The Texan gathered the things into his arms: "Never mind the bunk," he said, "I'll sleep in the hay. I'll be wanting an early start. You've helped, girl," he said looking straight into her eyes, "you've guessed wrong--but you've helped--maybe more than you know. I reckon Win wasn't such a fool with his reward after all," and before she could frame a reply, the man had opened the door and disappeared into the night. CHAPTER XX AT CINNABAR JOE'S 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."