Along toward the middle of the afternoon Cinnabar Joe laid down his
hammer and smilingly accepted the sandwich his wife held out to him.
"You sure don't figure on starvin' me none, Jennie," he grinned as he
bit generously into the thick morsel.

"Ranchin's some different from bartendin'--an' you're workin' awful
hard, Joe." She surveyed the half-completed stable with critical eye:
"Couple more weeks an' it'll be done!" she exclaimed in admiration, "I
didn't know you was so handy. Look over to the house."

Cinnabar looked: "Gee! Curtains in the window! Looks like a regular
outfit, now."

"Do you like 'em--honest? I didn't think you'd even notice they was
hung." With the pride of new proprietorship, her eyes travelled over the
tiny log cabin, the horse corral with its new peeled posts, and the
stable which still lacked the roof: "We ain't be'n here quite two
months, an' the best part is, we done it all ourselves. Why, Joe, I
can't hardly believe we've really got an outfit of our own--with horses
an' two hundred an' fifty head of cattle! It don't seem real. Seems
like I'm bound to wake up an hear Hank roarin' to git up an' git
breakfast. That's the way it ended so many times--my dream. I'm so sick
of hotels I hope I'll never see another one all my life!"

"You an' me both! It's the same with bartendin'. But you ain't a-goin'
to wake up. This here's _real_!"

"Oh, I hope we can make a go of it!" cried the girl, a momentary shadow
upon her face, "I hope nothin' happens----"

Her husband laid his hand affectionately upon her shoulder: "They ain't
nothin' goin' to happen," he reassured her, "we've got to make a go of
it! What with all both of us has be'n able to save, an' with the bank
stakin' us fer agin as much--they ain't no two ways about it--we've got
to make good."

"Who's that?" asked the girl, shading her eyes with her hand, and
peering toward the mouth of a coulee that gave into Red Sand Creek from
the direction of the bad lands. Cinnabar followed her gaze and both
watched a horseman who, from the shelter of a cutbank seemed to be
submitting the larger valley to a most careful scrutiny.

"One of them horse-thieves, I guess," ventured, the girl, in a tone of
disgust, "I wisht, Joe, you wouldn't have no truck with 'em."

"I don't have no dealin's with 'em, except to keep my mouth shut an'
haul their stuff out from town--same as all the other ranchers down in
here does. A man wouldn't last long down here th