Nora. Diana Palmer

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      After that, conversation turned to the Farmers Congress in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and to the Boer War in South Africa, where a Boer general named De Wet was growing more famous by the day with his courageous attacks on the superior forces of the British.

      THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed peacefully. The men were away from the ranch most of the day and, it seemed, half the night, bringing in the bulls. Within a couple of weeks, they would be starting the annual fall roundup. Nora’s opinion of the “knights of the range” underwent a startling transformation as she saw more and more of them from afar around the ranch.

      For one thing, there were as many black and Mexican cowboys as there were white ones. But whatever their color, they were mostly dirty and unkempt, because working cattle was hardly a dainty job. They were courteous and very polite to her, but they seemed to be shy. This trait had first surprised and then amused her. She went out of her way to flirt gently with a shy boy everyone called Greely, because it delighted her to watch him stammer and blush. The stale ennui of European men had made her uneasy with them, but this young man made her feel old and venerable. She had no thought of ridicule. It was the novelty of his reaction that touched something vulnerable in her. But she’d flirted with him once in front of Melly, and Melly had been embarrassed.

      “You shouldn’t do that,” she told Nora gently but firmly when Greely went on his way. “The men don’t like being made fun of, and Cal Barton won’t stand for it. Nor will he hesitate to tell you to stop it if he ever catches you.”

      “But I meant no insult. I simply adore the way he stammers when I speak to him,” she said, smiling. “I find this young man so refreshing, you know. And besides, Mr. Barton has no authority to tell me what to do, even if he did catch me,” Nora reminded her.

      Melly smiled knowingly. “We’ll see about that. He even tells Dad what to do.”

      Nora took the remark with a grain of salt, but she stopped playing up to poor Greely just the same. It was unfortunate that she should mention him, and why he amused her, later to her aunt when Greely was within earshot. After that, she had no opportunity to see him. His absence from her vicinity was pointed, and he had a somber, crushed look about him that made Nora feel guilty until finally he seemed to disappear altogether.

      NORA WAS INVITED OUT to watch the cowboys work, and she accompanied Melly to a small corral near the house where a black cowboy was breaking a new horse to the remuda, the string of horses used by the men during roundup. Melly explained what would happen in the upcoming roundup, all about the long process of counting and branding cattle, and separating the calves from their mothers. Nora, who had known nothing of the reality of it, was appalled.

      “They take the little calves from their mothers and burn the brands into their hide?” she exclaimed. “Oh, how horribly cruel!”

      Melly hesitated, a little uneasy. “Now, Nora, it’s an old practice. Surely in all your travels, you have seen people work on the land?”

      Nora settled deeper into her sidesaddle. She couldn’t bring herself to ride astride, as Melly did, feeling that it was unladylike. “I have seen farming, of course, back East.”

      “It’s different out here,” Melly continued. “We have to be hard or we couldn’t survive. And here, in East Texas, it’s really a lot better life than on the Great Plains or in the desert country farther west.”

      Nora watched the cowboy ride the sweating, snorting horse and wanted to scream at the poor creature’s struggles. Tears came to her eyes.

      Cal Barton had spotted the two women and came galloping up on his own mount to join them. “Ladies,” he welcomed.

      Nora’s white face told its own story as she stared at him coldly. “I have never seen such outrageous cruelty,” she said at once, dabbing at her eyes with an expensive lace-edged silk handkerchief. “That poor beast is being tormented by that man. Make him stop, at once!”

      Cal’s eyebrows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”

      “Make him stop,” she repeated, blind to Melly’s gestures. “It is uncivilized to treat a horse so!”

      “Uncivi… Good God Almighty!” Cal burst out. “How in hell do you think horses get gentle enough to be ridden?”

      “Not by being tortured, certainly—not back East!” she informed him.

      He was getting heartily sick of her condescending attitude. “We have to do it like this,” he said. “It isn’t hurting the horse. Jack is only wearing him down. It isn’t cruel.”

      Nora dabbed at her face with the handkerchief. “The dust is sickening,” she was saying. “And the heat and the smell…!”

      “Then why don’t you go back to the nice cool ranch house and sip a cold drink?” he suggested with icy calmness.

      “A laudable idea,” Nora said firmly. “Come, Melly.”

      Melly exchanged helpless glances with Cal and rode after her cousin.

      Nora muttered all the way home about the poor horse. It didn’t help that a gang of tired cowboys passed them on the way back. One was mad at his sidekick and using colorful language to express himself. Nora’s face went scarlet at what she overheard, and she was almost shaking with outrage when they reached the barn at last.

      “Knights of the range, indeed!” she raged on the way to the front door, having left the horses in the charge of a young stable hand. “They stink and curse and they are cruel! It is nothing like my stories, Melly. It is a terrible country!”

      “Now, now, give it a chance,” Melly said encouragingly. “You’ve only been here a short while. It gets easier to understand, truly it does.”

      “I cannot imagine living here,” Nora said heavily. “Not in my wildest imaginings. How do you bear it?”

      “I love it,” the younger woman said simply, and her brown eyes reflected her pleasure in it. “You’ve lived such a different life, Nora, so sheltered and cushioned. You don’t know what it is to have to scratch for a living.”

      Nora’s thin shoulders rose and fell. “I have never had to. My life has been an easy one, until the past year. But I know one thing. I could never live here.”

      “You don’t want to go home already?” Melly asked worriedly.

      Nora saw her concern and forced herself to calm down. “No, of course not. I shall simply have to stay away from the men, that is all. I do miss Greely. He, at least, was a refreshing change from those barbarians out there!”

      “Greely hasn’t been around lately,” Melly agreed. “I wonder why.”

      NEITHER KNEW THE ANSWER to the question of Greely’s absence. Days passed, and the cowboys began to look a little less like dirty tramps and a little more like men as Nora’s first impression began to waver and then fade. Nora became able to recognize faces, even thick with dust and dirt. She recognized voices, as well, especially Mr. Barton’s. It was deep and slow, and when he was angry, it got deeper and slower. She marveled at the way he used inflection to control his men, and the way they responded to even the softest words. He projected authority in a way that made her wonder about his past. Perhaps he’d been in the military. He could have been, with that bearing.

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