Charlie didn’t reply to the old man’s outburst. He took a last drag on his wilted cigarette and dropped it to the floor, toed it out. He drew in a deep breath and turned toward the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Hess called irascibly. “Better leave your chuck-list here with me. I’ll have your order ready for you to pick up when you start home.”

  Charlie kept on going toward the door. There was a new note of urgency in his voice when he called back over his shoulder, “I won’t be goin’ back today, I reckon. Got me some business out south of town.”

  Frank Hess stared after him, open-mouthed. Then he slapped his knee and began to chuckle delightedly. The Aiken ranch was south of town. Maybe he’d talked some sense into Charlie’s thick head. He hoped so. It’d sure be a crime for a sweet girl like Peggy Aiken to take up with a man like Henry Pelham.

  On the boardwalk outside Charlie stopped and looked up and down the street. The hitchracks were gradually filling up now, and he could see small groups of booted men lounging in the shade here and there.

  He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out the Rio Kid’s letter, smoothed it out and studied the date. It had been mailed in El Paso six days previously. And in the letter Hugh had said he would arrive in about a week. He was expecting Charlie to meet him at the Bar L headquarters which, three years ago, had been a deserted ranch house well isolated from its neighbors.

  Now there were new buildings at the Bar L, and instead of being a deserted spot that would make a perfect meeting place Henry Pelham was employing twice as many riders as any other rancher in the country. He’d have to head Hugh off somehow. There’d be hell to pay if he rode up to the Bar L unsuspectingly and was recognized. That ten-thousand-dollar reward would appeal to the hard-bitten crew of riders that worked for Pelham.

  Charlie thrust the letter back into his pocket and beckoned to a lanky man who was just dismounting in front of the store. He said, “Hi, Jim. Do me a favor?”

  Jim Lacy said, “Shore, Charlie. You’ve done me plenty.”

  “Wish you’d take this list of grub out and drop it at my place as you ride by.” Charlie handed his neighbor a short list of staple groceries. “Tell the boys I may not be back for two-three days.”

  “You bet,” Jim Lacy agreed heartily, and without any questions.

  Charlie Barnes untied his roan and mounted. He rode south along Main Street, lifting his hand and nodding to greetings from loungers along the boardwalk.

  2

  Three huge cottonwood trees formed a perfect triangle about the four-roomed log house that Jonas Aiken had built to receive his bride a quarter of a century before. From those trees and his initial had come the Triangle A brand that had marked the Aiken stock from that day onward.

  Steep wooded slopes rose directly behind the sheltered ranch house, while to the west and south the terrain sloped gently downward to the Mexican Border fifteen miles away.

  A mountain spring seeping from the weathered rocks formed a tiny running stream that Jonas had laboriously diverted through a stone spring-house and to watering troughs in the corrals, and in his youth and vigor he had utilized the overflow to irrigate a tiny patch of tilled ground that had produced green vegetables for the ranch table, and even flowers to please his wife who had come to him from a Lousiana plantation and who never quite adapted herself to the strange new frontier and the dry searing heat of the Border country.

  But that had been many years ago, when there were a dozen hands quartered in the long low bunkhouse beyond the cottonwoods and sleek herds dotted the rich grasslands spreading south and westward.

  A white-faced calf lay on its side in a wooden pen beyond the bunkhouse and bawled piteously. It pawed the ground feebly and rolled pleading eyes up at the girl who leaned on the rail fence and watched it suffer.

  Peggy Aiken knew the white-faced calf was dying before her eyes. All day she had been watching its struggles, watching it grow weaker while she did what she could, not knowing the nature of the sickness that had struck it down.

  Toward noon Peggy had wept when she realized she could do nothing more for the calf. Great tears had rolled silently down her thin cheeks, making the freckles seem to stand out from the tanned background of her complexion. And she had balled her thin, work-scourged fingers into small hard fists and turned angry eyes upward to the sky and addressed scathing invectives to an unjust God above who brought sickness to tiny calves who couldn’t fight back, who seemed determined that she should lose the unequal struggle she was making to keep the small ranch going.

