She made a great resolve, that moment, that if she were ever safely through the catastrophe which now loomed ahead, she would diminish the distance between her and her men and form the habit of calling them by their first names.  She could not change as abruptly in a moment, but she understood perfectly, that if she had been able to call McGuire by some foolish and familiar nickname, half of his strangeness would immediately melt away.  As it was, she made the best of a bad matter by throwing all the gentle good nature possible into her voice, and she was rewarded by seeing McGuire jerk up his head and jerk down his glance at her.  At the same time, he crimsoned to the eyes, changing his weathered complexion to a flaring, reddish-brown.

“Prison-guard?” said McGuire.  “Me?”

“Well,” answered Marianne, “that’s the truth, isn’t it?  You’re the guard and I’m the prisoner?”

“I’m watching these hosses,” said McGuire.  “That’s all.  They ain’t no money could hire me to guard a woman.”

“Really?” said Marianne.

“Sure.  I used to have a wife.  I know.”

She laughed, a little hysterically, but McGuire treated the mirth as a compliment to his jest and joined in with a tremendous guffaw.  His eyes were still wet with mirth as she said:  “Too bad you have to waste time like this, with such a fine warm day for sleeping.  Couldn’t you trust the corral bars to take care of the horses?”

His glance twinkled with understanding.  It was plain that he appreciated her point and the way she made it.

“Them hosses are feeling their oats,” said McGuire.  “Can’t tell what they’d be up to the minute I turned my back on ’em.  Might jump that old fence and be off, for all I know.”

“Well,” said Marianne, “they look quite contented.  And if one of them did take advantage of you and run away while you slept, I’m sure it would come home again.”

He had quite fallen into the spirit of the thing.

“Maybe,” grinned McGuire, “but I might wake up out of a job.”

“Well,” said Marianne, “there have been times when I would have weighed one hour of good sleep against two jobs as pleasant as this.  How much real damage might that sleep do?”

“If it took me out of the job?  Oh, I dunno.  Might take another month before I landed a place as good.”

“Surely not as long as that.  But isn’t it possible that your sleep might be worth two months’ wages to you, Mr. McGuire?”

“H-m-m,” growled McGuire, and his little shifty eyes fastened keenly on her.  “You sure mean business!”

“As much as anyone in the world could!” cried the girl, suddenly serious.

And for a moment they stared at each other.

“Lady,” said McGuire at length, “I begin to feel sort of yawny and sleepy, like.”

“Then sleep,” said Marianne, her voice trembling in spite of herself.  “You might have pleasant dreams, you know—­of a murder prevented—­of a man’s life saved!”