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just because he wondered if they were warm?
    â€œI’m here now,” Blake mumbled. “For what it’s worth I’ve missed you. Maybe after the sting is gone, you’ll ride out and visit a bit.”
    They turned their heads and returned to the house.
    â€œThey’re only boys,” Hannah told him afterward. “They’re confused. And hurt. They’ll come around.”
    But as Blake mounted his horse and headed for Dix’s ranch, he couldn’t help wondering. Forgiving came hard at thirteen or fourteen. And he wasn’t able to forget the cold, hard look in their eyes.

Chapter Five
    Blake reached the small gate of the Stewart ranch as the sun began its long descent into the western hills. Dix had built a wooden cabin on the place after returning from the war, but a month after he’d married Rita Thorpe, he’d moved to town and taken over the small mercantile store owned by her uncle. In the late sixties Dix had turned the store over to Rita while he’d teamed with Caulfield Blake and Martin Cabot to round up wild mustangs from the plains and break them to saddle. The army had been buying mounts then, and although the market was poor enough in town, it was as good a cash crop as corn or vegetables.
    As Blake crossed the rolling hills that led to the cabin, he noticed Dix had added cattle. It wasn’t much of a herd, only a scattered mixture of range cows and steers plus an occasional bull. Blake had seen a thousand like herds. All over western Texas small farms had turned their fields over to cattle. And those lucky enough to consign their stock to a large ranch in order to get them to market could make a nice enough profit. For many the cattle were destined to graze a lifetime on the scrub grasses of the plain, providing food for the family and barter for other goods in town.
    As Blake paused to stare back at the ranch his father had carved out of the barren frontier landscape, he noticed a rider approaching from the west. It was a familiar sight, that lean man crouched over his horse, blazing along and shouting like a Comanche.
    â€œCaulie!” the man screamed.
    â€œDix Stewart,” Blake mumbled, turning his horse so as to greet his old friend.
    â€œI knew you’d come,” Dix said, fighting to catch his breath as he reined his horse to a stop. “Knew it.”
    â€œWell, you’ve got trouble, I hear.”
    â€œIn spades, Caulie. Have you been to see Hannah yet? She’s in for the worst of it, I expect.”
    â€œThe creek’s dryin’ up.”
    â€œSimpson built a dam across Carpenter Creek just this side of Siler’s Hollow.”
    â€œHe must want this land bad. Has he offered you a price as of yet?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHe’s likely to wait a bit longer now.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œI saw him in town. He wasn’t exactly glad to see me.”
    â€œNever was too high on you, Caulie. Well, he did run you out of the county.”
    â€œNo, the rest of ’em did that. Simpson could never have managed it on his own.”
    â€œAnd I guess we helped, Hannah and me and Marty. Can’t tell you the nights I’ve thought about that, Caulie. It would have been so easy to step right into the middle of it.”
    â€œIt wasn’t your fight.”
    â€œSince when did either one of us ever have a fight without the other divin’ into it?”
    â€œYou had Rita and the kids to worry after.”
    â€œThat’s what I told myself, Caulie, but I believe it a little less every year. And now, when Simpson’s after the rest of us, you come runnin’ the first time we ask.”
    â€œIt was Hannah who asked.”
    â€œShe’d never done it on her own. Caulie, she’s just as rock stubborn as you are. That’s why you came to leave, or can’t you recall? Somebody should’ve sat down with you and made you listen.”
    â€œNobody did, though,