Books by Tracie Peterson
LOVE ON THE SANTA FE
Along the Rio Grande
THE TREASURES OF NOME*
Forever Hidden
Endless Mercy
Ever Constant
LADIES OF THE LAKE
Destined for You
Forever My Own
Waiting on Love
WILLAMETTE BRIDES
Secrets of My Heart
The Way of Love
Forever by Your Side
BROOKSTONE BRIDES
When You Are Near
Wherever You Go
What Comes My Way
GOLDEN GATE SECRETS
In Places Hidden
In Dreams Forgotten
In Times Gone By
HEART OF THE FRONTIER
Treasured Grace
Beloved Hope
Cherished Mercy
THE HEART OF ALASKA*
In the Shadow of Denali
Out of the Ashes
Under the Midnight Sun
SAPPHIRE BRIDES
A Treasure Concealed
A Beauty Refined
A Love Transformed
BRIDES OF SEATTLE
Steadfast Heart
Refining Fire
Love Everlasting
LONE STAR BRIDES
A Sensible Arrangement
A Moment in Time
A Matter of Heart
LAND OF SHINING WATER
The Icecutter’s Daughter
The Quarryman’s Bride
The Miner’s Lady
LAND OF THE LONE STAR
Chasing the Sun
Touching the Sky
Taming the Wind
****
All Things Hidden*
Beyond the Silence*
House of Secrets
Serving Up Love**
*with Kimberley Woodhouse **with Karen Witemeyer, Regina Jennings, and Jen Turano
For a complete list of Tracie’s books, visit her website www.traciepeterson.com
© 2022 by Peterson Ink, Inc.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3596-8
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by LOOK Design Studio
Cover photography by Aimee Christenson
Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and post-consumer waste whenever possible.
Dedicated to the men and women of
the Santa Fe Railway and all of its divisions.
With special thanks to those members of the
Horny Toad Division.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Tracie Peterson
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Epilogue
About the Author
Back Ads
Cover Flaps
Back Cover
1
JULY 1899
SAN MARCIAL, NEW MEXICO TERRITORY
Susanna Ragsdale Jenkins stepped off the Santa Fe passenger train and sighed. The breeze outside was only mildly helpful. Inside the stuffy cars of the train, women had actually fainted from the heat. Susanna’s mother had to be revived no fewer than ten times. Of course, that was typical for her overly dramatic mother. Gladys Ragsdale did love attention.
Susanna looked around as her father assisted Mother from the train. Her brother, Gary, was already hailing a porter for their bags. At eighteen, nothing seemed to deter him. He was energetic and impressionable, as well as foolish and thoughtless. He’d barely made it through school, and as the spoiled and pampered son of wealthy parents, no one really cared. Susanna had watched her parents try to manage him, but Gary had no respect for either of them. All they had taught him was how to live a life of privilege and the expectation that someone, somewhere, would provide the means for his desires. With that no longer the case, Gary had become even more headstrong and impatient. It was one of the reasons Susanna had agreed to accompany her family to New Mexico.
That, and she saw it as the easiest way to avoid the promise she’d made her dying husband.
She buried that thought deep as Gary approached.
“I’m going to see what kind of fun is to be had in this town.” Beneath his stylish straw hat, his golden-brown hair was dripping sweat.
Susanna fixed him with a stern look and shook her head. “No, you will help Father get Mother settled at the hotel. Then you will make certain our bags are delivered to the hotel.”
He looked at her for a moment as if trying to decide whether he’d go along with this new order. For a full minute, Susanna wondered if there was going to be trouble, but when Mother cried out and began to crumple to her knees, Gary went to help her.
What was Uncle Harrison thinking, sending a pair like her parents to manage a hotel in the middle-of-nowhere New Mexico? Susanna was appalled. San Marcial was a railroad town—a headquarters for the Rio Grande Division of the Santa Fe Railway.
“You have wasted your inheritance by investing in schemes that you were warned against. Time and again you put your family in a state of diminished financial security, always relying on me to straighten out the situation. Well, no more,” Uncle Harrison had said on their last night in Topeka. “I have no choice but to cut you off from further financial support and make you work for a living.”
Susanna could still hear her mother’s shriek of distaste. “I wasn’t born to be married to a man who has to do physical labor! How embarrassing! Oh, the thought of it is enough to give me apoplexy.”
“Well, have your fits somewhere besides my hotel sitting room,” Harrison Ragsdale had demanded.
Susanna had been invited to the meeting only because her uncle knew she could help keep some sense of order. Having lived her first year of mourning with her in-laws, she had agreed to move with her parents to New Mexico and see them settled at the hotel her uncle had built. But her years living with her husband had helped her forget just how bad her family could be. Now that they were broke, it was bound to be even worse.
Susanna swept pieces of soot and ash from her black gown. She had already determined that this would be her last day of full mourning. It had been over a year, after all, and she hated black. The constant reminder of what she’d lost—what she would never have again.