"You're one of us," she said simply, as if that explained everything. "There's been a kind of feud between our people and the ranchers for more years than I can remember. It's more bitter now."
"So bad you have to guard the road to keep strangers out?"
"Of course. Besides, the moon is full tonight. We're particularly careful now."
Mulvaney furrowed his forehead. Rangeland hate must be at fever pitch to make them fear an attack in the night. Whatever side the girl was on, he felt, must be the right side. So he pictured the ranchers as inconsiderate monsters.
The walls of the canyon sloped and fell away. The green coupé thrust itself around a bend and into as beautiful a valley as Kenneth Mulvaney had ever seen.
The valley bottom was a prairie perhaps a mile wide by twice as long. The creek meandered through its middle, bisecting green and yellow fields with its line of standing cottonwoods. On either side, pine-clad slopes rose steeply, stepping up toward the head of the valley.
The quick glance Mulvaney cast in that direction chilled him. A mountain guarded the valley's upper end. Even in the sunlight, it had seemed somber and brooding, like a giant wolf frozen in solid granite, overshadowing the valley with its baleful presence. Mulvaney spared it another quick glance, and the feeling it inspired in him increased. He shrugged and avoided looking at it, turning his attention to the valley.
A quarter of a mile ahead, a small aggregation of houses glinted in the rays of the westering sun. Details were hidden in the foliage of the many trees that sheltered the town.
"Wereville," the girl said. "It isn't muchonly a dozen or so housesa general storea blacksmith shoppopulation sixty-three."
Grazing cattle were brown dots in the fields around the town. Wheat stood waist high, rippling with golden waves on either side of the road. The blaze of the sun was fierce and mellow at once. The green coupé streamed into Wereville like a comet preceding a fanned-out tail of tan dust particles.
Mostif not allof the town's population was gathered in the square in front of the general store. Mulvaney braked the dusty car to a halt near the tail of a bay mare tied to the hitching rack. The mare's flanks were covered with dust and sweat. The animal was winded as if from a hard ride.
Mulvaney squinted through the insect-spotted windshield at the group facing them.
Sullen expressions were there. Some of the women were fierce in their looks, as though resenting his intrusion into their town. The female of the species has the more protective nature, he thought.
His eye caught sight of a familiar figure in blue denim, loafing in the foreground. Jimthe man at the gate. A short-cut, Mulvaney thought fleetingly. Jim had taken advantage of it to ride ahead and warn the villagers of their coming.
The girl opened her door with a shrill screech of metal and got out. The crowd kept silent. An elderly man stepped forward and the girl greeted him.
"I'm back, Dad."
"Joan! Who's that feller with you?"
She explained rapidly as Mulvaney got out beside her. Then she caught sight of the man who had ridden the mare from the gate. She stopped abruptly.
"Whythere's Jim! He could have told you!"
"He told us what this feller said. How do we know it's true? Maybe it's a trick."
Mulvaney felt seriously uneasy before the menacing look of the crowd. There was something about thema wolfish
