Chapter One

Chapter 1

Wyoming Territory

1880


The West is where water has the same value as blood.

Miss Eden Devlin, spinster schoolteacher, felt a chill of foreboding as she watched Bliss Davis, a nester's fifteen-year-old daughter, and Hadley Westbrook, a rancher's sixteen-year-old son, making cow eyes at each other across the schoolroom. It wasn't that she disapproved of young love. In fact, at an on-the-shelf twenty-nine, she envied the blushing glow on Bliss's cheeks and the liquid warmth in her eyes that was sparked by Hadley's admiring gaze. What concerned Eden was the violent reaction their fathers would have if they discovered that their children didn't share their parents' enmity toward one another. Because, as sure as hell took sinners, Big Ben Davis hated Oakley Westbrook's guts.

To Miss Devlin's horror, it seemed the once peaceful community of Sweetwater was only one short step away from a full-fledged range war. Eden knew there were honest grievances between ranchers and nesters. The homesteading nesters had fenced water holes the ranchers needed for their cattle. The ranchers had retaliated by cutting fences and ruining crops. Cattle were being rustled in alarming numbers.

But Oak Westbrook had denied the ranchers were cutting fences. And Big Ben Davis had denied the nesters were rustling cattle. There seemed to be no hope of working out their differences peacefully.

With the exception of Bliss and Hadley, the animosity of the adult ranchers and nesters was being played out among their children at school, disrupting Miss Devlin's teaching efforts. It was a good thing she was a peace-loving woman, because Miss Devlin had a good min