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what Callie expected of him and against which his whole being revolted. Part of his reason for agreeing to run for Sheriff had been to get away from her and from the smothering idiocy of the Hoad clan. Callie, he found, didn’t consider herself an individual, only a member of the family that could do no wrong. Originally the Hoads had come from the hill country of Tennessee—a hard-drinking, hard-bargaining, hard-fighting and hard-luck clan who attributed their own survival to the fact they were one united and loyal family. They were as alien to him as a group of Australian bushmen and hardly more understandable.
    He finished his drink, then picked up the bottle to pour himself another. He hesitated, bottle in hand, and then with a kind of self-loathing, he put down the bottle and corked it. He couldn’t change any of this by crawling into a bottle, he thought wryly. I’m like a lone man, heading into the desert, leading a horse that’s carrying plenty of food and water. I have to go, but I don’t know where I’m going.
    At that moment he knew the deepest loneliness.
    Ty and Orville Hoad sat in rocking chairs on the veranda of Orville’s peeled log house, a jug of pale whisky between them, watching the dusk slowly fade into the night. Buddy, after taking his sister Callie home, had returned and he, his cousins, Junior and Emmett and Big John, all Orville’s boys, partly sobered up by the supper just finished, had taken off for town to continue their celebration. Min, Orville’s wife, had cleaned up and gone immediately to bed so that the two brothers were alone for the first time that day. Orville’s chair was on a squeaky board and he hitched it forward, then stretched out his long legs which he crossed at the ankles.
    â€œTy, I done me some thinking these last couple of weeks. Lordy, I had enough time to do it.”
    â€œAbout hanging?”
    â€œSome, I reckon, but mostly what I was going to do if I got off.”
    â€œYou can’t be that lucky twice, Orv,” Ty said dryly.
    â€œYou’re wrong, Ty, I can,” Orville said flatly. He looked at his brother. “You ain’t thought much about what happened today, have you?”
    â€œOnly that at one time this morning I thought you were as good as dead. What should I’ve been thinking about?”
    â€œWhy, the reason I got off.”
    â€œThat’s easy. Like I said, anybody with eyes could see it. Four of them jurymen from over south didn’t like being told what to do by a woman.”
    â€œMe, I’ve been thinking past that,” Orville said proudly. “Way, way past that.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œWell, if that lady lawyer couldn’t hang me, then who’ll she ever get a conviction against so long as there’s a jury there?”
    Ty grunted in surprise. What Orville said was true and he hadn’t thought of it that way. He leaned down now, lifted the jug from beside his yellowed panama on the porch floor and took a drink of the fiery whisky, put back the corn cob cork and offered the jug to Orville, who only shook his head. Ty put the jug back beside his hat, feeling the rich warmth of the whisky churn around his supper. He said, “Supposing that’s true?”
    Orville laughed silently. “Me, I’m not going to keep scratching so hard. I aim to have me a little cash money coming in. I aim to buy more range that will run more cows.” He looked at Ty. “You got more’n me, Ty, but you got enough? You got all you want? You want to get more?”
    â€œAny man does. What d’you have in mind?”
    Orville leaned forward now. He pointed loosely out into the lowering night. “Forty miles yonder is the National Trail. Those big Texas herds will be coming up all summer. There’s enough of us Hoads to make up a bunch, Ty. We could stampede every other herd and we got the men to round up and drive off part of every herd.