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

and the buffalo. We will ride far lands where the only companions are wind and rain and sun."
    "You talk like a poet."
    I smiled wryly. "Yes, and work like a dog, often enough, but it's the poetry that keeps us going. It's my blessing or my curse, according to the way you believe, to live with awareness.
    "All of them," I gestured at the room, "are living poetry, living drama, living for the future, only they do not know it, they do not think of it that way. Most of them heard stories when they were youngsters, stories told by men who had been over the mountain or had dreamed of it, and those who did not hear the stories read them in books.
    "I talked to an old gunfighter once who told me he'd been a farm boy in Iowa when one day a man on a fine black horse rode into the yard. A man wearing buckskins and a wide hat. The man had a rifle and a pistol, and he wanted only to stop long enough to water his horse.
    "The gunfighter talked him into staying for supper and spending the night. And he listened to the stories the man told of Indians and buffalo, but mostly it was the land itself, the far mountains and the plains, with long grass blowing in the wind."
    Fuentes nodded. "It was so with me also. My father would come down from the hills and tell us of the bears he saw, or the lions. He would ride in dusty and tired, his hands stiff from the rope or the branding iron, from twenty hours of work in a single day, but he had the smell of horses and woodsmoke about him. And one day he did not come back."
    "You and me, Fuentes. Some day we will not come back."
    "With him it was Apaches. When his ammunition was gone, he fought them with a knife. Years later I lived among them and they told me of him. They were singing songs of him, and how he died. It is the way of the Indian to respect a brave man."
    "We talk very seriously, Fuentes. I think I will bid for a box."
    "I, also. But be careful, my friend, and do not get too far away. I have a bad feeling about tonight."
    Folks were beginning to come in from outside and gather on benches and chairs where they could see the small platform from which the boxes would be offered. We could see them all there, in neat piles, some of them decorated with paper bows, some tied with carefully hoarded colored string, and you can bet most of the boxes were intended for somebody special.
    It was Ann Timberly's box I wanted, but she didn't want me to have it, and probably wouldn't talk to me if I got it. But there's more than one way of doing things, and I had my own ideas.
    China Benn ... now there was a girl! But if I bid for her box I might tangle with Kurt Floyd, and on a night when the whole outfit might have trouble there was no time for private arguments. Anyway, I knew what I was going to do.
    The bidding started. And from the first box it was animated. The first one to go was a buxom ranchwoman of forty-odd, her box going to an oldster, a onetime cowboy with legs like parentheses, his thin shoulders slightly stooped, but a wry twinkle in his eyes. He bought the box for a dollar and fifty cents. A second box went a moment later for two dollars, a third for seventy-five cents.
    Often, other men deliberately avoided bidding, so that a certain man might buy a box at a price within his grasp. Others just as deliberately built up the price to tease some ambitious would-be lover, or somebody who'd be joshed about it later.
    The auctioneer knew all the bidders, and usually knew which boxes they wanted, although there was much bidding just for amusement. I watched, enjoying it, until suddenly a box I was sure was Ann Timberly's box was put up. From the comments by the auctioneer I was doubly sure, so when he asked for bids, I bid twenty-five cents.
    Ann stiffened as if struck, and for a moment there wasn't a sound. Then somebody countered with a bid of fifty cents and the moment was past, but our eyes met across the room. Her face was white, her chin lifted proudly, but the anger in her eyes was a joy to