by Merry Farmer
“You need to stop pestering her,” he said, point blank.
“I beg your pardon?” Franklin balked.
Jarvis let out a breath that said he was already tired of the whole thing. “Alice isn’t interested in you. You’re too young and full of yourself. So let it go.”
Franklin turned bright red, brimming with anger. “Oh, and I suppose you think she’s the woman for you?”
There was no point in lying. “As it turns out, I do. So I’d appreciate it if you’d back off.”
Franklin wasn’t intimidated. “You’re not good enough for her,” he spat. “Alice is a smart woman from New York City. What are you? Some grubby militiaman from who knows where. She deserves better than you.”
Jarvis wasn’t about to sit Franklin down and explain his father’s business and his own potential inheritance. “You’re wrong there. Alice has been through a lot in the last year. Too much. She’s picked up her life and headed west, away from the good and the bad. She doesn’t need class, she needs love.”
“That’s awfully maudlin for a dumb soldier,” Franklin sniffed. “Not even a soldier, a militiaman.”
Jarvis gritted his teeth and did his best not to punch the boy in the face. “You think you’re going to win her over by acting like a spoiled prince?”
“Well… I… I have….”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Jarvis pushed past him and on toward the barn. More and more cattle were moving out into the field from behind the structure. Franklin sputtered and scurried to come after him, but it was hard to give the boy—who had all the charm of a passel of bedbugs—his attention when a herd of cattle bigger than any Jarvis had ever seen before spread out in front of him.
If only he could have admired the cattle and nothing else. He wasn’t ten feet from the corner of the barn when the sound of Ginny and Howard tearing at each other reached him.
“You great booby,” Ginny shouted. “I should call out the marshal and have him arrest you as a cattle thief.”
“What are you talking about, you crazy woman?” Howard shouted back at her. “Those three are mine, make no mistake.”
“If you think they’re yours, then you’re blind,” Ginny argued. “They’ve got my mark on them.”
“Where?” Howard blustered. “I don’t see a thing.”
“Blind as a bat in a snowstorm.”
“How dare you.”
Jarvis picked up his pace. Alice stood to the side of the argument, wringing her hands and biting her lip. He would have found the sight of her teeth worrying that tender, pink lip incredibly arousing, if it wasn’t for the all-out war being waged that caused it.
As soon as Ginny spotted Jarvis, she broke away from Howard.
“Jarvis. You’re here to solve disputes. Solve this one.” She marched over and grabbed his arm, tugging him past Alice to the edge of the fence separating them from the cattle. “Look at those three right there. Can you or can you not see the brand on their backsides, clear as day?”
Jarvis squinted to take a look. He felt a little too much like he was being asked to climb to the top of a rickety ladder.
“What’s your brand look like?” he asked, hoping to buy some time. There might have been a mark on each of the cattle in question, but….
“It’s a V and a P,” she said. “For Virginia Piedmont.”
“No, it’s a double H, for Howard Haskell,” Howard argued.
The marks on the cattle in question hadn’t been made well and could have been either.
Jarvis pivoted and glanced to Alice. She shrugged and shook her head. There had to be another way around the problem of the day.
“Do your cattle interact much?” Jarvis asked, turning and leaning his back against the fence.
Ginny and Howard exchanged vicious glances.
“They mingle all the time,” Howard said. “I keep telling her she should build a fence to keep her lot on her own property.”
“And I say that cattle should be free to wander over the open range,” Ginny countered. “If you want a fence, then you build it.”
“I would,” Howard sniffed, “but dollars to dimes, if I did, you’d complain about where I drew the line.”
“I’d complain because you’re too stupid to know where it should go,” Ginny barked.
“Now hold on one second,” Alice rushed to Howard’s defense, stepping to his side and touching his arm. “Howard is a brilliant man.”
“Thank you, my dear.” Howard sent her a tight smile and patted her hand. “There’s no use arguing with a harpy, though.”
“Let’s stop with the name calling,” Jarvis said, sliding up to Ginny’s side. He couldn’t let her stand there unsupported if Alice was going to throw her lot in with Howard. As soon as he got her alone, he’d give Alice a piece of his mind on that regard.
“I won’t call names,” Ginny agreed. “I won’t let this… I won’t let my brother build a fence to block me out of my own land either. The cattle roam free or they don’t roam at all.”
“You’re the one wanting them to roam free,” Howard countered, “and you stand there and accuse me of poaching? What if those are your stock? They wandered into my barn, didn’t they?”
“Maybe a fence would be a good idea?” Alice added without much confidence.
An idea struck Jarvis like someone ringing a gong.
“What if you did build fences?” he spoke as the plan sorted itself out in his mind.
“What?” Ginny and Howard asked at the same time.
Jarvis glanced between the two of them, struck again by how similar they looked, especially when they were in a temper. He rushed on with his idea before it finished forming.
“What if you built fences? Fences that define the borders of your properties as you think they ought to be.”
“That’d be two separate fences, son,” Ginny told him as if he’d gone soft in the head.
