"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 that didn't—they'd put him out of business. You don't need to fear I'll throw in with 'em. I guess if a man can tend bar for six years an' stay straight—straight enough so the bank ain't afraid to match his pile an' shove the money out through the window to him—there ain't much chance he won't stay straight ranchin'."
"It ain't that, Joe!" the girl hastened to assure him, "I never would married you if I hadn't know'd you was square. I don't want nothin' to do with them crooks—I've got a feelin' that, somehow, they'll throw it into you."
"About the only ones there is around here is Cass Grimshaw's gang an' outside of runnin' off horses, Cass Grimshaw's on the level—everyone knows that."
"Well," replied the girl, doubtfully, "maybe they might be one horse-thief like that—but a whole gang—if they was that square they wouldn't be horse-thieves."
"What Cass says goes——"