Lettie and Billy had been sweet on each other since fourth grade.
“Thank you for the turndown, Holly Jane.” He crammed his mangled hat on his head, grinning. “Pa’s going to be put out some...again.”
“Take this with you.” Holly Jane handed him the cake she had just frosted. “That might sweeten him up some.”
“Might, but only for a while.” Billy stretched across the counter and kissed her cheek. “Be careful, Holly Jane. I spotted a Broadhower two blocks away.”
“I’ll be safe enough. You might want to go out my back door, though.”
“Much obliged.”
Billy glanced out the front window then hurried out the back door.
Holly Jane watched him trot down the path that passed through the oak grove behind the shop. With fall a week old, the leaves had begun to show some color. This evening, she hoped the walk home would be pretty enough to wipe her mind clean of troubles.
And thinking of trouble, it had been avoided by only seconds. The instant that she closed the back door on Billy, Henry Broadhower stormed in, red-faced and breathing hard.
“Good day, Henry.” Henry was close to thirty years old and already beginning to lose his hair. His round belly rose and fell with his breathing. “I said no to Billy, if that’s what’s got you riled.”
“Would have got me riled, but looks like you’ve got some common sense, for a frilly girl.”
She smiled at him because it was the easiest way to deal with the man. “What’s wrong with a frilly girl? Sugar and spice makes for a more pleasant town, don’t you whink.”
“Having no Folsoms in it would make it a better place.”
“Say what you came to, Henry,” she said with a sigh. In her opinion the town would be better off without a Folsom or a Broadhower to spread animosity. Their feud had caused tension for as long as she could remember.
“I’d be pleased if you’d become my wife, Miss Holly Jane.”
“I’m sorry, Henry, but no.” Even a frilly girl set her hopes higher than marrying to settle a feud.
When the color began to rise in his face once more, she plucked a cake from the case, apples and cream by heavens, and set it in his hands.
“Give your family my regards,” she said, walking to the front door. Henry passed through it, slump-shouldered and grumbling.
Mercy me! She plucked a square of chocolate from a display dish and popped it in her mouth. It melted over her tongue, sweet and smooth.
If the day presented one more proposal, she wouldn’t make a single dollar.
* * *
“My word, isn’t this a lovely town?” Sitting beside Colt on the buggy bench, Aunt Tillie patted his knee. “I believe this will be the home I’ve dreamed of all my life. See how the trees are begging to turn for the fall. I truly missed trees back at the Broken Brand.”
His great-aunt was right. The green hill country of Texas looked like heaven compared to the desolate badlands of Nebraska.
“Friendship Springs,” Grannie Rose read the sign announcing the name of the town. “I reckon it’s full of friendly folks, don’t you?”
Many of them would be friendly, but Colt knew that there was a feud dividing two of the old-time families and he was landing himself right in the middle of it.
“Hell, Grannie Rose,” he said, “we’ll be happy as three butterflies in a meadow.”
“Colt Travers, what have I told you about that language?” Aunt Tillie swatted his hand where the reins lay lightly in his fingers.
“Don’t use it.” He winked at her and earned a frown, but it wasn’t genuine. His great-aunt had doted on him from the moment he bawled his first lungful of air.
He’d try and be more careful with his language, but he’d worked the railroad for eleven years, dealing with rough men and stubborn locomotives, and his manners had turned coarse. The only thing guaranteed to bring on foul language quicker than a Travers relative was a damn, stubborn steam engine fighting his efforts to repair it.
Today, all that was behind him. He’d bought himself a ranch, sight unseen, just outside Friendship Springs. The seller had been a stranger who had become a friend over dinner and a beer. He never doubted the old man when he said the ranch looked like it had slipped through a hole in paradise and landed in Texas. It would provide wide green pastures for his horses and a snug home for the old ladies.
He wouldn’t let the fact that his ranch was bordered by the two feuding families—the Folsoms to the west and the Broadhowers to the south—bother him. He’d grown up with trouble most of his life.
“Lordy, will you look at that?” Aunt Tillie exclaimed, pointing toward Town Square.
Town Square was not a square but a circle with a clear bubbling spring at its center. It looked to be a gathering place, since it had benches and flowerpots all about. Pleasant-looking stores surrounded the square. He’d make sure to bring Grannie Rose and Aunt Tillie back here for some shopping and visiting with friendly folks. That’s not something they had done in the past, being shut away at the Broken Brand most of their lives.
“There’s a shop that says The Sweet Treat,” Grannie Rose exclaimed, nearly trembling with excitement. “It’s been an age since I had a sweet treat that I didn’t make for myself and a dozen others.”
“Past time you did, then, Grannie,” Colt answered. A sweet treat sounded just the thing before he settled the women into the hotel for the evening. They could set off for the ranch in the morning, fresh and rested.
Had it only been him traveling, he’d have been settled at the ranch weeks ago, but the old women had required a gentler pace.
Three doors down from the sweet shop he drew the buggy horses up sharp when a rolling ruckus broke out in front of them.
Two men lunged at each other, poking with balled-up fists and kicking at each other’s tender spot. Neither of the fools knew how to fight. They were just as likely to drown in the spring as to do the other in.
“Hand me my cane, Colt,” Aunt Tillie ordered after the men careened into a flowerpot and sent the orange mums flying.
“Let them be. It’s none of our concern... Besides the fools will give it up before anyone’s taken hard damage.”
One man got the better of his enemy and pinned him to the ground. The fellow on top balled his fist, aimed for the grounded man’s nose. Too bad for him that the combatant on the bottom turned his head. The balled fist slammed into dirt as hard as a rock.
A holler of pain shot about Friendship Spring’s spring.
“Ain’t no yellow-bellied, low-moraled Folsom going to wed Holly Jane,” one of them shouted.
“Any Broadhower puts a ring on her finger’s going to feel my bullet in his back!”
Colt grunted in disgust. With talk of a gun, things had taken a dangerous turn. Any rattlehead could kill from a distance.
Now, with the mention of Miss Holly Jane, things had suddenly become his business.
The only reason William Munroe had sold him the ranch was to keep his granddaughter from falling prey to the feud between the families. Had he left the land to the spinster, she would have become a pawn in the Folsoms’ and the Broadhowers’ lust for her property.
Through that prime ground flowed the river that fed water to the Folsom spread on the west and the Broadhower spread on the south.
Whoever controlled the water