So he didn't like the mare. Cord looked over. "The fancy horse with four stockings?

Yeah, they're all broke the same, but that's not a woman's horse. He'd be more for a man who likes something powerful and a little catty."

"Can I try him?"

"Sure." Cord saddled the tall bay, and Adamson rode him both in the corral and outside.

On the ground again, Adamson said briskly, "I don't like haggling, and I already told your wife I'd pay two hundred dollars for the kind of horse I want for my daughter. I'll give you the two hundred for the mare, and three seventy-five for the mare and the gelding. The problem is that I need them delivered to Mason to ship to Nebraska on Tuesday morning's train. My daughter's birthday is next week. They tell me they have no loading facilities and it means getting them in a cattle car right there at the station. The train only stops for fifteen minutes. Are you willing to try?"

Cord leaned against the corral rails. "You take either, or only the two?"

"If I can have only one I'd rather have the mare, but I'll take either."

"Cash?"

"You bring bills of sale, and I'll have cash."

"All right. We'll be there."

As Cord and Anne walked with Adamson toward his tied livery gelding, he said, "Lathrum told me what he did to you over that colt. He's proud of it, but the more he talked, the sorrier he and his stock looked.

"Kind of expected you to find something you liked over there," Cord said. "He's got good horses."

"Oh, they're good, all right, but they way they're handled I wouldn't feel my daughter was safe on one. Fear doesn't make a reliable horse."

"Suppose not." Cord decided he liked the man after all. "Want to see the colt I got from him?"

Adamson halted, showing surprise. "He said it died on you."

"Should have. Dying isn't easy around my wife."

Adamson smiled at Anne. "I see. Yes, I'd like to see him."

The three of them looked at the colt in silence. Fortune was still thin but no longer a rack of bones. Even with the s.h.a.ggy winter coat, it was easy to see quality in every line.

"Raoul told me he thought that might be the best colt Lathrum ever bred."

Cord nodded. "Thought that myself."

"Well." Adamson straightened and headed for his horse again. "I'll see you Tuesday then."

Three days ought to be just about enough time to make sure the money problem was solved for months to come.

CHAPTER 18.

ON TUESDAY MORNING ANNE RODE beside Cord bursting with pride. He had warned her she would be stiff tomorrow after the unaccustomed two hours in the saddle to town and two hours back, but she didn't care. She sat as straight as she could, trying to remember everything he had taught her over the last months and do it perfectly.

Cord finally glanced sideways at her and said, "You're allowed to relax and enjoy it, you know."

She laughed aloud, but she did relax, and how she did enjoy it! Adamson's horses trotted along on lead ropes, groomed until even their winter coats had a shine. Anne had, of course, trimmed the gelding with the scissors and washed his tail too. Cord had had to help. The bay horse had needed convincing he liked being fussed over that much.

After days of hard work, they had the night before discussed their strategy for getting the horses on the train and made their decision. They both now felt fatalistic. Either the work and the plan would pay off and the money problem would be solved or it wouldn't.

The weather was cooperating. The early March day was bright and sunny, not too cold, and no wind.

When they were close enough to town to see that the 11:30 train was not early, they finished the ride at an easy walk, tying the horses across from the train station a little after eleven. An extraordinary number of people seemed interested in the train today.

Adamson spied them and hurried right over. "I know these are range raised horses, won't the train frighten them when it pulls in?"

"No," Cord said. "I bring all my young stock to town a few times. They've seen trains, and they'll take their cues from the saddle horses anyway."

"I'm afraid I'm responsible for the crowd. When I mentioned around town that I'd bought the horses contingent on their loading, everyone told me I was crazy, that they'll never get on the train in these circ.u.mstances. I already feel as if I've just wasted a lot of your time. These people are all here hoping to see a rodeo."

"Never try, never know." Cord was at his most laconic.

"I've employed Bob Windon and his a.s.sistant from the livery to give us a hand."

A few minutes later Windon walked over, followed by an adolescent boy carrying an ugly looking quirt. Windon was about Cord's age, a few inches shorter, starting to bald and running a little to fat. He ran the town's livery stable and was Mason's resident expert on all things equine. Anne knew Bob liked and respected Cord, and today he wasn't trying to hide it.

"We gonna get treated to a show of Injun magic today?" he asked with a grin.

Cord drawled, "Nope. No rodeo either, lot of disappointed folks."

Windon's grin didn't falter. "They don't need a rodeo. They'll be happy if you can't get them on. You know that, don't you?"

"Yup."

The sound of the train came in the distance. Keeper and Lady barely p.r.i.c.ked their ears as the train pulled in with clouds of steam, but Honey raised her head high and gave it a wide-eyed stare, and the gelding did her one better, fidgeting restlessly. Cord didn't move, leaning easily against Keeper. Anne tried to imitate him, but her heart was already pounding. As the train came to a full halt, men ran out, opened the door on the one cattle car and attached a ramp. Oh, Lord, did it look steep and narrow.

Cord muttered, "Let's take a look."

Adamson followed them up the steep ramp. The floor of the car was littered with straw, and the car itself was divided into sections by rails. They removed the rails on one side and put them against the back wall.

Outside, Cord said to Windon, "If you're helping, how about sending your boy for some hay and buckets? Nothing in there for them to eat or drink, and Lincoln's a ways."

Windon wiped the silly grin from his face and started looking thoughtful. The boy was furious, but headed back to the livery barn when ordered.

Back at the horses, Cord looked at Anne, questioning, "Ready?"

"As ready as I'll get."

"Remember, try to keep her from stopping in the doorway. If she stops and he's on the ramp he's liable to go off it sideways and he'll never start again."

