The store owner had long since re-entered the room to see what the commotion was about. "Heavenly days " he gasped at seeing the mess. Then his eyes fell upon Molly still on the floor and he hastened to help her up. "Miss O'Brian Are you hurt badly? Here Let me help you " His eyes once again swept the room that only minutes before had been a showcase of his pride as a storekeeper. He shook his head in despair. It now looked like the battle of Gettysburg had taken its last stand here. "I'm all right," Molly gasped weakly. But indeed she wasn't. She'd taken spills from bucking horses, wrangled with ornery calves at branding time, been kicked by angry mamas from time to time. But never had her body screamed with outrageous pain as it was doing now. Even so, Molly bravely dismissed her own pain as she saw Colt go down. "You need to find the Sheriff. And hurry " she groaned through tight-set lips. As with most of my books, the setting is steeped in the valley of the Bitterroot Mountains near Tarkio and Last Chance, Montana. This story needs no stilts to prop it up, and no excuses for its characters. It is a straight-forward tail of a young cowboy who stops to help out a rancher in need. Molly, a fiesty, headstrong wampus cat of a rancher's daughter, aims every derogatory work of insults possible at her father's rescuer but is trumped at every turn by the young man, who has his own methods of dealing with the spitfire, finding out in a hurry that the only way to stop the girl's abusive speech is with a strange but effective method: countering with kisses. A change of pace from the typical Western romance, you'll find yourself frollicking along with laughter and maybe even a tear. You'll find a good share of fighting, skullduggery and murder to secure a ranch, as well as jealousy. And lastly, proof of the old adage: oil and water don't mix.