Lou Tarrant was elbow-deep in the infected neck of a fighting steer when the stranger rode into Bitter Brush Ranch.
That was probably why she remembered him.
Men had arrived before asking for work.
Men had arrived offering marriage.
Men had even arrived offering to buy the ranch from her for sums carefully calculated to sound generous while leaving them enough profit to laugh about afterward.
No man had ever appeared while Lou was trying to keep eight hundred pounds of furious beef from tearing apart a collapsing chute.
“Roy, hold that gate!”
“I am holding it!”
“You’re letting it move!”
“I weigh a hundred and twenty pounds!”
“Then weigh harder!”
Sixteen-year-old Roy Mercer planted both boots into the dirt and shoved his shoulder against the gate.
The steer threw its head.
Wood cracked.
Lou swore.
Perch Dunmore, the ranch’s sixty-three-year-old foreman, stood helplessly on the porch with one leg wrapped from ankle to thigh after a horse had rolled on him nine days earlier.
He shouted, “Let him go!”
Lou ignored him.
The infection beneath the steer’s hide had swollen nearly as large as her fist. If she released the animal now, they would have to catch it again tomorrow, and Lou had neither the manpower nor the patience for that.
She pushed the veterinary knife into position.
The steer lunged.
Roy shouted.
A new voice said, “Move.”
Before Lou could turn, a pair of dusty boots crossed behind the chute.
A stranger caught the steer’s tail near the base and twisted it upward with the practiced leverage of a man who understood cattle rather than merely claiming to.
The animal froze.
Not completely.
But enough.
Lou cut.
Pressure released.
Roy nearly collapsed with relief.
“Keep him there.”
The stranger did.
Lou cleaned the wound, packed it, checked the animal’s breathing, then stepped backward.
“Gate.”
Roy pulled the release.
The steer charged into the adjoining pen, swung once toward them with offended dignity, then trotted toward the water trough.
Lou wiped her hands on a rag already stained beyond usefulness.
Only then did she properly look at the man who had just ridden into her yard.
He was perhaps thirty-six.
Maybe thirty-eight.
Years outside made exact age difficult to judge.
He wore a broad brown hat bleached lighter along the brim, a tan shirt darkened with sweat at the collar, worn trousers, boots repaired more than once, and a brown leather vest polished by weather instead of care.
His face had the lean, tired look of a man accustomed to eating after the animals did.
Brown hair curled against his neck.
A short rough beard covered his jaw.
His horse was plain.
His saddle was not.
Lou noticed that immediately.
Good saddle.
Well cared for.
Expensive once.
A working man’s most valuable possession.
His eyes had already moved across the ranch.
Broken gate.
Missing shingles on the north barn.
Hayfield gone too long without cutting.
Perch’s bandaged leg.
Roy’s age.
Lou herself.
Not in the way most men looked at Lou.
He assessed.
She appreciated that.
“You always enter ranches by grabbing livestock?” she asked.
“Only when introductions look less urgent.”
Roy laughed.
Lou gave the boy a look.
He became deeply interested in the gate latch.
The stranger wiped his hands on his trousers.
“You hiring?”
Lou nearly laughed.
Hiring was precisely the problem.
She had four hundred steers scattered across summer range, nine weeks before the Winnemucca delivery window closed, an injured foreman, a boy who still thought shaving twice a week made him a man, and competitors offering experienced hands nearly ten dollars more per month than Lou could afford.
“What can you do?”
“Depends what needs doing.”
“That usually means nothing.”
“Fence.”
“Everyone says fence.”
“I say it because I can.”
“Horses?”
“Yes.”
“Cattle?”
He glanced toward the steer they had just treated.
Lou conceded the point.
“Drive?”
“Colorado to Kansas twice. Texas north once. Oregon down into Nevada. Smaller outfits in between.”
“Cook?”
“No.”
“Good. Men who claim they can cook usually lie about everything else.”
His mouth tilted.
Roy snorted again.
Lou continued.
“Forty dollars a month.”
The stranger looked toward the barn.
“Board?”
“Bunkhouse.”
“Meals?”
“When there’s food.”
“Horse feed?”
“If your horse works.”
He nodded.
Lou crossed her arms.
“Well?”
He looked directly at her.
“I was hoping you needed a husband.”
Roy choked so hard Lou thought the boy might require medical treatment.
Perch shouted from the porch, “I like him!”
Lou stared at the stranger.
He did not grin like an idiot.
Did not wink.
Did not let his eyes crawl over her.
He simply waited.
That made it worse somehow.
“The husband position pays nothing,” Lou said.
“I suspected.”
“Hours are worse.”