“I know.” Jarvis nodded, blood pumping faster as he got carried away. “What if you each started building the fence where you thought it should be? What if you raced? Whoever finishes their fence first gets to claim the property borders they want.”
Silence fell over their group. A few of the cattle in the field mooed and called out as if they were debating the idea.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Franklin said. “It’s a waste of time and materials.”
Howard sniffed, glancing sideways at his son. “Besides,” he said. “We all know I would finish my fence first.”
“Says who?” Ginny’s back snapped straight. “My boys are just as competent as yours. They could put together a fence so fast it’d make your lot’s heads spin.”
“You think so?” Howard took a step closer to his sister.
“I know it.” Ginny closed the gap between them, standing toe-to-toe with him. “Unless you get it in your head to cheat.”
“I would never,” Howard huffed.
The war of words continued as Ginny and Howard batted around rules and guides and insults. Jarvis took a step toward Alice. He wasn’t convinced it was the best idea ever himself, but the air had filled with an excitement that was far more than the tension that had hung between them all.
“Not sure I thought that one through,” he whispered to Alice once he stood by her side.
Alice leaned close to him. “No, I think you might be on to something,” she said. “This isn’t about land anyhow, it’s about competition.”
“Is it?”
Alice nodded, meeting his eyes. “Sibling rivalry. You just gave them something concrete to compete over.”
Jarvis grinned. “I got lucky.”
She grinned right back at him. Yep, he was lucky, all right. The luckiest man in the world, as long as Alice was by his side.
“I’m not going to let that green boob be the judge,” Ginny snorted, bringing Jarvis and Alice’s attention back to the argument.
“I’m as good a judge as anyone,” Franklin prote
sted. His face was red and his shoulders were stiff, as if he’d been insulted.
“I won’t have it.” Ginny put her foot down.
“Wouldn’t you rather work building the fence?” Howard asked his son.
Franklin squirmed.
“We’ll get Carl Brannon to be the judge,” Ginny declared.
For once, Howard didn’t object. Instead, he stroked his chin with a thoughtful stare across the cattle yard.
“Who’s Carl Brannon?” Alice asked.
“He’s our neighbor to the south,” Ginny said. “His land bumps up against both mine and Howard’s.”
“He’s a decent fellow too,” Howard added.
“Sounds like he should judge, then,” Jarvis said.
“We’re agreed on that.” Ginny nodded.
“Two days to gather supplies and put the rest of the ranch in order so the men can be spared?” Howard asked her.
“No more than six men per crew,” Ginny agreed. She raised a finger to point at his chest. “And no substitutions if a man gets tired or gets a splinter.”
“I agree if you do,” Howard said.
“It’s settled then.” Ginny spit on her hand, then held it out to her brother.
Howard narrowed his eyes, then spit on his own hand and took Ginny’s. “Settled. We’ll each determine where we think the boundaries of our properties lie, and whoever finishes their fence first gets their way.”
Chapter Eleven
The rest of the day was spent making plans, setting out rules, and gathering supplies. Jarvis was impressed—and amused—by how well Ginny and Howard worked together when they were discussing rules and means of “whooping each other’s backsides,” as Ginny described it later. They managed to agree on a specific point for each of them to start their fences, on the types of materials that could be used and what sort of fences would be built, and on which of their respective employees would be on each team. Even the neighbor, Carl Brannon, joined in what he called “the fun” and agreed to be the judge.
There was an element of fun to the whole thing, if truth be told. Everyone buzzed with excitement, from Ginny and Howard all the way down to the kitchen help. Jarvis supposed that having something concrete to focus on diffused a lot of the conflict that had enveloped the ranches for who knew how long. Still, he wasn’t convinced it was the best idea he’d ever had. Especially when Ginny dragged him back to her side of the property to help with preparations. He wanted to stay and talk to Alice, spend idle time with her at the very least, but he was out of luck.
It was an hour after dark before Jarvis finally had a chance to sneak away from Ginny’s house after she’d gone to bed and make his way across to Howard’s house. His back and legs were sore and his hands smarted from chopping wood for fence rails and loading the supplies Ginny already had into her wagon, but he wasn’t about to let a little pain keep him from where his heart was telling him to go.
He kept his eyes trained on the windows of the room where he knew Alice was staying as he walked to Howard’s house. When he got there, he caught his breath by searching the darkened yard for small stones, and when he found a few, he tossed them up at Alice’s open window. Instead of throwing them against the glass to make noise, he chucked a few right through the curtains. Either way, it worked.
Alice poked her head out the window. She searched the moonlit yard.
“Hello?”
“Alice,” he called to her.
Alice gasped and found him in the dark. “Oh, Jarvis. I was worried you might be Franklin thinking to serenade me.”
Jarvis chuckled. “I could sing a song if that would help.”
“No,” she laughed, then asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you.”
“Hold on, I’ll be right down.”
Alice pulled her head into the room. For several long moments, silence reigned. Jarvis paced in front of the window, eyes locked on the front door as he waited for her. When she snuck up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped near out of his skin.
“Sorry,” she giggled. “I came out the kitchen door. Howard is still up reading in the parlor, and I didn’t want him to strike up another conversation about fences.”