  The dying calf was not important in itself. It was a symbol of all that had happened during the past three years. Rains came in the mountains, and to the east and south, freshening her neighbors’ ranges while the grass on the Triangle A lay withered and parched, offering little nourishment for the greedy mouths of the stock bearing her brand.

  In the winters, packs of marauding gray wolves slunk down from the mountains and invaded the Triangle A pastures, seeming to take a perverse delight in depleting her herds while those of her neighbors went unmolested. And now this strange malady had struck at her new calf-crop. Its effects were confined within the boundaries of her ranch and already more than half of the new Triangle A calves had been stricken.

  It seemed to Peggy Aiken that the Triangle A was cursed, had been singled out by the Almighty for every sort of misfortune that could possibly befall a rancher, and she had begun brooding about the unjustness of it, asking herself secretly whether it was a retribution visited upon her for her brother’s sin of three years ago.

  Still, she refused to admit herself defeated. Within her slender, ill-nourished body the spirit of her pioneering father flamed indomitable.

  Now, in mid-afternoon, she leaned against the top rail of the fence with her chin resting on folded forearms, and watched another calf die. Hours ago, she had conquered her weeping, her brief spell of weakness. Now her lips were set in a tight line and her eyes were fatalistic. There were shadows beneath her eyes, and sunken spots in her cheeks gave her face a drawn, haggard appearance. Her body was as slender and as hard-muscled as a boy’s, showing no feminine swells of soft flesh beneath her faded blue shirt and tightly belted jeans.

  She found herself wondering what effect the strange disease had on the edible qualities of a stricken creature’s flesh. If she were only sure it would not be tainted she could butcher this calf before it ceased breathing, and there would be tasty veal on the supper table tonight.

  A greedy glint came into her eyes with the thought. Peggy had not tasted fresh meat for months. Her body craved it as a drunkard craves alcohol. Her breath came a little faster as her eyes fixed themselves on the weakening struggles of the calf in front of her. Her hands clenched and unclenched themselves spasmodically.

  She wasn’t quite sane, and in a queer impersonal way she realized her condition. A dry sob came up in her throat and she swallowed it back angrily. She caught herself glancing about furtively, though she knew she was alone and there was no one about to observe her.

  Suppose the veal was tainted and she died from eating it. Would that matter so much? No one would know, and she couldn’t be pitied. Pity was the one thing she couldn’t stand.

  Cords stood out on each side of her thin neck. Her eyes were dilated and enormous beneath the shadowing brim of her hat. She stared with hypnotic intensity at the soft throat of the dying animal. One knife slash and it would all be over.

  She shivered as though a chill had come to her in the hot Border sunlight, then turned away from the fence and walked deliberately to a small shed. She entered and selected a heavy-bladed knife from several hanging in a series of leather loops nailed to the wall. She touched the ball of her thumb to the keen edge of the blade and received an influx of strength and determination from the contact.

  Somehow, the unwholesome thing she planned to do was her challenge to the evil fate that had dogged the Triangle A for three years. She felt light-headed, as though she were floating along as she went back with the knife in her hand.

  If they (the “they” was wholly impersonal and without meaning) were going to kill off her calves by disease, this was the only way she could strike back at them. Other ranchers around her butchered a veal whenever the supply of table meat ran low. For over a year Peggy had refrained from such waste. She needed every calf she could raise to ship to market in exchange for precious cash, to pay a little on the mortgage and buy winter feed.

  There was a hot glow in Peggy’s eyes as she climbed over the top rail and dropped down into the pen beside the dying calf. It was as though the real Peggy Aiken stood off and watched herself do this thing—and clapped her hands and approved.

  She dropped to her knees on the sunbaked ground and grasped the calf’s hot damp muzzle firmly in her left hand, twisting the head up to lift the vital jugular vein to her knife.

