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expect too much. It has only been a week or so since you arrived here.”
    â€œCan’t help it. They need me at the ranch.”
    â€œWho has time for you there?”
    â€œNo one, I guess.”
    She bent over and kissed him on the mouth. “You answer your own questions.”
    He agreed.
    He closed his eyes and whispered to her, “I love you.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œWell, I do.”
    â€œGood. Yes, damn good, because your stay here has made me find that I can’t do without you. How I’ll ever manage my parents and you with yours, I am uncertain. But I want to be with you—beat up or well.”
    â€œI’ll find us a way.” He closed his eyes and fell into sleep’s arms.

Chapter 9
    Two weeks later, on a Monday, Kathren drove him back to the—in her buckboard. The morning sun was warm. They stopped for the mail in Mayfield and she went to Grossman’s store and brought back a big sack of hard candy for the ranch bunch. The south breeze sweeping them was a harbinger that spring sat around the corner.
    Chet hoped to talk to the Johnson brothers, who were taking his cattle to Kansas. He knew it was getting close to time for them to leave for the north. Most of the way back, his gut-roiling concern was about not getting that chance to talk to them.
    â€œI’d ask you how you felt, but you’d lie to me,” she said over the beat of the horses’ hooves and the whirl of the narrow rims.
    â€œI never said I was well. I’m better; that’s it.”
    â€œIf I didn’t—love you so damn much, I’d take you back and keep you.”
    He blinked at her in disbelief. “You never said anything like that before.”
    â€œWell, I never felt this way about anyone in my life like I do about you.”
    â€œWe been having an—yes, you call that an affair—that we’ve had for two years, and damn near got married once.”
    â€œWe should have, the day you came back from Kansas.”
    â€œYou want to get married today?” he asked her.
    She relented. “Let me get things straight with my parents. Dad’s doing some better. You don’t have your plans straight either, to go or stay. I’ll work on mine harder.”
    â€œI will, too.”
    He reached over and took the reins from her. The horses stopped; he put his arm around her and kissed her. For a long time. Then she sat up and drew in a deep breath. Without a word, she took the reins back and made the horses go faster.
    He sat back as if he had won a major battle in a war. His complaining muscles never felt sore or anything—she had agreed to marry him. Heaven help them .

Chapter 10
    Two days later, Chet sat on the nail keg and the two Johnson brothers, Rod and Elgin, squatted in their knee-high boots with their pants tucked into the tops. Reg and J.D. were both in that audience.
    Rod was shorter, and the toughest man with a reata that Chet knew. Freckle-faced, he always grinned, and his rep as a ladies’ man was true. Lankier Elgin looked much plainer, and was the business partner of the deal.
    â€œI ain’t giving you advice. I’m telling you what I know. Injuns want some beef for crossing their land, give them a couple of limpers. I figure most stampedes ain’t set off by a lightning storm. They are caused by folks, Indian or white, that want to steal a few head and figure you won’t get them all back.
    â€œLet them rain-swollen rivers go down all you can afford before you cross them. And don’t let your cattle get swallowed by another herd or yours do the same—or you’ve lost a week’s worth of work sorting them.”
    â€œWe had that the first year,” Rod said. “Our herd got mixed with some guy’s from Waco at the Red River. They wanted to drive them across and go on north to separate them on some plains in the Indian Territory. That was two weeks later, and we busted our asses for eight