the Man from the Broken Hills (1975) by Louis - Talon-Chantry L'amour

so she couldn't draw it.
    "Just take it easy," I said coolly. "You wouldn't shoot a man over something like this, would you?"
    "Who the hell said I wouldn't?" she flared.
    "You'd better also tell your papa to wash your mouth out with soap," I said. "That's no word for a lady to use."
    She was sashaying around, trying to get away from me, but that little bay I was riding knew its business and was staying right close to her gray gelding. For three or four minutes we kicked up dust, sidling around on the prairie until she saw it was no use.
    Maybe she cooled down a little. I don't rightly know, but she called over to Fuentes, who was sitting his saddle watching. "Fuentes, come and get this man away from me."
    Tony walked his horse over and said, "I do not want you to shoot him, senorita. He is my compadre."
    "I'll say this for you," I said. "You may have the devil of a temper, but you sure are pretty."
    Her eyes narrowed a little. "The major will have you hung for this," she told me, "if the boys don't get to you sooner."
    "Why don't you fight your own battles?" I asked. "You're a big girl now. No need to call on your papa to help you, or the big boys at the ranch."
    "Stop calling him my papa!" she said angrily. "He's 'the Major!' "
    "Oh, I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't know he was still in the army."
    "He's not in the army!"
    "Then he isn't a major, is he? I mean, he's a used-to-be major, maybe?"
    She didn't know what to say to that. Defensively, she said, "He's the major! And he was a major ... in the Civil War!"
    "Well, good for him. I knew a couple of them, up north. There was one used to clerk in a hotel where I stayed, and then I punched cows with a colonel up Wyoming way. Nice fellas, both of them."
    My face was smooth, my voice bland. Suddenly she said, "I don't think I like you!"
    "Yes, ma'am," I said politely, "I gathered that. When a girl comes after me with a quirt ... well, I sort of get the feeling she doesn't care for me. I'd say that wasn't really the romantic approach."
    "Romance?" Her tone was withering. "Withyou ?"
    "Oh, no, ma'am!Please ! Don't talk about romance with me! I'm just a drifting cowboy! Why, I'd never even think of romance with a daughter of the major!"
    I paused. "Anyway, I never start courting a girl the first time I see her. Maybe the second time. Of course, that depends on the girl.
    "You--" I canted my head on one side. "Well, maybe the third time ... or the fourth. Yes, I think so. The fourth time."
    She swung her horse around, glaring at me. "You! You're impossible! Just wait! Just you wait!"
    She dashed away, spurring her horse. Fuentes pushed his sombrero back on his head and looked woeful. "I think you are in big trouble, amigo. This one ... she does not like you, I think."
    "I think, too," I said. "Let's get on with the cattle."
    The two three-year-olds were gone, and neither of us were of a mind to follow or try to recover them. Besides, they'd be skittish now, and we'd be lucky to even get close.
    We drifted along behind our cattle. Several times I thought I heard movement in the brush, as though the young ones were following along, but soon we were out on the open plain and they did not appear.
    So she was the major's daughter? The one Roger Balch was supposed to be trying to round up ... or so the talk went. Well, he could have her.
    Still, she was pretty. Even when she was mad, she was pretty--very pretty. I chuckled. And she had been mad.
    We bunched the cattle in a corral and bedded down for the night.
    "Those steers," I suggested, "maybe they'll come up during the night."
    Fuentes shrugged, and then he said, "It is Friday tomorrow."
    "There's one most ever week," I said.
    "On Saturday there is a, what you call it, social at the schoolhouse."
    "A box social?" I asked skeptically.
    "Si... and I think of these cattle that they need to be with the herd. They will be restless and they might get away ... somehow. It is in my mind that we should drive them in."
    "Well," I agreed