All or Nothing by Ashley Elizabeth Ludwig Read Free Book Online

bedroll. He hefted it behind his saddle with a thump. Reggie Thompson, of late a demoted Private First Class, muttered an unheard comment that had Ross giving a hearty guffaw. Bowen hid a smile at the idle banter between Ross and Reggie as they broke camp. Though he was their commanding officer, Bowen didn’t feel inclined to stop them from hounding each other.
    The three men had known each other for seven years. In that time, Bowen had seen Reggie both promoted and demoted in rank. The boy had a streak of temper a mile wide and tended to lose it in the wrong company. Though Reggie seemed threatening with his towering frame, his ice blue eyes were prone to dancing with humor, often at the expense of his compatriot and childhood friend, Ross MacEvoy.
    Where Reggie was dark and as unkempt as the army would allow, Ross was fair, with a wide, easy smile and curling blonde mustache; equally broad shouldered as Reggie, and a full head shorter. The two soldiers were inseparable. Blood brothers. And, even more important than friendship, Bowen knew he could trust both men with his life and had on many occasions. Whether orders came to scout the roads for bandits and rogue natives or to clean up the messes made by the often-intolerant citizens of growing Tucson, Arizona, there were no other soldiers he’d rather ride out with.
    Unlike Bowen, they had both grown up in the territory. Ross had built a home for his new wife and growing family further east, beyond the Dragoon Pass out between Fort Bowie and that fool copper mine of DeWitt Bisbee’s. Reggie and Bowen both remained unmarried. Reggie by choice; Bowen by circumstance.
    A rumble of thunder echoed from the canyons above. The deep gray, ballooning clouds were a warning sign. The torrential rains and flash floods that followed could be devastating to the unaware. Every year, they scraped up the remains of some hapless traveler who’d been washed away in a flash flood out of the mountains. They would need to be exceedingly cautious, Bowen noted as he stowed his canteen in his carefully maintained saddle bags. He would keep an eye to the Rincon Mountains behind them, where the clouds gathered, looming dark and purple. Rain in the mountains above meant floods down the long slopes of the bajada into the arroyos below.
    After taking advantage of a brief furlough, hunting and giving aid to Padre Acuña around the chapel grounds, they would make their way back to the fort today. If his men suspected he was keeping an eye on the two young women currently housed at the mission, neither Ross nor Reggie brought it up to his face. Bowen frowned and rubbed oil over his army issue black leather boots in slow, concentric circles. Besides, he’d found the girls and brought them to safety. The state in which that rogue El Tejano left them should see him hang for sure, regardless of the fact he was a thief and a murderer. If and when they caught him, that was. No person, Christian or otherwise, should be abandoned in such a way. Especially not a woman like RuthAnne Newcomb...
    Bowen saw her image every time he closed his eyes. Soft skin, silken blonde hair swept from her graceful neck, a willowy frame still a good six inches shorter than he. But above all, her eyes seemed etched on his soul. As clear and blue as the desert sky on a summer morning, the look behind her steady, challenging gaze speared his soul and told him everything he needed to know.
    That’s what worried him.
    Always look a woman in the eye, Bowen, his mother had advised him quite seriously. You ’ ll recognize your soul mate in an instant. He knew his mama to be romantic to the core. It’s why she’d never remarried after Pa died. Her heartfelt words filled his head in memory. Are you the one? His thoughts shifted to RuthAnne before he pushed them as far as from east to west.
    He remembered laughing at his mother for such a notion. He teased, calling her a sentimental fool. Still, he always wondered at her simple