no rubbing against him.
His eye wrinkles were white as he considered her. The crew expected that. It was a normal, male reaction to her. And since she acted like a normal person, Cliff apparently figured he’d be okay.
However, every single man on the place managed to find a way to warn Cliff. They explained her thinking she was one of them and could do whatever a man could do.
Each man warned Cliff that it was up to him to discourage her pushy conduct.
That caused Cliff to pull his head back and give the first couple of men a startled look.
So each assured Cliff that she would be pushing in to help the men with the herding and cutting and branding and everything else! To remember that she considered herself one of them.
And at separate, found times, each one of them told him in a deadly voice, “Don’t you let her experiment with you.” Their eyes were squinched up and very serious.
They told him that no man who had all his marbles would get within fifty miles of her.
Having seen her, Cliff nodded soberly.
The men went on that if a man was around her, he’d spend all his time rescuing her—from water, blizzards, being lost or risking being trampled by beeves or horses. And they’d add, “Fooled you there, didn’t I.”
And Cliff understood there was a serious problem.
But then Clifford Robertson moved to the spread: He brought his neat little sports car towed behind his truck. He had his clothing packed neatly. He stopped near the house and got out He looked around and breathed. His soul smiled. It was as he’d remembered. It was a perfect place.
The sky was wide and the trees were oaks and hackberry, and pushing in were the relentless mesquites. There was a proliferation of wild, spring flowers and the Texas bluebonnets that filled his soul.
His room was in the house. That had caused Cliff to hesitate. He would rather be around the men. And he wondered who was the chaperone for the nubile female.
The terrifying woman was as he remembered. A slip of a girl who greeted him nicely and didn’t do anything else. Well, she showed him his part of the house and where to put his things.
His unit was downstairs at the front of the house, which was of adobe. The walls were thick and the air inside was cool. There was a separate door to the outside.
His part of the downstairs had been built for her parents. There was a reading room next to the bedroom with a desk, and he had his own bathroom. It was just right.
And he looked at the nubile woman and wondered why she hadn’t taken her parents’ suite for herself? He asked, “Where are the rest of the bedrooms?”
She replied simply, “Upstairs.”
He already knew that the cook and the yardman slept in rooms in the back of the house.
That was all she said. Cliff found a brief surfacing of curiosity in that he wanted to see her room.
Having shown him his section of the house, Chancy took him to the house’s separate barn to introduce him to his horse.
The meeting of those two would be interesting for her to watch. Jasper was a big horse. He was independent, curious, self-directed and willing to share. He was an individual animal that was also pretty smart.
As they walked to the barn, she lied. She said, “Here, we trade horses around so that we can know them all.”
That caused Cliff to pause and look at the neophyte. So he settled that right away. He told her firmly, “If I take a horse as mine, I’d rather no one else rode him.”
Chancy glanced over at him as she considered him with a tilted-back head. “That’s a little stingy.”
He looked around as men tend to do. He was stem. “It’s the way I work. Then I don’t have to remember which horse I’m on and what quirks it has. I can understand the animal better.”
“You call them... animals?”
He grinned. “I’ve never ridden a human.” As soon as he said that, he sunk his teeth into his lower lip.
Apparently she didn’t understand the unintended innuendo.
She was twenty, by then, and all the crew had treated her as if she was isolated and had never read nor heard anything.
The two went into the barn. Cliff asked, “The other horse. Is that yours?”
And she smiled. “Yes.”
He asked softly, “Anybody else ride it?”
“No.”
He was firm. “Nobody else’ll ride mine.”
“That’s selfish.”
He looked at her unduly, with his slitted eyes considering. Then he told her in that soft voice, “I’m selective.”
She figured he’d decide on his own horse and then keep it to himself. She just hoped he liked the one they’d chosen for him.
Inside the barn, Cliff looked at her horse with interest and even petted it, but he asked, “Which of these is the one for me?” He’d already decided on the stallion but he could be reasonably tactful.
So she showed Cliff Jasper. He was the one.
The horse and man observed one another, and it was Cliff who went to the horse. Jasper was steady and waiting. And the man gave the horse a sugar cube.
The bribe made Chancy smile.
But Cliff’s hands went over Jasper, getting the horse familiar with him. He took up each hoof and looked at each one. And during all that time, Cliff was running his hands over the horse and talking to him.
It was interesting but not unknown for Chancy to watch. The man and the horse were getting acquainted. Cliff was showing the horse that he was his. And the horse appeared to consider that quite easily.
She wondered why the horse accepted a stranger when she hadn’t been able to get his attention at all. He’d been reasonably tolerant of her, but he had discarded being her horse.
It was rather irritating to see a man get that close to a horse so quickly.
In the next month, Cliff worked as if God had sent him to them to spare the rest of the crew of the responsibility for...the Chancy one.
Probably the biggest surprise was that she was a jolt to a single man who was diligent in his activities. Those that concerned the place. Without any warning, she was in the group and determined to be a part of it. She owned the place.
She simply did not have the muscle or the strength to handle what a man could do so easily.
She did not obey rules laid down that were brief,
