here in Montana Territory, she dressed as a boy to keep wayward eyes from realizing she was, in fact, a very eligible maiden.

“Sal, you ready, my girl?” her father called from the main room. A well-respected nomad trapper, it’d been his idea to dress her in trousers and a buckskin coat after Mama died when Sallie was but a child of five. Sallie hadn’t minded then. It was easier to traipse after her father in something other than a dress. Who had use for frills and lace, anyway?

She still believed that, but now she wore plain dresses or a split skirt unless they went into a town. Then she honored her father’s request because all anyone knew of old Saul Beauregard, who lived up on the mountain near Blue Spruce, Montana, was that he had a son named Sal—a son who never spoke—except to horses.

Sallie slung her saddlebags over her shoulder as she followed her father to the barn. “Where are we making camp tonight?”

With the first breaths of spring, Papa got antsy to leave the confines of the old cabin. They’d return every few weeks to stock up on supplies, then go again to hunt and sell the meat and furs to those in towns along their way.

Papa scratched his full gray beard. “We’ll head down to the valley and follow the waking critters.”

She nodded. There was no need to comment as she saddled Gunpowder, named for the horse Ichabod Crane rode in Washington Irving’s tale. When she first met Gunpowder, the poor horse reminded her of the broken-down plow horse in the book. She patted his nose. Now his black coat shone, and his belly showed him well-fed. Gunpowder nuzzled her under the chin.

Supplies loaded onto the horses, she swung into the saddle and followed Papa down the mountain. Today, she believed spring could be around the corner. While a chill still permeated the air, snow dripped from the cabin roof and rocky outcroppings. Soon, the rivers would rage, waking the world from the depth of winter.

The advent of warmer weather usually sparked warmth in her heart, but a strange foreboding hovered this year. Perhaps because they were setting out on the fifteenth of March? She might not be superstitious, but she loved her books and had read Julius Caesar a few too many times not to have the warning echo in her head.

She rubbed Gunpowder’s neck, letting a prayer from Psalm 121 whisper upon the wind. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore. Amen.

The journey down the mountain took several hours, and they paused for the noon meal before entering the town limits. The cowboys and miners who happened to be in Blue Spruce greeted Papa warmly. They traded gossip as much as legitimate news. Sallie listened as she gathered canned goods in the general store. She recognized a few names from their last visit. Some had given up their claims and headed back east or further west. But one name stood out. It never ceased to send shivers down her spine.

Physically large and politically powerful, Brendan Doran thought first only of himself. Perhaps that’s why he owned the largest saloon in town, a place that also housed the only other unmarried women who lived in Blue Spruce. And the primary reason Papa disguised Sallie’s femininity.

“Rumor is Doran wants to settle down.” One grizzled man set a tin of tobacco on the counter. “Can you imagine having all those women around you and wanting to pick just one to spend the rest of your life with?”

Another old cowboy tipped up his hat and laughed. “I doubt he’ll give that up. He just needs a girl he can hoodwink.”

Papa caught Sallie’s eye, nodded toward the crate of goods he was about to pay for, and then pointed his chin toward the door. He wanted her away from this conversation, and Sallie was more than happy to oblige.

She shouldered the crate as a lad might and pushed into the pale sunlight. The men who passed barely cast her a second glance. Just as she set the crate beside where she and Papa had tied the horses, a shout brought her gaze east, to the road leading out of Blue Spruce. Or into it, considering the billowing cloud that loomed closer.

Sallie rested her hand on Gunpowder’s flank as she circled him. Men ran out of buildings as a horse with a black coat that made Gunpowder’s color appear faded galloped into town, a lead rope trailing behind him. Considering the rope’s frayed end, the black must have broken his lead. And having it whacking his bare back surely wasn’t helping his panic. Fortunately, the horse slowed as it reached the center of town, but his nostrils flared.

Mr. Doran swaggered out of his saloon, laughing loudly. “Orson can’t even keep hold of his horse.” Doran weaved as he walked, probably inebriated.

The black, presumably owned by local reclusive rancher Caleb Orson, shied. Sallie could see what would happen next as if reading it in the pages of her favorite book.