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and now they were firm friends.
    Making sure she was not observed she led him back of the barn and swung into the saddle. She was wearing a divided skirt because she preferred to ride with her legs around his barrel and she left the ranch in the direction of Columbus, not swinging toward Mimbres until she had put a couple of ridges between herself and Tadpole.
    She was not at all sure the information would help her if she did find out the names of the men implicated in her father’s killing. The sheriff of Luna County spent the most of his time around Deming and, from all reports, was a pretty frail reed to lean on. For some indefinable reason she felt strangely reluctant to go to Don Luis. For almost three months now she had been living in his house and there was still constraint between them whenever chance conspired to place them alone in each other’s company.
    That this constraint was almost wholly of her making she was well aware, nor could she find any plausible reason for it. All her life she had lived with tales of the Cordray saga and she knew it was not awe which made her restive in his presence. He was the soul of tact, a charming host, never presuming upon the situation which had placed her under his roof. He had offered to oversee the rebuilding of Spur headquarters for her and it was certainly not his fault that things were progressing so slowly. Adequate help was hard to come by and those of her father’s crew still alive had apparently fled the country. She had been over there often enough to know he was doing everything he could to speed completion of the new buildings. His own vaqueros were riding Spur range, patrolling it to discourage the inroads of rustlers. In her behalf he had hired carpenteros and adobe makers and when these went off on a drunk he hired others. She knew he’d had men trying to track down the raiders and had only given up when every chance had been exhausted. Yet her disquiet in his presence remained a nagging irritation and she resented her inability to put it down and be as gracious as her debt to him would have her.
    The evening wore on and dusk came to subdue the surrounding contours of the hills and gobble up the sun while her thoughts continued to pick at Lewis Cordray and the reactions he awoke in her.
    She was an honest girl and he had treated her as one, treated her almost as an equal, despite the differences in their backgrounds and the gap between their ages. He was fourteen years her senior and about all the law there was in the country; and two weeks back he had asked her to marry him and she had fled white-faced to her room like a schoolgirl.
    Her cheeks burned painfully at the memory. Though he’d said nothing further about it and continued to treat her with every consideration, it was obvious that soon he would expect her to give him an answer.
    So here she was with a ranch on her hands and no crew to run it. What could she say? Even she had to admit it would be the most practical arrangement. What other man in this region could do better by her? From every commonsense viewpoint it was the best possible solution of all her problems. She would have security and the envy of every woman in the country. As the wife of Don Luis —
    She hit the gelding with her spurs. She didn’t want to be his wife! She saw the line shack through the darkness and pulled up, unaccountably shuddering. The only thing she wanted in all the world was to be loved!
    • • •
    She tied the gelding to a gnarled juniper and stood beside him, stroking his muzzle, telling herself she was being silly. She went into the shack and struck a match, looking around in distaste at the litter of rubbish. There was a lamp in a bracket and she went across to it and lit it, only then becoming conscious of the man who had come in behind her.
    He hulked better than six feet in the cotton drawers and shirt of a peon, the unusual height of him emphasized by a gauntness that seemed little short of starvation.