She nodded, took the mare's rope, and started for the ramp as if there were no doubt in her mind what was going to happen. She knew Cord was right behind her with the gelding.

The crowd seemed to be holding its breath and let it out in a collective sigh when both horses walked up the steep ramp as if they'd done it every day of their lives. Grin back in place, Windon slid the car door shut after the gelding cleared the doorway.

When his a.s.sistant puffed back with two water buckets and a big sack of hay, he looked around in disbelief. "Where'd they go?"

Windon said, "Inside."

The boy looked like he wanted to weep over the unused quirt hanging from his belt.

"Now go fill those buckets about halfway and bring them along. We haven't got all day, you know."

Minutes later the horses were safe in a railed off section of the car, munching hay, buckets tied to the wall. Cord handed Adamson the bill of sale for the horses, and Adamson looked at it with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Just one bill of sale? You knew they'd load, did you?"

"Had a notion." Cord pocketed the wad of bills uncounted.

Adamson turned to Anne. "Mrs. Bennett, it was a pleasure meeting you, and don't think I don't appreciate the way those horses look either. My daughter will be tickled with that mare. What's her name?"

"Wild Honey."

"Ah, and the gelding?"

"I'm afraid I've just been calling him Legs, but you could make it Captain Legs or something."

"Legs will do fine."

They shook hands again, and Anne gave Adamson a small packet of lumps of sugar.

"To make them feel at home when they get there, you know."

Adamson swung on the train himself, and his last words were to Cord. "Envy. I truly envy you."

As they watched the train pull out, Cord said, "How about lunch at Dora's?"

Anne didn't even try to hide her delight. "It worked, didn't it? It was worth every minute of it."

They were leading Keeper and Lady toward the cafe when they spotted Ephraim and Martha standing in the dispersing crowd. Cord angled over that way and stopped in front of his brother and sister-in-law. "We're celebrating with steaks for lunch. You want to come along, we'll buy."

Anne half hoped Ephraim would say no, but after a brief hesitation, he proved he could recognize an olive branch when it was thrust under his nose as well as the next man and accepted the invitation. They all headed up the street to the cafe together.

CHAPTER 19.

THE BENNETTS HAD NO MORE than taken care of their coats and hats and seated themselves in the cafe when Rob Wells came in. Anne knew if her brother was here it was under orders from their father, and her family was not going to spoil her day.

Rob rudely ignored everyone else. "Anne, I want to talk to you. Alone." The last word followed a baleful glance at Cord.

Anne fussed with her chair, deliberately avoiding looking at Rob. "I'm having a grand day, a superb day, a wonderful day. Go away."

"I won't go away. I want to talk to you, and without him listening."

Cord sat next to the window, watching the street outside as if nothing he heard concerned him in any way.

Anne hardened her expression and met Rob's gaze. "I'll tell you what, we're buying Ephraim and Martha lunch. Sit down, we'll buy you lunch too. You don't have to be nice, just civil, and if you are, after lunch, I'll listen to whatever talking to you want to give me on my failings over at another table for five minutes. But if you call either me or Cord one nasty name, your time expires right then. Deal?"

"He's not buying me anything."

"All right, then, buy your own. Or go away. That's the only way I'm talking to you."

Rob sat down like a sullen child. Anne paid him no further attention, making small talk with Martha about the fine weather and some of the people they knew who had been in the crowd watching the train.

Not only was Rob behaving badly, Anne noticed that Ephraim wasn't helping Martha carry the conversation but was studying Cord as Dora brought coffee cups, filled them, and took lunch orders. Anne thought he looked only slightly less sour than Rob, but after Dora left, Ephraim made an effort.

"I heard you got good money for those horses."

Cord's light eyes flicked upwards from a study of his coffee cup. "A record for me.

Anne sold them."

A warm glow suffused Anne at these words. She did not come from a family that bestowed credit upon its female members for helping with the family business. Rob's startled look only increased her pleasure.

Ephraim looked slightly surprised himself, but asked, "How did you come to sell to him anyway?"

This required more answer than Cord was going to give. He started staring intently out the cafe window, in effect turning his back. Ephraim's disgusted expression would not have moved Anne to try and smooth things over, but she was eager to tell anybody everything about the sale to Adamson. She launched into the story immediately, gesturing for emphasis, delighted by the incredulous looks on her listeners' faces.

Anne told of Adamson's first visit, the petticoats, the second visit, and then the past three days of leading those horses through every dark, narrow doorway on the ranch. Of the imitation train ramp Cord built and how they led the horses over it and over it, moving it in front of the doorways, over a ditch so that it would ring hollow, and up the sides of the creek bed so that it would slant at a steep angle in approximation of the climb into the railroad car.

She told how they discovered the mare was trusting enough to follow her almost anywhere. The gelding would fuss but would follow the mare if she went quietly, and so they developed the system of her leading the mare with Cord following close behind with the gelding.

Finally, overjoyed by the cleverness of it all, she told about the three bills of sale in three different pockets, one for each horse and one for both. Mr. Adamson would never know that they hadn't really been all that confident that both horses would load so easily, had just thought there was a good chance they might.

Rob, of course, jumped in with criticism as soon as Anne finished her story. "That's dangerous. You shouldn't be around horses like that. The only horse you ever even petted was old Mollie. You'll get hurt."

"I'm around all the horses all the time now. I rode to town today."

"So now he's got you on his horses. I bet he's got you astride and in trousers, and if you fall off, all he'll worry about is the horse."

Since Anne wasn't wearing trousers and had gone to a lot of trouble to divide several skirts so that she could ride astride without them hiking up, she ignored that part of Rob's accusations. "I may not be the best rider in the world, but I've never fallen off. Teaching me so I'm halfway decent at it is Cord's Christmas present."