Rose shook her head. “You don’t know the first thing about women, big brother. That’s how a young girl shows interest. By teasing.”
“You’re the crazy one.”
“Ask her if you don’t believe me.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“We’ll see. You spend some time around her, you might just come to your senses.”
CHAPTER 10
They rode into town, where the feral-looking men seemed to have cleared out. Reaching Pelton’s General Store, they hitched their horses and went inside.
“Afternoon, Rose,” Mr. Pelton said from behind the counter. The shelves were mostly bare, and there were no other customers in sight, but Will saw that Mr. Pelton had still been keeping everything neat and tidy.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Pelton,” Rose said. “You remember my brother?”
Pelton removed his half-moon glasses and smiled. “Well, hello, Will.” He came around the corner to shake Will’s hand. “I didn’t even recognize you at first. Made it through the war in one piece?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well good, good. You back to stay?”
“Not sure.”
“Well, I hope you stick around. Times are hard, Will. I don’t have to tell you that. You can see it for yourself. But hard times require good men. We got plenty of the other kind around here these days but not enough of the good ones.”
Will nodded at that, appreciating the suggestion that he was a good man, but inside, he yearned to leave.
He loved Texas, but things were rough here.
Farther west, in places like Colorado, folks were forging a new land. He longed to join them.
And truth be told, he wanted to do more than build stone walls. Like many men, he had set his desires aside to provide for others, but he still dreamed of exploring the West, staking a claim, and building something on the frontier, something he could pass along to the children he hoped to have one day.
That couldn’t happen here, not until Texas rose again.
But further west was a new land of bold possibilities, where men didn’t care whether you’d worn the blue or the gray. They cared not for the past but for the future.
That sounded good to Will, about as good as a breath of air might sound to a drowning man.
But for now, he was here, and he had business to take care of, folks to provide for.
He bought some panniers and filled them mostly with food.
Rose was a big help selecting the things they needed. Not just food but also soap and cloth and lamp oil, things they’d been running low on.
“Does Mama have any tea?” he asked.
Rose’s eyes swelled at the extravagant notion. “We haven’t had tea in years.”
So Will added tea to the order and then, on an uncharacteristic whim, got some coffee, too. He loved coffee. And this was real coffee, not chicory, a treat he hadn’t allowed himself for a long, long time.
Finally, he added a tin of beeswax and tallow cartridge lube and a wooden box of paper cartridges for the Colt Dragoon he’d taken off the highwayman. He had plenty of ammunition for his other weapons.
Mr. Pelton totaled the bill and announced the sum with an apologetic tone. “That comes to seven dollars and eight cents, I’m afraid. What do you have in trade, Will?”
“Money.”
