I drew a long breath.
"We mustn't let her do it again."
"Not while I'm in the game. She's an ace-high trump just the same. Wonder if she would have any use for a maverick rancher from the alkali country? I got a pretty good outfit in the Flying D."
"Better ask her."
"I'm going to," he answered coolly. "Drift that butter down this way, will you?"
"Where is she now?" I asked.
"Not up yet. She took a two-hour turn watching while we slept. Then she sat by Dugan for a while. You'd ought to have seen her at the piano singing 'My Maryland' and 'Dixie' to us just as if she had starred in a mutiny every week of her life. She was doing it for what they call the moral effect, and it sure did keep up the nerve of the boys. I could see Jimmie and Billie get real gay again. Used to live in Tennessee, you know."
"Jimmie or Billie?" I asked innocently.
"You know who I mean all right, you old son of a gun. Try this bacon. It's the genuine guaranteed article. That Billie boy is some cook. Seems her mother was a Southerner before Wallace married her."
"What was she afterward?"