Broken Bow (2007)

Irene B. Brand's inspirational romance, published by Barbour's Heartsong Presents line in 2007 and dedicated to her husband's grandparents who homesteaded in Custer County, Nebraska, opens four weeks before Christmas 1890. Paula Thompson is going home to the Lazy R ranch near Broken Bow after a fruitless visit to her aunt, unsure whether her stepfather Gordon Randall's will has left her a home, when a handsome stranger, Carson Hardey, buys a ticket for the same train. (Open Library)

Watches

Waltham watch: Paula drops her valise in the Grand Island railway station after a miserable week with her reclusive Aunt Lucy and checks the Waltham watch that hangs from a silver chain around her neck: half an hour until the train for Broken Bow. While she waits, a cowboy in a new gray Stetson comes to the ticket window, a stranger she will suspect of being her stepfather's nephew. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: According to the Waltham watch hanging from the silver chain around her neck, she had a half hour to wait before the train left for Broken Bow. (Irene B. Brand, Broken Bow, scan cataloged as Heartsong Presents (Barbour), 2007, p. 5; the 1890 calendar is on p. 6; Internet Archive scan OCR)