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"I'm not hoping about the nine."

"You're a liar."

"I'm hoping a little about the nine."

"Mabel's bred. She got put to a bull I'd not have picked and I've seen worse. The other five are open and they'll go to Judge in July." He got the ramp up and pinned it. "After Judge there's a two-year-old I've had my eye on since Fort Worth. He's expensive and he's worth it."

"How expensive?"

"We'll talk about it in the house."

"That means expensive."

"It means in the house."

"Owen. What did these six cost?"

He told her.

"That's not a price," she said. "That's a ransom."

"It is."

"You paid it."

"I offered it. There's a difference and it's worse." He coiled the strap and hung it on the trailer. "I've bought bulls off that outfit for nine years and they know what I know, which is what those cows are. They had me the minute I turned in their gate, and they knew that too."

"And you turned in their gate anyway?"

"I'd have turned in at twice it," Owen said. "Don't tell them."

She leaned on the fence and looked at six cows in a trap that had stood empty since the first of June.

"Owen."

"I know it."

"You don't know what I was going to say."

"You were going to thank me," Owen said, "and I'd have had to stand here while you did it. So I've told you I know it. Now we can both get on with our morning."

She laughed at him. It showed in his jaw and nowhere else, and he went to get something out of the truck.

It was a printer's proof, one page, folded once, and he handed it to her flat like a man handing over a feed ticket.

"Fall sale," he said. "They want it back Tuesday if we're changing anything."

She opened it.

BATEMAN & ROYSTON, it said, across the top, in the plain type he'd have picked out of about forty kinds of plain type. FIRST ANNUAL FALL BULL AND FEMALE SALE. And under that, small, the date and the place and the two phone numbers, hers first.

"You put my name in front of yours."

"I did."

"Owen."

"It's a forty-year-old line and an eleven-year-old program." He was looking out at the cows and not at her. "And I've wanted to see it printed that way since the third of March, so I had it printed that way."