Winds of Time — Mary A. Benton

Ex-Confederate soldier Jed McCabe returns home to Tennessee to discover his only surviving sister, Kate, is missing. Jed vows to find her, tracing the wagon train he believes she is with into Texas.

A chance meeting with a young cowboy leads to employment on a local cattle ranch. There he meets the boss, Ida Mae Greeley. A widow, she runs the ranch with the help of her foreman, Cotton, and the young cowboy, Kyle. Wearing men's clothing and toting a .32 Smith and Wesson on her hip, Ida Mae has no patience for drifters, especially ex-Confederate soldiers. But her cattle are being rustled, and she sees Jed as someone who might be able to help her, if he's willing to follow the rules.

Jed doesn't follow rules well, though, and he has his own agenda: finding Kate. What he didn't count on was being drawn into the lives of the people around him, and against his better judgment, becoming attracted to the scrappy Ida Mae.