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whitening yellow hair lay flat on his head, combed across to hide baldness. He was dressed too formally, too heavily for the hot day, in a frock coat and large brown cravat. Mack estimated him to be in his late fifties.
    The two other riders, a well-dressed man and a very attractive woman, trotted up behind him now and stopped. The gentleman wore a fine white hat, white breeches, and shiny high boots. Beside him, astride a beautiful black horse, the girl was dressed in a white blouse and tight, mannish trousers— definitely not the kind of feminine riding costume he’d seen in magazines. A long gold-colored silk scarf tied in her blond hair trailed down between her large breasts.
    “So what have you got to say for yourself?” the gunman shouted. Standing there stupefied, Mack noticed other details now. The gunman’s frock coat showed spots and stains, and under it, the right-hand shirttail was hanging out. He had a belly big as half a watermelon. His small, fierce eyes almost hid in sockets of sunburned skin.
    Mack finally screwed up his nerve. “I’m thirsty.”
    “Yah?” The man snorted; it was hardly a laugh. He lowered the S&W and rested it on one ham of a thigh. With his other hand he scratched his crotch. The young woman didn’t see; his back was to her, and she had all of her attention on Mack, as did her companion, whom Mack judged to be somewhat older than he, maybe as much as thirty. He was a well-set-up gentleman with trimmed side-whiskers and a small mustache, and sat easily on his horse, conveying strength and clear contempt for the ragged stranger by the water.
    “You wanted a drink, hah? I tell you something, Johnny. This is my ranch. My land, my water. Around here, trespassers get shot.”
    Mack decided his situation was so bad that cowering was pointless. Besides, the man angered him. He slashed an arm back at the trees, the hidden fields. “I didn’t see any signs posted.”
    “Never mind signs ,” the man yelled, dancing the gray nearer the flat brown stream and Mack. “You come from back that way, you been trespassing on my land for twenty-eight miles.”
    Mack was speechless a moment. Twenty-eight miles !
    The man seemed annoyed at his lack of response and shouted, “You damn fool, I’m Hellman.”
    Mack just stared. The girl leaned forward over the neck of her horse, resting her hands on me high pommel of her silver-studded Mexican saddle and watching the older man, whose anger seemed to amuse her. Then she looked down at Mack with a smile of sympathy. She had a wide mouth, starkly pink but unpainted by cosmetics, and eyes of a deeper blue than Wyatt Paul’s.
    “Does that name mean nothing to you?” the younger man asked.
    “No, sir, not a thing.”
    The young man stepped his beautifully groomed chestnut nearer the water. “After Mr. Henry Miller of Miller and Lux, Mr. Hellman is the largest private landowner in the state.”
    “Yah,” the gunman shorted, “Otto Hellman—you some kind of bumpkin, some kind of Scheisskopf , you never heard of that?”
    “He’s a stranger in California,” the girl said. “Anyone can tell that. You can at least be civil.”
    “Keep out of this, Carla.” She didn’t like that. She was feisty, certainly the most modern creature Mack had ever seen.
    Otto Hellman walked his gray into the water. Mack’s eyes blurred with running sweat. He was sure the man could hear his heart hammering. The name Hellman meant nothing to him, but obviously the man was important and not to be fooled with, despite his slovenly, somewhat comic appearance.
    “I don’t understand why you’re sore,” Mack said finally. “All I want is a drink. You don’t own the water.”
    Otto Hellman barked rather than laughed. The young man leaned over and whispered something to the girl, who laughed and said, “Shameful, Walter.” They were a contrast: her smile large and lusty, his tight and contained. In all of Mack’s life, he’d never seen a woman so fair.
    “Jesus,