the X, and make a knot that will hold."

[Illustration: "SHE'S A GAME KID, ALL RIGHT," SAID SMITH TO HIMSELF AT
THE TOP OF THE HILL.]

The girl's words and manner inspired confidence. Interest and relief were
in the face of the little man standing at the side of the road.

"Now, Windy, hand me the rope. I'll take three turns around my
saddle-horn, and when I say 'go' you see that your team get down in their
collars."

"She's a game kid, all right," said Smith to himself at the top of the
hill.

When the sorrel pony at the head of the team felt the rope grow taut on
the saddle-horn, it lay down to its work. The grit and muscle of a dozen
horses seemed concentrated in the little cayuse. It pulled until every
vein and cord in its body appeared to stand out beneath its skin. It lay
down on the rope until its chest almost touched the ground. There was a
look of determination that was almost human in its bright, excited eyes as
it strained and struggled on the slippery hillside with no word of urging
from the girl. She was standing in one stirrup, one hand on the cantle,
the other on the pommel, watching everything with keen eyes. She issued
orders to Tubbs like a general, telling him when to block the wheels, when
to urge the exhausted team to greater efforts, when to relax. Nothing
escaped her. She and the little sorrel knew their work. As the man at the
roadside watched the gallant little brute struggle, literally inch by
inch, up the terrible grade he felt himself choking with excitement and
making inarticulate sounds. At last the rear wheels of the wagon lurched
over the hill and stood on level ground, while the horses, with spreading
legs and heaving sides, gasped for breath.

"Awful tired, ain't you, Mister?" the girl asked dryly, of the stranger on
horseback, as she recoiled her rope with supple wrist and tied it again to
the saddle by the buckskin thongs.

"Plumb worn to a frazzle," Smith replied with cool impudence, as he looked
her over in much the same manner as he would have eyed a heifer on the
range. "I was whipped for working when I was a boy, and I've always
remembered."

"It must be quite a ride--from the brush back there in Missouri where you
was drug up."

"I ranges on the Sundown slope," he replied shortly.

"They have sheep-camps over there, then?"

Again the slurring insinuation pricked him.

"Oh, I can twist a rope and ride a horse fast enough to keep warm."

"So?"--the inflection was