Rennie ran a finger across the brand which scarred the gray's hide. "Spur R-that's a new one to me."

"My own. Heard tell as how there's a custom of the country that a slick this old can be branded and claimed by anyone bringing him in. I wasn't going to lose him that way should he do any straying, accidental or intentional."

_Don_ Cazar laughed. "That's using your head, Kirby. All right. It's a deal as far as I'm concerned. You draw wrangler's pay and take stud fees in foals-say one in three, your choosing. Register that brand of yours with _Don_ Lorenzo to be on the safe side. Then you're welcome to run Spur R with the Double R on the Range."

He held out his hand, and Drew grasped it for a quick shake to seal their agreement. He was committed now-to the Range and to a small partnership with its master. But he still wondered if he had made the right choice.

Two days later he dropped bedroll and saddlebags on the spare bunk at one end of the long adobe-walled room and studied his surroundings with deep curiosity. It was a fort, all right, this whole stronghold of Rennie's-not just the bunkhouse which formed part of a side wall. Bunkhouse, feed store, and storage room, blacksmith shop, cookhouse, stables, main house, the quarters for the married men and their families-all arranged to enclose a patio into which choice stock could be herded at the time of an attack, with a curbed well in the center.

The roofs of all the buildings were flat, with loopholed parapets to be manned at need. A sentry post on the main house was occupied twenty-four hours a day by relays of Pimas. A loaded rifle leaned at every window opening, ready to be fired through loopholes in the wooden war shutters.

The walls were twenty-five inches thick, and mounted on the roof of the stable, facing the hills from which Apache attacks usually came, was a small bra.s.s cannon-_Don_ Cazar's legacy from troops marching away in '61.

What he saw of the resources of this private fort led Drew to accept the other stories he had heard of the Range, like the one that _Don_ Cazar's men practiced firing blindfolded at noise targets to be prepared for night raids. The place was self-contained and almost self-supporting, with stores of food, good water, its own forge and leather shop, its own craftsmen and experts. No wonder the Apaches had given up trying to break this Anglo outpost and Rennie had accomplished what others found impossible. He had held his land secure against the worst and most unbeatable enemy this country had nourished.

There were other Range forts, smaller, but as stoutly and ingeniously designed, each built beside a water source on Rennie land-defense points for _Don_ Cazar's riders, their garrisons rotated at monthly intervals.

And Drew had to thank that system for having taken Johnny Shannon away from the Stronghold before the Kentuckian arrived. Rennie's foster son was now riding inspection between one water-hole fortification and another.

But Drew was uncertain just how he would rub along with Shannon in the future.

"_Senor_ Kirby, _Don_ Cazar-he would speak with you in the Casa Grande,"

Leon Rivas called through one of the patio side windows.

"Coming." Drew left the huddle of his possessions on the bunk.

The Casa Grande of the Stronghold was a high-ceilinged, five-room building about sixty feet long, the kitchen making a right angle to the other rooms and joining the smoke house to form part of another wall for the patio.

Mesquite logs, adze-hewn and only partially smoothed, were placed over the doorways, and the plank doors themselves were slung on hand-wrought iron hinges or on leather straps, from oak turning-posts. Drew knocked on the age-darkened surface of the big door.

"Kirby? Come in."

Here in contrast to the brilliant sunlight of the patio was a dusky coolness. There were no gla.s.s panes in the windows. Manta, the unbleached muslin which served to cover such openings in the frontier ranches, was tacked taut, allowing in air but only subdued light. The walls had been smoothly plastered, and as in Topham's office, lengths of colorful woven materials and a couple of Navajo blankets served as hangings. Rugs of cougar and wolf skin were scattered on the beaten earth of the floor.

There was a tall carved cupboard with a grilled door, a bookcase, and two ma.s.sive chests shoved back against the walls. And over the stone mantel of the fireplace hung a picture of a morose-looking, bearded man wearing a steel breastplate, the canvas dim and dark with age and smoke.

_Don_ Cazar was seated at a table as ma.s.sive as the chests, a pile of papers before him flanked by two four-branch candelabra of native silver.

Bartolome Rivas' more substantial bulk weighed down the rawhide seat of another chair more to one side.

"Sit down-" Rennie nodded to the seat in front of the table. "Smoke?" He pushed forward a silver box holding the long cigarillos of the border country. Drew shook his head.

"Whisky? Wine?" He gestured to a tray with waiting gla.s.ses.

"Sherry." Drew automatically answered without thought.

"What do you think of the stock you saw down in the corral?" _Don_ Cazar poured a honey-colored liquid from the decanter into a small gla.s.s.

