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dark eyes fixed on him with startling intensity—eyes that reminded him of olives freshly fetched from a tub and still moist. They stared hard as if to impart a message, so it seemed to him. A plea for help? That was when he first got the impression she was being held captive.
    But the steers demanded his attention and he was forced to move on.
    This first week of roundup he heard low-voiced speculation about her, always from newcomers hired on for roundup. But none of the regulars would discuss her at all. However, there was speculation among the new men that she was Brad Sanlee’s woman and he was keeping an eye on her during roundup.
    The following day it rained. As Lassiter started his rope-spinning overhead to make a cast, his horse slipped in the mud. Lassiter was thrown heavily. But he was instantly on his feet, dancing away nimbly. However, his pinto, struggling to get up fromthe muddy ground, took a steer horn in the belly. Its awesome scream knifed through the roundup camps. Entrails of the animal lay steaming where it had fallen.
    Lassiter spun from the advancing steer, but it suddenly veered and went ambling into the brush.
    With a dry mouth, Lassiter shot the suffering horse through the head. After stripping off saddle and bridle and carrying his rifle, he walked back to camp for a fresh mount. He gave thanks that it wasn’t his black horse in a crumpled heap back in the brush.
    It was late in the day when Lassiter, mounted on a chestnut horse, saw some ropers nearby let a wild ladino get away. It went crashing through the brush and across the Diamond Eight camp, scattering pots and bedrolls, bumping against the chuck wagon. Lassiter, who was the nearest, went pounding after it. A perfect cast of his rope pinned the forelegs and dumped the great beast on its nose.
    In his rampage, the bull had crushed the woman’s tent. She stood now beside the crumpled canvas, her face white, hands clenched at her sides.
    And in those moments when his horse was backing away, to drag the bellowing mountain of flesh away from the chaos it had caused, she was looking at him intently again. She seemed younger than he had thought at first. He saw her lips move in greatly exaggerated fashion. He had never practiced lip-reading, but there was no mistaking her silent message:
Help me! Please help me!
    But by then, some of the Diamond Eight riders had come up and were cursing the big bull for what he had done to their camp. Brad Sanlee cantered in, saw that Lassiter had the fifteen-hundred pound ladino in hand and gave a jerk of his head in approval.
    â€œSee you got the bastard!” Sanlee shouted with a great show of white teeth through his beard.
    Lassiter gestured at the woman, really a girl, who stood trembling beside the mound of canvas. “She was likely scared half to death when he got loose,” Lassiter said, wondering at the man’s reaction.
    Sanlee didn’t even bother to look at her, but his eyes, with their peculiar shade of gray, seemed to darken. “She’s used to trouble, that one.” He spoke so coldly as if to imply she was a nonentity, not to be discussed.
    Sanlee shouted at two of his men to straighten up the scattered bedrolls but made no mention of her tent. She had turned her back and was trying to straighten out the tangle of damp canvas. No one offered to give her a hand. Anger shot through Lassiter at such indifference—the reflection of the attitude of a tough crew to a tough ranch owner, Lassiter supposed. And although he felt at home around such men, one thing he could not tolerate was to see that toughness turned on the weak and defenseless, or to demean a woman as was the case at the Diamond Eight roundup camp.
    By then the bull was on its feet. Some of the Diamond Eight riders were herding it in the direction of the holding ground.
    Lassiter rewound his catch rope, hooked it over the saddle horn and dismounted. At the moment, he didn’t give much of a damn