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 ing to Rawlins, nodding ponderously. "He turned the house upside-down that time he made his break to run off with one of my horses. It'll take a smarter man than him to git his paws on any of my money, I'm here to tell you!"

"Where's the change?" said Edith, repeating Peck's well-remembered demand on Tippie. She looked her question straight into Rawlins' eyes, holding out her hand, severe, mandatory, gruff—to go off into another rocking fit of laughter the next moment, the demanding hand pressed to her side, where her riotous mirth was struggling like a cat in a sack.

"Maybe I'll surprise you one of these days by makin' a man out of that feller yet," Mrs. Peck almost threatened, her disapprobation of this hilarity strong in her face.

"You would," said Edith soberly.

"I think if you'd give him a dime now and then he'd be more contented," Rawlins said, so seriously that Edith collapsed, flinging her arms on the table, smothering her face in them, sputtering and gasping in the very climax of mirth.

"When he earns it like any other hand, I'll give it to him," Mrs. Peck said, resenting the criticism of her methods of making a man. "When any skite-poke like him thinks he can marry me and honey around till he gits his paws on my money, he's got a whole lot to learn."

"Well, he's yours," said Rawlins, in a manner dumping Peck and the subject of his proper subjugation on her hands at the same time. "Go to it. I wish you luck. Is Elmer up in the mountains?"