n't they? I guess I'll go to
work."

"I don't mean to be too personal, but--are you used to working?"

"I never did a day's work in my life."

"Then what can you do?"

"I don't know. I--you see, I never figured on this. I--I--Do you
happen to know anybody who wants a man?"

A little flicker of a smile shot across Crawford's face.

"We're all looking for men--good men--all the time. I can use a
half-dozen more cow-punchers right now. Do you want to try it?"

Conniston's one glance of the girl's eager face decided him.

"I've always had a curiosity to know what they did when they punched
the poor brutes," he grinned back. "And I can work out that dollar I
owe you too, can't I?"

"You're engaged," returned Mr. Crawford, crisply. "Thirty dollars a
month and found. I'll have one of the boys show you where the
bunk-house is. You'll begin work in the morning."

CHAPTER VI

As the significance of his change of fortunes began slowly to dawn on
him, Conniston was at first merely amused. One of the men employed by
John W. Crawford, a man whom Conniston came to know later as Rawhide
Jones, conducted him at the Old Man's orders to the bunk-house. The
man was lean, tall, sunburned, and the _tout ensemble_ of his
attire--his flapping, soiled vest, his turned-up, dingy-blue overalls,
his torn neck-handkerchief, and, above all, the two-weeks' growth upon
his spare face--gave him an unbelievable air of untidiness. He cast
one slow, measuring glance at the young fellow who Mr. Crawford had
said briefly was to go to work in the morning, and then without a
word, without a further look or waiting to see if he was followed,
slouched on ahead toward the gap in the encircling trees into which
Lonesome Pete had disappeared earlier in the afternoon.

Conniston saw that Argyl Crawford was standing at her father's side
and that she was smiling; he saw that Hapgood was laughing openly. And
then he turned and strode on after his guide, conscious that the blood
was creeping up into his face and at the same time that he could not
"back down."

The graveled road wound through the pines for an eighth of a mile,
leaving the bench land and finding its way into a hollow cleared of
trees. Here was a long, low, rambling building--a stable, no doubt.
At each end of the stable was a stock-corral. And at the edge of the
clearing was another building, long and very low, with one single door
and several little square windows. A stove-pipe