By Proxy

A mute yearning ricochets across sun-cracked corrals when tongue-tied cowpoke Aleck nurses a love he can’t articulate; swaggering foreman Red Saunders, equal parts cupid and confidence man, saddles up to town and strong-arms Lindy—presumed target of Aleck’s bashful ardor—into a dusty buggy back to the spread. But the Fates, sporting spurs, throw the narrative: Ah Sing, the ranch’s wry Cantonese factotum, pinches every stitch of denim and flannel, pawning threads for poker coin, leaving the bunkhouse a half-naked posse of goose-pimpled vaqueros who thunder through sagebrush in union-suit disarray. The chase climaxes in a kerosene-lit gambling den where roulette wheels spin like dervishes, clothes change hands like contraband scripture, and Red realizes Lindy is the wrong postcard from Cupid’s catalogue; yet serendipity, that flirt, flips embarrassment into betrothal when Lindy, charmed by the whole rodeo of errors, accepts Red’s impromptu ring of barbed wire and stardust.