uy
cattle with."

"De white woman couldn't give you no stake."

He made no reply to her taunt. He was thinking. The words of a cowpuncher
came back to him as he sat and regarded with unseeing eyes the Indian
woman. The cowpuncher had said: "When a feller rides the range month in
and month out, and don't see nobody but other punchers and Injuns, some
Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes begins to look kind of good to him when
he rides into camp and she smiles as if she was glad he had come. He gits
used to seein' her sittin' on an antelope hide, beadin' moccasins, and the
country where they wear pointed-toed shoes and sit in chairs gits farther
and farther away. And after awhile he tells himself that he don't mind
smoke and the smell of buckskin, and a tepee is a better home nor none,
and that he thinks as much of this here Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes
as he could think of any woman, and he wonders when the priest could come.
And while he's studyin' it over, some white girl cuts across his trail,
and, with the sight of her, Mary Moonbeam or Sally Star-eyes looks like a
dirty two-spot in a clean deck." The cowpuncher's words came back to
Smith as though they had been said only yesterday.

"Why don't you say what you think?" the woman asked, uneasy under his long
stare.

"No," said Smith, rousing himself; "the Schoolmarm couldn't give me no
stake; and money talks."

"When you want your money?"

"Quick."

"How much you want?"

"How much you got?" he asked bluntly. He was sure of her, and he was in no
mood to finesse.

"Eight--nine thousand."

"If I'm goin' to do anything with cattle this year, I want to get at it."

"I give you de little paper MacDonald call check. I know how to write
check," she said with pride.

Smith shook his head. A check was evidence.

"It's better for you to go to the bank and get the cash yourself.
Meeteetse can hitch up and take you. It won't bother your arm none, for
you ain't bad hurt. Nine thousand is quite a wad to get without givin'
notice, and I doubt if you gets it, but draw all you can. Take a
flour-sack along and put the stuff in it; then when you gets home, pass it
over to me first chance. Don't let 'em load you down with silver--I hates
to pack silver on horseback."

To all of which instructions the woman agreed.

That she might avoid Susie's questions, she did not start the next morning
until Susie was well on her way to school. Then, dressed in her gaudiest
skirt,