eep do?"

"If it took me out of the job? Oh, I dunno. Might take another month
before I landed a place as good."

"Surely not as long as that. But isn't it possible that your sleep
might be worth _two_ months' wages to you, Mr. McGuire?"

"H-m-m," growled McGuire, and his little shifty eyes fastened keenly
on her. "You sure mean business!"

"As much as anyone in the world could!" cried the girl, suddenly
serious.

And for a moment they stared at each other.

"Lady," said McGuire at length, "I begin to feel sort of yawny and
sleepy, like."

"Then sleep," said Marianne, her voice trembling in spite of herself.
"You might have pleasant dreams, you know--of a murder prevented--of a
man's life saved!"

McGuire jerked his sombrero low over his eyes.

"You think it's as bad as that?" he growled, glaring at her.

"I swear it is!"

He considered another moment. Then: "You'll have to excuse me, Miss
Jordan. But I'm so plumb tired out I can't hold up my end of this talk
no longer!"

So saying, he dropped his head on both his doubled fists, and she lost
sight of his face. It had come so inconceivably easily, this triumph,
that she was too dazed to move, for a moment. Then she turned and
fairly raced for the corral. It had all been the result of the first
smile with which she went to McGuire, she felt. And as she saddled her
bay in a shed a moment later she was blessing the power of laughter.
It had given her the horse. It had let her pass through the bars. It
placed her on the open road where she fled away at a swift gallop,
only looking back, as she reached the top of the first hill, to see
McGuire still seated on the stump, but now his head was canted far to
one side, and she had no doubt that he must be asleep in very fact.

Then the hill rose behind her, shutting out the ranch, and she
turned to settle to her work. Never in her life--and she had ridden
cross-country on blood horses in the East--had she ridden as she rode
on this day! She was striking on a straight line over hill and dale,
through the midst of barbed wire. But the wire halted her only for
short checks. The swift snipping of the pair of pliers which was ever
in her saddle bag cleared the way, and as the lengths of wire snapped
humming back, coiling like snakes, she rode through and headed into
the next field at a renewed gallop. She was leaving behind her a day's
work for half a dozen men, but she would have sacrificed ten times the
value of the