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for me.”
    “Mucking out the stables and grooming the horses,” Victoria muttered.
    “Better than stealing my cows,” Sinclair thundered.
    Victoria had picked up her silverware again, but instead of taking another mouthful, she leaned eagerly toward her father. “Father, tell me more about that beef order. It’s good news, isn’t it?”
    “We could use the cash.” Sinclair threw a sour look at Declan. “It will be nice for a change to get paid when the numbers of my heard dwindle.”
    Victoria bit her lip and lowered her eyes to her plate. She toyed nervously with the food. On her face, Declan could see hurt and determination, and the effort as she racked her brain for something positive to say. It only took her a moment to regroup. Then she made another comment about the running of the ranch. Sinclair gave another gruff response.
    And that was how the evening went until the fruit pie had been eaten and the coffee poured and drunk. Victoria did her best to diffuse the hostile mood, her father shot down every effort she made, and Declan listened in sullen silence.
    “Thank you,” he said and stood as soon as it was polite to leave.
    “Good night,” Victoria said.
    “Good riddance, more like,” Sinclair grumbled.
    “Father!”
    Declan was already on his way out when he heard Sinclair’s insult and Victoria’s angry outburst. He closed the door behind him to seal their voices away. Unease coursed through him as he undressed and settled in the narrow brass bed. It was becoming vital reach the final stage of his revenge plan soon. Otherwise, Victoria might spoil things by bringing the situation to a head with her father before the pieces were properly in place.
    ****
     
    All through the following day, Victoria continued her labors with the yellow cotton and thread and needle. Lunch was a piece of bread and cheese. By the time the shadows lengthened outside her window, her eyes were blurred, her fingers were bleeding, and her patience was in tatters. But she had a completed shirt. It had taken her three days. The finishing touches—collar and cuffs and buttons—had almost defeated her, but she was nothing if not determined.
    Her head snapped upright when a ruckus flooded in through the open window. Gunshots. The clanking of tin cans. A chorus of riotous yells. The cowboys were at it again—shooting the place down, and scaring the birds from the trees and the prairie dogs in their burrows. She shoved the shirt aside and hurried out to the yard.
    The two black cowboys were loitering outside the forge, waiting for the blacksmith to finish work and join them. Clyde, a muscular man in his thirties, was coaxing a tune from a mouthorgan. Johnston, a lanky youth in his teens, was dancing a jig of some kind, his feet shuffling on the dusty ground.
    He called out a greeting. “Howdy, Miss Victoria.”
    She jerked her head toward the noises. “What’s that about?”
    Clyde lowered his mouthorgan. “Lenny has a new Colt forty-five.”
    Victoria nodded and set off toward the piece of sandy ground beyond the corrals that had been set up for shooting practice. She could see them from fifty paces away. It was Declan, and the three Anglo cowboys, Hank and Stan and Lenny.
    She could not see the two Mexicans. “Where are Juarez and Flaco?” she asked as she reached the men. They had never had any racial tension at Red Rock, and she wanted to keep it that way.
    Hank pushed his hat back on his head. “Gone. Left this morning.” Hank was a big bull of a man, in his forties, as solid and dependable as the boulders that lined the riverside.
    “What do you mean, gone?” she asked. They were shorthanded already.
    Stan, a wizened old cowboy not a day under sixty, replied, “They quit. Went to work in one of them ranchos south of Tucson. So’s they can talk Spanish. They missed having other Mexican vaqueros around.”
    “And pretty maids to flirt with,” Lenny put in. His tone grew petulant. “And they got fed up with