  The sound of a ridden horse dimly penetrated through the barrier that separated her from reality. She shook her head angrily, convinced that her ears were playing tricks and there was really no one coming. It was just another trick of the gods to thwart her again. She stubbornly refused to be tricked, would not turn her head to see if the obtruding sound of hoofs was actuality or her imagination.

  She drew the sharp heavy knife blade firmly across the calf’s soft throat, then calmly rocked back on her heels to avoid the spray of red blood that spurted out.

  A man’s light laughter came to her. She lifted her eyes and saw Henry Pelham astride a beautifully marked black and white paint smiling down at the scene over the rail fence. He lifted his hat in a mockingly courtly gesture as her eyes met his. He drawled:

  “I’m always being amazed by you, Peggy.” His voice was cultivated and rounded, with none of the nasal twang of the native Westerner. He was a strong-bodied, well-fleshed man in his late thirties, with full sensual lips and brown eyes that sometimes had a tawny, animal look. Now they rested upon Peggy with frank admiration.

  She arose slowly, holding the bloody dripping knife stiffly outstretched, as though the hand gripping the wooden hilt did not belong to her. “What do you mean by sneaking up on people?” she demanded hotly.

  He arched thick black eyebrows at her and laughed delightedly. “I had no intention of sneaking up on you. The fact was, my dear Peggy, you were so intent on your task that you wouldn’t have heard me if I’d ridden up shouting.”

  She hated Henry Pelham for the smooth mockery in his voice, for the smug self-assurance of the man, for his wealth and his possession of fat herds of cattle while hers were gaunted and stricken with this strange malady that was killing off her calf crop; but she hated him most intensely for the realization that he could carelessly order a calf, or a dozen calves, butchered any time he was so minded, and that he would never reach such desperate straits that he would consider the thing he had caught her doing.

  She stood slim and defiant before him with the body of the slain calf kicking feebly as its life-blood gurgled out onto the ground, and her dark eyes flamed her hatred at him. Then she lowered her eyes, let the bloody knife fall to the ground, and said listlessly:

  “He was dying before my eyes … just as all the rest of my calves are dying. I … couldn’t stand to watch him die.”

  “So you ended his suffering?” Pelham’s tone was bantering and light. “A strictly feminine reaction … and that’s what surprises me, Peggy. You’ve always tried so hard not to be feminine. More boy than girl. I’ve wondered … and by heaven I’m delighted to see you reveal a trace of girlish softness.”

  Peggy didn’t reply. She wondered if he guessed what her true intention had been. From his tone she thought it was likely he did. She stooped and picked up the butcher knife, cleansed the blade by stabbing it into the ground. The dead calf stopped kicking and lay still. She turned and went out a gate, walked to the tool shed and replaced the knife in its leather loop on the wall.

  Henry Pelham had dismounted when she came to the door. He wore two .45’s in low-slung holsters, but even in that section of the country where most men carried no six-shooter, or one at most, his pair did not seem to mark him as either a show-off or a desperado. They were a part of the man, an integral part of his strength and his assurance.

  He dropped the reins of his paint to the ground and strode toward her, turned by her side into the path leading up to the house with an insolent assumption of welcome that was as much a part of him as his low-tied guns.

  Peggy creased her lips in a tight line but said nothing. She was suddenly conscious of an apathetic sense of utter desolation. Somehow, the unavailing slaughter of the dying calf was symbolic of all that had happened during the years since her brother had been gone. One more disappointment to add to all the others she had endured. There would be no veal on the table tonight. Her stomach muscles contracted in angry remonstrance against the unfairness of it.

  She felt faint and she braced herself against any outward show of weakness. She stopped at the low front porch in the cool shade of one of the giant cottonwoods and sat down on the edge of the rough boards.

  Henry Pelham remained standing in front of her. The mockery had vanished from his eyes. He studied her drawn face gravely and asked, “Things getting worse, Peggy?”

  She nodded, cupping her chin in her hands and not looking at him. “That was the thirteenth calf to die that way. I nursed him all morning.…”

  Henry Pelham said, “You poor kid.” His voice was very gentle, but vibrant and strong. He took off his hat and sat beside her.

