Gus McCullough stood in the yard of his homestead and counted the men who had ridden out on him. Three in two weeks. The last one, a lean drover with a chewed hat, had looked at the sagging barn and the empty pasture and laughed before he swung back into the saddle. No bunk. No pay ledger. No name worth writing home about. Gus was twenty years old, three miles east of the river, and he meant to build the finest cattle ranch the frontier had ever seen. He could read a sick steer from a hundred yards, a trick the old hand up north had beaten into him. None of it mattered if he had to work the land alone. He was staring at the barn door when the speckled dog came out of the brush. Ribs showing, ears up, eyes fixed on him like it had already picked its man. Gus crouched and held out the last of his jerky. The dog took it clean, then sat. He ran a hand along its flank and felt the working muscle under the dirt. A cattle dog, and a good one, judging by how it held his eye. "You'll do," he said. It followed him to the porch and lay down like it had always slept there. Clara Hartwell came around the side of the cabin with a bucket in each hand and stopped when she saw the dog. She set the buckets down and knelt to it, her white skirt dragging in the dust she never seemed to mind. She had come out from town two months back to keep house for her aunt and had stayed later and later at Gus's fence line until one evening she just stayed. The cabin behind her stood three stories of fresh timber, the porch he had raised himself, the kitchen she had scrubbed until the boards went pale. She looked up at him, hand on the dog's head, and smiled the way she had the first morning she woke under his roof. "He found us," she said. Gus felt the ring in his pocket, the plain band he had traded a colt for last week. Not yet. Soon. "Clara," he said, "ride into town with me tomorrow." He told her plain. A dog to work the herd. A woman who meant to stay. A cabin with three bedrooms waiting to be filled. He would post a notice at the feed store under both their names, hers as much as his, and any hand who rode out now would find a homestead, not a bachelor's gamble. She stood and took his hand and said yes before he had finished asking. The next morning two brothers signed the ledger by noon. By dusk they were mending the south fence, the dog already circling wide, driving Gus's first four head toward the water.

A week after the brothers signed on, Gus rode the north line at dawn and found six longhorns he did not own grazing among his herd. Their brands were a lazy Y burned deep into the hip. His were a clean M on the shoulder. The dog circled the strangers and held them loose while Gus counted. Past the last cedar post, the fence ended. Open range ran a full mile before the next man's claim. Any steer with legs could wander in, and any rider with a rope could wander out with one of his. He rode back to the cabin and laid it plain to Clara at the kitchen table. If a Lazy Y hand found his brand mixed with theirs, they would call it theft before they called it drift. He needed that mile fenced by the end of the week. He had two brothers, one dog, and no extra hands. Clara set down her cup. "Post at the feed store again." "No time. A notice takes a week to pull a man out." She thought a moment. "The orphanage in town keeps boys past fourteen with nowhere to go. My aunt sat on their board. They feed them on nothing and pray somebody takes them on." Gus looked at her. "Boys." "Old enough to dig a post hole. Old enough to eat." He rode in that afternoon. The orphanage sat weathered and square on its lot, warm light in the low windows, a hand-lettered board over the porch. The matron met him on the step. He named the work, the wage, the meals, and the bunk in the loft. She brought out four boys between fifteen and seventeen, thin at the wrist, steady at the eye. He took all four. By the second morning they were setting cedar posts along the open stretch. Clara ran water out to them from the pump house by the creek, buckets sweating in the sun. The dog worked the strays back off Gus's grass while the brothers strung wire. On the fourth day a rider came down the line at a walk. Lazy Y on his saddle blanket. He counted the new fence, counted Gus's men, and touched his hat without a word. He rode off the way he came. By Saturday the wire ran tight to the last post. Gus cut out the six Lazy Y steers and drove them clear onto open ground himself, the dog holding them honest. He watched them trot toward their own country and felt the mile close behind him like a door. That night he sat on the porch with Clara. Four new mouths in the loft. Two brothers in the bunkhouse. A herd that was only his now. "We'll need more grass by spring," he said. Clara pulled her shawl tight. "Then we'll need to know whose land runs next to ours."