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 nothing more to be said, indeed. It was a case of put up or shut up.

The girl gave a little sobbing gasp of relief when the fence-rider galloped off as suddenly as if the gun had been fired for the start of a race that he was determined to win. She looked at Rawlins, her lips puckered in a tremulous struggle that seemed indecisive between a grin and a sob, dragged her sleeve almost viciously across her eyes, hiding her face a moment in the crook of her arm. There was a little sniveling sound, a little agitation of quick-caught sobs in her bosom. She faced him, then, smiling, tears in her eyes.

"Darn him!" she said.

"He's a rough sort of a guy, ain't he?" Rawlins said, looking after the man as he mounted the hill she had ridden down a little while before, passed over it in a flash, and out of sight.

"He'd 'a' stole my horse, all right, if you hadn't happened along."

"I don't see how he could get away with anything like that," Rawlins remarked. "I think it was a bluff to scare you off. More than likely he intended to turn it loose in a little while."

"No, he didn't," she corrected him seriously. "He'd 'a' got out of it—they can get out of anything."

"You ought to carry a gun, it seems to me, when you go out fence-cutting."

"Yes, I know I ought to," she admitted, "but I didn't want them to have anything on me. They can't do anything to you by law, I mean, for cuttin' the fence on a section line—that's a public road, you know—but if you go in with a gun on you and happen to