Showdown at Gila Bend. Kingsley West

round. “Aren’t you going to help him up?” she asked, the words stinging. “You can see he’s hurt!”

      “No, ma’am. He fell down by himself. Let him get up by himself.”

      She turned from him, trembling, furious in defeat. She watched as he walked the horse away. The sun was strong, the light from the west, and he wore the hat forward to shield his eyes. There was an ease in the way he sat on the horse, in the way he ignored her and in the shape of his shoulders that was masculine and had nothing to do with her kind of pride. She did not know what to think. She did not understand her own confusion and didn’t know why not.

      The young fellow on the ground moved and made a sound. She knelt and helped him to rise. Blood from the cut over his eye had hardened on his cheekbone, his chin was bruised and his lips swollen. He swayed and held her arm. She thought about the man on the horse. She looked again. Latigo was moving away. “What were you fighting about, Joe?” she asked.

      The dark-skinned man brushed his mouth and squinted in the sunlight, eyes following the straight-backed figure on the gelding. “Nothing,” he said. “It was just a fight.”

      She made him look at her. “Joe, it wasn’t just a fight,” she said. “I want to know!”

      “It was just a fight, Hildy,” he said crossly. “A man-fight that doesn’t have anything to do with you. A fellow needs a fight sometimes. You don’t know. . .” She slapped his cheek and his dark face smarted. “If you’d marry me, I wouldn’t have to fight,” he said.

      She knew that and didn’t answer him. He reached for her hands and she avoided the touch. His eyes sulked. “Get on your horse, Joe,” she said. “Father wants you.”

      “What for?”

      Again her eyes sought the shape of the man on the gelding, still visible, distant now. “I don’t know. He just wants you.”

      He walked to his horse. She picked up the crop. When she was mounted she asked, “Who was that stranger, Joe?”

      He followed Latigo’s direction; a man on a horse, dark against yellow grass, too far away to be recognised. “Never saw him before. Some cowhand. I reckon.”

      “What’s he doing here? Is he looking for work?”

      “I told you. I never saw the fellow before.”

      “He could have stopped the fight.”

      “No!” he said sharply.” “I didn’t want the fight stopped. I’m not finished with Nevin. I’ll kill him!”

      “That’s what he said about you, ”Joe,” she remembered. Her eyes met his. Her look was distant and deep. “Why were you fighting?”

      He didn’t answer. He spurred the horse forward. “Come on, we’d better get back. I’m in enough trouble already.”

      Together they rode over sunlit grass. She remembered the face of Latigo Lansen and his lips, his hands when he straightened the rein and gripped the saddle horn, and eyes that weren’t afraid of her. The man riding by her side was as tall, as straight, and knew how to sit on a horse but there was a difference that had nothing to do with the shape of either or how each man rode a horse. She didn’t know what it was and not knowing disturbed her.

      CHAPTER TWO

      GILA Bend hadn’t changed much. What was new Latigo noticed at once. The bank was brick and plaster now and the church had been painted white. The boardwalk followed the corner of the bank and turned east. The day was still bright, shades were drawn, window glass glinted in the light, the street between unpainted frame buildings caked mud, rutted by a thousand wheel rims. He walked the gelding, looking for faces that he knew. Nobody waved a hat or cried his name. Coming back wasn’t what he had expected.

      At the blacksmith’s, where he watered the horse, a round-faced sweating man in a split leather apron strode out into the light. “Something I can do for you, mister?”

      “Was looking for the Land Office,” said Latigo. “Figured it was over by the bank.”

      “Used to be, then the bank got bigger. Land Office moved. Keep going the way you’re headed. It’s up by the sheriff’s office.”

      “Thanks.”

      The blacksmith wiped his red face. “If you’re looking for work, son,” he said. “Kincaid is the man to see.”

      “Hear he’s the big man in these parts.”

      The man on the ground nodded. “Sure,” he said. “He’s big but he’s not any bigger than the boots he wears. Doesn’t affect me none. If a man rides a horse he’s got to come to me. Could give you a job myself, if you know anything about smithy work.”

      “Right now I’m not looking for work,” said Latigo. “Besides, what I know most about’s not in your line.”

      “What do you know about, mister?”

      “Cattle,” said Latigo. “Horses . . . know some about guns, too.”

      The smith looked him over quickly. “You another hired gun?” he asked sharply.

      “No.”

      “How come you’re not wearing guns?”

      “I’m a peaceable man. Didn’t know I’d need to.” Latigo touched his hat. “Thanks for the information. When my horse needs looking at I’ll bring him in.”

      “Sure. Have to wait your turn.”

      Four men walked out of the sheriff’s office into the light. All of them wore guns. The sheriff followed and stood on the boardwalk. Three of the men were young lean-bodied fellows with straight backs and narrow jaws. Latigo idled his horse and watched the dark man with the sullen good looks who had come out second best in the fight. Since then he’d washed his face and there was no blood on his lips but the marks of another man’s fist remained. All three men seemed of an age. Hired guns, he thought.

      The fourth was older, used to the sun, smooth-faced and clean-shaven. His voice was strong with authority. His boots were polished and the white shirt he wore clean that morning. “You tell the judge what I said,” he ordered and hoisted himself into the saddle.

      The sheriff was quick to speak. “Yes, Mister Kincaid, I’ll tell him. I’ll go see him right away.”

      “It’s got to be done legal, you understand.”

      This was Kincaid. Latigo Lansen watched, searching for the known signs of land hunger; eyes with the strangeness of distance in them, pupils that held on to what they saw with greed and grasp and shone with a pointed light, the restlessness that came out in hands and shoulders and the curious need for haste.

      There were no such marks upon the man. He had a powerful body and strong chin. He looked like an important cattleman and not like anything else.

      All four mounted and wheeled from the rail. The dark man stared at Latigo on the gelding. Neither spoke. Latigo turned away. The fellow spurred his horse and followed the others. Once he looked back over his shoulders, face clouded in doubt. Latigo made no sign. He watched their dust.

      The sheriff stepped out of the shade. He eyed Latigo and the gelding. “You looking for something, stranger?”

      “Land Office,” said Latigo.

      The sheriff was about to point and then didn’t. “I’m sheriff around here,” he announced. “What kind of business you aim to do at the Land Office?”

      “Some looking.”

      “Looking for what? I got a right to know, mister.”

      “Wanted to find out if the Lansen ranch is still where it ought to be.”

      The sheriff looked up. “Lansen. . . ? Yeh, it’s still there. South of town by the river. Won’t do you any good, though. Lansen’s