that were tight now with suppressed fury, and eyes that were too dark for such light coloured hair. Her breasts moved under a yellow buckskin jacket and her riding skirt flared away from a narrow waist. She wore fancy riding boots of polished brown leather and was the finest looking woman he’d seen. When she did not speak he confirmed what the older man had said. “What the man says is true, ma’am. It was a fair fight.”
Her eyes glittered. “You saw it all?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why didn’t you do something?”
“Like what, ma’am?”
“You could have stopped them!”
Her hands and body quivered. She wanted to whip him also but the crop lay on the ground. “They didn’t want to be stopped,” Latigo said quietly. “Looked to me they had good reason for fighting.”
“You were afraid!” she accused. His legs straightened and his shoulders rose. “You see a man beaten nearly to death and you don’t lift a finger to help! What kind of man are you?”
He eyed her calmly, was slow to speak. Her flushed cheeks made her beautiful, a fiery beauty, all flame and temper. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’ve done all the fighting for other people I’m going to do. A man’s got a right to mind his own business.”
Her lips compressed. “You’re a coward!” she said and watched his jaw harden. “Who are you, anyway? What are you doing here?”
He moved to the horse, gathered up the rein and regarded her. “Nothing in the world so hard to put up with, ma’am, as a stiff-necked woman,” he said. “I reckon you talk the way you do because nobody ever told you not to.”
She had stepped nearer the man on the ground, moving his arms now and trying to rise. As Latigo spoke she turned quickly, eyes still alight with the old anger and sharpened with a new. “What did you say?” she demanded.
“You’re talking out of turn, ma’am.”
Her hands clenched again. The quirt lay too far away. Her breasts rose. “How dare you!” she cried.
He nodded. “That’s what I mean, ma’am.”
He raised himself into the saddle and threaded reins. The gelding came round. “Aren’t you going to help him up?” she asked, the words stinging. “You can see he’s hurt!”
“No, ma’am. He fell down by himself. Let him get up by himself.”
She turned from him, trembling, furious in defeat. She watched as he walked the horse away. The sun was strong, the light from the west, and he wore the hat forward to shield his eyes. There was an ease in the way he sat on the horse, in the way he ignored her and in the shape of his shoulders that was masculine and had nothing to do with her kind of pride. She did not know what to think. She did not understand her own confusion and didn’t know why not.
The young fellow on the ground moved and made a sound. She knelt and helped him to rise. Blood from the cut over his eye had hardened on his cheekbone, his chin was bruised and his lips swollen. He swayed and held her arm. She thought about the man on the horse. She looked again. Latigo was moving away. “What were you fighting about, Joe?” she asked.
The dark-skinned man brushed his mouth and squinted in the sunlight, eyes following the straight-backed figure on the gelding. “Nothing,” he said. “It was just a fight.”
She made him look at her. “Joe, it wasn’t just a fight,” she said. “I want to know!”
“It was just a fight, Hildy,” he said crossly. “A man-fight that doesn’t have anything to do with you. A fellow needs a fight sometimes. You don’t know. . .” She slapped his cheek and his dark face smarted. “If you’d marry me, I wouldn’t have to fight,” he said.
She knew that and didn’t answer him. He reached for her hands and she avoided the touch. His eyes sulked. “Get on your horse, Joe,” she said. “Father wants you.”
“What for?”
Again her eyes sought the shape of the man on the gelding, still visible, distant now. “I don’t know. He just wants you.”
He walked to his horse. She picked up the crop. When she was mounted she asked, “Who was that stranger, Joe?”
He followed Latigo’s direction; a man on a horse, dark against yellow grass, too far away to be recognised. “Never saw him before. Some cowhand. I reckon.”
“What’s he doing here? Is he looking for work?”
“I told you. I never saw the fellow before.”
“He could have stopped the fight.”
“No!” he said sharply.” “I didn’t want the fight stopped. I’m not finished with Nevin. I’ll kill him!”
“That’s what he said about you, ”Joe,” she remembered. Her eyes met his. Her look was distant and deep. “Why were you fighting?”
He didn’t answer. He spurred the horse forward. “Come on, we’d better get back. I’m in enough trouble already.”
Together they rode over sunlit grass. She remembered the face of Latigo Lansen and his lips, his hands when he straightened the rein and gripped the saddle horn, and eyes that weren’t afraid of her. The man riding by her side was as tall, as straight, and knew how to sit on a horse but there was a difference that had nothing to do with the shape of either or how each man rode a horse. She didn’t know what it was and not knowing disturbed her.
CHAPTER TWO
GILA Bend hadn’t changed much. What was new Latigo noticed at once. The bank was brick and plaster now and the church had been painted white. The boardwalk followed the corner of the bank and turned east. The day was still bright, shades were drawn, window glass glinted in the light, the street between unpainted frame buildings caked mud, rutted by a thousand wheel rims. He walked the gelding, looking for faces that he knew. Nobody waved a hat or cried his name. Coming back wasn’t what he had expected.
At the blacksmith’s, where he watered the horse, a round-faced sweating man in a split leather apron strode out into the light. “Something I can do for you, mister?”
“Was looking for the Land Office,” said Latigo. “Figured it was over by the bank.”
“Used to be, then the bank got bigger. Land Office moved. Keep going the way you’re headed. It’s up by the sheriff’s office.”
“Thanks.”
The blacksmith wiped his red face. “If you’re looking for work, son,” he said. “Kincaid is the man to see.”
“Hear he’s the big man in these parts.”
The man on the ground nodded. “Sure,” he said. “He’s big but he’s not any bigger than the boots he wears. Doesn’t affect me none. If a man rides a horse he’s got to come to me. Could give you a job myself, if you know anything about smithy work.”
“Right
