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 'em, not if he had any heart in him, anyhow. He thinks I'll git disgusted with him and take them sheep away from him and kick him out, but I started to make a sheepman out of him and I'll either make him or break him. Did he tell you about tryin' to run off?"

"Yes, he said something about it. I met him, in fact, the night he was on his way."

"You did?"

"He stopped at Lineberger's, where I had taken shelter out of a storm. I felt kind of sorry for him to see him prisoner on the range again. Why don't you take the string off his leg, Mrs. Peck, and let him go?"

Edith had been making a pretense of looking at the pictures in a magazine. At Rawlins' suggestion in behalf of her one-time mail-order suitor the girl threw the magazine down with a slap, broke out in a sudden burst of laughter, rocking back and forth in her chair as if the net of merriment had made her as much a prisoner as Peck, and she was struggling to break through to liberty.

Mrs. Peck looked at her sourly.

"If you was married to him you'd laugh out of the other side of your mouth, young lady," she said.

"I'm not," said Edith, provokingly comfortable in her security.

"You're to blame for him, you brought him out here. By rights you ought to be the one to have the trouble with him."

"He cut me cold for you, auntie. He wouldn't have me. I lost out the night Elmer brought you the money to pay off the men."

"Yes, he tried to rob me," Mrs. Peck accused, turn-