Guest Author Kaye Spencer

Please welcome Guest Author Kaye Spencer, who has a story is a recently released Hot Western Nights anthology.
www.amazon.com/dp/B07T9F21B5

My contribution Prairie Rose Publications’ western romance anthology is ‘Give My Love to Rose’. Johnny Cash fans will likely recognize that same title as one of his early hits. The song provided the [quite loose] plot fodder for my story. I changed things around and Rose became the main character, and the man who comes across the dying man is a deputy U. S. marshal. (You can listen to this song on YouTube.)

BLURB

A deputy U. S. marshal comes upon a dying man and finds unexpected love when he carries out the man’s last request.

EXCERPT

Exhaling a long, slow breath, Federal Deputy Marshal Clint Callahan eased the dead man down to the blanket. Clint pushed his hat back and studied the man from his lawman’s well-seasoned experience with death. He’d come across all manner of dying during his career. Broken leg, gut shot, horse run off, weak heart, blizzard, poisoned water hole, robbery. It wasn’t so bad when he came up on them already dead. Their suffering was over. It was the dying ones that stayed with him—the desperation in their eyes, the regret in their voices. He’d never get used to watching a person die, especially the women and children.

What he knew for certain was the worst part of dying wasn’t the pain. It was not being able to say goodbye to the people who mattered, and that was his sole companion over every mile he rode.

How many times had he heard the last words of love for a beloved wife and children, or a wish to see a mother one last time? Some cried. Others cleared the burden on their consciences. Most only had enough time to name next of kin. When you heard a person’s last words, shared their last breath, shouldered their confessions, you took on the duty of seeing their dying wishes taken care of.

This man, Lon Griffin, was no different. He’d clung to a thin thread of life, slipping between delirium and lucidity all through the night. His will to live gave out in the dark just before the dawn.

Any other time, Clint would have dug a grave right there, said the proper words, and then rode on to tell the family or sent a telegram, whichever was the faster way to convey the news. This time, though, Lon’s widow waited at the house a good many miles on farther north, she was probably wondering right now when she’d see her husband again. She never would, not alive, anyway, and Lon begged him to take him home to be buried in the family cemetery.

Haunted heartbreak clouded Clint’s eyes. That Lon left behind a family brought back his own loss. Nothing he possessed, not his guns, his badge, his physical strength, or his love had been enough to prevent the accident of nature that had killed his happiness in the blink of an eye.

Kaye Spencer

writing through history one romance upon a time

www.kayespencer.com