  “It’s too much for you, Peggy. Why don’t you give up this insane idea of trying to run a ranch with just one old crippled man to help you? You needn’t be ashamed to admit you’re defeated. You’ve tried hard enough, God knows. I’ve stood by and watched, and I haven’t interfered because I knew you didn’t want help. I’ve admired your courage and your determination. But the job’s too big for you, dear. Let me help. I’ve wanted to say this for a long time. I’m sure you knew how I felt.”

  Peggy felt like a vacuum that drank in the rich sureness of his tone. It was blissful to let languor overtake her, to cease resisting, to give up for a little moment to the restful consciousness that the struggle need not go on.

  She felt drowsy, and her taut senses were lulled by the enervating heat of the day, the vast silence into which Pelham’s voice merged and blended so it was like a soft caress to her jangled nerves.

  “I’ve proved what can be done here by a man who goes at it the right way.” Pelham wasn’t boasting. He was stating an essential truth. Not arguing a point, his regeneration of the Bar L ranch backed up his implicit faith in himself.

  “Your Triangle A is a natural extension of the Bar L. Let my men tear down the boundary fence between them, Peggy. Your place here will make a convenient round-up camp for my”—he corrected himself quickly—“for our riders.”

  A round-up camp for Bar L riders! The home her father had built with his own hands. The three giant cottonwoods he had set out a quarter of a century before. The little log house where she and Hugh had been born. This yard where they had played together. The corrals and the bunkhouse. The dear, familiar things that were woven into her life.

  Well, perhaps so.

  “I’ll build a new house at the Bar L. Just for you, Peggy. We’ll go on our honeymoon while it’s being built. To San Francisco … New York. I want to buy you things, Peggy. The things every girl wants. I’ve never seen you dressed in anything but shirts and pants. I want to see you wearing rich gowns … my wife.”

  San Francisco and New York. Hotels … and dining rooms where one could gorge oneself on rare foods. Thick juicy steaks for the ordering. Peggy’s starved stomach quivered with the acute misery of imagining.

  Henry Pelham was proposing to her. And she was letting him. She hated Henry Pelham. She scourged herself with that reminder, then said faintly, “You mustn’t. I don’t love you.”

  “I can teach you to love me.” Pelham laughed indulgently. “I’ll take my chances on that.”

  She didn’t feel like a girl receiving her first proposal of marriage—as she had always imagined she would feel. She felt nothing. Perhaps that was best.

  “You’re so alone here, dear. It’s not good for you. It isn’t natural. You’ve stayed here alone with only old Hank for company long enough. I haven’t told you this before because I didn’t want to revive bitter memories, but I promised your brother I would do my best to look after you. That’s why …”

  “Hugh? You know Hugh?” Peggy lifted her head to face him, her eyes dilated and wondering.

  “Quite well. We met in Mexico two years ago. He told me about you … begged me to look after you.”

  “How was he? How did he look? What did he say about … everything?” she ended faintly.

  Henry Pelham took one of her thin brown hands in his. “He was well. He looked like … the Rio Kid, Peggy. He knows he can never return to Arizona. He worries about you a great deal … about the effect his action had on you when he went away.”

  “And you were friends?” she asked eagerly.

  “Very close friends,” Pelham assured her. “When he learned I was looking for a ranch where I could settle down and try out some theories of my own he suggested the Bar L to me … because it adjoined the Triangle A and he said he’d feel so much better about you if he knew I was close by to see that everything was all right.”

  Peggy’s lips quivered and her eyes were misty. She felt a whimpering of taut nerves inside her, a sudden convulsive softness that shattered all the barriers she had erected between herself and the world since Hugh’s disappearance. She let herself be drawn closer to Henry Pelham, and her eyes did not avoid his. He bent his head to kiss her relaxed lips and she did not draw away from him.

  A loud “Halloo,” jerked them apart and brought Peggy tremulously to her feet. She recognized Charlie Barnes on his shaggy roan, and the mist cleared from her eyes.