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 wouldn't 'a' done it, either. I raised the roof when I got up and found you'd left. You don't know how cheap I feel, Mr. Dunham, over the way they treated you at our house this morning. I could crawl in a gimlet hole and pull it in after me."

"I wouldn't do that if I was you," Bill advised, with a gentle protestation that made her laugh.

"I guess he'll see now that my judgment of a man is as good as his own," she said with meaning emphasis, but looking straight ahead as she spoke. "When I hire a man I intend for him to stay hired, and I let him know it, good and plenty."

Bill appreciated her delicacy in referring to his late unpleasant meeting with Kellogg that way, sparing him the confusion, even the pain, of going at it untactfully with an effusion of words. She had a lot of sense as well as a lot of good looks; the way she held her chin when she spoke of hiring and firing was enough to prove to anybody she wasn't a scrub.

"I've got to go down there tomorrow," she announced, casually as if she spoke of riding to Pawnee Bend. "You might as well stay here tonight and go along with me."

"I'd be proud to," Bill said, "but I told Mr. Garland I'd bust right on through as fast as this old crowbait'd take me."

"He's not so bad," she said, running an impartial glance over the horse. "But it wouldn't hurt him any to lay over here till morning and put some hay in his hide. You'd miss 'em if you was to go on down to-