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slammed the door.
    Disappointment in her mother kept Mary Lee rooted to the spot. Blood rushed to her face, and her heart beat so fast she could hardly breathe. Her knees were weak when she turned to go back to the house. When she stumbled on a clump of dirt, she felt a hand on her arm. She let out a small shriek of alarm.
    “Don’t be scared. I don’t want you to fall and hurt the kid.” She recognized the distinctive voice of the man in number six.
    He had witnessed her humiliation!
    “I’m all right.”
    “You don’t feel all right. You’re trembling like a scared rabbit.”
    “You heard?”
    “Yeah. Passing by on my way to town. Couldn’t help but hear.”
    “I’ve got to get him out. Mama will never straighten up with him here,” she said, as if talking to herself. They reached the porch steps. “Thank you.” She turned and sat down on the steps, not wanting him to see her stumbling into the house.
    She expected him to leave, but he stood there looking down at her.
    “Thank you,” she said again.
    “You said that. Haven’t you learned that there’s a time to attack and a time to back off?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’ll get nowhere with a man like Frank Pierce, especially when he’s drinking. Talk to the sheriff.”
    “Mama will give him a receipt. He probably paid her in whiskey.”
    “You’d better get some help if you’re going to run this place.”
    “I can’t afford it. My daddy ran this place without help.” “He wasn’t a girl and he wasn’t pregnant.”
    Ashamed that she had revealed so much to this man who was a stranger yet not a stranger, she got shakily to her feet, afraid that she would burst into tears before she got in the house. “Good night.”
    She didn’t know if he answered or not. She hurried to her room and threw herself down on the bed. Something seemed to give way inside her. She was too depressed even to cry.
    Jake Ramero headed once more for town, telling himself that he had no business getting involved with the girl or her problems. But dammit to hell. Frank Pierce was a lazy loud-mouth and as mean as a rutting moose when he was drinking. Mary Lee would have a hard time getting rid of him.
    How in hell was a pregnant woman going to keep the motor court going by herself? Weeds needed to be cut, holes in the roadway filled, trash hauled away. Even the signs along the highway needed to be repainted. She had her work cut out: doing the washing, keeping the cabins clean and her mother out of sight.
    He had seen cars drive in and leave after being greeted by Mrs. Finley. In the month he’d been here, he’d seen the floozy who stayed there clean a cabin a time or two, but he’d not seen a wash on the line. After a couple of weeks, he’d bought himself a set of sheets and a few towels.
    With his thoughts to distract him, Jake’s long legs covered the distance to town before he knew it. At the post office he dropped a letter in the mail slot, then went down the street, turned in at Red Pepper Corral and straddled a stool at the bar.
    “Hi-ya, Paco.”
    “
Hola,
Jake. Bottle or draw?”
    “Draw.”
    “Quiet tonight.” Jake drank deeply and wiped the foam off his lips with the back of his hand.
    “It’s early. You still out at Quitman’s?”
    “Part-time, breaking stock horses. He gives me time off now and then to do some bridge work.”
    “Heard you came in on the bus the other night.”
    “Does anything happen in this town you don’t know about?” Jake growled. Paco was one of a few men in Cross Roads he called a friend.
    “Very little,
amigo.
” Paco grinned, showing the wide space between his front teeth. He was a short man with broad shoulders and long arms. His family had been in northern New Mexico since 1826. He and Jake had become friendly when they learned that both their great-grandfathers had fought in the Battle of Glorieta in 1862.
    Jake’s mother had been the granddaughter of Luis Gazares Callaway, who was considered a hero in