“I’d as soon ride range here as anywhere,” he said. “It’s immaterial to me who I work for, so long as it’s my kind of work.” “Are you one of these stock hands that considers it beneath his dignity to work for any outfit with less than ten thousand head of cattle?” she asked, with a comical note of asperity. “Well, no,” he laughed. “Hardly so finicky as that. If you’ve got a rider’s job for me, consider me on the pay roll. Only, I’d like to know, if I’m going to work for you, whether I’m likely to find myself being buried some morning at sunrise--and why?” “Wait a minute,” she said. She turned back into the house. In a second she was back with a hat on and two shiny tin pails. “Come down to the stable with me, and we’ll talk this over while I milk. I was in such a state last night that I forgot the cows. Will you saddle up and bring them in out of the pasture?” Rock drove two amiable-looking red cows from the far end of a small pasture to the corral. The girl tied both to the fence and sat down beside one on a low stool. “Can you milk?” she asked, with the faintest shadow of a smile. “Never did,” he answered truthfully. “It’s considered woman’s work, I suppose,” she replied. “But even the wild and woolly cowboy, I notice, likes real milk and cream and butter. I don’t want you to milk cows, though. I’m not running a dairy. I have about eight hundred cattle scattered around here.” “Your ranch outfit looks like about eight thousand,” Rock remarked. “We had more than eight thousand when we came here,” she said. “That is why the house is big and the stable. My father drove three trail herds in here from the Pecos. But we lost most of them.” “Oh, I see,” Rock commented. “So, as I said, I have about eight hundred cattle on the range. I have a rider with the Maltese Cross round-up. I need another rider on the ranch.” “But if you keep a rep with the Cross,” Rock interpolated, “does it matter if your stock does scatter considerable? The outfit would brand the calves and ship your beef as long as you supply a man and a string of horses.” “Yes and no,” she said. “I see you know range work. I suppose what you say is true. Only I have reasons for handling cattle in my own way. But that’s all beside the point. What you want to know is whether you’ll be expected to step into a dead man’s boots and take the risk of getting shot for some reason or other, isn’t it?” “Yes,” Rock admitted. “I have no hankering to inherit a private war along with a forty-dollar job.” “It’ll be fifty if you work for me,” she said. “There may be a risk. Not if you can be around here and work for me, without getting sentimental and jealous. That was what got Doc killed, I believe. I’m sure it was.” Perhaps Rock looked his curiosity and surprise. The girl stood up. She had worked, as she talked, and finished milking the first cow.