Ping!
One of the thin wire struts snapped clean.
I blinked my eyes and licked my lips.
The salty taste of the tears touched my tongue.
I could see the faint gray pebbles in the black tar of the roof now.
I eased back on the stick and began to come out of the dive.
At eight hundred feet, I leveled off and went into a wide turn that would take me to the field behind the factory.
I headed into the wind and made a perfect three-point landing.
Suddenly I was tired.
It had been a long flight up from Los Angeles.
Nevada Smith was walking across the field toward me as the plane rolled to a stop.
I cut the switches and the engine died, coughing the last drop of fuel out of its carburetor lungs.
I looked out at him.
Nevada never changed. From the time I was five years old and I first saw him walking up to the front porch, he hadn't changed.
The tight, rolling, bowlegged walk, as if he'd never got used to being off a horse, the tiny white weather crinkles in the leathery skin at the corner of his eyes.
That was sixteen years ago.
It was 1909.
I was playing around the corner of the porch and my father was reading the weekly Reno paper on the big rocker near the front door.
It was about eight o'clock in the morning and the sun was already high in the sky.
I heard the clip-clop of a horse and came around to the front to see.
A man was getting off his horse. He moved with a deceptively slow grace.
He threw the reins over the hitching post and walked toward the house.
At the foot of the steps, he stopped and looked up.
My father put the paper down and got to his feet.
He was a big man. Six two. Beefy. Ruddy face that burned to a crisp in the sun.
He looked down.
Nevada squinted up at him.
"Jonas Cord?"
My father nodded. "Yes."
The man pushed his broad-brimmed cowboy hat back on his head, revealing the crow-black hair.
"I hear tell you might be looking for a hand."
My father never said yes or no to anything.
"What can you do?" he asked.
The man's smile remained expressionless. He glanced slowly across the front of the house and out on the desert. He looked back at my father.
"I could ride herd but you ain't got no cattle.
I can mend fence, but you ain't got none of them, either."
My father was silent for a moment.
"You any good with that?" he asked.
For the first time, I noticed the gun on the man's thigh. He wore it real low and tied down.
The handle was black and worn and the hammer and metal shone dully with oil.
"I'm alive," he answered.
"What's your name?"
" Nevada."
" Nevada what?"
The answer came without hesitation.
"Smith.
Nevada Smith."
My father was silent again.
This time the man didn't wait for him to speak.
He gestured toward me. "That your young'un?"