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the least likely to try to talk her out of what she was about to do. But Dylan McCall had left her no choice.
    “Mary.” Ruth grasped the young woman’s shoulders more firmly.
    Coughing, Mary stirred and opened her eyes sleepily. Ruth bent close to her ear and whispered, “Get up. You have to help me.”
    Predawn chill sheathed the bedroom. With chattering teeth, Ruth quickly reached for the towel on the washstand to dry her damp hair.
    Mary’s voice sounded raspy in the shadowy room. “Wha . . . what’s wrong now?”
    Ruth slid a sideways glance toward the three other sleeping women. Patience and Lily hadn’t moved. Harper’s head burrowed in her pillow, her back end protruding in the air beneath the heavy blankets.
    “Ssssh.” Ruth bent to lay a finger over Mary’s lips. She pressed closer, whispering. “I need your help. I asked Dylan McCall to take me to Wyoming and he refused. I have no other choice but to make him take me.”
    “Make him?” Mary struggled to sit up. She blinked. “You can’t make the marshall do anything—”
    Harper stirred in the bed beside her.
    Ruth slapped her hand across Mary’s mouth and bent closer to her ear. “I’m going to trick him.”
    Mary coughed, the spasm racking her frail body. Ruth moved about the room as quietly as a church mouse. If the others heard and woke up, they’d try to talk her out of her plan. Mary would attempt to reason with her, but Mary would do what Ruth needed. Anxious to be about her plan, Ruth started to stuff personal articles into a knapsack.
    Mary shivered as goose bumps popped out on her thin arms. Slipping out of bed, she wrapped a blanket around herself and watched Ruth’s movements. “What plan? What are you talking about?”
    “My plan to thwart that no-good scoundrel Dylan McCall and rescue myself from Oscar Fleming.”
    “Oh, Ruth!” Mary sank softly onto the side of the goose-down mattress. “You promised to think about Mr. Fleming’s proposal.”
    “I have thought about it, Mary. I’ve thought of nothing else all night. I can’t—I won’t—marry Oscar.”
    Mary’s eyes followed her movements. Ruth knew what she must have been thinking. Mary was an obedient person. If Oscar had asked Mary to marry him, she would have done so out of a sense of obligation to the Siddonses.
    At one time Ruth was thought to have the most common sense of anyone in the group, but Tom Wyatt’s deceit had changed that. She’d been gullible enough to fall for the man’s deception. Dylan McCall was about to leave and alter Ruth’s life irrevocably—that is, if she didn’t do something to stop him.
    Mary snuggled tighter in her blanket. “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to follow Dylan when he rides out of town at daybreak.”
    “Follow him!”
    “Shhh!” Ruth clamped a hand over Mary’s mouth, her eyes darting to the sleeping women. “Just for a little way. Then, when it’s too late for the marshall to turn around and bring me back, he’ll be forced to let me ride with him.”
    “Are you nuts, girl?” Harper threw the covers aside and sprang to her feet. Ringlets of tight curly hair stood up like porcupine quills. “That man will hog-tie you and haul you back here like a sack of flour!”
    “Ssssssssssh!”
    Two more heads popped out from beneath the covers. “What are you sssssssh ing for?” Lily sat up, scratching her head. “Did you honestly think we could sleep through all this racket?” Beside her, Patience nodded.
    “Sorry,” Ruth mumbled. “But I don’t have a lot of time.” She continued throwing things into the sack.
    Yawning, Patience peered out the window. “What time is it? It’s still dark.”
    “It’s late,” Ruth said. And getting later every moment.
    “What are you going to do if the marshall decides to ride on by himself?” Harper lit the candle on the nightstand, and the room came to light. “He could, you know. Don’t seem likes he’s the type to let a woman trick him into