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he asked Lon.

      “Not in the last ten years,” Lon said. “Me and a boy named Johnny Wheelwright traveled around some then. Southern California, Arizona, up into Colorado, and back here. I heard Johnny was still at it.”

      “Seems to me I heard the name,” Duke said. “I couldn’t be sure . . . It’s a sucker kind of life. I’d like to drop a rope over my own cow sometime.”

      “Don’t get me wrong,” Lon said. “I ain’t no cattle baron.”

      Duke laughed. “Don’t get me wrong. I never took first money at Madison Square.”

      They both laughed. Lon said, “I got sixteen head, all told. Three horses to chase ’em on. Only way I make out is working for the government, summers.”

      “Forest Service?” Duke asked.

      Lon nodded. “If I could turn over into about ten mares, I could make money.”

      Duke took a long swallow of his highball. “Never heard of anybody making money raisin’ horses.”

      Lon said, “Well, I don’t like to brag unless I have to, but I’d like to give her a try.”

      Turk came back and took up his waiting drink. “No trouble at all.”

      Duke asked, “You her husband?”

      “No,” Turk said. “Rodeo police. Told him he’d been seen with a suspect.”

      “That works real good,” Duke said. “My turn to buy.”

      “I thank you,” Lon said, “but I got to be upstairs. Got a couple of kids need me.”

      Duke laughed. “You’ll have to fight us to get out of here. And me, I’m kind of stove-up, but Turk’s a bad man to tangle with.”

      Turk shook his white hat. “Wouldn’t say that.” He thought a minute. “But Duke’s right ingenious with himself, come a tussle. Remember once, in Redding, California, how—”

      “What is this, anyway?” Lon asked. “You guys drunk, or just horsing around?”

      “Show him the letter,” Turk said. “Y’know, I got so much Turkish blood in me, I can’t blush. So it does me real good to see somebody else get red in the face.”

      Duke thought a minute. “All right,” he said. “Of course, Vera Mae’ll lynch us.”

      He handed the sheet of hotel paper over, and Lon, still looking from one to the other of them, not sure this wasn’t some sort of joke they played on country boys, took it. The bartender brought three more drinks, and took Duke’s money.

      Dear Duke:—

      This’ll be brought you by a guy named Lonnie Verdoux, who’ll buy you a drink. Buy him one back, but don’t get him drunk, cause I’m taking him out to supper. He is a nice guy with two kids and his wife is dead, and I don’t think he’s had much fun lately. Maybe if I do something for somebody else once in awhile, it’ll change my luck, which sure needs it.

      There’s a fat faced jerk named Dutcher waiting for me in the bar. You or Turk throw him out. I’ll see you.

      V.

      Lon grabbed for his drink, and never felt it go down his throat.

      “Boy,” Turk said. “Is he doing a good job of blushing!”

      CHAPTER IV

      LON FINISHED the last of his fried shrimp and pushed back from the table. “It runs good,” he said earnestly. “Even in the end of September, when the wind’s from the desert, she’s never gone dry. Mike’s after me to maybe put a dam on her, and run two, three feeder lines from other springs in, and irrigate maybe an acre of natural pasture. The SCS man told him that’d feed five, six cows, or two, three horses, but Tommy—he’s the District Ranger up there—says it won’t, that it’d take care of half that many. I dunno—” He broke off. Vera Mae was grinning at him.

      He said, “I guess this is kinda dull. I’m sort of out of practice, taking a girl to dinner.”

      “I’m taking you out, but we’ll argue that later. You used to be a ladies’ man?”

      Lon felt himself grinning foolishly. But he recovered. “I wouldn’t say that. But when I was traveling around, I was more used to gals. Lord! I reckon those rodeo ladies have all settled down and are making homes now! That was ten years ago . . . It’s why I’m so careful to try and do what Mike wants, if I can barely scrape up the money. I wouldn’ta left the homestead if my father hadn’t been so set in his ways . . . He ran just about enough beef to feed us, and made his money cuttin’ off the timber . . . Now it’s all gone, and it’s taken a hell of a lot of water and topsoil with it.”

      “So you’re giving Mike a voice in how you run the ranch, even if he’s only ten.”

      He nodded. The waitress came and took away their plates, and they ordered coffee. Vera Mae looked at him over the rim of her cup. “You’re a good father.”

      “Well, they’re good kids . . . I guess you’re kind of curious about what kind of a man it is that’ll go to a rodeo, and his wife only buried two months.”

      She looked down at her plate. Her hair was beautifully brushed, and the part went right down the middle, straight as if it had been drawn with a ruler. Doing up June’s hair every morning had been an awful chore at first, and he’d been half-scared to send her to school when Easter vacation ended. Hadn’t sent her, in fact, but the teacher thought that was on account of her mother. But finally he had decided he was being silly, and when she came home that night, she hadn’t mentioned it, so the teacher or the other kids hadn’t said anything.

      He’d like to tell Vera Mae about it. She wouldn’t either laugh or get all wet up around the eyes, like almost any other woman he’d ever known. And she’d understand how he couldn’t even let Dot, down at the ranger station, know about his trouble over a little thing like hair.

      She said, “Penny.”

      “I was thinking I like the way you do your hair.”

      “Why, cowboy!”

      When he looked up, she was as red in the face as he’d gotten when Duke gave him the note. It gave him kind of a good feeling to be able to do that to her, but it was cruel to keep it up. He said, “You and Duke and Turk pretty close?”

      She said, “Thanks . . . Well, Duke and me. Turk’s a nice fellow to talk to, but all of a sudden he goes off and you don’t see him for a year. Yes, last winter, I stayed in with Duke and his wife. They have a place in the San Fernando.”

      He said, “Oh,” very carefully, because she was kind of uncomfortable, the way she could read what he was thinking.

      Even so she read him this time. “No,” she said. “I’m divorced . . . I’ll tell you about it sometime—and—and unspoke for.”

      The waitress was coming over with the check. He said, “All right.”

      All in a rush the rest of it came out. “And I don’t pick up suckers like that fat Dutcher unless things are awful rough.”

      The waitress gave him the check, but Vera Mae got it faster than anything he’d ever seen. “I asked you to dinner. And I meant it.”

      He shrugged. God knows, if he knew anything, Lonnie was a boy knew when not to argue with women. “It’s better than borrowing from your friends. Duke or Turk.”

      Her eyes came clear open. “You see that?” she said. He had to bend forward to hear her. “Well—if you see that—I can tell you the rest. Kenny—my husband—went to prison. He cut a man.”

      “You got no call to be telling all this.”

      “I know that . . . I was going to divorce him anyway. So I went ahead with it. He was

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