“I’m not sure I should have suggested this fence idea in the first place,” Jarvis confessed. He took Alice’s hand and led her around the back of the house, where they would be less likely to be spotted.
Halfway there, Alice tightened her grip on his hand and switched directions.
“This way,” she said. “We can talk in the tool shed. Howard keeps a lantern in there, so we’ll be able to see each other too.”
They cut across the lawn to the small tool shed next to the barn, leaving the door open to the moonlight while Jarvis found a box of matches and lit the lantern. As soon as the lantern was glowing, he shut the door, closing him and Alice into the small but well-organized room. It smelled of cut grass and fresh wood—honest, earthy smells.
“What did you come to talk about?” Alice asked.
Jarvis opened his mouth to speak, but stopped as he looked at her. Alice wore a frilly white nightgown with a thin green shawl. Her hair hung in a loose braid down her back, and her cheeks were pink with the warmth of the evening.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” Jarvis asked. He couldn’t have helped the grin spreading across his face if he’d tried.
His heart thumped even harder when Alice shifted her weight to one hip, crossed her arms, and gave him a sly smile.
“You came all this way in the middle of the night to tell me I’m beautiful?”
He sent her a sheepish grin and ran a hand through his long hair. It was loose, for a change, and there was some comfort in combing his fingers through it.
“I’d walk much farther for the chance to tell you you’re beautiful,” he admitted.
“Stop,” she laughed. “Why did you really come?”
He debated keeping up the story that he’d come just to drink in her beauty. It seemed like a better idea than the reason he had come.
He cleared his throat and got serious. “I came because I’m not sure about this whole competition.”
“What about it?” Alice glanced around, then leaned against a sturdy sawhorse behind her.
Jarvis took a seat on the sawhorse next to her. “I can’t shake the feeling that it will lead to trouble once the fun has worn off,” he confessed. “Building two fences? Racing to see who can claim the borderline they want first? It’ll just end up with hurt feelings and a lot of wasted time and materials when all is said and done.”
Alice shrugged. The motion rubbed her arm against his, sending a spike of heat through him.
“In theory, it isn’t a great idea,” she agreed. “But after watching the energy that Howard put into it today and the way it made him smile, I’m starting to think it might be exactly what he needs.”
“You think?” He inched closer to her so that their arms pressed together.
Alice didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, she didn’t object. Her expression grew pensive.
“I don’t know what Ginny is like or what she’s said about this conflict, but the more I talk to Howard about things, the more I see that it isn’t about land at all.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No. Howard has so much land he can barely keep track of it all. When I pressed him, he admitted he’s got half a dozen streams in other areas. It can’t be about the land itself.”
“Then what’s it about?” He had a feeling he knew, but he wanted to hear Alice talk. He wanted to see the way her beautiful mind worked.
Alice sighed, staring at a pair of axes hung on the shed’s wall opposite them. “Howard is a good man and an intelligent one, but he’s also sad and lonely.”
The way she said it, her head bowed, her shoulders drooping, told Jarvis she understood sadness and loneliness all too well. He waited patiently for her to go on.
“He misses his sist
er,” she said at last. “He misses his wife and his daughter too. His life was once full of love and life, family and happiness, but now he’s lost, drifting.”
“Is she?” He shifted his hand to take one of hers, holding it tenderly.
“He.” Alice slowly met his eyes. “You mean he. Howard,” she said. “We’re talking about Howard.”
“Yes, we are.” He knew full well they weren’t.
“Building this fence gives him a chance to feel like he’s part of something, like he has some reason to interact with the people he loves.”
Jarvis’s brow rose. He hadn’t thought about that. She might have a point.
“Ginny may argue like a dog with a bone when they’re face-to-face,” he said, stroking his thumb across her knuckles, “but she talks about him all the time when he’s not around.”
“Hmm,” Alice hummed.
More than anything, Jarvis wanted to put his arm around her, to let her rest her head on his shoulder and give her cares over to him. He wanted to keep her safe and make her happy for the rest of his life. Strange that he could be so certain about someone so soon after meeting them, but he felt as though he had been waiting to meet Alice for his whole life.
“I think Ginny just wants the argument to end,” he said, swaying toward Alice. “I think that she hates seeing her brother suffer. She knows that he’s lost so much, and she wants to help ease that pain. She wants to see her brother start anew and find happiness.”
Alice pivoted to face him, one eyebrow arched. “Ginny feels that way about Howard?”
Jarvis grinned, an admission that he wasn’t talking about their hosts at all anymore. Alice knew it.
“Absolutely,” he lied. “Ginny feels like she’s known Howard her whole life, like they had a bond before they even met.”
Alice’s lips twitched, and her expression grew stern. “Ginny and Howard have known each other their whole lives. They’re siblings.”
“Hmm.” Jarvis nodded. “I think you might be right about the fence, though.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t fight the urge to hold her any longer. He let go of her hand and slid his arm around her waist. “I think the feud and the fence are an excellent way to spend time together and to enjoy each other’s company.”