The sun crept across the western sky and dropped lower and lower until it hung at last, a blazing disk of fire, close above the highest peaks of the Costejo mountain range.  The poplars in front of the house flung slim black shadows across the low adobe buildings and splashed the tip of their shade in the dust-cloud that filled with haze the corral a hundred yards away.  Sing Pete stepped from the door and beat a tattoo on the iron triangle suspended by a piece of wire from the lowest branch of a mesquit tree at the corner of the house, announcing by the metallic clamor that the work of the day was finished and supper was ready and waiting.  Parker swung back the heavy gate at the corral entrance and the dozen colts, sweat streaks on heads and backs and bellies where hackamore, saddle and cinches told of the lessons of the afternoon, pushing and jamming and with a clatter of hoofs, whirled out to freedom, around the stable and down a lane into an open meadow.

Kicking off their chaps the cowboys tossed them on the riding gear, piled already against the fence of the corral, and straggled stiffly toward the house.  On the wire enclosing the back yard Sing Pete had hung a couple of heavy towels, coarse and long.  Some basins and several chunks of yellow laundry soap were on a bench beside an irrigation ditch that ran along the fence just inside the gate.  Old Heck, Parker and the cowboys stopped at the ditch, pitched their hats on the grass and dipping water from the ditch scoured the dust and sweat from their faces and hands.

All were silent as if each was troubled with thoughts too solemn to be spoken aloud.

At last, Skinny, handing a towel to Bert after drying his own sun-tanned face and hands, remarked inanely: 

“Chuck ain’t come, has he?”

“Slupper!” Sing Pete called.

They filed into the kitchen and each took his regular place at the long, oilcloth covered table.  The food, wholesome, plain and abundant, was already served.

Silently each heaped his plate with the viands before him while Sing
Pete circled the table pouring coffee into the white porcelain cups.  The
Quarter Circle KT was famous for the excellence of its grub and the
Chink was an expert cook.

“Lordy, oh, lordy,” Old Heck groaned, “it don’t seem possible them women are coming!”

“Maybe they won’t,” Parker sympathized.  “When they get that telegram they ought to turn around and go back—­”

“Chuck’s coming!” Bert Lilly exclaimed at that moment and the sound of a horse stopping suddenly at the front of the house reached the ears of the group at the table.

“Go ask him if he got an answer, somebody, quick!” Old Heck cried.

As Charley Saunders sprang to his feet Chuck yelled, “They got it and sent an answer!  I got one—­” and rushed excitedly through the house and into the kitchen waving an envelope, twin to the one Skinny had brought earlier in the day.  “They’re on Train Number Seventeen, the agent said—­”