As the Kentuckian raised it to sip, the scent of the wine quirked time for him, making this for a fleeting moment the dining room at Red Springs during a customary after-dinner gathering of the men of the household. The talk there, too, had been of horses-always horses. Then Drew came back in a twitch of eyelid to the here and now, to Hunt Rennie watching him with a measuring he did not relish, to Bartolome's round face with its close-to-hostile expression. Deliberately Drew sipped again before answering the question.

"I'd say, suh, if they're but a sample of Range stock, the breed is excellent. However--"

"However what, _senor_?" Bartolome's eyes challenged Drew. "In this territory, even in Sonora, there are none to compare with the horses of this hacienda."

"That is not what I was about to say, _Senor_ Rivas. But if _Don_ Cazar wishes to try the eastern methods of training, these horses are too old.

You begin with a yearling colt, not three-year-olds."

"To break a foal! What madness!" Now Bartolome's face expressed shock.

"Not breaking," Drew corrected, "training. It is another method altogether. One puts a weanling on a rope halter, accustoms him to the feel of the hackamore, of being with men. Then he grows older knowing no fear or strangeness."

The Mexican looked from Drew to _Don_ Cazar, his shock fading to puzzlement. Rennie nodded.

"_Si, amigo_, so it is done-in Kentucky and Virginia. But this time we must deal with the older ones. Can you modify those methods, gentle without breaking? A colt with the fire still in him, but saddle-broke, is worth much more-"

"I can try. But you have already said, suh, that you don't allow rough breakin' here." Drew's half suspicion crystallized into belief. _Don_ Cazar had not really wanted another wrangler at all; he had wanted Shiloh-and his foals. Well, perhaps he would find he did have a wrangler who could deliver the goods into the bargain.

"No, but it is always well to learn new ways. I have been in Kentucky, Kirby. Perhaps some of their methods would not work on the Range. On the other hand, others might. As you have said-we can but try." He picked up the top sheet of paper and began to read:

"_Bayos-blancos_-light duns-two. _Bayos-azafranados_-saffrons-one.

_Bayos-narajados_-orange duns-none--"

"There was one," Bartolome interrupted. "The mare, she was lost at Canon del Palomas."

Rennie frowned, "_Si_, the mare. _Bayos-tigres_-striped ones -three.

_Bayos-cebrunos_-smoked duns-two. _Grullas_-blues-four. Roans-six.

Blacks-three. Bays-four. Twenty-five three-year-olds. You won't be expected to take on the whole _remuda_, Kirby. Select any six of your own choosing and use your methods of gentling on them. We'll make a test this way."

Bartolome uttered a sound closer to a snort than anything else. And Drew guessed how he stood with the Mexican foreman. Rennie might have faith, or pretend to have faith, in some new method of training, but Rivas was a conservative who preferred the tried and true and undoubtedly considered the Kentuckian an interloper.

"Now, the matter of Shiloh..."

Drew finished the sherry with appreciation. He was beginning to see the amusing side of this conference. Drew's work on the Range settled, Rennie was about to get to what he really wanted. But _Don_ Cazar's first words were a little startling.

"We'll keep him close-in the water corral. To turn a stud of eastern breeding loose is dangerous--"

"You mean he might be stolen, suh?" Drew clicked his empty gla.s.s down on the table.

"No, he might be killed!" And Rennie's tone indicated he meant just that.

"How...why?"

"There are wild-horse bands out there, though we're trying to capture or run them off the Range. And a wild stud will always try to add mares to his band. Because he has fought many times to keep or take mares, he is a formidable and vicious opponent, one that an imported, tamed stud can rarely best. Right now, coming into Big Rock well for water is a pinto that has killed three other stallions-including a black I imported back in '60-and two of them were larger, heavier animals than he.

"The Trinfans are moving down into that section this week. I hope they can break up that band, run down the stud anyway. He has courage and cunning, but his blood is not a line we want for foals on this range. So Shiloh stays here at the Stronghold; don't risk him loose."

"Yes, suh. What about these wild ones-they worth huntin'?"

"They're mixed; some are scrubs, inbred, poor stuff. But a few fine ones turn up. Mostly when they do they're strays or bred from strays-escaped from horse thieves or Indians. If the mustangers here pick up any branded ones, they're returned to the owners, if possible, or sold at a yearly auction. By the old Mexican law the hunting season for horses runs from October to March. Foals are old enough then to be branded. Speaking of foals, you left your mare and the filly in town?"

"Kells'll give them stable room till next month. I can bring them out then."

"We'll have a delivery of remounts to make to the camp about then. You can help haze those in and pick up your own stock on return."

Leon appeared in the doorway. "_Don_ Cazar, the _mesteneoes_-they arrive."