The Soldier (Bailey Clan Westerns Book 16)

Vengeance Rides With Him

After the Civil War, Duncan Bailey returns to El Paso only to find his family slaughtered—murdered by an Apache known as the Desert Fox, once a boyhood rival. Raised among the Apache and trained as both a soldier and a warrior, Duncan sets out on a relentless mission of revenge that takes him deep into the rugged terrain of southern Arizona.

But vengeance gives way to something more when Duncan rescues four captives from the Desert Fox—among them, Camila Nichols, daughter of a powerful rancher. As Duncan escorts them back to the Rocking N Ranch near Tucson, a bond begins to form between him and Camila. Yet peace is short-lived. A man named John Hudson—charming, persuasive, and dangerous—is hiding his true identity as Karl Ringgold, a ruthless Comanchero with a dark past and a deadly plan.

When his schemes unravel, Ringgold gathers hired guns to take what he wants by force. But he didn’t count on Duncan Bailey—a man forged in war, driven by love, and ready to fight.

Book 16 in The Bailey Clan Series delivers a gripping Western tale of revenge, honor, and hard-won love.

Get The Soldier now and ride with Duncan Bailey into the heart of the frontier.

Excerpt from the book

He was hunkered down just below a ridge on the Mule Mountains in a grove of ponderosa pine and oak. His horse was tethered further back against the mountainside behind the grove. His name was Duncan Bailey, and he was a tall man, standing six foot three inches in his socks and weighing two hundred and twenty pounds – most of it in his broad shoulders and deep chest. He was tanned deeply by the desert sun and he wore dull-colored clothing that would merge with the desert or the mountain. He wore knee-high moccasins, like the Apache, instead of boots. He wore a gun belt with a Colt revolver on his right thigh and a razor-sharp Bowie knife in a sheath on his left. He was watching a cavalcade of Apaches winding their way up the mountain.

He knew where they were going because he had found their small village. The tepees were in a meadow high up the mountain, about five miles from where he squatted now. There were only a few squaws and two older men in the village, so he knew it was a raiding party on the warpath. He had studied the tracks around the village and estimated the strength of this band at around twenty-five. That was quite a large band of warriors to be on the warpath, and it meant that their leader had achieved some success in raids – either in scalps or goods.

He counted fifteen warriors in the cavalcade, but seven of them were wounded, so they had faced fierce resistance on this raid. But the raid wasn’t a failure because he could see four white captives. Two looked like cowboys and two like youngsters – maybe twelve to fourteen years of age, going by their build and height. All four were dressed in range clothes and had their hands bound together in front of them. His eyes traveled to the front of the column and his features hardened as he grunted, “I’ve got you now, Broken Nose!” The Apache he was looking at was a squat, powerfully built man with bulging biceps and broad forearms. He wore the loincloth like the other Apaches, but he also wore a black and white cowhide vest. His warrior name was the Desert Fox because of his cunning, but in his younger days he was also known as Broken Nose.

Duncan had been hunting for this particular Apache for four months now. He had traversed the desert and the mountain ranges in south Arizona searching for the Apache villages. He had grown up in the desert and the mountains and he could move as silently and swiftly as an Apache, if not better, and he could live off the land. He had ambushed four Apache warriors two weeks ago in the Santa Rita range. Before that, he had captured two warriors in the Sonoran Desert and his only question was always, Where is the Desert Fox? The two warriors did not know or would not say, so they had died. But one of the four warriors in the Santa Rita range said, “We are not with him. He has done things that do not please the elders, so he is on his own. He has his followers and they hide in the Mule Mountains.”