t a smile, or
something that would do duty as a smile. Strangely enough, no sooner
had the smile come than her whole mental viewpoint changed. It became
easy to make the smile real; half of her anxiety fell away. And
dropping one hand on her hip, she said cheerfully to McGuire.

"You look queer as a prison-guard, Mr. McGuire."

She made a great resolve, that moment, that if she were ever safely
through the catastrophe which now loomed ahead, she would diminish the
distance between her and her men and form the habit of calling them by
their first names. She could not change as abruptly in a moment, but
she understood perfectly, that if she had been able to call McGuire
by some foolish and familiar nickname, half of his strangeness would
immediately melt away. As it was, she made the best of a bad matter by
throwing all the gentle good nature possible into her voice, and she
was rewarded by seeing McGuire jerk up his head and jerk down his
glance at her. At the same time, he crimsoned to the eyes, changing
his weathered complexion to a flaring, reddish-brown.

"Prison-guard?" said McGuire. "Me?"

"Well," answered Marianne, "that's the truth, isn't it? You're the
guard and I'm the prisoner?"

"I'm watching these hosses," said McGuire. "That's all. They ain't no
money could hire me to guard a woman."

"Really?" said Marianne.

"Sure. I used to have a wife. I know."

She laughed, a little hysterically, but McGuire treated the mirth as
a compliment to his jest and joined in with a tremendous guffaw. His
eyes were still wet with mirth as she said: "Too bad you have to waste
time like this, with such a fine warm day for sleeping. Couldn't you
trust the corral bars to take care of the horses?"

His glance twinkled with understanding. It was plain that he
appreciated her point and the way she made it.

"Them hosses are feeling their oats," said McGuire. "Can't tell what
they'd be up to the minute I turned my back on 'em. Might jump that
old fence and be off, for all I know."

"Well," said Marianne, "they look quite contented. And if one of them
did take advantage of you and run away while you slept, I'm sure it
would come home again."

He had quite fallen into the spirit of the thing.

"Maybe," grinned McGuire, "but I might wake up out of a job."

"Well," said Marianne, "there have been times when I would have
weighed one hour of good sleep against two jobs as pleasant as this.
How much real damage might that sl