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"Here, Miss Margaret! You begin on these. I'll have coffee ready

in two shakes of a cow's tail. And what do you say to bacon?"

He understood her to remark from the depths of a sandwich that

she said "Amen!" to it, and that she would take everything he had

and as soon as he could get it ready. She was as good as her

word. He found no cause to complain of her appetite. Bacon and

sandwiches and coffee were all consumed in quantities reasonable

for a famished girl who had been tramping actively for a day and

a night, and, since she was a child of impulse, she turned more

friendly eyes on him who had appeased her appetite.

"I suppose you are a cowboy like everybody else in this country?"

she ventured amiably after her hunger had become less sharp.

"No, I belong to the government reclamation service."

"Oh!" She had a vague idea she had heard of it before. "Who is it

you reclaim? Indians, I suppose."

"We reclaim young ladies when we find them wandering about the

desert," he smiled.