ill have to be cemented. I explained to Dinky-Dunk
that I wanted eave-troughs on both the shack and the stable, for the
sake of the soft-water, and proceeded to point out the need of a new
washing-machine, and a kiddie-coop for Poppsy and Pee-Wee as soon as
the weather got warm, and a fence, hog-tight and horse-high, about my
half-acre of kitchen garden.

Dinky-Dunk sat staring at me with a wry though slightly woebegone
face.

"Look here, Lady-Bird, all this sort of thing takes 'rhino,' which
means ready money. And where's it going to come from?"

"I'll use that six hundred, as long as it lasts," I blithely retorted.
"And then we'll get credit."

"But my credit is gone," Dinky-Dunk dolorously acknowledged.

"Then what's the matter with mine?" I demanded. I hadn't meant to hurt
him, when I said that. But I refused to be downed. And I intended to
make my ranch a success.

"It's still quite unimpaired, I suppose," he said in a thirty-below-zero
sort of voice.

"Goose!" I said, with a brotherly pat on his drooping shoulder. But my
lord and master refused to be cheered up.

"It's going to take more than optimism to carry us through this first
season," he explained to me. "And the only way that I can see is for
me to get out and rustle for work."

"What kind of work?" I demanded.

"The kind there's a famine for, at this very moment," was Dinky-Dunk's
reply.

"You don't mean being somebody else's hired man?" I said, aghast.

"A hired man can get four dollars a day and board," retorted my
husband. "And a man and team can get nine dollars a day. We can't keep
things going without ready money. And there's only one way, out here,
of getting it."

Dinky-Dunk was able to laugh at the look of dismay that came into my
face. I hadn't stopped to picture myself as the wife of a hired
"hand." I hadn't quite realized just what we'd descended to. I hadn't
imagined just how much one needed working capital, even out here on
the edge of Nowhere.

"But never that way, Diddums!" I cried out in dismay, as I pictured my
husband bunking with a sweaty-smelling plowing-gang of Swedes and
Finns and hoboing about the prairie with a thrashing outfit of the
Great Unwashed. He'd get cooties, or rheumatism, or a sunstroke, or a
knife between his ribs some fine night--and then where'd I be? I
couldn't think of it. I couldn't think of Duncan Argyll McKail, the
descendant of Scottish kings and second-cousin to a title, hiring out
to some o