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Peel asked.
    Sarah stared at her, and then laughed. “We are idiots,” she said. “We decided only a month ago that we had reached retiring age, remember?” She rose from her bed and went over to the windows and opened them wide. The steady murmur of the creek, the rustling of the cottonwood-trees, the notes of a robin singing two lines of a song, came drifting into the room.
    “Nonsense,” Mrs. Peel said brusquely. “That’s what it was. This idea is just the sort of thing I need to keep me alive. If we are idiots, then we are idiots with a good idea, and just enough money—which is equally important.”
    “Unless the price of this house were too high.”
    “We could always lease it, of course.”
    “That wouldn’t be the kind of money he needs. Besides, he might not like our idea at all.” Sarah Bly remembered Jim Brent’s determined jaw-line and decidedly firm mouth. The eyes too were uncompromising. He might want to keep the house as his own, even if it were a white elephant. Men were like that.
    “Well, we are having dinner with him, aren’t we? Let’s be thankful the electricity isn’t on, and that candlelight has a softening effect.”
    “He will think we are crazy,” Sarah said. “And how on earth do we get anywhere near the subject?”
    “Leave that to me,” Mrs. Peel said. She was already in her most persuasive mood as she began to brush her hair. “After all, think of the benefactor he would be if he sold us this house— why, he might be responsible for a completely new phase in his country’s literature.”
    * * *
    The future benefactor was at that moment changing into a clean pair of well-faded, well-shrunk jeans. As he stamped his way into his best high-heeled boots he was cursing Ma Gunn’s idea of hospitality. What had made her suggest that the guests should have supper in the dining-room tonight, and that he ought to be host? They had accepted before he had been given the chance to make a polite excuse. They were nice enough women, he supposed, but he had a hell of a lot of paper work to do in his office tonight. And where the hell was that clean shirt? He cursed everything within reach in turn before he managed to leave his cabin.
    The boys were lined up outside the Roost to encourage him with a cheer. Bert, caked with mud from the afternoon’s work, volunteered to come and serve them cocktails. There were numerous other suggestions too, including Ned’s guitar-playing, Robb’s recitations, and old Chuck as the Singing Cowboy. And Jackson, they thought, could pick flowers for the table.
    But Jackson was sitting on his cot upstairs in the Wranglers’ Roost, thinking dolefully that every one else sounded much too happy. His hands itched and burned with red blotches that had spread up his arms and, since he had wiped the honest sweat off his brow several times in the course of this hot day’s work, were now appearing on his face. He rose to look in the small, cracked mirror hanging beside Robb’s cot. He closed his eyes to blot out the horrible sight. Before he came to Wyoming, he thought gloomily, he had been a handsome man—his taste ran to square-shaped jaw, heavy eyebrows above large brown eyes, and thick black hair. But now his eyes were puffed into slits; his nose had swollen and spread. He was no longer the Hungarian émigré or the Paris boulevardier or the smart New York chauffeur. He was a Tibetan pig. He sat down on his cot and wondered doubtfully if Atlantic City would ever look at him again.

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    Jim Brent found he was enjoying himself, after all. That was something of a surprise, for he had entered the dining-room in a definitely bad-tempered mood. By way of apology he set out to be a good host; he listened sympathetically, and he even talked a good deal more than he usually did with women. He was admitting to himself that he had jumped to several wrong conclusions about them. And so they found him a much easier companion than they had expected. They