tapping the little man on
the chest with every word, and still there was the same dogged
resistance. "Well, come on and let's find out," protested Creede at
last, impatiently dragging him back.

"Miss Ware," he said politely, "what do you expect of this here supe?
I might want that job myself, later on," he observed importantly.

Lucy smiled at the bare-faced fraud and hastened to abet it.

"I expect him to look after my cattle," she responded promptly, "and
to protect my best interests according to his own judgment. The only
thing I insist upon is that he leave his gun at home."

"I'm sorry," said Creede briefly. "And I needed the job, too," he
added lugubriously. "How about your foreman?" he inquired, as if
snatching at a straw. "Same thing, eh? Well, I'll go you--next
month."

He laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and crowded his big black sombrero
down over his eyes until it gave him a comical air of despair.

"Luck's gone," he remarked, reaching parenthetically for a cigarette
paper. "See you later." And, with a last roguish twinkle at Miss Lucy,
he slouched off toward the fire.

His luck indeed had gone, but somewhere in that giant carcass which
harbored the vindictive hate of an Apache, and the restless energy of
a Texano, there still lingered the exuberant joyousness of a boy, the
indomitable spirit of the pioneer, resigned to any fate so long as
there is a laugh in it. As he drifted into the crowd Lucy's heart went
out to him; he was so big and strong and manly in this, the final
eclipse of his waning fortunes.

"Mr. Creede is a noble kind of a man, isn't he?" she said, turning to
where Hardy was still standing. "Won't you sit down, Rufus, and let's
talk this over for a minute. But before you decide anything, I want
you to get a good night's sleep. You are a free man now, you know, and
if there's any worrying to be done it's my funeral--isn't it?"

If he heard her at all Hardy made no response to the jest. He stood
before her, swaying dizzily as he groped about for his hat, which had
fallen from his hand. Then at last a faint smile broke through the
drawn lines in his face.

"That's right," he said, sinking down at her side, and as he settled
back against the tree his eyes closed instantly, like a child whose
bedtime has come. "I'm--I'm so dead tired I can't talk straight,
Lucy--to say nothing of think. But--I'll take care of you. We aren't
sheeped out yet. Only--only I can't--I forget what I'm going