CHAPTER ONE: EDGE OF DARKNESS

The next night found River’s Bend unusually busy. The place was buzzing with more activity than it had ever seen the entire five years it had been open. Word traveled fast as it usually did in small towns. When people heard that Jayne Cobb, upright peaceful businessman and faithful husband, never hurt a man in the five years they’d known him, had shot not just one but two men trying to rob his bar, well, everyone wanted a look. On any given day, most of the people who came to the bar were regulars and while a small portion of the bar’s customers had always been made up of strangers, there had never been this many at once before. Every table was filled and every chair was occupied. It gave Jayne a bit of an uncomfortableness that was only slightly dispelled by the thought of the handgun hidden under the counter and his old hunting knife tucked in his boot shaft. But if the unusual number of strangers was making Jayne uncomfortable, it was making River even jumpier.

When they’d bought the bar, they hadn’t planned for her to work there at all but then the lao tu tou Jayne originally hired to do the cooking had a heart attack and kicked the bucket two weeks after her arrival. He hadn’t been able to find anyone new right away so she agreed to fill in for a few days. Days turned into weeks and then months until Jayne gave up and let her take over. Not to mention if he didn’t, he probably would’ve had a riot on his hands, most of the regulars came because of River’s cooking, the barmaids adored her and well, she’d been bored rattling around in their little house on her lonesome all day.

She’d had a hard time keeping herself together when she first started working in the kitchen. She hadn’t been used to being around so many strangers after living onboard a spacecraft with the same crew day after day. But as she gradually became familiar with all the people who frequented the bar, the number of thoughts she encountered whose originators were unknown to her decreased to