wrong--pilin' on me like a thousand of
brick."

"Is it goin' to be any better?"

"Some of my friends will stick," Dr. Harpe repeated stubbornly.

"Sure, they will. A woman like you will always have a followin' among
the igner'nt and weak-minded."

"What you roastin' me for like this?" The woman's brutal frankness
touched her at last. "Who and what do you think you are yourself?"

"Nothin'," Nell Beecroft returned composedly. "Nobody at all. Just the
wife of a horse-thief that's doin' time. But," and her hard, gray eyes
flashed in momentary pride, "he learnt me the diffrunce between sand and
a yellow-streak. They sent fifty men to take him out of the hills, and
when he was handed his medicine he swallowed the whole dose to save his
pardner, and never squeaked."

Nell Beecroft walked to the window swallowing hard at the lump which
rose in her throat.

"If I could sleep--get one night's decent sleep----"

"When you collapse you'll go quick," opined the woman unemotionally.

"But I'm goin' to see it through--I'll stick to the bitter end--I'm no
coward----"

"Ain't you?" Sudden excitement leaped into Nell Beecroft's voice and she
stared hard down the street. "Unless I'm mistaken you're goin' to have
as fine a chance to prove it as anybody I ever see. Come here." She
pointed to a gesticulating mob which was turning the corner where the
road led from the Symes Irrigation Project into town.

"The dagos!" Dr. Harpe's voice was a whisper of fear.

"They're on the prod," Nell Beecroft said briefly, and strode to the
cellar-door. "Cache yourself!" She would have thrust Dr. Harpe down the
stairway.

"No--no--not there! I can't! I'd scream!" She shrank back in unfeigned
horror. "I'm goin' to run for it, Nell! The Dago Duke has ribbed this up
on me!" From force of habit she reached for her black medicine case as
she swung her Stetson on her head. "If I can get to Symes's house--down
the alley--they can't see me----"

Nell Beecroft, with curling lips, stood in the kitchen doorway and
watched her go. Crouching, with her head bent, she ran through the
alley, panting, wild-eyed in her exaggerated fear.

A big band of bleating sheep on the way to the loading pens at the
station blocked her way where she would have crossed the street to
Symes's house. She swore in a frenzy of impatience as she waited for
them to pass in the cloud of choking dust raised by their tiny, pointed
hoofs.

"Way 'round 'em, Shep!" The voice was