A Man to Call My Own

Chapter 11

RIDING INTO TRENTON LATE the next afternoon, Chad tried to view the town through a strangers eyes, as Amanda would see it. It was a good-sized town, bigger than most of the ones the ladies had passed through getting there. It had grown considerably from when his father had setded in the area.

The original main street was much longer now. Two blocks had been added to the right, three blocks were squared off on the left, with two more beyond that. And the town was still growing, despite there being no indication that the railroad would ever reach it. But it had a stage line, with connecting routes to Waco up north and Houston down south, and passengers passing through had been known to like what they saw in Trenton and elect to settle there instead of continuing on.

The Kinkaid ranch was partly responsible for the growth, even though it was situated some ten miles west of town. Stuart could have built his own store on the ranch to see to the needs of his large force of employees, but he preferred to support the town instead. There was also a wide selection of farmers settled east of town, and a sawmill up north only a day away.

Straight lines, wide streets, shade trees planted long ago a decent size now, there wasn't much the town didn't offer. Three hotels, four boardinghouses, two more restaurants in addition to the three dining rooms in the hotels that were open to the public, a general store as well as many shops dedicated to specific items like shoes, guns, saddles, furniture, jewelry, even several clothing stores. Three doctors had set up shop, two lawyers, a dentist, two carpenters, and other folk with assorted occupations. For entertainment there were four saloons, two of them considered dance halls, a theater, and several brothels on the outskirts of town.

It was mostly a quiet town. Stuart frowned on excessive rowdiness in his men, as did the saloon owners, and while the cowhands would and did raise hell on the weekends, it was more good-natured, rather than destructive, and a good many of them would show up in one of the town's two churches come Sunday morning.

Occasionally there'd be a gunfight in the streets, but more often than not the sheriff would intervene and try to talk the combatants out of it, usually with success. It was too bad he was retiring next month. He'd kept the peace in Trenton for many years, had been re-elected four times.

Chad had expected to cause somewhat of a commotion, riding into town that day. The rift with his father and his taking off would have made the gossip rounds in town. Red's cowboys had brought back the news that Stuart had hired not one but three trackers to find him, and of course, not one of them had discovered where he'd gone into hiding.

So he was surprised, even a little perturbed, when the Concord Stage, much bigger than the smaller stage that usually passed through town, drew more notice dian he did. In fact, that stage drew so much notice that they were pulling up in front of the Albany Hotel before anyone actually recognized him riding beside it.

But then the expected greetings and remarks came at him from all sides as a crowd started gathering and growing there on the steps of the hotel.

"That you, Chad?"

"Where you been?"

"Your father know you're back, boy?"

"Where you been keeping yerself?"

"That filly cried for all of a week, I heard, when you ran off on her."

"This mean you're getting hitched now?"

"We getting invited to the shindig?"

"Where you been?"

Chad answered none of the questions, hitched his horse to the rail in front of the hotel, and moved to open the coach door. Amanda stepped out first, and that pretty much silenced the crowd. He'd figured it would. Trenton didn't see many women as pretty as Amanda Laton. There was almost a collective gasp before the silence.

Amanda usually delivered a complaint or two each day as their journey ended. He couldn't really blame her. A delicate woman like her would get easily worn-out with so much traveling. But she held her tongue with such a large audience on hand, even smiled at such a welcome. A good many of the men staring at her probably fell in love in those few moments that she moved gracefully into the hotel.

Chad stayed with her, but only to avoid a new round of questions that were sure to start up as soon as Amanda was out of sight. At least he told himself that was why he took her arm and led her inside, that it had nothing to do with subtly showing that he'd staked his claim. But then he had noticed that even Spencer Evans had stepped out on the porch of his saloon to observe the commotion. Chad hoped he'd stay there. He had enough on his mind without having a confrontation with his old nemesis.

He and Spencer went way back. Born the same year, they'd known each other all their lives. For a brief time, half of one summer anyway, they'd even got along—but they were too young then to have figured out yet that they didn't really like each other.

Competition got in the way of what might have become friendship. Chad supposed that was natural enough, their being the same age and near the same weight and height. Soon enough they were competing over anything and everything. Schoolwork, fishing, hunting, shooting, racing, didn't matter what, they each had to be the better at it. But Spencer turned out to be a sore loser and had started many of those first fights.

It wasn't long before they didn't need much of an excuse to fight, since the fighting turned out to be just another form of competition between them. They'd busted up the schoolroom so often in those days, the town officials elected to abandon the small, one-room schoolhouse in favor of the church, in hopes it would have a more calming influence on the boys. It didn't, but at least they took their fights out into the churchyard thereafter.

They might have outgrown these tendencies, might still have become friends someday and laughed over the antics of their youth. Anything was possible. But then they got old enough to start noticing females . .

Wilma Jones was the first they both took a liking to. Six fights later and after Spence had carved "I love you, Wilma" on every single plank of her house late one night, the Joneses moved back East, taking Wilma with them.

Agatha Winston was the second girl they both noticed, again at the same time. They were sixteen by then, and their fights were getting a little more bloody. Aggie happened to get in the middle of one of them and got her nose broken. Chad guiltily suspected it was his fist that had done it, but he'd never been quite sure. She'd refused to talk to either of them after that and still didn't, even though she was married with three kids now.

The kicker, though, was Clare Johnson. She'd bloomed late, or they just hadn't paid attention since she was a couple of years younger than they were. But she was a real nice girl, always helping out the younger children in school. She aspired to be a teacher herself someday.

Chad became infatuated with her soon after his seventeenth birthday, his first—and last—serious interest in a girl. He took her on a picnic, invited her to keep him company while he fished, danced every dance with her at the shindig following the Wilkses' barn-raising, and was sure he was the first to steal a kiss from her because she'd blushed so bright red afterward. He never would have thought to do more than that. She was a nice girl, the kind you courted slowly, then married.

He tried to keep his interest a secret this time. He didn't take her out to places where Spencer would notice—Spencer was too uppity to go to barn-raisings, so Chad was sure he hadn't heard about the dancing. But Spencer was doing his own secret courting of Clare that Chad didn't know about—until it was too late. And Spencer didn't abide by the rules, he didn't stop with a kiss.

He actually seduced Clare, then the son of a bitch bragged about it, so Chad would know he'd lost. Spencer didn't consider that his bragging would effectively ruin Clare—or he didn't care. It was more important to him to win.

The fights escalated after that. Chad and Spencer couldn't be in the same room without trying to kill each other. And that sorry state of affairs continued until Spencers father, Tom Evans, finally got fed up with paying his share of the damages his boy had caused and shipped him off to finish his schooling with relatives back East. The town breathed a collective sigh of relief-—until months later the peace and quiet actually got a bit boring and some folks were bemoaning the loss of their weekly entertainment in watching Chad and Spencer go after each other wherever they happened to meet.

When Spencer Evans finally returned to town after his father's death to take over the Not Here Saloon, the townsfolk were filled with both dread and expectancy. But enough time had passed, both boys were men now, and fortunately, the town now had two saloons, so Chad actually made an effort to avoid Spencer. He didn't always succeed, and there were still the occasional fights between them, but nothing like what had gone on during their youth.

Clare was still in Trenton. She'd helped in her father's tin shop until he died, then she sold it. She worked in Spencers saloon now, handled the entertainment, onstage and otherwise. And every time Chad thought of her these days, he despised Spencer even more.

But Amanda wouldn't be staying in town more than one night, and Reds ranch was a good days ride from town, so he didn't expect Spencer to come sniffing around. Besides, Red wouldn't allow a seducer of innocents to court her very innocent niece.