THE PONY EXPRESS
Romance Collection

Abundance of the Heart

Opening Scene

Tumbleweed Ranch, Nebraska
August, 1861

Mercy Winfield scowled at her brother and chafed against the injustice of the stupid regulations. She wished, not for the first time, that she could break the rules and show her brothers she could be anything she wanted. She’d grown up enduring their teasing, but sometimes they carried it too far.

Like this time.

Bowie circled her, scrutinizing her from head to toe. He rubbed his chin. “What do you think, brothers? Should we cut off her hair or stuff it under her hat? Either way, she could pass for a boy.”

Mercy growled before heaving the saddle in her arms at her smart-aleck brother. “Do your own saddlin’.”

He landed on his backside with the saddle in his lap and his eyebrows arched up to his hairline. “Hey!”

She tossed him her fiercest glare and stormed out of the barn with Bowie’s laughter dogging her steps. Sawyer, the eldest and always the businessman, yelled after her to come back and finish saddling up–they had a schedule to keep, but Mercy pretended not to hear him.

She stalked past the sod barn and corrals to the sanctuary of the prairie grasses that beckoned in the wind. She plunked herself down, the waist-high grass providing some semblance of privacy, and fumed at the way her brothers made light of her heartfelt desire that would never come to pass. Her desires mattered little, not to her brothers, not to God.

Only then did she allow herself the luxury of a tear. But only one. She sniffed and fisted the single tear away, unwilling to allow God to see her cry.

“Mercy?”

Jesse. Her middle brother. Always the tender-hearted one. He never could stand to see her upset.

“Mercy? You out there?”

She sighed. Jesse wouldn’t give up until she answered. “I’m here. Leave me alone.”

A minute later, Jesse came batting his way through the thick grass. “Chicken livers, Mercy. Can’t you find an easier place to hide?”

She sent him a withering look. “What would be the point of hidin’ in an easy place?”

He sat beside her. “You know Bowie’s just teasin’, like he always does. Don’t pay him no mind.” He gave her shoulder an awkward pat.

Mercy’s stomach tightened. “I know he’s teasin’, but sometimes he doesn’t know when to quit. None of you understand how much I want to ride for the Pony Express. Ever since I read the first announcement a year and a half ago, I knew it was somethin’ I could do. But I’m not allowed to even try–because I’m a woman.”

Jesse’s gentle smile eased a little of her tension. “But if you weren’t a woman, you wouldn’t be our Mercy, and we’d miss you. At least I know I would.” He propped his wrists on his drawn-up knees. His straw-colored hair flopped in his eyes. “Aw, Mercy, I know how much you wanna be an Express rider. But there ain’t no use in wishin’ for something that can’t happen. It only makes your heart hurt. An’ I don’t want to see you hurt–”

Again.

He didn’t voice the word, but it hung silently between them. Sometimes the unspoken words shouted louder than those uttered.